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More "Indiscretion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his order remained behind in the farm-house at Dahme with the escort from Brandenburg. Assuring the Elector of his most lively sympathy, and protesting that he had most bitterly reproached his wife for her inexcusable indiscretion in bringing about a meeting between him and this man, the Chamberlain went on to ask what could have occurred during the interview to affect his master ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... indiscretion. It is evidently really difficult for you, Lubov Yakovlevna, to live with your father. He's a man with old-fashioned views and, pardon me, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Savaron de Savarus, the natural son of the Comte de Savarus—pray keep the secret of my indiscretion—if he is returned deputy, will be our advocate in the suit about les Rouxey. Les Rouxey, my father tells me, will be my property; I intend to live there, it is a lovely place! I should be broken-hearted at seeing that fine piece of the great ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... first of these after-dinner causeries I ventured humbly to remark that Patriotism was a vulgar vice of which I had never been guilty. That innocent indiscretion of mine aroused at the moment some unfavourable comment. I confess I was sorry for it. But I passed it by at the time, lest I should speak too hastily and lose my temper. I recur to the subject now, at the hour of the cigarette, when man can discourse most genially ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... rural retreat, although situated in the limits of the city. There the stranger, who was understood to be a prisoner of state, lived in the greatest seclusion; and although neither he nor his attendant could be guilty of indiscretion, because none understood their language, and although Governor Perier severely rebuked the slightest inquiry, yet it seemed to be the settled conviction in Louisiana, that the mysterious stranger was a brother of the Sultan, or some great personage of the ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... declared. "Mademoiselle Flossie is a charming young lady. No wonder she has many friends. There was one," she continued, "who came here with her this afternoon—but he left almost at once," she added hastily, aware of her indiscretion. "Ah, these stairs! They grow steeper for ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... victory through the remarkable over-confidence and indiscretion of Edwin James, Q.C., who opposed us. James's client was the husband of the deceased. By her will the lady had left him the whole of her property, amounting to nearly L100,000. The case we set up was that the wife had been improperly influenced by her husband in making it, and that her mind ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... matter must not be allowed to rest where it was; she knew that Lady Luce would have effected her purpose and cast a shadow of scandal over Nell's future life if not another word was spoken. Convinced that Nell was innocent of even the slightest indiscretion, she felt that it would be wiser to force ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... despised Crane family repeating their foolish performance, which many years previous had resulted in Jed's long banishment, might have caused her to commit almost any unheard-of act of spite as an outlet for her jealous anger. But only the few remaining garden flowers were witness to the lovers' indiscretion, and they kept their own counsel after the manner of flowers, so Selena's feelings were mercifully spared ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... extraordinary coincidence!" exclaimed Mr. Barton, when I told him this; "who would have expected it? Naturally, when you revisit a spot so fraught with affecting associations, you will wish to be alone. You must pardon my involuntary indiscretion in ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... the prerogatives of which a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescence of the people, without any act of his, had put him in possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out to him, that he was born king of France. But misfortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... for her former indiscretion and establish herself again on her height of maiden reserve in Thomas Merriam's eyes, sat resolutely in the meeting-house of a Sabbath day, with her eyes cast down, and after service she glided swiftly down the aisle and was out of the door before the young minister could much more than descend ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... their kind. To be interesting, it is perhaps indispensable that the biographer should be indiscreet, and certainly the Branwell incident—a matter of two or three pages—is the only part of Mrs. Gaskell's biography in which indiscretion becomes indefensible. And for this she suffered cruelly. 'I did so try to tell the truth,' she said to a friend, 'and I believe now I hit as near to the truth as any one could do.' 'I weighed every line with my whole power and heart,' she said on ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... again see—the daughter?" he questioned, as though half regretting the indiscretion of ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... her maid, which an invincible sleepiness prevented him from reading at that moment. He fell asleep, dreaming of a gentle love that his life had so far lacked. Some hours later he opened the note, and found in it important news, which neither Rastignac nor de Marsay had allowed to transpire. The indiscretion of a member of the government had revealed to the actress the coming dissolution of the Chamber after the present session. Raoul instantly went to Florine's house and sent for Blondet. In the actress's boudoir, with their feet on the fender, Emile and Raoul analyzed the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... owe you equal frankness, Mr. Falconer. There is no barrier between Major Moray and myself but the foolish—no, wicked—indiscretion of an otherwise innocent and ignorant girl. Listen, Mr. Falconer: under the necessity of the circumstances you will not misjudge me if I compel myself to speak calmly. This, I trust, will be my ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Warrington, not so much for facilitating my progress in the interior, as for increasing my difficulties a hundred-fold. I was astonished that a high functionary, of thirty-three years' experience in these countries, should have committed such an act of egregious indiscretion, exposing the life of a fellow countryman to such increased danger, who was already without any kind of guaranteed protection. If I had been murdered in The Desert tract from Ghadames to Ghat, it would have most justly been attributed to the placard placed on the doors of the Consulate ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... amateur. He takes his impressions home and elaborates them; he brings his intellect to bear on them; and, as this exhibition shows, without robbing them of their bloom, makes of them something solid and satisfying. To realize what a power this is we may, I hope without indiscretion, glance for an instant at another handsomely endowed French painter. That M. Lhote does not want for sensibility is shown by his sketches and water-colours, that his intellect is sharp enough is proved ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... Stanchon felt tempted to say, "and I hope the girls are out, too!") As if in answer to this indiscretion, the new butler ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... absolutely must have sumptuary laws, I undertake to give you the receipt. And I guarantee that in my system collection shall be easy: no comptrollers, assessors, tasters, assayers, inspectors, receivers; no watching, no office expenses; not the smallest annoyance or the slightest indiscretion; no constraint whatever. Let it be decreed by a law that no one in future shall receive two salaries at the same time, and that the highest fees, in any situation, shall not exceed twelve hundred dollars in Paris and eight hundred in the departments. What! you lower your eyes! Confess, then, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... your composure," entreated the scribe. "You need fear neither indiscretion nor ridicule with me. The confidence reposed in me by persons whom chance or misfortune has deprived of the benefits of education, has always been considered as ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... that I can make a speech from which all his arguments are to be excluded. The worst of authors will say something which is to the point. Who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?) and must be allowed and excused; the only merit is in the arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention; but when you ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... of pearls, gold, etc., in order to impress the sovereigns with the great value of his most recent discovery. The Admiral had good and sufficient reasons for making the most of this discovery, as his enemies in Spain and in the West Indies were seeking to belittle his great deeds, hence his indiscretion in placing the proofs of his achievement in the hands of his implacable foe, Bishop Fonseca. He could not return at that time, owing to the terrible condition of affairs in Hispaniola, which demanded his continued presence there—as narrated in ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... so—he must take a position consistent with his assumed character. Detection by Georgian was what he now feared. Whatever happened, she must not get the smallest glimpse of him or be led by any indiscretion on his part to suspect his presence under the same roof as herself. Yet he must see all, hear all that was possible to him. For this a continuance of the present conditions, an open door and no light, were positively ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... than he had in years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the Everards' to ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... — N. rashness &c adj.; temerity, want of caution, imprudence, indiscretion; overconfidence, presumption, audacity. precipitancy, precipitation; impetuosity; levity; foolhardihood^, foolhardiness; heedlessness, thoughtlessness &c (inattention) 458; carelessness &c (neglect) 460; desperation; Quixotism, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of a simple misunderstanding. Those who think that the adventure of young Nemovetsky is a slice of life and characterizes certain psychological states, have, without a doubt, the right to judge this story as an indiscretion, and to reproach the author with a deviation from morality; but Andreyev has not taken his hero from reality; he has not tried to give us a picture of manners, but has expressed an idea, born in his brain under the influence of the philosophy of Nietzsche. It illustrates the terrible ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing really wrong—she hadn't the nerve. But the nuisance of it was, that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh commandment and had very nearly got hanged ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... hardly credit my senses. Her tone was one of reproof, plus decision. It convicted me of an indiscretion. If I had asked to take the roof off and replace it with silk umbrellas, it might have been justified. But to a request ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... than his words, conveyed an intimation that when the opportunity served he would trounce Furneaux for an indiscretion. Fenley was mollified. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... mercenary from St. John Lateran. It is related that in 1559, a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination of this relic, in the process of which, to better satisfy himself, he had the indiscretion to break off a small piece; instantly the most dreadful tempest broke over the place, followed by crashing peals of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning; then a sudden darkness covered the country, and the luckless priest and his assistants ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... reconciliation if James had not been so rich. The riches of James offended Susan's independence. Not for millions would she have exposed herself to the suspicion that she had broken her oath because her stepuncle was a wealthy and childless man. She was, of course, wrong. Nor was this her only indiscretion. She was so ridiculously indiscreet as to influence her husband in such a way that he actually succeeded in life. Had James perceived them to be struggling in poverty, he might conceivably have gone over to them and helped them, in an orgy of forgiving ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... was flagrant to the whole world. If, on the other hand, the advantage seemed to go with the Canton Club, or the opposition benches, then it was the whig and liberal hounds who howled and moaned, explaining everything by the indiscretion, infatuation, treason, of Lord Viscount Masque, and appealing to the initiated world of idiots around them, whether any party could ever succeed, hampered by such men, and influenced ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... for some sort of indiscretion; nobody could save her that! Even if there was any probability that Royal ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... your highness," she said, and there was virtuous appeal in her eyes. "I pray forgiveness for this indiscretion and implore you to be lenient with two miserable creatures who love you so well that they ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... As I recall, there were only two great passions in your uncle's life—Japanese art and green-turtle soup. It was just like him to retire from business on his sixtieth birthday and depart for the Orient, there to commit the shameless indiscretion of matrimony." ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... her for the introduction. She was quite confounded; but she did not abate her kindness in the least, although my reservation of confidence in only giving her a hint of the truth, checked her advances. You may think this an insane indiscretion on my part; but if you knew how often I have longed to stand up before everybody and proclaim who I am, and so get rid of the incubus of a perpetual falsehood, you would not be so much surprised. There is one unspeakable blessing ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... match for your daughter is not to be relinquished on slight grounds; and though his lordship should have been guilty of some indiscretion, it will not alter my resolution respecting his ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... diplomatic prudence. His shrewdness and experience must soon have shown him that his presence in Paris, if not precisely distasteful to the French government, must at least in some degree compromise it, and might by any indiscretion on his part easily be made to annoy and vex the ministers. It therefore behooved him to make himself as little as possible conspicuous in any official or public way. A rebuke, a cold reception, might do serious harm; nor was it politic to bring perplexities to those whose friendship he sought. He ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... then," he observed, "is now agreed upon. We proceed to condition number two. Mrs. Delaporte, Captain Bannister, and Mr. Cheape," he went on earnestly, "I have been guilty of an indiscretion the proof of which is in your hands. Having decided to make London my home for a time, I desire once and for all to extinguish all possibility of this affair ever cropping up again in ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... other cause but because he was a preacher of the Gospel, an enemy to Papistry, and a married man." This dislike is easily accounted for. Exeter was very far from London, the new ideas travelled slowly, and the west was staunchly conservative. As with many reformers, too, his zeal was spoilt by indiscretion; the sternness of the Puritan militated against his success, and people preferred the old errors more becomingly supported. His successor, Turberville, was a man quite after the heart of the people, and he won praise from Protestant ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... victim of another mistake, which he resented more strongly than he did my indiscretion. He told the story to me and to Mrs. Procter one day in the drawing-room at Fryston, with keen indignation. A certain noble lord had approached him at an evening party with an air of extraordinary deference. Venables knew the peer very slightly, and was surprised by the salaams ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... The ill-treatment she had had to endure was only too well-known, and every one in Falaise took her part. If Acquet lost the case, it would mean the end of the easy life he was leading at Donnay, and he not only wished to gain time but secretly hoped that his wife would commit some indiscretion that would regain for him if not the sympathies of the public, at least her loss of the suit which if won, would ruin him. In order to carry out his Machiavellian schemes, he pretended that he wished to come to an understanding with the Combray family, and he despatched one of his friends to Mme. ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... and the indiscretion of youth, I used expressions which the Papist considered insulting to his religion. He was not one to put up patiently with this, so he would fire up, twirl his blackthorn round his head, and say, "By St. Patrick, you had better ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... young man said "Oh!" and his "Oh" sounded blank, whether because it was apparent to him through her answer that there had been indiscretion in his question, or because he wondered at there being a dinner-party in this house and he not asked to it. Leslie paid no attention, for at that moment the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... and fidelity in her whole life will, when confronted with this crucial test, deny her hair-pin. She will deny that hair-pin before a hundred witnesses. I have stupidly got into more trouble and more hot water trying to hunt up the owner of a hair-pin in a Pullman than by any other indiscretion of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... go to some neighbor and say in her softly purring voice, "Isn't it too bad that Mr. Smith neglects his wife so dreadfully, and it is shocking the way he drinks. Now the other night, etc., etc.," until her garrulous tongue would make a great crime of perhaps only a small indiscretion. Drusilla had been a joy to her, as she was new in the neighborhood, and she regaled her with all the gossip, much to Drusilla's disgust and discomfiture; but she was too kindly to be rude to the bitter-tongued woman, who was the only one of her neighbors who "ran ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... waited near the enclosure. Ferocious joy shone in his eyes as the accused made their way through the crowd, two by two, their wrists tied with ropes; for the duke every minute expected to hear the queen's name spoken. But the chief-justice, a man of experience, had prevented indiscretion of any kind by fixing a hook in the tongue of each one. The poor creatures were tortured on a ship, so that nobody should hear the terrible confessions ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... are inclined to say; and yet it was not so. For this was the crisis for Claudius as well as Hamlet. He had better have died at once, before he had added to his guilt a share in the responsibility for all the woe and death that followed. And so, we may allow ourselves to say, here also Hamlet's indiscretion served him well. The power that shaped his end shaped the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... born of the superstition that was destroying him, was hate. The one laboured for mankind; the other for himself. And thus the aspirations of Numerian, founded on the general good, nourished by offices of kindness, and nobly directed to a generous end, might lead him into indiscretion, but could never degrade him into crime—might trouble the serenity of his life, but could never deprive him of the consolation of hope. While, on the contrary, the ambition of Ulpius, originating in revenge and directed to destruction, exacted cruelty from his heart and duplicity from ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... that? What a dreadful memory you have. I should expect Grant to make a burnt sacrifice of me if I had beguiled her into such an indiscretion. He won't even have her sit to himself since she ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... been fought with a member of the Embassy. Captain Ward had certainly been injured, but that was the result of an accident; they had Dr. Goldberg's word for it. It was then that the younger wiseacres smiled. Baron Petrescu was an easy lover, and had been punished for some indiscretion. Some townsman, perhaps, with the luck on his side, had got the better of the master of fence. No wonder the Baron wished to keep the matter quiet. Lord Cloverton knew the true story. Captain Ward had sent to him directly Dr. Goldberg had got him home, and the Ambassador shut himself ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... from authority which I cannot doubt, that the indiscretion of certain of your admirers last Saturday at the Opera-house occasioned a disturbance which to a young woman of delicacy I should imagine must be very alarming: now as I consider myself concerned in your fame and welfare from regarding you as my ward, I think it is incumbent upon me ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... alone—nearly alone, inasmuch as Colbert, as soon as he perceived the young girl approaching, had stopped and drawn back a dozen paces—the king advanced towards La Valliere and took her by the hand. "Mademoiselle," he said to her, "should I be guilty of an indiscretion if I were to inquire if you were indisposed? for you seem to breathe as if you were oppressed by some secret cause of uneasiness, and your eyes are filled ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they had any marriage ceremony, but they are very jealous of their wives, and visit with great severity any indiscretion on ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... in vain that Valkendorf, now alarmed by his indiscretion, began to pour cold water on the flames he had lit. Christian had quite lost his susceptible heart to the rustic and unknown beauty, and vowed that he could not rest until he had seen her with his own eyes. And within a month he was riding into Bergen, with Valkendorf by his ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... prosecuting the inquiries into the conduct of your servants, which you have been pleased to commit particularly to my charge. You will readily perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... affected the whole course of human affairs,—and whom octogenarians like Nesselrode and Palmerston would be compelled to call statesmen of the first class. These are Octavius Caesar, more successful in the arts of policy than even the great Julius, never guilty of youthful indiscretion, or, we are sorry to say, of youthful virtue; Maurice of Saxony, the preserver of the Reformed religion in Germany, in that contest where his youthful sagacity proved more than a match for the veteran craft of Charles the Fifth; the second William of Orange, the preserver ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... considerations, to reduce them to their simplest elements, and to prove that the favors of lovers were mere pleasure, that there were no pledges—philosophically speaking—excepting those which were given to the world, when we allowed it to penetrate our secrets and joined it in the acts of indiscretion. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... taken up with his passion, and so surprised at the conversation he had heard, that he fell into an indiscretion very common, which is, to speak one's own particular sentiments in general terms, and to relate one's proper adventures under borrowed names. As they were travelling he began to talk of love, and exaggerated the pleasure ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... plain to Sir Patrick (to whom both ladies had opened their hearts, at separate interviews) that his sister-in-law, in one way, and his niece in another, were equally likely—if not duly restrained—to plunge headlong into acts of indiscretion which might lead to very undesirable results. A man in authority was sorely needed at Windygates that afternoon—and Sir Patrick was fain to acknowledge that ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... be indiscreet!" implored the girl, with clasped hands. "I admire indiscretion in others, and cultivate it ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... (Bourgogne) before the Revolution; predecessor of Abbe Brossette in this curacy; uncle of Jean-Francois Niseron. He was led by a childish but innocent indiscretion on the part of his great-niece, as well as by the influence of Dom Rigou, to disinherit the Niserons in the interests of the Mesdemoiselles Pichard, house-keepers in his ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... answered, he continued: "It seems that Rocdiane surprised his wife in a criminal situation, and has made her pay dearly for her indiscretion." ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... felt that he was going to say some such thing and for a moment it amused her. It was so ridiculous to find this rather wan and wistful indiscretion assuming damaging proportions. But a nasty fear succeeded her faint amusement. Could it be possible that Stillman ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... come home, perhaps on a sudden impulse, with a view to further blackmail, would not her wisest move be to risk some indiscretion, some partial disclosure, so that her renewed silence afterward might have the higher price? An hour's tete-a-tete with that shrewd, hard-souled man, Henry Barron! Alice Puttenham guessed that her own ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... isn't so dissipated, father," she began quaveringly, regretting the indiscretion into which eloquence had ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... the Piece been really silly (and I have proof positive that Sheridan did not think it so) yet 10 years afterwards to have committed a breach of confidence in order to injure the otherwise . . . that on the ground of an indiscretion into which he had himself seduced the writer, and the writer, too, a man whose reputation was his Bread—a man who had devoted the firstlings of his talents to the celebration of Sheridan's genius—and who after he met treatment not only never spoke unkindly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... look like a different being from what he had appeared an hour before, in consequence of this pause in the regular business of sealing, and the promised holiday. A strict order was given that no one should go among the seals, as it was feared that some indiscretion or other might have a tendency to create an alarm. In all other respects the island was placed at the disposal of the men, if anything could be made of such a lone spot, a speck on the surface of the antarctic seas, and nearly encircled by ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... want, then, if she has all the money she needs! Perhaps some discarded mistress! Bah! The old man's heart is as hollow as a sentrybox, and, besides, he has not been in Europe for nearly twenty years. Ah, I see! Perhaps a bit of blackmail—some early indiscretion! She did speak about the girl! Then I must be the silent partner of her future harvest! She probably needs a man's arm to reach the wary old Baronet in future. My lady writes in no ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... here, where Roman taste, genius, and magnificence, excite ideas analogous to yours at every step. I could no longer oppose the inclination to avail myself of your permission to write to you, a permission given with too much complaisance by you, and used by me with too much indiscretion. Madame de Tott did me the same honor. But she, being only the descendant of some of those puny heroes who boiled their own kettles before the walls of Troy, I shall write to her from a Grecian, rather than a Roman canton; when I shall find myself, for example, among her ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... silence. Raoul heard only the sound of his own breathing. He quite failed to see that the indiscretion of his conduct ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... embarrassed by opposition, lost in confusion, fretted by disappointment, and ready to conclude, in our haste, that all things are against our own good and our Master's honor. But "this is our infirmity"; it is the dictate of impatience and indiscretion. We forget the "years of the right hand of the Most High." We are slow of heart in learning a lesson which shall soothe our spirits at the expense of our pride. We turn away from the consolation to be derived ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... his flushed face, a lack of that self-contained bearing which always had marked him as a man of large affairs. It was his uncle's strict rule, he recalled, never to take a second drink; it was an axiom of the Honorable Milton's that the second drink drew the cork on indiscretion and eventual inebriety. That something had happened which must have disturbed him greatly to make him break this rule was a deduction as simple as the evidence that he had ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Master Jocelyn," Wolfe rejoined, "but to my lord of Buckingham, whom you wantonly insulted? For the latter indiscretion there can be no excuse, whatever there may be for the former; and it was simple madness to affront a nobleman of his exalted rank, second only in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... terribly vexed by this rudeness, which I was powerless to resist, and regretted my indiscretion in entering the forecastle after the politic resolutions I had formed. However, Captain Coxon's ferocity was nothing new to me; truly I believed he was not quite right in his mind, and expected, as in former cases, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... conversation with a bosom friend. Besides, that when a friend is turned into an enemy, and (as the son of Sirach calls him) a betrayer of secrets, the world is just enough to accuse the perfidiousness of the friend, rather than the indiscretion of the person who confided ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... announcement, referring to a debate in the House of Lords on February 20th, which he regarded as of the utmost importance. A report made by a Colonel Jervois on the defences of Canada had been published, and the publication, exposing the extreme weakness of Canada, was regarded as an official indiscretion. It asserted that under the arrangements then existing British and Canadian forces together could not defend the colony. Lord Lyveden brought the question up in the House of Lords, and dwelt upon the gravity of the situation created by the defencelessness of Canada and by the hostility of the United ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... elsewhere, my son, the miserable condition of princes who commit their people and their own dignity to the management of a premier minister; but it is little beside the misery of those who are left to the indiscretion of a popular assembly; the more you grant, the more they claim; the more you caress, the more they despise; and that which is once in their possession is held by so many arms that it cannot be wrenched ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fell on their knees before the little people, and Tatoka, for her lover had less than the heart of a doe, and was speechless, related her story. She told them how long she had loved Karkapaha, and holding down her head confessed her fatal indiscretion. Then she pictured the wrath of her father, the pursuit which was making, doubtless with a view to the punishment by death of her lover, and concluded her tale of sorrow with a burst of tears, which came from her eyes like the rain from a summer cloud, and sighs which might be ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... not have believed that men were able to love so much. I have passed a terrible night. Do not think I am angry, dear friend, because you confided to him that we love one another like two lovers; it does not displease me, and with him it was no indiscretion, because his mind is as free of prejudices ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... affair" of twelve years ago was a ghost which refused to be laid. Every one on the island knew the story; it was handed down from one batch of visitors to the next. He knew that whenever his name was mentioned this unique indiscretion of his, this toothsome morsel, would likewise be dished up. It would never grow stale, though atoned for by twelve years of exemplary conduct. He felt guilty. There was a skeleton in his cupboard. He ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... reproach rather than of annoyance, and he was left with a sense of having committed an indiscretion. The consciousness brought with it the perception that in a measure he was growing used to his position. He was beginning to take it for granted that this girl should come and minister to his wants. She herself did it so simply, so much as a matter of course, that the circumstance lost much ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... good Nancy, it is more than I know myself. What awful indiscretion does your prophetic soul see ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... in his cabinet, surrounded with book-cases, filled mostly with works on history, statistics, and geography, and I hope I am not committing any indiscretion in saying that his conversation savoured more of the abstractions of history and political philosophy than that of any other practical statesman I had seen. I do not think that I am passing a dubious compliment, since ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... her side of the campaign, Theresa—emboldened by recapitulation of her late boastings at the Miss Minetts' tea-table—hastened to put a gilded dome to her own indiscretion and offence. For nothing would do but Damaris must accompany her on this choir treat! She declared herself really compelled to press the point. It offered such an excellent opportunity of acquiring archaeological ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... by the indiscretion of people here, what by the rebound which came often back from London, what by the private interests and ambitious views of persons in the French Court, and what by other causes unnecessary to be examined now, the most private transactions ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... vain. An excuse, instead of a denial, was the gentlest answer I received. Whilst I languished in a condition too horrible to be described, and which, in a land of humanity, and, what is much more, Christianity, seems a strange punishment for a little inadvertency and indiscretion; whilst I was in this condition, a fellow came into the prison, and, enquiring me out, delivered ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... invitation Columbus set sail on the morning of December 24. In the evening when the admiral had retired the helmsman committed the indiscretion of confiding the helm to a ship's boy. About midnight when off Cape Haitien, near their destination, the vessel was caught in a current and swept upon a sandbank where she began to keel over. During the confusion which followed, Columbus had the mainmast chopped ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... season of indiscretion, as ye know, Signori," returned the father, breathing more freely—"and as none become old that have not been young, I have little need to awaken your recollection of its weaknesses. I trust my son is incapable of designing aught ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her that one. A girl who could announce her approaching marriage with a stranger (Chilminster no longer gave her the benefit of the doubt) and follow up that glaring indiscretion by a visit to her victim, was—— The imminence of such a thing alarmed him. Was she coming to propose—to molest him? He ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... gave her the chance to correct that which, in the light of Claude's warning, might prove to have been an indiscretion. "I'm sure I can't imagine. You must ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... with him a covering for the car, was, on the contrary, ready to take off his own cloak, and with it shelter articles of small value; this man, who had been for many days so silent and gloomy, gave, on the contrary, many proofs of his gayety—almost of his indiscretion, speaking, at all the inns, in terms of praise of his master and mistress. The waiter at the inn at Dauphin, says he was a tall young fellow, mild and good-natured; 'we talked for some time about horses, and such things; ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old place under the gallery, but their performances were of a highly decorous character. At the least-sign of a relapse into certain old tricks, more grotesque than refined, the brows of Prince Alexis would grow dark, and a sharp glance at Sasha was sufficient to correct the indiscretion. Every one found this natural enough; for they were equally impressed with the elegance and purity of the young wife. After the healths had been drunk and the slumber-flag was raised over the castle, Boris led her into the splendid apartments of ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the look on the young man's face. But I forget myself. I am rambling in all directions when I ought to be telling a consecutive tale. Not my usual habit, sir; this you know; but I am not quite myself at this moment. I declare I am more upset by this discovery of my indiscretion than I was by Mr. Trohm's declaration of affection in Lost Man's Lane! Give me time, Mr. Gryce; in a few minutes I ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... of Mohammed is recorded when an indiscretion of his young wife Ayishah was reported to him, "There be no adultress without an adulterer (of a husband)." Fatimah the Apostle's daughter is supposed to have remained a virgin after bearing many children: this coarse symbolism of purity was ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... passed many a team, broken down as a result of those first few days of rush. People often brought these and other ills upon themselves by their own indiscretion. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... to be lost. Tom felt that he had been guilty of an act of indiscretion in remaining so long on shore, and in not having seen that the boat was properly secured. He had not forgotten those huge monsters of sharks, which had been prowling about, but there was only one way by which the ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... but doubtless this would have been revealed had not her visit been interrupted and terminated by the appearance of the Eurasian doctor upon the scene. From your own account she recognized that she had committed an indiscretion by coming there, and of the doctor's anger—- which he was quite unable to conceal—you have told me. Note also that the next episode was your being followed by Cassim, the Nubian, undoubtedly with murderous intent. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... cords which dragged him into a party, whose principles he naturally disliked, and whose leaders he personally hated, as they did him. He became a thorough convert by a perfect trifle; taking fire at a nickname[26] delivered by Dr. Sacheverell, with great indiscretion, from the pulpit, which he applied to himself: and this is one among many instances given by his enemies, that magnanimity ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... had excited her anger? Had Mrs. Frothingham been guilty of some indiscretion, or was it merely the result of hotheaded surmises and suspicions on the girl's part? Plainly, Alma had returned to England in no amiable mood; in all probability she resented her step-mother's behaviour, now that it had been explained to her; there had arisen 'unpleasantness' ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... face. He tried to speak, but only a faint gurgle came from his blood-flecked lips. Too late Hardenberg, catching an angry glance from Buck, realized and regretted his impulsive indiscretion. For Mary Thorne, turning slowly like a person in a dream, stared into the face of the man beside her, lips quivering and eyes full ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... for a fitter opportunity, the rector went back to Mrs. Armadale. He could not disguise from himself that Allan's mother was the person really answerable for Allan's present indiscretion. If the lad had seen a little less of the small gentry in the neighborhood, and a little more of the great outside world at home and abroad, the pleasure of cultivating Ozias Midwinter's society might have ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... But even if I had exaggerated matters, and the Vicomte were not quite so bloodthirsty as was usual with his order, even if he chose to accept my promise that I would forget what he had said, he must nevertheless—in view of his indiscretion—demand my instant withdrawal from Lavedan. And what, then, of my ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... of the Democratic party at the polls in the presidential election of 1888 was less emphatic than might have been expected from its sorry record. Indeed, it is quite possible that an indiscretion in which Lord Sackville-West, the British Ambassador, was caught may have turned the scale. An adroitly worded letter was sent to him, purporting to come from Charles Murchison, a California voter of English birth, ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... Majesty, to save the country from the results of your Majesty's indiscretion in calling the Ambassador to your palace without consulting your Ministers. If we do not strike now we lose our prestige as a great nation, our national honor is dragged in the dust. We have to fight. We ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"—what am I saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory—the memory of a scientific man, if you please!—teems with the naivetes of insolence which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... political plans. With the real public, the confidence felt in the integrity of Washington remained unshaken, but so imposing was the appearance of the documents adduced as to excite an apprehension that the transaction might be placed in a light to show that some indiscretion, in which he had not participated, had been ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... confessed, that by the weakness and indiscretion of busy (or at best, of well-meaning) people, as well as by the malice of those who are enemies to all revealed religion, and are not content to possess their own infidelity in silence, without communicating ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... — N. unskillfulness &c. adj.; want of skill &c. 698; incompetence, incompentency[obs3]; inability, infelicity, indexterity[obs3], inexperience; disqualification, unproficiency[obs3]; quackery. folly, stupidity &c. 499; indiscretion &c. (rashness) 863; thoughtlessness &c. (inattention) 458 (neglect) 460; sabotage. mismanagement, misconduct; impolicy[obs3]; maladministration; misrule, misgovernment, misapplication, misdirection, misfeasance; petticoat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... comforter; and what though our affairs grew no better, yet I was tolerably easy, thinking his love sufficient recompense for the absence of all other worldly comforts. Then ill fate, in the shape of a near relation, laid the groundwork of my misery, and—joined with my mother's command and my own indiscretion-broke the correspondence between him ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... extraordinary turn, which had reduced him to indigence in a moment, he did nothing but lament his own hard fortune, and curse his indiscretion for coming to such a place. Bradley endeavoured to cheer him, telling him he would yet put him in a way to get money, and thereupon proposed going with him upon the highway; in order to encourage him to which, he told him that at such a place they should meet with a man who had fourscore ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... grovel at her feet. Hitherto, in all his intercourse with her, he had been masterful and marital. He had managed up to this point so to live as to have kept in all respects the upper hand. He had never yet been found out even in a mistake or an indiscretion. He had never given her an opening for the mildest finding of fault. She, no doubt, was young, and practice had not come to her. But, as a natural consequence of this, Lord George had hitherto felt that an almost divine superiority was demanded from him. That sense of divine superiority ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... her taking hold of his joyful indiscretion.—I took her letter, and said, Here, Mrs. Jewkes, is yours; I thank you for it; but I have been so long in a maze, that I can say nothing of this for the present. Time will bring all to light.—Sir, said I, here is yours: May every thing turn to your happiness! I give you joy ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Julius certainly placed Erasmus in a dilemma; he extricated himself by equivocation, which barely escapes from direct untruth. It is possible that a public man of his position at the present day might find himself driven to a similar method of escape from a similar indiscretion.[27] But experience has taught men not to write lampoons which they dare not avow, and a more effective law of copyright protects them against publication by ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... that record such scenes and sayings are faithfully reproduced in preparing the votive tablet upon which the dead man's life is to be delineated, the ungrateful reader answers with an accusation of imprudence, indiscretion, and betrayal of confidence; and the surviving friends protest still more vehemently. Within the last three months these consequences have been forcibly illustrated by the reception of Cardinal Manning's Life, in which the letters are of extraordinary value ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... at the moment of voting, took two plain pieces of paper; his neighbour was guilty of the indiscretion of looking, and saw distinctly that the illustrious geometer wrote the name of Fourier on both of them. After quietly folding them up, M. de Laplace put the papers into his hat, shook it, and said ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... benign influence of his administration. A hasty zeal to reform the corrupted state, accompanied with less prudence than might have been expected from the years and experience of Pertinax, proved fatal to himself and to his country. His honest indiscretion united against him the servile crowd, who found their private benefit in the public disorders, and who preferred the favor of a tyrant to the inexorable equality of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... she had begun. "Yes?" he had answered laughingly. "When was your ladyship ever anything but indiscreet? and who has made indiscretion adorable like you?" Her ladyship had bidden him hold his tongue with frank camaraderie, and had finished the speech. "When I am indiscreet, I am indiscreet to Mary. She is like a little well, into which one drops one's ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the edge-tool of your wits upon the whetstone of indiscretion, that your words may shine like the razors of Palermo[165]: [to POPPEY] you have learning with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and champions. His blunder ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... rarely be any delicacy at the time of an election in urging on the people that it is their duty to go to the poll, but it will nearly always be an indiscretion to indicate from the pulpit for whom they should vote. Very often good causes are lost or long delayed, not because the sentiment of the electorate is opposed to them, but because large numbers are too apathetic ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... took holy orders and quitted his chambers at Cambridge, as much in debt as many a scamp of his college. He had been, perhaps, a little foolish and fanciful in the article of books, and had committed a serious indiscretion in the matter of a carved oak bookcase; and, worse still, he had published a slender volume of poems, and a bulkier tome of essays, scholastic and theologic, both which ventures, notwithstanding their merits, had turned out ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... riches, and in this way they are full of imperfection; which is not an unbecoming or impossible thing, considered from different points of view, to be perfect and imperfect. I say that their imperfection firstly may be observed in the indiscretion, or unwisdom, or folly, of their arrival, in which no distributive Justice shines forth, but complete iniquity almost always; which iniquity is the proper effect of imperfection. For if the methods or ways by which they come are considered, all ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... of my indiscretion were but too apparent, and rendered, as I thought, deception justifiable. I put on widow's weeds, and gave out that my husband was a young officer, who had fallen a victim to the fatal Walcheren fever; that our marriage ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and the remainder of the cast was, on the whole, satisfactory. Stay, it is only just that I should single out for special commendation Mr. ARTHUR BOURCHIER, who played a character, to whom reference was frequently made as "the melancholy Jaques," faultlessly. Here again the author committed an indiscretion. Jaques (by the way, why was not Mr. SUGDEN'S role described as, "the more melancholy Touchstone?") is permitted to stop the action of the piece to deliver some thirty lines commencing with the trite truism, ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... decisions, with this stranger in the house. It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the second volume of Diana of the Crossways. Why not? It was only ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to attempt to rally Tu Kiu's division would be in vain; he did not even care to protect its retreat, for as it had been taken so unawares, it must suffer the penalty of indiscretion. To march straight to the field of battle, and to encounter a solid phalanx of the best troops in the world, elated with victory, and led by a general like Ah Kurroo, and inspired, too, by the presence ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... French and Indian wars, the American army was encamped on the plains of Chippewa. Colonel St. Clair, the commander, was a bold and meritorious officer; but there was mixed with his bravery a large share of rashness or indiscretion. His rashness, in this case, consisted in encamping on an open plain beside a thick wood, from which an Indian scout could easily pick off his outposts, without being exposed, in the least, to the fire of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... regarded as an injured man. From the exuberant generosity of his temper, he had powerfully sympathized with the French republicans at an early stage of their revolution; and having, with great indiscretion, but an indiscretion that admitted of some palliation in so young a man and of so ardent a temperament, publicly avowed his sympathy, he was ignominiously dismissed from the army. That act made an enemy ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... saw them first," he sand, "a great many years ago, when Mr. Barnum had them, and they were just fresh from Siam. The ligature was their best hold then, but literature became their best hold later, when one of them committed an indiscretion, and they had to cut the old bond to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that weighs least with me in the matter. There is another reason—well, I may as well tell you. My position is this. I daresay you know, like everybody else, that once, many years ago, I was guilty of an indiscretion. ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... incorporate into moral philosophy, to which they do essentially appertain; as the knowledge of this diversity of grounds and moulds doth to agriculture, and the knowledge of the diversity of complexions and constitutions doth to the physician, except we mean to follow the indiscretion of empirics, which minister the same medicines ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... the Bishop; I've only spoken to him once," exclaimed J. P. Huddle, with the exculpating air of one who realizes too late the indiscretion of speaking to strange Bishops. Miss Huddle was the first to rally; she disliked thunderbolts as fervently as her brother did, but the womanly instinct in her told her that ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... accent by speaking too much with the servants, who had remained peasants under their livery, Madame de Maurillac, who had not been able to bring a lady's maid with her, on account of the extra cost which her traveling expenses and wages would have entailed, and who, moreover, was afraid that some indiscretion might betray her maneuvers and cover her with ridicule, made up her mind to wait on her daughter herself. And Fabienne talked with nobody but her, saw nobody but her, and was like a little novice in a convent. Nobody was allowed to speak to her, or to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... previous occasions when Trigger had met with this group. The advisory committee simply sat there and watched him. As far as Trigger could figure it, they were present at these sessions only to check Rak if it looked as if he were about to commit some ghastly indiscretion. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... parliamentary reform, and education, and in all of these he rendered signal service. When, in 1830, the Whigs, with whom he had always acted, attained power, B. was made Lord Chancellor; but his arrogance, selfishness, and indiscretion rendered him a dangerous and unreliable colleague, and he was never again admitted to office. He turned fiercely against his former political associates, but continued his efforts on behalf of reform in various directions. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... passage which the Chevalier Burke has been at the pains to delete before sending me his manuscript. Doubtless it was some very natural complaint of what he supposed to be an indiscretion on my part; though, indeed, I can call none to mind. Perhaps Mr. Henry was less guarded; or it is just possible the Master found the means to examine my correspondence, and himself read the letter from Troyes: in revenge ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that her party would finish without unpleasantness was singularly frustrated. Robert Boulger was irritated beyond endurance by the things Lucy had said to him; and Lucy besides, as if to drive him to distraction, had committed a peculiar indiscretion. In her determination to show the world in general, represented then by the two hundred people who were enjoying Lady Kelsey's hospitality, that she, the person most interested, did not for an instant ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... his bold and familiar manner, appears to have been equally a favourite with James I. and Charles I. He behaved with singular indiscretion both at the courts of France ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... have picked up some socialistic nonsense. You will have to rid yourself of it. Our family has always arrayed itself squarely against such indefensible theories.... But the thing to do at once is to wipe out any silly ideas your indiscretion may have aroused ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... ENTENTE There were a few people in England who had some inkling on 18 July that it might prove a turning-point in history. Foch's simple piety had led him into what was almost an indiscretion; he had asked for the special prayers of the faithful, the request had spread to conventual schools in England, and by the 16th it was guessed by those who knew the fact that a special effort was in contemplation. But his great counter-attack owed its importance to what had ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... a canon of the church of St. John Lateran, impelled by a worldly curiosity untempered by piety, undertook to make a critical examination of this relic, in the process of which, to better satisfy himself, he had the indiscretion to break off a small piece; instantly the most dreadful tempest broke over the place, followed by crashing peals of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning; then a sudden darkness covered the country, and the luckless priest and his assistants fell flat on their sacerdotal noses, feeling ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... strike, a great deal is written about the men employed in various capacities by railroads, and every misdeed is exaggerated, and every indiscretion magnified into a crime. But very little is said on the other side of the question. The men to whom railroad travelers, and especially those who ride at night, commend their safety, are worked to the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... companion was now communing chiefly with himself. She felt, indeed, that she had already been guilty of a certain disloyalty to one to whom she owed some manner of allegiance; but that was the extent of Miss Bouverie's indiscretion in her own eyes. It caused her no qualms to entertain an anonymous gentleman whom she had never seen before. A colder course had commended itself to the young lady fresh from London; but to a Colonial ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... action, they are utterly inconsistent and irreconcilable with themselves. Look at the man in one light, and he shall seem wise, penetrating, discreet, and brave; behold him in another point of view, and you see a creature all over folly and indiscretion, weak and timorous as cowardice and indiscretion can make him. A man shall appear gentle, courteous, and benevolent to all mankind; follow him into his own house, maybe you see a tyrant morose and savage to all ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... find much repugnance in saying so many things of my mother-in-law. I have no doubt that my own indiscretion, my caprice, and the occasional sallies of a warm temper, drew many of the crosses upon me. Although I had what the world calls patience, yet I had neither a relish nor love for the cross. Their conduct toward ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... the bitterest trouble I have ever experienced—not for myself, God knows I wouldn't ask even your help, but for another who is dearer to me than all the world and for whose future I can do nothing. You never knew that I married. I committed that indiscretion in Rome with a little Spanish dancer who ought to have known better than to be attracted by my beaux yeux—for I had nothing else to offer her. We existed in misery for a couple of years and then she left me, for a more gilded position. But I had the child, which ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... according to our ignorance of nature Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one's health to one's disease! Miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known Mix railing, indiscretion, and fury in his disputations Moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer) More ado to interpret interpretations More books upon books ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... Captain had entrapped me into speaking to him. When I think of it now, I am ashamed to repeat the language in which I resented this man's presumptuous assertion of authority over me. Having committed one act of indiscretion already, my anxiety to assert my freedom of action hurried me into committing another. I bade Mr. Varleigh welcome whenever he chose to visit me, in terms which made his face flush under the emotions of pleasure and surprise which I had aroused in him. My wounded ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Ptitsin, and then back again; he was extremely agitated. Lebedeff could not stand it. He crept up and read over Ptitsin's shoulder, with the air of a naughty boy who expects a box on the ear every moment for his indiscretion. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Is it an indiscretion, madame," said Godefroid, "to ask the names of these gentlemen? I am ready to explain my life; can I know as much of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Oh, the week of retreat! That was the bonne bouche of it all, for themselves and for the others. It was the same every year. By the time the week of retreat arrived, interest and mystery had been frothed to the point of indiscretion; so that the little girls would stand on tiptoe to peep through the shutters at the postulants inside, and even the larger girls, to whom first communion was a thing of an infantile past, would condescend to listen to their reports ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... was brooding over them in proud anticipation of one day leading home a healthy family, thus causing an agreeable surprise to the farmer's wife. The fox almost brushed against her as he sprang over the hedge, and she paid to the utmost the penalty of indiscretion. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... self-contempt, and in a curious surge of pride almost as perverse as his humility, O'Moy had adopted her suggestion, and thereafter—in the past-three months, that is to say—the unreasonable devil of O'Moy's jealousy had slept, almost forgotten. Now, by a chance remark whose indiscretion Tremayne could not realise, since he did not so much as suspect the existence of that devil, he had suddenly prodded him into wakefulness. That Tremayne should show himself tender of Lady O'Moy's feelings in a matter in which O'Moy ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... been charged with having expressed himself unguardedly upon the subject of Italian nationality. "It happened some years ago, when I was in the other House. Then a very high official—a diplomatist of great eminence, a member of the Liberal party—had committed what was deemed a great indiscretion by several members of his own party; and the Government were asked in a formal manner, by a Liberal member, whether that distinguished diplomatist had been in consequence recalled. But the person who was then responsible for the conduct ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... a marriage with him would only make her miserable, and between her love for him, which could not be concealed, and the fear that he would eventually win her consent to be his wife, her mind was in a constant state of anxiety and restlessness. The little indiscretion he had been guilty of with Fan she had forgiven in her heart: that he had actually conceived a fondness for this poor young girl she could not believe, for in that case he would have been very careful not to do anything to betray it ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... of wasting it. Seek in it for affection as little as for ideas. Its kisses conceal a profound indifference, its urbanity a perpetual contempt. It has no other fashion of love. Flashes of wit without profundity, a wealth of indiscretion, scandal, and above all, commonplace. Such is the sum of its speech; but these happy fortunates pretend that they do not meet to make and repeat maxims in the manner of La Rochefoucauld as though there did not exist a mean, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... of deliverance, as I very vaguely expressed it in my colloquies with myself, I did entertain the idea of having recourse to Ozhogin himself ... of calling the attention of that nobleman to the perilous situation of his daughter, and the mournful consequences of her indiscretion.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the reciprocal confidence of the whole commercial world may, by the authoritative enquiry of these commissioners, be shaken. All this, at least, I should have feared, as liable to happen, if the persons who are named in the bill had not been men whose characters are above all suspicion of indiscretion or malice. I may presume it to be the common conviction of the merchants, that in such hands they will be safe: since they have made no opposition to the bill, in it's progress; and since they have offered no appearance against ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... sturdy retainer was gone, and the sound of his heavy boots had died away, Mr. Jellicorse shook his head very gravely, and said, as he opened and looked through his packet, which confirmed the words of Jordas, "Sad indiscretion—want of legal knowledge—headstrong women—the very way to spoil it all! My troubles are beginning, and I ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cultures. You would not like your daughter to marry the sort of negro who steals hens, but then you would also not like your daughter to marry a pure English hunchback with a squint, or a drunken cab tout of Norman blood. As a matter of fact, very few well-bred English girls do commit that sort of indiscretion. But you don't think it necessary to generalise against men of your own race because there are drunken cab touts, and why should you generalise against negroes? Because the proportion of undesirables is higher among negroes, that does not justify ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... mortified, Mrs. Gammit scrambled to her feet, shook her petticoats into shape, and glanced about to see if the wilderness in general had observed her indiscretion. Apparently, nothing had noticed it. Then, with an air of relief, she glanced down at her vicious little antagonist. The weasel lay stunned, apparently dead. But she was not going to trust appearances. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... do to any one mean enough to peep or listen through the key-hole of your door, in order to hear or see everything that was said or done within? Would you show so little self-respect as to tolerate such indiscretion? Would you not rather take a whip or a cane, and drive away the villain? Would you not even expose your life to free yourself from ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... he ordinarily revealed them only when his livery was doffed. Yet even the impeccably correct serving man has his moments of weakness, and, as Hamilton Burton left the room, he muttered low, but quite audibly, "My God!" Then, feeling Carl Bristoll's chilling glance upon him, he sought to cover his indiscretion in an ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... sir—I have seen enough of the world's weakness, to forgive the casual faults of youthful indiscretion;—but I have a detestation for systematic vice; and though, as a general censor, my lash may be feeble, circumstances have put a scourge in my hand, which may fall heavily on this family, should any of its branches force me to wield ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... well, and is untroubled by dreams, unless he has been indulging in some indiscretion in the way of diet, but the stirring scenes of the last few days were so impressed upon the mind of Fred that they reappeared in his visions of night, as he lived them all over again. He was again standing in the silent wood along the Rio Pecos, with Mickey O'Rooney, watching for the ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... happy combination of rare talents and qualities, the harmonious union of the intellectual and moral powers, rather than the dazzling splendor of any one trait, which constitute the grandeur of his character. If the title of great man ought to be reserved for him who can not be charged with an indiscretion or a vice; who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory, and durable prosperity of his country; who succeeded in all that he undertook; and whose successes were never won at the expense of honor, justice, integrity, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and incomprehensible incident, had by his order remained behind in the farm-house at Dahme with the escort from Brandenburg. Assuring the Elector of his most lively sympathy, and protesting that he had most bitterly reproached his wife for her inexcusable indiscretion in bringing about a meeting between him and this man, the Chamberlain went on to ask what could have occurred during the interview to affect his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for once was not guilty of an indiscretion, waking or sleeping. The woodsman got no hint of what matter had been discussed until more than two weeks later, when he stood in the main street of Greenville, beside a tanned, muscular, newly shaven trio, waiting for their departure ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... who had laughed at the woes of a Woman whom he loved, was bewailing his indiscretion in sack-cloth-of-gold and ashes-of-roses, when the Angel of Compassion looked down ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... that the colour element of vice is so oddly lacking in our life of to-day. We appear, one and all, to have been born at an advanced age and with ladylike manners, and we reach our years of indiscretion very slowly; and meanwhile we learn, too late, that prolonged adherence to morality trivialises the mind as hopelessly as a prolonged vice trivialises the countenance. I fear this has been said by someone else, my too impetuous ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Harry. "Why, how strange! But, indeed, for some time back I walk among surprises. One question I think I may surely ask without indiscretion: Is he ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... from the very virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, I admit, as from vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as it is according to scripture not to 'despise the poor, because he is poor,' so we ought not to honor the rich merely because he is rich. The true way is to take a fair survey of the character of a man as exhibited in his conduct; ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... slid round the wine sun-wise for a Highlander's notion of luck; the young advocates, who bleared somewhat at the eyes when they forgot themselves, felt the menacing sleepiness and glowing content of potations carried to the verge of indiscretion; Kilkerran hummed, Petullo hawed, the Provost humbly ventured a sculduddery tale, the Duke politely listening the while to some argument of Elchies upon the right of any one who had been attacked by the Macfarlanes to use arms ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... former indiscretion as a fault was never reckoned, To Merope or Sterope—the first or else the second, And you'll never see so rigidly respectable a dame As Merope or ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Normandy, made during his exile. And, sensible of his own declining health, and the tender years of the young Edgar, he might be musing over the terrible pretender to the English throne, whose claims his earlier indiscretion might seem ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cold from head to foot, and he grew sick at the thought that by the indiscretion of his clumsy sympathy he had brought this down upon his luckless head. Mechanically his arm relaxed the hold of her waist and fell away. Instinctively she apprehended that all was not as she had thought. She turned on the seat to face him squarely, and caught something ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... had never seen his wife in evening-dress before. It was true they were alone, and in their own sitting-room, but the room was still invested with that formality and publicity which seemed to accent this indiscretion. The simple-minded frontier man's mind went back to Jane, to the hired man, to the expressman, the stranger, all of whom might have noticed ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... before his eye, giving materials to be well stored in the memory. While you are alone you are entirely your own [master] and if you have one companion you are but half your own, and the less so in proportion to the indiscretion of his behaviour. And if you have many companions you will fall deeper into the same trouble. If you should say: "I will go my own way and withdraw apart, the better to study the forms of natural objects", I tell you, you will not be able to help often listening to their chatter. And so, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... from without. If these arrangements be properly attended to, few parties of Indians will venture to make an attack, as they are well aware that some of their warriors might pay with their lives the forfeit of such indiscretion. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... dark period, forbid us to suppose that his intellect ever crossed the line which separates reason from insanity. From out the gloom that surrounds the whole case two points stand out clear and indisputable, that no indiscretion of conduct or aberration of mind on the part of Tasso can possibly have merited the sufferings to which he was subjected, and that whatever may have been Alfonso's suspicions, his fiendish vengeance is one of history's darkest crimes, and covers the tyrant with ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... knowledge, let us now proceed to unfold his faults, though they have been already slightly noticed. He was of an unsteady disposition; but this fault he corrected by an excellent plan, allowing people to set him right when guilty of indiscretion. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... exclaimed the old detective. "I really shouldn't have said that. But we detectives are used to all sorts of complications, and, more than once, they have to do with women. Often enough there is nothing more serious than a little indiscretion, but I can see where outsiders might make trouble—particularly husbands. I take it then that you and the lady were out together without her ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... vicinity of Woodward's Gardens. But she had a furtive and sly desire to float oil-like upon the surface of this turbid sea, touching it at certain points, yet scarcely mixing with it. Indeed, this inclination to taste the core of life without committing herself the further indiscretion of swallowing it grew to such proportions that at the age of fifteen she almost succumbed to its allurement. Even at this late date she could recall every detail of a seemingly casual conversation which she had held with ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the names in your father's two books, to give me the further history of the family, and in particular your own experiences in London. I am confident the history of your married life must contain a number of incidents which, without the least danger of indiscretion, might be communicated to the public to the great advantage of all ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... invention to the minuti of dress, and confirms the sway of the conventional, so as to give la mode the force of social law to an extent unknown elsewhere. The tyranny and caprice of fashion were as characteristic in Montaigne's day as at present. "I find fault with their especial indiscretion," he says, "in suffering themselves to be so imposed upon and blinded by the authority of the present custom as every month to alter their opinion." "In this country," writes Yorick, "nothing must be spared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is for wit as your young travellers for languages, as much as will call for necessities and hardly that. He is not crafty enough to be a knave, nor wise enough to be honest, but the midway betwixt; a kind of harmless man. His whole vice is his indiscretion, and yet this makes him seem guilty of all." After the word "reserved" in Bliss, the MS. goes on: "He will part with anything in a humour, but in a good cause with nothing, and you may better entice him than persuade him. He is often perverse, never resolute and inexorable to nothing so much ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... that means. If a comrade in his range was sick and unable to come to meals, I have constantly seen a man secrete half of his miserable breakfast or dinner in his pocket, to be carried up to the invalid and smuggled into his cell. It was a matter of course, nobody remarked it. Any mistake or indiscretion committed by a prisoner would be instantly and almost mechanically covered by the man nearest him, though at the risk of punishment—and the punishment for betraying human sympathy in this way is—of course it is!—especially severe; it is ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... The unchivalrous indiscretion of the youth in publishing the secret of his amour elicited from Kamehameha only the sarcastic remark, "Couldn't he eat his food and keep his mouth shut?" The lady herself took the same view of his action. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... revealed what he intended to conceal; but he had such a reputation for cunning that this sort of indiscretion was attended by no inconvenience to him. He was supposed to be such a constant dissembler that those who did not know him well looked upon the truth when he spoke it merely as an artful snare laid to entrap them. I, however, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... even, and he was forced to escape secretly from the city; nor did he stop until he reached his native Lombardy, where he might rely upon the protection of his kinsmen, the Marshal Trivulzio and the Borromeos, to shield him from the consequences of his indiscretion. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... a matter, do it without passion and indiscretion, however mean the person may be you ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... it—have been of no meaner blood. You may see all their portraits at our poor charming old house—every one of them an 'injured' beauty, but not one of them hanging her head. Not one of them ever had the bad taste to be jealous, and yet not one in a dozen ever consented to an indiscretion—allowed herself, I mean, to be talked about. Voila comme elles ont su s'arranger. How they did it—go and look at the dusky faded canvases and pastels and ask. They were dear brave women of wit. When they had a headache they put on a little rouge and came to supper as usual, and when they had ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... Certainly, standing there staring till doomsday would not do it; and there seemed but two ways, that of entering the house at once or arousing the man. But the man was sleeping so soundly that it seemed a pity to awake him for a trifle; and, after all, there could be no great harm or indiscretion in his entering to see if his bride was safe. Probably Leoline was asleep, and would know nothing about it; or, even were she wide awake, and watchful, she was altogether too sensible a girl to be displeased at his anxiety about her. If she ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... sometimes admit of concealment. They adopt many measures to hide their virtue from the eyes of others; they will by no means court public attention, or allow a formal publication of their deeds: but if perchance they are whispered abroad, if any indiscretion betrays them, if though not written, they are stated; they are the last persons on earth to feel any offence, and congratulate themselves on having effectually secured the applauses ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... overlook the offence, and hope you may as easily forgive yourself. It were well, however, that your indiscretion, which can only find its excuse in your being so young an officer, had not been altogether without some good result. Had you killed or disabled the—the savage, there might have been a decent palliative offered; but what must ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... along the street, with an echoing tread, and as the two slunk past him he turned a casual glance upon them. The glance touched them like a galvanic shock, and they would have run if they had had courage for such an indiscretion. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of Denmark, becoming a widow by the sudden death of King Hamlet, in less than two months after his death married his brother Claudius, which was noted by all people at the time for a strange act of indiscretion, or unfeelingness, or worse: for this Claudius did no ways resemble her late husband in the qualities of his person or his mind, but was as contemptible in outward appearance, as he was base and unworthy in disposition; and suspicions did not ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... feeding. After the battles of the Kimberley relief force, Surgeon-General Wilson, at my request, had all the abdominal cases placed in a large marquee, where we were able to carefully watch the whole of the patients from hour to hour, and little chance existed for any indiscretion on the part of the patients in the way of ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... together and approached the last and most delicate part of his task, which was to defend or palliate a phrase of Norburn's that had been greeted with angry groans and protests. Mr. Norburn had in fact referred to the Capitalist class as a "parasitic growth," and Medland was left to get out of this indiscretion as best he could. He referred to the unhappy phrase. The storm which had greeted its first appearance broke out again. There were cries of "Withdraw!" Mr. Kilshaw called out, "Do you adopt that? Yes or no;" Norburn's followers cheered; redoubled groans answered them; Eleanor ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... for details, who would strive to find more information from the hints given. At that time they were likely to find any person wiser than themselves, and he had seen to it that there should be no indiscretion at Malchester Row. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... the tip of my tongue, but Miss Beverley did not seem to have noticed the indiscretion. Indeed my sympathy was sincere, and I think she ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... going to be in the least hard on you," Lutchester assured him. "You have committed a frightful indiscretion, and all that is asked of you now is to keep your mouth shut. If you do that, I think a way will be found for you out ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fantastic tale about one of our own lot. Indeed about one wearing strawberry leaves and with two very young sons growing up, and she, apparently imagining the younger to be the living likeness, growing plainer every day, of a former indiscretion, gives directions to her favourite lackey to get rid of this wrong one and he, from spleen, gives the honest child away. The lady dies shortly after; the father never suspects anything. The bastard inherits, so the entire tragedy was ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... they do not group themselves pathetically to sing "Protegga il giusto cielo": they grasp formidable legal and social weapons, and retaliate. Political parties are wrecked and public careers undone by a single indiscretion. A man had better have all the statues in London to supper with him, ugly as they are, than be brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience by Donna Elvira. Excommunication has become almost as serious a business as it was in the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... was of a most wonderful and magnificent colour. It had no resemblance whatever to those Easter eggs dyed in the juice of the beetroot, so much admired by the urchins who stare in at the fruit-shops. It was of the colour of royal purple. And with the indiscretion of my age I could ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... afraid that in my warmth I allowed the expression of my feelings to extend to one so dear to him, and so like him in person and in mind. Will you only consider that you received the overflowings of a grateful heart towards your brother, and for his sake pardon my indiscretion?" ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... and advise her to wisdom, in the matter of impulsive acts and wishes. He would be that friend. He had not, it was true, made a very happy beginning, with the expedition that had ended so unfortunately; but he promised himself not to be led into an indiscretion of the kind again. It was a friend's part to warn in due time, and to point out the possible consequences of a rash act. He only excused his behaviour because he had not seen her for over two months, and had felt too sorry for her to refuse the first thing she asked of him. But from ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... at him sharply and realised he had committed an indiscretion—that this was a subject that might not be handled even ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... his chin, musing on my words. I was afraid for a little he resented my indiscretion, but resentment was apparently not in his mind, for his speech found ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... of Neville's tract also recalls the lost play of Thomas Nash—"The Isle of Dogs"—for which he was imprisoned on its appearance in 1597, and suffered, as he asserted, for the indiscretion of others. "As Actaeon was worried by his own hounds," wrote Francis Meres in his "Palladis Tamia," "so is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs." And three years later, in 1600, Nash referred in his "Summers Last Will" to the excitement raised by his suppressed ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... same passions which made those regulations necessary, rendered them ineffectual. The reproaches which angry prelates have so vehemently urged against each other, serve only to expose their common guilt, and their mutual indiscretion. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... occupied their old place under the gallery, but their performances were of a highly decorous character. At the least-sign of a relapse into certain old tricks, more grotesque than refined, the brows of Prince Alexis would grow dark, and a sharp glance at Sasha was sufficient to correct the indiscretion. Every one found this natural enough; for they were equally impressed with the elegance and purity of the young wife. After the healths had been drunk and the slumber-flag was raised over the castle, Boris led her into the splendid apartments of his mother,—now ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... novelist and poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, under a very thin disguise, revealed his relations with the famous actress, Eleanora Duse. Anglo-Saxons thrust such books aside with a feeling of disgust for the man who could so betray a sacred confidence and perhaps exaggerate a simple indiscretion into actual guilt. But it is not so in France and Italy. And this is ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... and a married man." This dislike is easily accounted for. Exeter was very far from London, the new ideas travelled slowly, and the west was staunchly conservative. As with many reformers, too, his zeal was spoilt by indiscretion; the sternness of the Puritan militated against his success, and people preferred the old errors more becomingly supported. His successor, Turberville, was a man quite after the heart of the people, and he won praise ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... cast down my eyes. 'You appear very ill,' said he. 'Yes, sir,' I answered, astonished that he did not address me familiarly as usual. 'It is very plain,' added he, 'it is in consequence of your situation; but notwithstanding your lies, your bad conduct, and your indiscretion of yesterday,' added he, in a softened tone, 'I have pity on you. Although I have treated you as you deserved before the cure of the parish, such an affair as this will be a scandal to my house; and, moreover, your family will be in despair. I consent, under these circumstances ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... to be questioned in his doings, or even to be spoken to by ordinary persons," replied the Being. "Nevertheless, Ten-teh, there is that in your history for the past fourteen years which saves you from the usual fatal consequences of so gross an indiscretion. Let it suffice that it is concerned with the flight ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... other enters it, builds in it or hoards in it. If, through heedlessness, through momentary forgetfulness of her own house in the tumult of the city, some neighbour so much as comes and looks in at the door, the owner soon puts her to flight. No such indiscretion is tolerated. Every Bee has her home and ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... My indiscretion at once became apparent, but I was a complete novice in "being arrested." To involve Cecilia in the affair would be but an aggravation of matters, and I at once decided, come what might, I would not give the police her address. Looking at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... for his irreverence; and the elder sister, who had a keen sense of humour as well as fixed opinions, was so thankful that the boys had been brought safely back to them, she commenced to make the most comical excuses for their erring brother's buoyant indiscretion. The young man's contrition was signified by his taking hold of his sisters, waltzing them round the room, and then proceeding to stand on his head and dangling his legs in the air. This threw them into fits of laughter, and though it was against the rules of the home, the joyous chatter ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... question escaped her almost before she was aware, and she waited for the snub which she felt would inevitably follow her second indiscretion that afternoon. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... should n't have felt nearly so much at liberty to go if I had known I should always find you there making love to Mademoiselle. It would n't have seemed to me discreet,—I know what you are going to say—that it 's the first time you ever heard of my wishing to avoid an indiscretion. It 's a taste I have taken up lately,—for the same reason you went to London, for a 'change.'" Here Blanche paused for an appreciable moment; and then she added—"Well, I must say, I have never seen anything so lovely as Mrs. Vivian's influence. I hope ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... dear fellow. I did not see Maurice,' the President went on. 'Serizy and I, after being the witnesses to your marriage, became your accomplices; I did not think I was committing an indiscretion in the presence of these two ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... the cold dictates of prudence, gratitude, or filial duty, may sometimes be mistaken for the pleadings of the heart. I would not boast—yet let me say, that I have neither age, person, nor character, to found dislike on; my fortune such as few ladies could be charged with indiscretion in the match. O Julia! when love receives such countenance from prudence, nice minds will ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... being. To disciples of a higher order 'Ali Muḥammad no doubt disclosed himself as he really was, but, like a heavenly statesman, he avoided inopportune self-revelations. Now, however, the religious conditions were becoming different. Owing in some cases to the indiscretion of disciples, in others to a craving for the revolution of which the Twelfth Imâm was the traditional instrument, there was a growing popular tendency to regard Mirza 'Ali Muḥammad as a 'return' of the Twelfth Imâm, who was, by force ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... down the hall, but almost at once Ford, whose ears were alert for any sound, heard him returning, approaching stealthily on tiptoe. If by this maneuver the Jew had hoped to discover his patient in some indiscretion, he was unsuccessful, for he found Ford standing just where he had left him, with his back turned to the door, and gazing with apparent interest at a picture on the wall. The significance of the incident was not lost upon the intruder. ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... wrong,' returned Otto; 'and for that I ask your pardon. You can scarce refuse it, for your own dignity, to one who is a plexus of weaknesses. Nor was the fault entirely mine. Had the papers been innocent, it would have been at most an indiscretion. Your own guilt is the ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disaster to the British has been immediately attributed to the acts or the tactics of the commanding officer. In this connection I will cite the regrettable instance of General Gatacre at Stormberg. I do not think this reverse is to be attributable to stupidity, or indiscretion, or cowardice. ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... wanted someone to share her pleasure or amusement—to laugh with her, or wonder with her, or to search with her for fresh treasures. It seemed to take the edge off everything if she must enjoy it alone; and this desire for sympathy at last grew so strong that it caused her to be guilty of the grave indiscretion I shall now relate. A friend had once given Mrs Fotheringham a couple of half-wild white ducks of a peculiar kind, and these had so multiplied and increased in the quiet retreat of Paradise Court that they now threatened to become too numerous. Orders had accordingly been ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... some frightful convulsion of Nature? He felt sure that Fakrash would hesitate at no means, however violent, of burying all traces of his blunder in oblivion, and very little hope that, whatever he did, it would prove anything but some worse indiscretion than ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... remarked on the condition of his coat—inches thick in dust, I do assure you, and she was haughty, and gave me to understand that he had something better to do than brush his clothes. I hope she won't bear me a grudge for my indiscretion. It will be a lesson to me not to make personal remarks for the future. Dear, dear me, how I do long to peep in at the drawing-room window! Do you think they would mind very much, if they looked up and saw my face flattened against the pane? When are we going to see them, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
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