"Irresponsibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to study, through the medium of his recollection, the simple but intensely human inner life of slavery. His way of looking at the past seemed very strange to us; his view of certain sides of life was essentially different from ours. He never indulged in any regrets for the Arcadian joyousness and irresponsibility which was a somewhat popular conception of slavery; his had not been the lot of the petted house-servant, but that of the toiling field-hand. While he mentioned with a warm appreciation the acts of kindness which those in ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... arrow before, and her skill was instinctive rather than scientific, but the powers were on her side and she aimed better than she knew—those who took note of John Hathaway's behavior that summer would have testified willingly to that. It was the summer in which his boyish irresponsibility slipped away from him once and for all; a summer in which the face of life ceased to be an indistinguishable mass of meaningless events and disclosed an order, a reason, a purpose hitherto unseen ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was all over, all his amiable carelessness came back, and with it his genius, his school-boy high spirits, his tomfooling, his romps with his children, and his utter irresponsibility, and absolute disdain for all the ordinary business of life; and the happy, genial temper that never seemed to know a moment's depression or ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... where the names followed each other with such jumps of date. The others watched him while he did so—or contemplated in silence some "guest" of the hostelry, when such a personage entered the place with an air of appealing from the general irresponsibility of the establishment and found no one but the village-philosophers to address himself to. It was an establishment conducted by invisible, elusive agencies; they had a kind of stronghold in the dining-room, which was kept locked at all but sacramental hours. There was ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... the Demon of Pure Irresponsibility bade me lower myself from the edge of the wharf to the tea-tray ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... secrecy and irresponsibility of Congressional committees which had charge of the direction of legislation, in so far as there was any direction, had been growing for years; and an incident of the revolt against the Payne-Aldrich tariff and the break in the Republican Party had been the internal ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... procedure, when beset by difficulties, was to find fault with everyone all round, himself maintaining a position of irresponsibility. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... seemed for the moment merely a price paid for liberty. The shock of sorrow and dismay had broken innumerable bonds, overthrown all manner of obstacles to growth of character, of power. She gloried in a new, intoxicating sense of irresponsibility. She saw the ideal life in a release from all ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... picture captains of industry, like the California gold finders of 1849, making colossal fortunes in two or three years, have the same glorious irresponsibility and occasional need of the sheriff. They are Californians more literally than this. Around Los Angeles the greatest and most characteristic moving picture colonies are being built. Each photoplay magazine has its California ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the mood to which she herself had looked forward—a mood of springtime and irresponsibility. That was what he should be. It was her right ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... high road on which move onward the great European nations. The Western Aryans have every nation and tribe like their eastern brethren of the fifth race, their Golden and their Iron ages, their period of comparative irresponsibility, or the Satya age of purity, while now several of them have reached their Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, an age black with horrors. This state will last ... until we begin acting from within instead of ever following impulses from without. Until then the only palliative is union and ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... weaker race is deprived of the opportunities which are necessary to cultivate those innate powers which are intended by God to be developed in the rounding out of good citizenship. In fact, the denial of freedom to any race, along any of the walks of life, has a tendency to teach that race irresponsibility; for responsibility must rest with the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... loved them they believed; with all the aloofness of their young souls they were thankful that she did not caress them; but they liked to see Lily Brent fondled by her mother, and they themselves suffered Mrs. Brent's endearments with a happy sense of irresponsibility. It was Mrs. Brent who gave them hot cakes when they went to the dairy to fetch butter or eggs, and who sometimes let them skim the milk and eventually lick the ladle, but she was chiefly wonderful because she could tell them about Mr. Pinderwell. Poor Mr. Pinderwell was the late owner ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... situations, when passengers aboard a commercial vessel find indications of total irresponsibility or incipient insanity on the part of a ship's officer, they are considered correct in assuming command for the time needed to protect their lives. We were poisoned by food prepared in your kitchen, and were nearly killed by ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... political articles informed by at least some pretence of knowledge of economics, history, and constitutional law, such paltry follies and sentimentalities, snobberies and partisaneries, as ignorance can understand and irresponsibility relish. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... fear of death. A report rang out and echoed among the hills. A bullet went 'splat' against a rock near at hand, making a frayed blue mark upon the grey stone. The man dodged from side to side in the panic-stricken irresponsibility of a rabbit seeking covert where none exists. There was not so much as to hide his head. Conyngham looked up towards the foe in time to see a puff of white smoke thrown up against the steely sky. A second report, and the fugitive seemed to ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... heart with a half-dollar, and the treasures of her knowledge were revealed to me. The beauty and her party were to remain a fortnight Among her companions there were no males, except a youthful irresponsibility. Exultemus! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... modernity is (conventionally) measured, roughly, by the degree in which they have departed from the mediaeval pattern. Wherever the unavoidable concessions have been shrewdly made with a view to conserving the autonomy and irresponsibility of the governmental establishment, or the "State," and where the state of national sentiment has been led to favor this work of conservation, as, e.g., in the case of Austria, Spain or Prussia, there the modern outcome has been what may be ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... most was the curious fact that, for all her light irresponsibility, it was always she who made the practical suggestion, hit the nail of expediency on the head. No sentimental scruple made the blow waver or deflected her resolute aim. She had thought at once of Laura, and Laura was his only, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... things as about good things, he would rather, for choice, be in contact with good things. It is always nice to combine business and pleasure. But one regrets, even then, the business. If I were a forensic critic, my delight in attending the courts would still be great; but less than it is in my irresponsibility. In the courts I find satisfied in me just those senses which in the theatre, nearly always, are starved. Nay, I find them satisfied more fully than they ever could be, at best, in any theatre. I do not merely fall back on the courts, in disgust of the theatre as it is. I love the courts ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... indestructible part of her composition. She could not have put into words what quality she demanded in man, but she had always known that she would recognise it when she found it: and she recognised it now in Jimmy. It was a recklessness, an irresponsibility, a cheerful dare-devilry, the complement to ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "worse cropper" might not possibly be a less serious ill than persistent slacking and irresponsibility; but now that the bad news was out, Ralph ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... now placed his hat on his head, and his hand was on the door-knob. An expression which Katharine knew well from her childhood, when he asked her to shield him in some neglect of duty, came into his eyes; malice, humor, and irresponsibility were blended in it. He nodded his head to and fro significantly, opened the door with an adroit movement, and stepped out with a lightness unexpected at his age. He waved his hand once to his daughter, and was gone. Left alone, Katharine could not help laughing to find ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... just how I can account for a strain of compassion which mingled with this sense of irresponsibility in me; perhaps it was my feeling of security that attuned me to pity; but certainly I did not look at this young girl long without beginning to grieve for her, and to weave about her a web of possibilities, which grew closer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a passion for intellectual exercise; but I do not think those forces alone would have kept me at it so grimly and closely if Wimblehurst had not been so dull, so limited and so observant. Directly I came into the London atmosphere, tasting freedom, tasting irresponsibility and the pull of new forces altogether, my discipline fell from me like a garment. Wimblehurst to a youngster in my position offered no temptations worth counting, no interests to conflict with study, no vices—such ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... state of abstraction; when spoken to he made no reply, seemed ready to fall asleep, and when brought before the examining magistrate actually fell asleep. Dr. Garnier, the medical man attached to the infirmary of the police establishment, had no doubt of his irresponsibility and ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... stole softly out through the scullery door and clambered on the char-a-banc for Coney Island. On arrival at that home of gaiety and irresponsibility he forgot his troubles—his sordid domestic upheavals—even his talent he suppressed and merged himself like an ordinary human being into the mad spirit of carnival. With boyish shouts he rolled on the joy-wheel; with childish gurgles he bestrode strange and jolting painted horses and waved his ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... skies themselves; to notice how the sunlight splashed through the rifts as though it had been melted and poured down from above; to feel the friendly warmth of summer air under trees; to savour the hot springwood-smells that wandered here and there in the careless irresponsibility of forest spirits off duty. This was Bobby's first experience with woods; and his keenest perceptions were alive to them. The tall trunks of trees rising from the graceful, fragile, half-translucence of undergrowth; little round ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... roared Kie Wicks. And as the man turned he recognized the little professor whom he had met at Judge Breckenridge's ranch the previous day. Kie laughed to himself. Here was one man he need never fear. Inefficiency and irresponsibility were stamped upon ever line of the ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... things established have been applied to this new species of possession without remark. It is indestructible, imperishable wealth, subject only to the mutations of value that economic changes bring about. Related in its character of absolute irresponsibility to this shareholding class is a kindred class that has grown with the growth of the great towns, the people who live upon ground rents. There is every indication that this element of irresponsible, independent, and wealthy people ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... and his eyes troubled him with spots and dashes and blurs till he had taken counsel with the sideboard, and the Melancolia both on the canvas and in his own mind appeared lovelier than ever. There was a delightful sense of irresponsibility upon him, such as they feel who walking among their fellow-men know that the death-sentence of disease is upon them, and, seeing that fear is but waste of the little time left, are riotously happy. The days ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Miss Dickett?" the chauffeur inquired respectfully; all the employees of the Julia Carter Sykes establishment respected Molly, as well they might. A sudden, happy irresponsibility flooded Molly's tired mind, and she smiled into the man's face—the old, not-to-be-resisted ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... indolence of a sailor away from the sea, the scene of never-ending labour and of unceasing duty. For utter surrender to in indolence you cannot beat a sailor ashore when that mood is on him—the mood of absolute irresponsibility tasted to the full. It seems to me that I thought of nothing whatever, but this is an impression which is hardly to be believed at this distance of years. What I am certain of is that I was very far from thinking of writing a story, though it is possible and even likely ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... embezzlement or perhaps larceny as bailee. In this instance, you were the bailee. And the only way out of that would be to swear that you had received the check with Stener's knowledge and consent. Then it would only be a technical charge of irresponsibility on your part, as I see it, and I don't believe any jury would convict you on the evidence of how this relationship was conducted. Still, it might; you never can tell what a jury is going to do. All this would have ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... believe, one of Leonora's priests—a man of the world—who suggested that she should take him to Monte Carlo. He had the idea that what Edward needed, in order to fit him for the society of Leonora, was a touch of irresponsibility. For Edward, at that date, had much the aspect of a prig. I mean that, if he played polo and was an excellent dancer he did the one for the sake of keeping himself fit and the other because it was a social duty to show himself at dances, and, when there, to dance well. He did nothing for fun except ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... to desire and absolutely nothing to do, since Stevie's urgent claim on her devotion no longer existed. Mrs Verloc, who thought in images, was not troubled now by visions, because she did not think at all. And she did not move. She was a woman enjoying her complete irresponsibility and endless leisure, almost in the manner of a corpse. She did not move, she did not think. Neither did the mortal envelope of the late Mr Verloc reposing on the sofa. Except for the fact that Mrs Verloc breathed these ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... further on, but not an insanity of the will, as they understand it, which would excuse a man from the consequences of his wilful acts. Upon this subject Dr. Chipley justly remarks: "If one is born with all the emotional endowments of our nature, but destitute of understanding, his irresponsibility is unquestionable. The same is true when the faculties of the understanding are perverted, impaired, or destroyed ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... and momentarily attractive. But she only said "No," apparently from habit, picked up her doll, and the boy clambered to the front of the wagon. The incomplete episode terminated at once with that perfect forgetfulness, indifference, and irresponsibility common to all young animals. If either could have flown away or bounded off finally at that moment, they would have done so with no more concern for preliminary detail than a bird or squirrel. The wagon ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... President sees fit to send me here, without order from the Departmental Governor. Hombre! what will follow? Quien sabe?" He shrugged his shoulders with that expressive Latin gesture which indicates complete irresponsibility for ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... conferred upon the Federal judiciary. Not only, then, did the framers of the Constitution depart from the English model in making the Federal judiciary independent of Congress, but they went much farther than this and conferred upon the body whose independence and irresponsibility were thus secured, powers which under the English system were regarded as the exclusive prerogative of a responsible Parliament. This made our Supreme judges, though indirectly appointed, holding office for life and therefore independent of the people, the final interpreters of ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... itinerant preacher. But for one brief day I was a small and insignificant part of the life in your great city, unnoted and unclassified. And you cannot know what that sensation means, if you were not brought up as a whole big unit in some small village. The sense of irresponsibility was delightful. I felt as if I had escaped through the buckle of my father's creed and for once was a happy maverick soul in the world at large, with no prayer-meeting responsibilities. I could have danced and glorified God on a curbstone, if such a manifestation ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... saw shadows; I looked into another kind of depths—mental depths—which held a message that I feared. So I procrastinated, staying on in the air which had given me red blood. But that was cowardly, and that day I came over the pass I was making my last ride in the kingdom of irresponsibility. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... maintain, but the very irresponsibility of which I have spoken. Why, gentlemen, I foresee the day when these people themselves shall come to us Southerners of their own accord and ask to be re-enslaved until such time as they shall be fit for freedom." Old Horace was ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of the virtues of the Stuarts and most of their faults. His arbitrary irresponsibility shook the confidence of the nation in his sincerity. Two parties, the Whigs and the Tories, came into being, and party spirit and party strife ran high. The question at issue was chiefly one of religion. The rank and file of Protestant ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... the more imperiled. Withal there was a spreading and deepening and most reasonable disgust at the reckless ranting of a little knot of antislavery men having their headquarters at Boston, who, exulting in their irresponsibility, scattered loosely appeals to men's vindictive passions and filled the unwilling air with clamors against church and ministry and Bible and law and government, denounced as "pro-slavery" all who declined to accept their measures or their persons, and, arrogating to themselves exclusively ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... touch in a friendly way, and say as little as possible. He comes to one humanly first, and asks you for your eye to his verse afterward, something of the "Little boy Lost", in his so ineffectual face, weak with sweetness and hidden in shyness, covered with irresponsibility, or lack of power to ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... simply a "consultative voice." Provision was made for a ministry, and under the letter of the constitution no act of the government was binding unless performed on the warrant of a minister. But in point of fact the principle of irresponsibility permeated the Napoleonic regime from the First Consul himself to the lowliest functionary. The conferring upon Napoleon, in 1802, of the consulship for life, and the conversion of the Consulate, in 1804, into the Empire, but concentrated yet more fully in the hands of a single man ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... never feel any active impulse to further its work. He liked to see things fall into place about him at a wave of her wand; but his enjoyment of her household magic in no way diminished his smiling irresponsibility, and it was with one of its least amiable consequences that his wife and ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... He would admit of no defense, although the lawyer appointed for him by the court was strenuous for a plea of insanity, based upon the singular remark which he had made upon the announcement of Elijah Abbott's death, and which was construed by those who heard it as ample proof of irresponsibility. Called upon in court to give his defense, Cavendish stated in a loud, clear voice that he was strictly accountable for his act, that he was in full possession of his senses at the time, and that he had killed the Governor in the firm conviction that he was a menace ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... over worldly duties; when I had neglected or carelessly performed my tasks, I was not chastised. Human nature finds such instruction very easy of assimilation. Under Master's unsparing rod, however, I soon recovered from the agreeable delusions of irresponsibility. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... these drifters, however, who because of their irresponsibility and their hostility toward society became easy victims to the industrial organizer. The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... is linked with that of a man no less remarkable than herself, a hero of chivalry, a marvel of courage, of fascination, and of irresponsibility. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... heaviest charge brought against American humour is that it never keeps its target well in view. We laugh, but we are not purged by laughter of our follies; we jest, but our jests are apt to have a kitten's sportive irresponsibility. The lawyer offers a witticism in place of an argument, the diner-out tells an amusing story in lieu of conversation. Even the clergyman does not disdain a joke, heedless of Dr. Johnson's warning ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Democratic Conference. The immediate task of the fusionists was to create a responsible ministry. But even this was not achieved. Kerensky neither wanted nor permitted responsibility, because this was not permitted by the bourgeoisie, which was backing him. Irresponsibility towards the organs of the so-called democracy meant, in fact, responsibility to the Cadets and the Allied Embassies. For the time being this was sufficient for the bourgeoisie. On the question of coalition the Democratic Conference revealed its utter insolvency: ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... to look at him in the moonlight. His face presented its habitual Spanish gravity—a gravity that was almost ironical. His small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity—the irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of Miss Mannersley. I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss Pinkey Smith, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... noise in the Federation; but we hold it together for you. I'm not particularly disturbed by the superficials I've seen here. The indecent dress of these people, their indolent villages, their congenital irresponsibility—all that disgusts me, but it has not affected my analysis. There's something else here—something far more terrible and more dangerous for us. I can't put it in words. It's horrible and it's deadly; it's the reason why our men have deserted. They've had attractive women ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... His irresponsibility enchanted her in spite of herself—Ned had judged the situation rightly when he said: "It is the circus aspiring to the academy and the academy spying the circus." His epigram occurred to him as he walked home and it amused him, and he thought ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... have been perfectly possible for the world to get on and do business without the modern corporation—without the invention of a fictitious person clothed with the enormously powerful attributes of immortality and irresponsibility. That is to say, men can act together or in partnership, but they are mortal, and at their death their personal powers end. The corporation may be immortal, and its powers, as well as its acquisitions, increase forever. Men are liable with all their estates for their contracts and obligations. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... consumed by the desolating flames of war, spring up the tender growths of Christian civilization. The filthy hovel is replaced by the decent cottage. The squalor of slavery is succeeded by the little adornments of ownership. The thrift of self-possession supplants the recklessness of irresponsibility. For the slave-pen we have the school-house. Where the lash labored to reduce men to the level of brutes, the Bible leads them up to the heights of angels. We are as yet but in the beginning, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Early Training.—To low ideals of home life and of personal obligation, which were imbibed in youth, can be traced much family irresponsibility. It is by no means the rule, however, for children always to follow in the footsteps of weak or vicious parents; and it is the experience of social workers that such children, taught by observation to avoid the faults seen ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... whereas he took care that there should be no responsibility but to himself. He viewed them, in fact, in the light of instruments which he might break as he pleased. I found this single index sufficient to disclose all his future designs In order to make the irresponsibility of his Ministers to the public perfectly clear, he had all the acts of his Government signed merely by M. Maret, Secretary of State. Thus the Consulship for life was nothing but an Empire in disguise, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... enthusiasm. Priscilla declared that she wasn't a bit sleepy, and the others all echoed the statement. Then Aunt Abigail was appealed to, for just one more, and complied without any pretence of reluctance. Aunt Abigail was enjoying herself hugely, and it was characteristic of her amiable irresponsibility that it never occurred to her that there might be undesirable consequences, from thus stimulating the vivid imaginations of a party ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... had an excellent opportunity to come to know the Filipinos. Their dignity of bearing, their courtesy, their friendly hospitality, their love of imposing functions, and of fiestas and display, their childishness and irresponsibility in many matters, their passion for gambling, for litigation and for political intrigue, even the loves and the hatreds of some of them, had been spread before us like an open book. It is a fact that except for the inhabitants of Cebu, Bohol and Batangas, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of tone is admirable, for it is a subtly restrained acidity, requiring either intense and unremitting care (which seems unlikely) or a special adjustment of temperament. It is very Gaulish, it must have been modelled on Voltaire: but it is also enlivened with flashes of irresponsibility that are ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... they will not hear Ireland speak. All the real amiability which most Englishmen undoubtedly feel towards Irishmen is lavished upon a class of Irishmen which unfortunately does not exist. The Irishman of the English farce, with his brogue, his buoyancy, and his tender-hearted irresponsibility, is a man who ought to have been thoroughly pampered with praise and sympathy, if he had only existed to receive them. Unfortunately, all the time that we were creating a comic Irishman in fiction, we were creating a tragic ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Abbott would rent the house every winter. A pleasant feeling of irresponsibility was beginning to possess his jaded spirit. He made a little money occasionally, but he was no longer expected to hand anything over when the first of the month came round—a date that had haunted him like a nightmare for four long years. Pie could spend it on himself, and he felt an. increasing ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... entail must not be allowed to grow dim. Those nearest of kin are the natural supports and helpers of the weak and dependent; and though patience and resources be severely taxed, it is better to let blood ties continue to involve obligation than to permit the selfish irresponsibility of a freer and more individualistic society. Much provocation can be borne by remembering "She is my mother"; "He is my brother"; after all, their interests are ours, and our lives are impoverished, as well as theirs, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... irresponsibility of money have ruined many a man, and the misuse of wealth has left unused immense opportunity for good. It has coined a word that has become abhorrent, and "Capitalism" has, in the minds of the suspicious, become ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... pure form the desire for new experience implies motion, change, danger, instability, social irresponsibility. The individual dominated by it shows a tendency to disregard prevailing standards and group interests. He may be a complete failure, on account of his instability; or a conspicuous success, if he converts his experiences into social values—puts them in the form of a poem, makes of them ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... forced to sign his name. As I once heard it picturesquely expressed, "The mask should be torn from the villain's face. Why should a man be allowed to stab his neighbour in the dark!" As a matter of fact, I am convinced that anonymity makes, not for irresponsibility but for responsibility, and that there are many men who, though truculent, offensive, and personal when they write with the "I," will show a true sense of moderation and responsibility when they use the editorial "we." The man who writes for ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... breaking point. We call the administration of that period criminally unpatriotic. As such "The Destroyers" must always figure in history. But we must not forget that then, as now, we English people had as good a Government as we deserved. The spirit of selfish irresponsibility was not confined ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... as one who knew that any change which depressed his party, might eventually abrogate his privilege. For the first time in the person of an imperator was seen a supreme autocrat, who had virtually and effectively all the irresponsibility which the law assigned, and the origin of his office presumed. Satisfied to know that he possessed such power, Augustus, as much from natural taste as policy, was glad to dissemble it, and by every means to withdraw it from public notice. But he had passed his youth as citizen ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... acuity of hearing was no longer so pronounced and the sense of refreshment, although still present, was not intense. We were already becoming adjusted to the new condition. The feeling of inertia and irresponsibility became gradually replaced by a general sense of calmness. To me, it seemed as if I had entered a world of new perspectives, a larger world in which space and time were widened out immeasurably. I could scarcely recall the nature of those impulses that had once driven me to and fro in ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... a newspaper Press that, on ordinary matters, for delightful irresponsibility, might be matched in London. Yet not a single whisper of what the nation was designing and planning leaked abroad. Because the whole nation was a soldier, and the whole nation was under a soldier's honour, absolute ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... classify Oh, Mr. Bidgood (LANE), then I should call it a confused comedy, but I should want to add that Mr. PETER BLUNDELL writes with such delightful irresponsibility that the confusion does not make much difference. To explain exactly what occurred during the voyage of the Susan Dale from Ceylon until she was "in distress" off the Borneo coast is not within ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... this made Harwood uncomfortable. It was unfortunate from every standpoint that the legislature should be called upon to choose a Senator without the usual time for preparation. Dan had already been struck by the general air of irresponsibility that prevailed among the legislators. Many of the members had looked upon the special session as a lark; they seemed to feel that their accountability to their constituents had ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness, that bottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility—that terrific, devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... your mother and the children, because if you had thought even of me a little this would not have happened. I'm very, very sorry for it. I believe it happened from your weakness and foolishness, or you could not have behaved with such irresponsibility, but I'm trying to look at it quite calmly. I therefore propose to do nothing at all for three months. If I acted on your suggestion you might regret it ever after. If in three months you write to me again in the same strain, still desiring to be free, I will think ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... changes of the social and literary environment. Undoubtedly the comparison is to the advantage of the earlier writings; they seem infinitely more amusing, more genuine, more biographical, more redolent of the manners and complexion of the time. There is in them a flavour of heartiness and irresponsibility which may partly be attributed to the fact that the best writers were poets, whose genius flowered as early as their manhood, and most of whom died young; so that their letters are fresh, audacious, and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... have given you the best they have: an honorable name, a lifetime of devotion, the full ten talents. For these, you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self-indulgent hypocrisy. You have begged extenuation on the basis of nervous ill- health and temporary irresponsibility, both of which you have brought upon yourself by violating the laws of right-living. It is your soul that is sick. You are not fit to live free and equal with righteous men and women. You have had ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... attributed to the general demoralization of the times than to any definite policy. For it must be remembered that the political conditions of Mexico at that time were most unsettled. None knew what a day or an hour might bring forth. All was confusion, uncertainty, irresponsibility. And in the melee Mission property and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Direct employment would not have meant a change to another class of work (this is what direct employment meant for knitters and hand-loom weavers). The butty system existed and persisted through slackness and irresponsibility. The owners paid compensation for accidents, when they might have diminished the number of accidents. They paid commissions to middlemen with whom they might have dispensed. The system made temperance impossible for the individual; and the masters, with the full approval of the Government, ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... taking of a human life was to him a commonplace. He was not capable of remorse, any more than he had been disposed to pity. He was not a man, only the blighted and cursed husk of a man, indeed, but doubly dangerous for his irresponsibility, for ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... conditions, and although nothing occurred of sufficient magnitude to warrant official protest, the Tokyo Government became sensible of perpetual rebuffs and humiliating interferences at China's hands. Korea herself suffered seriously from this state of national irresponsibility. There was no security of life and property, or any effective desire to develop the country's resources. If the victims of oppression appealed to force, China readily lent military assistance to suppress them, and thus ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sighed a second time, for he was far from happy. Life seemed to be one long constant worry over money matters and Myra Nell. Being a prim, orderly man, he intensely disliked searching for mislaid articles, but he began a systematic hunt; for, knowing Myra Nell's peculiar irresponsibility, he was prepared to find the missing slipper anywhere between the hammock on the front gallery and the kitchen in the rear. However, a full half-hour's search failed to discover it. He had been under most of the furniture and was both hot and dusty when she came bouncing ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... what he fancied he knew about his distinguished guest. Among those who crowded the place were several men of education, in the Honduranean sense,—about equal to that of a poorly trained American child in the fourth grade. But there was not one of them that did not show a monkey curiosity and irresponsibility in handling every article in my pack; my sweater—"Ay que lindo!" my papers—"How beautiful!" an extremely ordinary shirt—"How soft and fine! How costly!" and "How much did this cost?—and that?" Suaza displayed my medicine-case to ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... whose envious tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman, there would be an end of this silly, ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the earth earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such incalculable creatures. The men and women—women especially—who gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to scurrilous papers—he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is not responsible for his faults; but there is a sense in which we are none of us responsible for ours, and when we are once permanently committed to this view of ourselves, there is no health in us. To treat the married vagabond as not responsible, is only to increase his irresponsibility. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... legacies; in marriage in our own country; in voting and in jury and militia service; in the right to admission and practice in the professions and many public offices; in the enforcement of laws relating to education and to child labor, as well as to various matters in the criminal code; the irresponsibility of children under ten for crime or misdemeanor; the determination of the age of consent, ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... neither of these two classes, except perhaps in the irresponsibility of its author. It is compounded of gossip,—the flying gossip or dust of Peking. Take it lightly; blow off such dust as may happen to stick to you. For authentic information turn to the heavy volumes written by the acknowledged students of ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... actions, but we take good care, or ought to take good care, that they shall answer to us for their insanity, and we imprison them in what we call an asylum (that modern sanctuary!) if we do not like their answers. This is a strange kind of irresponsibility. What we ought to say is that we can afford to be satisfied with a less satisfactory answer from a lunatic than from one who is not mad, because lunacy ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... by their old-fashioned in-board overhang. But I had no very clear notion of what I was doing; and my feeling, so far as I had any feeling, was less that I was moving of my own volition than that I was being moved by some power acting from outside of me—the sensation of irresponsibility that comes to one sometimes in ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... truth in Hardy's description of Ted Haviland. Ted had all a baby's fascination, a baby's irresponsibility, and a baby's rigid tenacity of purpose. There perhaps the likeness ended. At any rate, Ted had contrived to plan a career for himself at the age of seven, had said nothing about it for ten years, and then quietly carried it through in spite of circumstances ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... through the beard of a season's growth and behind the haggard mask before me, I saw at once the circus-rider of Turin and Paris. I remember being scarcely excited or surprised at the meeting, for a great sense of irresponsibility came over me, and I involuntarily accepted the coincidence as a matter of course. He tried in vain to speak, but held up his right hand, and feebly made with his fingers the sign of the letter which had played ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... my hand, I would be a little rattled if a gag was put on me. To the devil with Red Shirt! Although he had not mentioned the name "Porcupine," he had given me such pointers as to put me wise as to who the objective was, and now he requested me not to blow the gaff!—it was an irresponsibility least to be expected from a head teacher. In the ordinary run of things, he should step into the thick of the fight between Porcupine and me, and side with me with all his colors flying. By so doing, he might be worthy the position of the head teacher, and vindicate the principle of wearing ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... up the tail of her gown, put her feather-crowned head through the gap in the fence and drew her august person after, and Jeffrey followed her. He had a gay sense of irresponsibility, of seeking the event. He was grateful to Madame Beattie. They went on, and as it was that other night, some withdrew to leave a pathway and others stared, but, finding no specific reason, did not hinder them. Madame Beattie spoke once or twice, a brief mandate in a foreign tongue, and that, Jeff ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... bound to come sooner or later between public opinion, concerned to preserve the comfort of its illusions, and the art of the individual artist playing, in noble irresponsibility, with ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and then came a telegram for Park. In the reading of it he shuffled off his attitude of boyish irresponsibility and became in a breath the cool, business-like leader of men. Holding the envelope still in his hand he sought out Thurston, who was practicing with a rope. As Park approached him he whirled the noose and cast it neatly over the peak of ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... writing at the time, might have approved, but were hardly to be called educative in any higher sense. The only master that these Bohemians could boast was a very invertebrate old artist, who seems to have been the soul of politeness and irresponsibility, and who accompanied every weak criticism with the ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... individualism, checked only by a system of legally constituted rights. The test of American national success was the comfort and prosperity of the individual; and the means to that end,—a system of unrestricted individual aggrandizement and collective irresponsibility. ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... upbringing and subsequent life had been amongst the dreariest of surroundings, there was something about it all peculiarly fascinating. The air of pleasant abandonment, the subtle aroma of gaiety allied with irresponsibility, the strange food and wine, well cooked and stimulating, delighted him. His sole desire now was for a companion. If only those men—artists, he was sure they were—would draw him into their conversation. He had plenty to say. He was ready to be as ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... the excuse which previous provocation may be conceived in some degree to furnish to human infirmity, but only the strict theory and principle of the constitution on which the doctrine of the responsibility of the ministers and the consequent irresponsibility of the sovereign rests, Lord Campbell's conditional justification for the communication made through Lord Temple will hardly appear admissible. We cannot be sure how far Mr. Grenville's "Diary" is to be trusted for transactions in which he was not personally concerned, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the first place, so much as know who he was—by which he meant know who and what it was to be a White-Mason, even a poor and a dear and old one, "anyway." That indeed—he did her perfect justice—was of the very essence of the newness and freshness and beautiful, brave, social irresponsibility by which she had originally dazzled him: just exactly that circumstance of her having no instinct for any old quality or quantity or identity, a single historic or social value, as he might say, of the New York of his already almost legendary past; and that ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... conformance with current precepts, particularly in a world still full of hostilities. The stability of the Army came first; changes would have to be made slowly, without risking the menace of disruption. An attempt to mix the races in the Army seemed to most officers a dangerous move bordering on irresponsibility. Furthermore, the majority of Army officers, dedicated to the traditions of the service, saw the Army as a social as well as a military institution. It was a way of life that embraced families, wives and children. The old manners and practices were comfortable ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... sheds communicating with this small barn. The lantern shed a soft, steady light from one wall. All outside was still in the rain. He looked down at the silky folds of the paisley shawl. It reminded him of his mother. She used to go to church in it. He was back again in the old irresponsibility and ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... attention, and spoiled the means, the minds, and the souls of the masses. The sight daily in every great English-reading city when the sporting editions of the newspapers appear, ought indeed to arouse every follower of Christ. But the habit of irresponsibility that has grown up in most "Christian" circles has still to be fought against everywhere, and The General's persistent testimony against it, indeed the whole theory of a Divine Army and of War, ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... now old enough to be dangerous, and his life had been one of irresponsibility and lawlessness. He was nearly at his physical growth at this time, possibly five feet seven and a half inches in height, and weighing a hundred and thirty-five pounds. He was always slight and lean, a hard rider all his ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... not parent bred, but class bred, a person with a lively sense of social influences and no social ideas. The one class that is economically capable of making all that can be made of its children is demoralized by the very irresponsibility of the wealth that creates this opportunity. This is still more apparent in the American plutocracy, where perhaps half the women appear to be artificially sterilized spenders of money ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her girlish beauty and irresponsibility will never be known; but we know that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry, in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... laborers. One was a hodcarrier, and a strapping fellow. When he arrived at the institution, he was at once placed in the violent ward, though his "violence" consisted of nothing more than an annoying sort of irresponsibility. He irritated the attendants by persistently doing certain trivial things after they had been forbidden. The attendants made no allowance for his condition of mind. His repetition of a forbidden act was interpreted as deliberate disobedience. He was physically ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... barbaric, in its refusal of a seat in the central senate of the nations. What we called our splendid isolation became a rather ignominious sleeping-partnership with Prussia. Next, we were largely trained in irresponsibility by our contemporary historians, Freeman and Green, teaching us to be proud of a possible descent from King Arthur's nameless enemies and not from King Arthur. King Arthur might not be historical, but ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... when he wrote that Posh was a little obstinate as to "how little drunk," etc. Moreover he understood the nature of the man—"a great genial boy"—but he did not understand that these "great genial boys" have all the mischievous tendencies, and all the irresponsibility of real boys. He was kind and forbearing enough, God knows. But he had set up his Posh on such a pinnacle of pre-eminence over all his fellow-men that it is possible that his bitterness in discovering that after all his protege was merely a well-built, handsome, ordinary ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... ten days' stay in Paris, Katrine saw him constantly. The evening after her first visit to the Countess he received with a gay air of irresponsibility the news that she was to take up her residence with Madame de Nemours, and though he personally assisted in the establishing of herself and Nora in the queer old house, it was with the manner of one in no way responsible ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... in In Memoriam (his two sustained and ambitious efforts), particular phrases are always flashing out the whole fire of the truth; the truth that Tennyson meant. But owing to his English indolence, his English aristocratic irresponsibility, his English vagueness in thought, he always managed to make the main poem mean exactly what he did not mean. Thus, these two ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton |
