"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sunburn cream, "maybe I'd better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven't forgotten." She went off without another word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she'd come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp. ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... ventured to interfere with or annoy the meeting. He was ready, not only to preach the Gospel but to fight, as sometimes he felt it his duty to do. No man dared in the presence of Cartwright to interrupt the meeting, as in those times irresponsible parties hanging about such gatherings frequently attempted to do in ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... I remember now what I did say. I said that much as I enjoyed the pleasant give and take of friendly conversation, dearly as I loved even the irresponsible monologue or the biting repartee, yet still more was I attached to the silent worship of the valse's mazy rhythm. 'BUT,' I went on to say, 'but,' I added, with surprising originality, 'every rule has an exception. YOU are the exception. May I have two dances, and then we'll try ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... of Mr. Browning's new poem came before the critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, sordid, unlovely, morally sterile, an ugly leaf out of some ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... he discovered the true line of progress and the law of future society; he was a patriot, a republican, a Liberal, but above all this, a man sagacious enough to know that politics is an inductive science. A sublime purpose justifies him, and he has been wronged by dupes and fanatics, by irresponsible dreamers ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... contentment, making me feel that I'd swell up and burst, if all that crazy ferment couldn't find some relief in expression. So after three long years and more of silence I'm turning back to this, the journal of one irresponsible old Chaddie McKail, who wanted so much to be happy and who has in some way missed the pot of gold that they told her was to be found ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... gloried in it. Baron, if you ever want to know how ample a thing life can be, become a certified lunatic! You are quite irresponsible for your debts, your crimes, and, not least, your words. It certainly enlarges one's horizon. All this time, I may say, I was racking my brains—which, by the way, have been steadily growing saner in other matters—for some recollections of my previous ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... and temperament have the buoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, its charm and its weakness. These distinctions and contrasts meet us everywhere. The southern Chinese, and especially the Cantonese, is more irresponsible and hot-blooded than the Celestial of the north, though the bitter struggle for existence in the over-crowded Kwangtung province has made him quite as industrious; but on his holidays he takes his pleasure in singing, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... fathers' fathers. Here a man who had been a tutor and then a Fellow, and was now one of His Majesty's judges; there another, who walked with sober mien in the leggings and tunic of a Bishop, and who, in his time, had dodged the Proctor and his bull-dogs as nimbly as the most irresponsible undergraduate of the moment—and so on through the whole ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... who hold a place in the upper ranks are not worthy of their lofty position, and there are many who hope to see such a general levelling as took place during the French Revolution. They are fortified in their opinion by the lavish and irresponsible way in which the wealthy use their money, and they are tantalized by the display of luxury which, if times are hard, are in aggravating contrast to the hardship and suffering of the poor. The scale ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... not merely that she can do pure comedy, that she can be frankly, deliciously, gay. There is one of her songs in which she laughs, chuckles, and trills a rapid flurry of broken words and phrases, with the sudden, spontaneous, irresponsible mirth of a bird. But where she is most herself is in a manner of tragic comedy which has never been seen on the music-hall stage from the beginning. It is the profoundly sad and essentially serious comedy which one sees in Forain's drawings, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... four weeks and he had agreed to pay me $2,500, aside from the bonus always attached to successful and quick work. Still, I wasn't sure that I wanted to go. I knew there was the danger of recognition, and I knew the kind of irresponsible, hotheaded, temperamental people I was going among. It was far more difficult, far more hazardous, than any mission I had ever undertaken, in England or France; even the tremendous responsibilities ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... dearest ties of nature have been riven in his own person. A mother has been cruelly scourged before his own eyes. A father,—alas! slaves have no father. A brother has been made the subject of its tender mercies. A sister has been given up to the irresponsible control of the pale-faced oppressor. This nation looks on approvingly. The American Union sanctions the deed. The Constitution shields the criminals. American religion sanctifies the crime. But the tide is turning. Already, a mighty under-current ...
— The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave • William Wells Brown
... time the weather, generally malign and irresponsible, favoured Priscilla. With the rising tide a light westerly breeze sprang up. She hoisted the sails and sat in the stern of the boat with an oar. She tucked the middle of it under her armpit, pressed her side tight against the gunwale, and with the blade trailing in the water steadied the Tortoise ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... a totally different thing. I happen to know what I'm talking about. The fellows who've got these guns are wild, irresponsible, unpractical fools. They've been giving us trouble for years, far more trouble than all the Unionist party put together. They don't understand politics in the least. They've no sense. They're like—like——" he looked round for some comparison, "in some ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... among other things a very vivid sense of citizenship and public spirit, somewhat put out in later life by the rush of personal feeling, but in childhood the personal events are so few and so irresponsible that public affairs become an actual part of life and of experience. While their elders are still discussing the news and weighing its importance, it is already a part of the children's life. Little Amelia Alderson ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... had," Aunt Frances' tone was fervent. "I can't see any future for Barry, unless he marries Leila. If he were not so irresponsible, I might do something for him. But ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... and a few moments later the men had saddled their ponies and were galloping away in the direction of sun-baked Cuivaca. They sang now, and were happy, for they were as little boys playing hooky from school—not bad men; but rather irresponsible children. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... man. There were neat steps cut in the sandstone leading from one to the other; narrow ledges along which you crawled, clinging like a fly to the face of the cliff; and outside some of the caves was a kind of sandstone chute which presumably served the same purpose as did the banisters of irresponsible boyhood's days. I cannot imagine what else the occupants could use them for, nor when they had reached the bottom, how they climbed the steep incline again, except ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... so evenly his mood of irresponsible insouciance that the soberness with which he announced that it was his sister who was to join them at dinner sent Archie's thoughts darting away at a new tangent of speculation. He had so accommodated himself to the idea that the Governor was ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... in this twentieth century in the hands of single individuals, not selected from the mass for their special wisdom or humanity, is a stupendous fact which must give pause to any one who is inclined to feel complacent about modern industrial progress. In days gone by political power was as irresponsible as the economic power wielded to-day by Lord Rhondda; and it descended from father to son by hereditary right in the same way as the control over the lives of countless American workers descends to-day as a matter of course from John D. Rockefeller senior ...
— Progress and History • Various
... be rescued from their present subjection to an irresponsible secret tribunal which can condemn their plays without giving reasons, by the substitution for that tribunal of a Committee of the Privy Council, which is to be the final authority on the fitness of a play for representation; and this Committee is to sit in camera ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... shores of our little island have drifted all kinds of miscellaneous rubbish, and that the Manxmen, from their very simplicity and ignorance of other literatures, have had no means of sifting the flotsam and assigning value to the constituents. Besides this, they are so irresponsible, have no literary conscience, and accordingly have appropriated anything and everything. This is true of some Manx ballads, and perhaps also of many Manx carols. The carols, called Carvals in Manx, serve in Man, as in other countries, the purpose of celebrating the ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... his mistress to come out of the nursery where her voice could be heard talking imperiously to her baby's ayah. He had already waited some minutes, and he would probably have waited much longer, for his patience was inexhaustible, had it not been for that sudden irresponsible and wholly tuneless burst of song. But the second line was scarcely ended before she came hurriedly forth, nearly running into his ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... told her husband, who appeared in the kitchen door, dish-towel in hand. Margaret Bean's husband always washed the dishes and performed all the irresponsible domestic duties of the establishment. He was commonly adjudged not as smart as his wife, and little store was set by his counsels. Indeed, at times the only dignity of his man's estate which seemed left to this obediently pottering old body was the masculine pronoun which necessarily ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to the quick. His irresponsible temper fairly jumped within him, his eyes danced with rage, and he could scarcely find ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... him from buying and selling human beings and parting kindred—which should have made it impossible for him to have permitted the lashing, beating and lacerating of his slaves, much more the hiring of an irresponsible brute, by the year, to perform this barbarous service for him. The McGees were charitable—as they interpreted the word—were always ready to contribute to educational and missionary funds, while denying, under the severest ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... conventions. But these flashes of amusement were but brief reactions from the long disgust of her days. Compared with the vast gilded void of Mrs. Hatch's existence, the life of Lily's former friends seemed packed with ordered activities. Even the most irresponsible pretty woman of her acquaintance had her inherited obligations, her conventional benevolences, her share in the working of the great civic machine; and all hung together in the solidarity of these traditional functions. The performance of specific ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... time the head of the Ministry assumed an absolutely independent and irresponsible position. He had been raised to power by the Petrograd Soviet during the first epoch of the revolution: Kerensky had entered the Ministry without a preliminary decision of the Soviets, but his admission was subsequently approved. After the First ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... resists any and every attempt to amalgamate them into one sole substance. The doctrine of creation, and not of emanation or of modification, is the doctrine by which it constructs its theory of the Universe, and the doctrine of responsible self-determination, and not of irresponsible natural development, is the doctrine by which it constructs its systems of Philosophy ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Dr. Ashton's that what Arthur Fenton became was so purely a question of environment as to leave the artist all but irresponsible. This fatalistic view he had laid before his wife with some detail, at once explaining ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... Southern and Western Ireland more important than those of the United States. In spite of the plain fact that a separate Ireland would weaken civilisation and menace the world's peace by introducing a hostile and undependable wedge betwixt the two major parts of Saxondom, these irresponsible elements continue to encourage rebellion in the Green Isle; and in so doing tend to place this nation in a distressingly anomalous position as an abettor of crime and sedition against the Mother Land. Disgusting beyond words are the public honours paid to political ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... right, and whatever ought to be the relations between white men and black, lynching must be wrong, and must tend to make the difficulties of a mixed population even greater than they were already. Whatever may be the vices of the black man, burning negroes alive at the mandate of an irresponsible mob, who are acting on rumour and hearsay, cannot but be the very acme of human depravity. And it is as stupid ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The creatures whom I met in the ways and byeways of Parisian life, whose gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I hungered to know, awoke in me a tense, irresponsible curiosity, but that was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... admission. Those who had already scrutinized Miss Tuttle with the curiosity of an ill-defined suspicion now scrutinized her with a more palpable one, and those who had hitherto seen nothing in this heavily-veiled woman but the bereaved sister of an irresponsible suicide allowed their looks to dwell piercingly on that concealing veil, as if they would be glad to penetrate its folds and read in those beautiful features the meaning of an allusion uttered with such ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Bautista seems more like that of a prison than a church. The Rev Valentin Closa, of the Company of Jesus, who for many years has had charge here, found that some visitors were so irresponsible that thefts were of almost daily occurrence. So he had a wooden barrier placed across the church from wall to wall, and floor to ceiling, through which a gate affords entrance, and this gate is kept padlocked with as constant watchfulness as is that of a prison. Passing this ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... the tropics. Once, seizing a slender vine to aid him in climbing, he gave a sudden lurch and swung out unexpectedly over the gorge, hundreds of feet deep. Again Rosendo, who by this time had learned to keep one eye on the ground and the other on the irresponsible Harris, rescued him from ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... is excellently descriptive of the irresponsible, mischievous, anti-social creature whose eccentric action is the outcome of too much mutton. This immoral will-o'-the-wisp, seized with a desire to jostle, or thump, or smash, combines for the occasion with others like himself, and the shouldering, shoving ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... many families with members whom the rest call irrational, irresponsible or "black sheep." Again, there are many families who have one child who, from the time of its birth, has called for methods of management entirely different from those used for the other children. There are many little sensitive creatures who are afraid of ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... nevertheless, nothing is ever said that is out of character; while nothing can be better of the kind than some of his professed personifications, his Plutus or his Philosophy, we do retain distinct impressions of at least an irresponsible Zeus and a decorously spiteful Hera, a well-meaning, incapable Helius, a bluff Posidon, a gallant Prometheus, a one- idea'd Charon; Timon is more than misanthropy, Eucrates than superstition, Anacharsis than intelligent ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... speaking without reference to the new constitution which will be dealt with later on, is an irresponsible autocracy; its institutions are likewise autocratic in form, but democratic in operation. The philosopher, Mencius (372-289 B.C.), placed the people first, the gods second, and the sovereign third, in the scale of national importance; and this classification ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... negro suffrage." The labor, however, which she most enjoyed was among the colored refugees. Soon after the slaves were set free they flocked to Kansas in large numbers, and what should be done with this great body of uneducated, untrained and irresponsible people was a perplexing question. She went into the day schools, Sunday-schools, charitable societies and all organizations for their relief and improvement. The journal shows that four or five days or evenings every week were given to this work and that she ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Montgomery Blair of Maryland as Postmaster-General. Welles, with the guidance of a brilliant subordinate, Fox, served usefully, was very loyal to Lincoln, had an antipathy to England which was dangerous, and kept very diligently a diary for which we may be grateful now. Blair was a vehement, irresponsible person with an influential connection, and, which was important, his influence and that of his family lay in Maryland and other border slave States. Of all these men, Seward, Secretary of State—that is, Foreign Minister and something more—and Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... insured elsewhere against fire), and personal security. The advances are said to stand at Kr. 130,000, or £7222. When against personal security a promissory note is taken, signed by the borrower and two irresponsible witnesses, or by two responsible obligants, according to standing. Title-deeds are taken as collateral security. The Bank has its own forms for loan-documents. The probability is that the Bank will soon become ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Imperial matters, when they were under discussion in an Imperial Conference, was a step in the right direction. But disappointment was felt that while other countries were represented by responsible Ministers, the representation in India's case was of the Government, of a Government irresponsible to her, and not the representative of herself. No fault was found with the choice itself, but only with the non-representative character of the chosen, for they were selected by the Government, and not by the elected members of the Supreme Council. This defect in the resolution ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... Happy, irresponsible days, in which I learned to know and love the Chinese. I saw them now to best advantage, simple, patriarchal, industrious and thrifty, extraordinarily resourceful, and independent of all that their own fields and farm do not supply. I saw the women's activities, and how they picked ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... well established that many people refused to believe in the abominable instincts which dominated him. The matter was discussed from every conceivable point of view. Some held that he was a somnambulist and irresponsible for his acts; others that he was a murderer through love of blood, having no other possible motive for committing these crimes. Perhaps both were right, for it is an undeniable fact that moral being, will, soul, whatever name you choose to call it by, is wanting in the somnambulist. The ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... typically significant of someone's whimsical, freakish tastes and personality. From the sublime to the ridiculous—and worse—subjects pious and impious, dreamily-beautiful and lewdly-vulgar, comic and tragic, also many splendid photographs were all jumbled together on the walls in a shockingly irresponsible fashion. Many of the pictures were unframed copies cut apparently from art and other journals; ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of three of four women, acting without concert, in the matter of property rights, it is probable that in a fit of generosity the men of the United States would have enfranchised its women en masse; and the government now staggering under the ballots of ignorant, irresponsible men, must have gone down under the additional burden of the votes which would have been thrown upon it, by millions of ignorant, irresponsible women. Before that time, the unanswerable argument of Judge Hurlbut had been published, and had made a deep ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... crime were committed by a totally irresponsible person, would it be possible, once that fact was thoroughly established, to keep investigation from that person; to conduct the matter so quietly that publicity, which would crush the happiness of innocent persons, might ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... the side of the seat stood an old pump, handle and spout shaded by a vine that half trained and half of its own will trailed and gambolled up the old red brick garden wall. A flycatcher perched on the pump handle and thrilled out its gay irresponsible song. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... kingdom from the disastrous results of the interference of Italians in the domestic affairs of France; to preserve the treasure of the realm from exhaustion resulting from the levy of arbitrary imposts fixed by irresponsible aliens, and exacted through the terrors of ecclesiastical penalties; to prevent the right of election to lucrative livings from falling into the hands of those who would use the privilege only as a means of acquiring riches; and to rescue clergymen themselves from being hurried away for trial ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... like gloomy angels the gates of cities which they had built, watching the flock hemmed within, repelling as accursed the irresponsible madmen who refused to recognize their authority. He saw at the foot of great monuments, museum paintings, and shelves of books in the libraries, the mute grin of the craniums which seemed to say to men: "Admire us! This is our work, and all which you do ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... insight into the country's needs, and was now freed, to a great extent, from party obligations. Great hopes were built upon his second administration, and they would no doubt have been fulfilled, in part at least; but a few months after his inauguration, he was shot through the body by an irresponsible anarchist while holding a public reception at Buffalo, and died within the week. The years which have elapsed since his death enable us to view him more calmly than was possible while he lived, and the country has come to recognize in him ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... flowed from this quality. Similarly fallacious are the inferences, through analogies, from the liability to decay of bodies natural to that of bodies politic; from the supposed need of a primum mobile in nature to that of an irresponsible power in a state; and from the effects of a decrease of a country's corn to the effects of a decrease of its gold (the utility of which, but not of corn, depends on its value, and its value on its scarcity). Such, also, were the Pythagorean inferences ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... a tougher nut to crack than it did on Lord K.'s small and featureless map. I do not speak for myself for I have so far only examined the terrain through a field glass. I refer to the tone of the sailors, which strikes me as being graver and less irresponsible than the tone of the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Philippine problems were coloured by a desire to retain my official position. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, no man who has not served for long and sometimes very weary years as a public official, and has not been a target for numerous more or less irresponsible individuals whose hands were filled with mud and who were actuated by a fixed desire to throw it at something, can appreciate as keenly as I do the manifold blessings which attend the life of ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... unmoved by the underlying principle and cause for which his eloquent pleading stood, anyhow we must believe he was deeply impressed by the prospect of his personal ambition as the leader of a party being thwarted by the contemptuous action of an irresponsible body. His words, however, stand, and have been quoted again and again as the most effective attack against the partizan nature of the Second Chamber:—"What I complain of in the House of Lords is that during the tenure of one Government it is a Second Chamber of an inexorable kind, but while ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... derived consolation in retirement from the retrospect of the part she had played in her prosperity, still there were moments of poignant grief when her very soul groaned within her. She was ambitious, and her ambition had been foiled; she loved irresponsible command, but the time had come when those over whom she ruled defied her; she was dictatorial and exacting, but she had lost the influence which alone makes people tolerate control. She incurred debts, and was doomed to feel the degradation consequent upon them. She thought ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... is dark-hued, forbidding, sinister. As Golaud and Pelleas emerge from the vaults, much use is made in the orchestra of a jubilant figure in triplets (first given out fortissimo by flutes and oboes, over an undulating accompaniment, on page 152, measure 1) which seems to express a certain irresponsible exuberance on the part of Pelleas; it accompanies his light-hearted remarks about the odor of the flowers, the sheen of the water, and the invigorating air, as they come out upon the sunlit terrace. ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... fascination a Mary Queen of Scots—hated the archbishop, as Mary hated John Knox, because he had ventured to reprove her levities and follies; and through her influence (and how great is the influence of a beautiful woman on an irresponsible monarch!) the emperor, a weak man, allowed Theophilus to summon and preside over a council for the trial of Chrysostom. It assembled at a place called the Oaks, in the suburbs of Chalcedon, and was composed entirely of the enemies of the Patriarch. Nothing, however, was said about his heresy: ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Swanic (it was called Swanwick in the early nineteenth century) it witnessed the defeat of its colonizers in a sea fight with Alfred. The irresponsible partners commemorated this by erecting a stone column surmounted by four cannon balls. A queer way of perpetuating a pre-conquest naval victory, but possibly the projectiles were less in the way here ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... possess the holidays for a little while, then possess them only in smiling, wistful memories of holly and twinkling lights and dance-music, and charming faces all aglow. It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness—nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it is a ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... cause. Legally and politically, that is, conventionally, the differences are even greater on a comparison of nations and eras. In England we have seen senators of mark and authority, nay, even a prime minister, the haughtiest, [1] the most despotic, and the most irresponsible of his times, at an age which, in many states, both ancient and modern, would have operated as a ground of absolute challenge to the candidate for offices the meanest. Intellectually speaking, again, a very large proportion of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the improvement of society. If it means that we do wrong to invest with the most marked, serious, and unmistakable formality an act that brings human beings into existence, with uncounted results both to such beings themselves and to others who are equally irresponsible for their appearance in the world, then the position is recklessly immoral, and it is, moreover, wholly repugnant to Diderot's own ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... experience in this line that I could go into the detail work. I have to be guided by the main points in the case. Then, again, I gave Brown's testimony very little thought, as I considered him unreliable and irresponsible." ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... of the connection of the two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, and communication between them in the subjective or irresponsible way, the question naturally arises, "Is there not another way of communication? May not the Individual Intelligence on the physical plane communicate with the denizens of the spiritual plane at his own volition, independently? May he not learn to see and hear them without attempting, ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... organization of the internal organs remains obscure. Thought to be mammalianoid—there's a fence-sitter for you—but can't be certain of this because no young have been observed, nor any females in gestation. Extremely gregarious, curious, playful, irresponsible, etc., etc., etc. Habitat under natural conditions: uncertain. Diet: uncertain. Social organization: uncertain." Kielland threw down the paper with a snort. "In short, the only thing we're certain of is that they're here. Very helpful. Especially when every dime we ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... all their days in the chaparral, hoping, at the end, to pull down a set of false teeth and a coffin. Others quit the game early, having drawn cards that called for violent death, or famine in the Barrens, or loathsome and lingering disease. The hands of some called for kingship and irresponsible and numerated power; other hands called for ambition, for wealth in untold sums, for disgrace and shame, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... any garment when it was so beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The creatures whom I met in the ways and by ways of Parisian life, whose gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I hungered to know, awoke in me a tense irresponsible curiosity, but that was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct to ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... have too—though she is by no means so objectionable as the other kind I spoke of. She is a would-be child of nature. She has no thoughtfulness or weight about her; she is an engaging kitten who exists on the rather inadequate stock-in-trade of nice eyes; she is quite irresponsible and useless, and tells you so, in an ingenuous way, for which her nearest and dearest long to box her ears! I would call her "The Artless Japanese," remembering the princess in the Mikado, who says, "I sit and wonder, in ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... other books written by people who have spent years in China and who know it well,—ponderous books, full of absolute information, heavy and unreadable. Books of the first class get one nowhere. They are delightful and entertaining, but one feels their irresponsible authorship. Books of the second class get one nowhere, for one cannot read them; they are too didactic and dull. The only people who might read them do not read them, for they also are possessed of deep, fundamental knowledge of China, and their views agree in no slightest particular ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... mysterious entrance of this threat on a dagger's point into a room he had locked overnight. It implied supernatural craft and power. After this, where could a man be safe from these all-penetrating and remorseless agents of a secret and irresponsible tribunal. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... pollution of Lago de Valencia; oil and urban pollution of Lago de Maracaibo; deforestation; soil degradation; urban and industrial pollution, especially along the Caribbean coast; threat to the rainforest ecosystem from irresponsible mining operations ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... has become of McFudd—irresistible, irresponsible, altogether delightful McFudd? that condensation of all that was joyous, rollicking, and spontaneous; that devotee of the tub and pink of neatness, immaculate, clean- shaven and well-groomed; that soul of good-nature, which no number of flowing bowls could ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in charge of the line would come from the left, and it was arranged that the other post would signal us when he approached, and one of us would go out. In this way we always had a man out from each post when he inquired into matters. This was rather an irresponsible way of running the Army of the Potomac, but it seemed to us ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... any other method you can employ. Don't buy infringing cans from irresponsible dealers. By decision of the U. S. Court the Cooley is the only Creamer or Milk Can which can be used water sealed or submerged without infringement. Send for ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the great Caesar had failed, had not divined aright the only treatment to which the disease of the age would yield, for although the blows which actually killed Caesar may have been merely an accident in history, the deed of irresponsible men, his fall was no accident but was the inevitable logical outcome of his imperial policy. But Augustus succeeded in establishing a form of government which enabled himself and his connexion to occupy the throne for almost a hundred years, and ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... transportation, the promiscuity of schools, the excitement of competition, everyone's rush to placement and office, the increasing excitement of ambition and greed, had not (yet) immeasurably multiplied the class of irresponsible malcontents and mischievous nomads. In the political order of things, inaptitude, envy, brutality were not sovereign; universal suffrage did not exclude from power the men, born, bred and qualified to exercise it; countless public posts were not offered ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... am going to show you your own responsibilities, if that's a possible thing. I'm not going to let you throw them on George because he's a man and your kin; and I shan't let him throw them on an irresponsible agent because he has neither the time nor the inclination to do justice to himself, to you, nor to these people to whom he ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... the two great English-speaking nations of the world, it is in the power of the most foolish politician or the most irresponsible sub-editor, on either side of the Atlantic, to create an international complication with a single spoken phrase or stroke of the pen. And as both countries appear to be inhabited very largely by persons who regard newspapers as Bibles and foolish ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... by her various little departures from the Eastern styles—such as doing her hair low rather than high. Where he had been used to seeing the hair of woman piled high and skewered with many pins, hers was brushed smoothly back-smoothly save for little, irresponsible waves here and there. Thurston decided that the style was becoming to her. He wondered if the fellow beside her were her brother; and then reminded himself sagely that brothers do not, as a rule, devote their time quite so assiduously to the entertainment of their ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... searching for signs in the little path, and the artist, with the others, was waiting, Aaron King's mind went back to that day when he and Conrad Lagrange had sat there under the oaks and, in a spirit of irresponsible fun, had committed themselves to the leadership of Croesus. To the young man, now, that day, with its care-free leisure, seemed long ago. Remembering the novelist's fanciful oration to the burro, he thought grimly how unconscious they ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... indeed the only estate of man that savors of the realty is in his mind. Mr. James seems to have arrived early at an understanding of this, and to have profited by the best modern appliances of self-culture. In conception and expression is he essentially an artist and not an irresponsible trouvere. If he allow himself an occasional carelessness, it is not from incaution, but because he knows perfectly well what he is about. He is quite at home in the usages of the best literary society. In his writing there is none ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and evasive lights, the place used to please me, leading as it does to the river bank, the mystery of the ebbing and flowing tide, the ceaseless effort seaward of the stream, and those low-lying spaces on the Surrey side. It was the nearest bit of nature, unharnessed, irresponsible nature, which I could get to; and it symbolised emancipation from monotonous labour and everlasting bricks and mortar. I could watch the dying of the sunset, and the outcoming of the stars, the tossing of the pale willows—there on the eyot—in the windy dusk, undisturbed. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... that these precautions were not taken out of any fear of meeting with Confederate troops, whose nearest commands were supposed to be considerably to the westward of where we were, but because of a desire to avoid all possibility of conflict with those armed and irresponsible bands that ranged at will between the lines of the two great armies. Already they had become sufficiently strong to make trouble for ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... boy!" Then, in glad relief, he fell upon his knees beside the couch, praying, in discreetly veiled language, that the pure heart of a babbler might not be held guilty for the utterances of an irresponsible head. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of its significance to any but the baldest style, and of its special importance to his own. I have heard him say: 'People accuse me of not taking pains! I take nothing but pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrast between the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse to which the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labour which he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit must have grown upon him; it was natural that it should do so as thought ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... had more to do than to rouse the irresponsible part of his audience by his patriotic eloquence. The countenances of his judges remained as cold to him as ever, and he turned to the serious business of his defence. His quick intelligence saw that the telling point in Coke's diatribe had been ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... neighborhood they chanced to visit. Their assumed character changed with their changing opportunities or necessities. They were squads of Kansas militia, companies of "peaceful emigrants," or gangs of irresponsible outlaws, to suit the chance, the whim, or the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... can on occasion state it with a fairness and fulness which proves that it is not wholly repellent to our reason. During the crisis I write of, the attitude of Cargill and Vennard was not that of roysterers out for irresponsible mischief. They were eminently reasonable and wonderfully logical, and in private conversation they gave their opponents a very bad time. Cargill, who had hitherto been the hope of the extreme Free-traders, wrote an article for the Quarterly ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... at all points by a solemnity and profundity of thought and sentiment which are lacking in the early comedy. The serious atmosphere has led critics, without much reason, to detect in the scheme of 'The Tempest' something more than the irresponsible play of poetic fancy. Many of the characters have been represented as the outcome of speculation respecting the least soluble problems of human existence. Little reliance should be placed on such interpretations. The creation of Miranda ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... to resume in order to guard the people of Virginia, for whom alone the Convention could act, against the oppression of an irresponsible and sectional majority, the worst form of oppression with which an angry Providence has ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... even for an instant with the ferocious brutality of the dead monster, except—von Horn's brain came to a sudden halt at the thought. Could it be? There seemed no other explanation. Virginia Maxon had been rescued from one soulless monstrosity to fall into the hands of another equally irresponsible and terrifying. ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... right or claim to subsist apart from the will of the people. To limit the Emperor's authority was to renounce their own; but to take it away was to assert their own. They gave the Empire as they chose. They took it away as they chose. The Revolution was as lawful and as irresponsible as the Empire. Democratic institutions continued to develop. The provinces were no longer subject to an assembly meeting in a distant capital. They obtained the privileges of Roman citizens. Long after Tiberius had stripped the inhabitants of Rome ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... that the Government grew fairly jealous of them, excluding them from office, as the Whigs did Lord Brougham. As private individuals, they are made to distinguish themselves as the founders of journals, societes en commandite (companies of which the members are irresponsible beyond the amount of their shares), and all sorts of commercial speculations, requiring intelligence and honesty on the part of the directors, confidence and liberal disbursements ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she is irresponsible. The father or the husband is all. They are wisdom, power, responsibility. But woman is a nonentity, if still in her father's house, or if she has a husband. I object to this teaching. It is unjust to man that he should have the added responsibility ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... constantly increasing number of disputes arising from the reckless creation of public debts and loose financial administration. It was absurd for us to stand quietly by and witness the utterly irresponsible creation of financial obligations that would inevitably lead to European intervention and then undertake to fix the bounds and limits of that intervention. It is interesting to note that President Wilson did ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... suddenly from nowhere, trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; especially hard if one was born with an unbending character, tough and determined, ambitious and vain. These are not reproaches being piled up on the vicar's wife; who shall dare reproach ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Captain Pharo: from this time on his conduct waxed sunny and genial, as well as irresponsible of the grave duties ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... and in those which had fought on his side, as though he were preparing for himself a Greece in which he would take the first place. He did not choose his archons by their birth, or their wealth, but favoured his own friends and political adherents, to whom he gave irresponsible power; while by being present at several executions, and driving the opponents of his friends into exile, he gave the Greeks a very unpleasant idea of what they were to expect from the empire of Lacedaemon. The comic poet Theopompus therefore appears to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... manage the whole concerns of the bank during the existence of its charter. It is easy to conceive that great evils to our country and its institutions might flow from such a concentration of power in the hands of a few men irresponsible ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... in April, 1876, with shattered nerves and weary brain, but instead of resting, I went on lecturing until my overworked mind and body could no longer hold out, and then it was, after nearly two years of sobriety, that I once more fell. For weeks before this disaster overtook me, I was actually an irresponsible maniac. My pulse was never lower than one hundred to the minute, and much of the time it ran up to one hundred and twenty. I was so weak that with all my energy aroused I could only move about with ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... have described. It would be absurd to dismiss it as an excrescence, and untypical of the American mind. But it is typical, too, in the manner in which it has gone beyond that mere partiality to the accumulation of a definite power, and made that power irresponsible and almost irresistible. It was Comstock himself, in fact, who invented the process whereby his followers in other fields of moral endeavour have forced laws into the statute books upon the pretence of putting down John Doe, an acknowledged malefactor, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Hades!' said Lachesis, with much dignity, 'I hold a responsible office in your realm, and I claim the constitutional privilege of your attention. I protest against the undue influence of the Queen. She is a power unknown in our constitution, and an irresponsible agent that I will not recognise. Let her go back to the drawing-room, where ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... intelligible object, I could have sympathised at least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully. They were wretched in themselves; the old animal hate moved them to trouble one ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... to indulge every whim and fancy she'll spend everything she has before she is fairly grown. She's too young to understand and she has been brought up so far in an irresponsible fashion. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "J. London" (the Bishop of London), and the word "beeches" as "breeches." "For what on earth can the Bishop want to see the breeches I wore at Waterloo?" said the Duke; but taking a charitable view of the matter he decided that the poor old Bishop must be getting irresponsible and replied that he was giving his valet instructions to show the Bishop the garments in question, whenever it suited him to inspect them. The Bishop was equally amazed, but took exactly the same view about the Duke as the latter had decided upon concerning the Bishop. No doubt the mystery was ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... running wind; for these were visiting days— all manner of strangers dropped in upon them from distant walks in life, and they never knew whether the next would be a fir-cone or one of those careless, irresponsible travellers, a ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... trial for breach of discipline. The trial takes place, and he is sentenced to confinement in the military prison for two years. He is again transferred, in company with convicts, by etape, to Caucasus, and there he is shut up in prison and falls under the irresponsible power of the jailer. There he is persecuted for a year and a half, but he does not for all that alter his decision not to bear arms, and he explains why he will not do this to everyone with whom he is brought ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Francesca do not enjoy it all quite as intensely as I, so they considerately give me the lion's share. Every morning, after an exhilarating interview with the Niobe of our kitchen (who thinks me irresponsible and prays Heaven in her heart I be no worse), I put on my galoshes, take my umbrella, and trudge up and down the little streets and lanes on real, and if need be, imaginary errands. The Duke of Wellington said, "When fair in Scotland, always carry an umbrella; ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... we think of it, there could not have been devised a more evil scheme, either against the natives or the settlers, than these wellnigh irresponsible Agencies. From all parts of the Union, from every country of the Old World, emigrants had come to settle in the beautiful Minnesota State; they had built themselves good, substantial houses, ploughed, fenced, and planted their rich and prosperous farms, conquered the savage wilderness into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... than three months after this incident, Kansas was in a state of war; in fact, two distinct varieties of warfare were carried on. Publicly organized companies on both sides engaged in acts of attack and defense, while at the same time irresponsible secret bands were busy in violent reprisals, in plunder and assassination. In both of these forms of warfare, the free-state men proved themselves fully equal to their opponents, and Governor Shannon was entirely unable to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... changed. I saw surprise become craftiness and fear, distrust. I saw in her eyes the beginning of that hate which I believe has never, since that irresponsible ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... sailor is much disposed to reverence his omnipotence, even while he transgresses his laws; but in nearly all those instances in which nature has implanted a temperament inclining to deep feeling, as was the case with Bluewater, not even the harsh examples, nor the loose or irresponsible lives of men thus separated from the customary ties of society, can wholly extinguish the reverence for God which is created by constantly dwelling in the presence of his earthly magnificence. This ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with a touch of regretful longing at the fleeing rooster; he pricked his ears, his eyes grew fierce, he licked his chops. There had been a time, perhaps—but that was long ago, in the dim past of his irresponsible puppyhood. ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... passed in exceedingly high spirits. No consciousness of the practical destruction of the Career seems to have troubled him at this time. Doubt had vanished from his universe for a space. He wanted to dance along the corridors. He felt curiously irresponsible and threw up an unpleasant sort of humour that pleased nobody. He wished Miss Heydinger many happy returns of the day, apropos of nothing, and he threw a bun across the refreshment room at Smithers and hit one of the Art School officials. Both were extremely silly things to do. In the first ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... management of their public affairs; and, second, they require LEADERSHIP. It takes close attention to public affairs to enable a citizen to make wise decisions for himself; and the average citizen looks around for guidance. The absence of RESPONSIBLE leadership gives the irresponsible "boss" his chance. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... of an Eastern despot, and has been said to be unhistorical and unbelievable. But the world has seen many examples of rulers whom the possession of unlimited and irresponsible power has corrupted in like fashion. And others than rulers may take the warning that to live to self is the mother of all sins and crimes; that no man can safely make his own will and his own passions his guides; that there is no slavery so abject as that of the man who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have haughtily scorned the tale-bearing and would have gone with more haste into the professor's way of thinking. In fact, she was in process of undermining herself., and the work could have been. retarded or advanced by any irresponsible, gossipy tongue. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... fellow was down on the deck, stabbed in a dozen places from behind, and the life kicked and trampled out of him by the fighting, panic-stricken crowd of miners, who were now simply beside themselves with terror, and practically as irresponsible as ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... experiment. On the 8th of August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point. The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... always avoid their friends found a fruitful source of apprehension, their enemies of hope. While they foresaw less promptness of action than in governments differently formed, they overlooked the far more important consideration that with us war could never be the result of individual or irresponsible will, but must be a measure of redress for injuries sustained voluntarily resorted to by those who were to bear the necessary sacrifice, who would consequently feel an individual interest in the contest, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... told to expect persecution, not only at the hands of irresponsible individuals, but at the instance of the officials such as they who were at that moment intent on taking the life of the Lord Himself, and who would scourge them in the synagogs, deliver them up to hostile tribunals, cite them before rulers ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... pondering over his encounter with the chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville. He thought, too, of the old Vicomte de Morteyn and his gentle wife, of the little house-party of which he and his sister Dorothy made two, of Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh, their youthful and totally irresponsible chaperons on the journey from Paris ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... propositions. We think, as we contemplate the West, that white people do not understand comfort because they have no leisure to enjoy contentment; THEY measure life by accumulation, WE by morality. Family ties are stronger with the so-called colored races than they are among the more irresponsible white races; consequently the social sense is keener among the former and much individual suffering is avoided. We have our vices, but these are not peculiar to US; and, at least, we have the merit of being easily governed. Wherever there are Chinese colonies the general ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... them in some way, and she is freed from a responsibility for which she is not, and never was, fit. It is a miracle that some tragedy has not come out of this daily companionship of three such passionate, irresponsible creatures.' ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... returned to England an irresponsible paragraphist informed the American public that I went home determined to give it to them hot. This contradiction of mine appeared, and was sent to me by the Major. Note in it I contradict his report that I went ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... influence and interference. It is hardly to be doubted, that the persons who busied themselves to prevent the reprieve of Rebecca Nurse acted under the authority and by the direction of this self-constituted body of inquisitors. The agency of such unauthorized and irresponsible combinations is always of questionable expediency. When acting in the same line with an excited populace, they are ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... people again after the events of the morning. He could feel them covertly nudging each other and grinning as he went up to the pulpit. He chided himself for the momentary annoyance it caused him. Were they not like so many naughty, irresponsible children? ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... alternative and impossibility in all its fulness for the other,—so the bachelor joys are utterly lost from the face of being for the married man, who must henceforward find his account in something that is not them but is good enough to make him forget them; so the careless and irresponsible living in the sunshine, the 'unbuttoning after supper and sleeping upon benches in the afternoon,' are stars that have set upon the path of him who in good earnest makes himself a moralist. The transitions ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... view"; and that when your statesmen sentimentalize upon, and your journalists denounce, far-away tyrannies—the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons—the abridgment of personal freedom in continental countries—the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands—they would turn their eyes homeward and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would in all sincerity suggest that humane and well-meaning men who exert themselves ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... "I'm feeling just irresponsible enough to venture. Now, if I knew you, of course I couldn't. But as I shall never set eyes on you again—I ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The irresponsible pleasure of our first sail the next afternoon was never quite repeated. The boat shot from the landing like a high-strung horse given his head, out across the unbordered road of silver water, and in a moment, as we raced toward the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... irresponsible young man, Jacob Van de Grift married became quite a different person. Returning to Indianapolis, he built a house for himself with the aid of friends, and, launching out into the lumber business, soon became one of the prosperous and solid citizens of the place. His house was on the "Circle," ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... common with Art? except that he dines at our tables and picks from our platters the plums for the pudding he peddles in the provinces. Oscar—the amiable, irresponsible, esurient Oscar—with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat, has the courage of the opinions ... ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... heart loves a religion of forms and ceremonies, which professes to renew and save without self-denial, breathing around us the quietism of ordinances, and lulling us to drowsy forgetfulness of duty in the luxurious enjoyment of an irresponsible religion. While, therefore, we cannot too carefully guard against the abuse of ordinances, we must not forget that God, who made man, body and soul, chooses to convey some of his gracious operations to us by the help of the two simple sacraments, and that they are intended to act upon us, ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... prevent absence from the plantation upon the day of election. After a time, however, it was found that such care was unnecessary. The laws of the State, carefully revised by legislators wisely chosen for that purpose, had taken the power from the irresponsible hands of the masses, and placed it in the hands of the few, who had been wont to exercise ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee |
