"Untrustworthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exceedingly wrong in taking walks with any man without your parents' permission, and you degraded yourself by enlisting the aid of a servant to get letters from him unknown to them, and so led her to do wrong and to act in an untrustworthy way to her master and mistress. You ought to tell her that you regret having so done, and will ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... bed as best you can," said Mrs. Horton. "Minnie will not be allowed to see you. Minnie has been discharged. She is untrustworthy, and I would have sent her packing to-night, but she insisted on her right to stay under this roof until morning. So she is in her room where I have ordered her ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... last stand; but the hearts of the Thebans failed them, and they came towards the Persians holding out their hands in entreaty for mercy. Quarter was given to them, but they were all branded with the king's mark as untrustworthy deserters. The helots probably at this time escaped into the mountains; while the small desperate band stood side by side on the hill still fighting to the last, some with swords, others with daggers, others even with their hands and teeth, till not one ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... matters the child has no rights. The only safeguard is the fact that if parents are absolutely brutal, society steps in, removes the untrustworthy guardian, and appoints another. But society does nothing, can do nothing, with the parent who injures the child's soul, breaks his will, makes him grow up a liar or a coward, or murders his faith. It is not ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... impossible person who ever breathed." she replied. "He was a conscientious objector during the war, a sex fanatic since—Mr. Dartrey had to use all his influence to keep him out of prison for writing those scurrulous articles in the Comet—and I think he is one of the smallest-minded, most untrustworthy persons I ever met. For some reason or other, Stephen Dartrey believes in him. He has a wonderful talent for organization and a good deal of influence with the trades unions.—By the by, it's all right about ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Dion Cassius, writing long after the event, tells us that Herculaneum and Pompeii were overwhelmed; but he mixes his story with fantastic legends concerning the appearance of gods and demons, as is his fashion in his so-called history. Of all the Roman writers, he is perhaps the most untrustworthy. Fortunately, however, we have in the deposits of ashes which were thrown out at the time of this great eruption some basis for interpreting the events which took place. It is evident that for many hours the Vesuvian crater, which ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... just a caution to save their own necks. It's the spirit of the law that they violate. But we are getting away from the point," he added, pulling himself up short with an apologetic smile toward Mrs. Nelson. "We were speaking of this Peter Levine. My summing up of him is that he is entirely untrustworthy." ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... the hut as if the evidence of his ears were totally untrustworthy. Haldane touched him on the shoulder with ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... individual mind naturally seeks its own reflection in the poet's work, as it does in the facts of nature. It was stimulated by the investigations of the Browning Societies, and by the partial familiarity with his actual life which constantly supplied tempting, if untrustworthy clues. It grew out of the strong personal as well as literary interest which he inspired. But the tendency to listen in his work for a single recurrent note always struck him as analogous to the inspection of a picture gallery with eyes blind to every colour but ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... our own first impressions of the stranger, they were probably correct. We all disliked him; we thought him conceited, self-opinionated, selfish, and untrustworthy. But later, reflecting that this was possibly the result of Captain Jim's over-praise, and finding none of these qualities as yet offensively opposed to our own selfishness and conceit, we were induced, like many others, to forget our first impressions. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Prussia, at a distance of fifteen hundred miles from Paris; for Russia would fight to the death rather than lose the only possessions which put her into the heart of Europe, and thus be relegated to the character of an Asiatic power. The Emperor of the French had already seen after Eylau how untrustworthy the grand army was, even in Poland; if dejected and insubordinate there, as he may well have recalled was actually the case, what would it be on the banks of the Dnieper, in the plains of Lithuania? Such considerations probably determined not only the fact of peace, but its character. In order ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the fixed idea of these men, who seemed to enjoy so much the cleverness of their suspicions. It was the most dangerous of tempers to deal with. It made them as untrustworthy as so many lunatics. They were capable of anything, of decoying us alongside, and stoving the bottom out of the boat, and drowning us before they discovered their mistake, if they ever did. Even as it was, there was danger; and yet I was extremely loath to give her up. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the other hand, this exasperating thunder has the advantage of covering the sound of our approach. The lightning's not so convenient. Ah, your house is fully illuminated! My clever Martin is punishing your stock of candles. He belongs to the unceremonious classes, which are also unlovely, untrustworthy, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... say; and a man who speaks boldly and plainly may yet say what is little worth hearing; so, in painting, there are men who can express themselves but blunderingly, and yet have much in them to express; and there are others who talk with great precision, whose works are yet very impertinent and untrustworthy assertions. Sir Joshua Reynolds is full of fogginess and shortcomings as compared with either of the Caraccis; but yet one Sir Joshua is worth all the Caraccis in Europe; and so, in our modern water-color societies, there are many men who define clearly enough, all whose works, put together, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... tired, and, strange as it may appear, curiously doubtful about my own existence. I had for some time been coming to the conclusion that he did not quite believe in my reality; and after he had dismissed my account of the black races as being untrustworthy, he said, half to himself, that quite probably I was nothing more than an hallucination, a thought projection of his own mind. And after that I got more and more annoyed—partly, I think, because I had a kind of haunting fear that what he had said might be true. When you have ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... be misled by the common notion that an hypothesis is untrustworthy simply because it is an hypothesis. It is often urged, in respect to some scientific conclusion, that, after all, it is only an hypothesis. But what more have we to guide us in nine-tenths of the most important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... required alteration. Thus far there has never been a fraud or defalcation that was attributable to inadequate checks in the system. While I was at the head of the office, Mr. Chase never required me to retain a clerk who was incompetent or untrustworthy. There were times, however, when he looked to appointments with reference to Presidential preferences, and he always considered himself in ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... she is also very fond of talking and noisy. He is very irascible, and often becomes excited at the merest trifle; nevertheless he is very forgiving, he does not bear anger long, and he is not at all revengeful. He is very credulous; even the most incredible things, which the most untrustworthy people relate to him, he immediately believes. He is very cleanly, and you will not find even one speck of dust on his coat. He is an excellent boy, but very apt ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... unfolded and obvious to the view! For if it had been so, not merely the virtues and vices of the mind would be easily visible, but also its knowledge of branches of study, displayed to the contemplation of the eyes, would not need testing by untrustworthy powers of judgement, but a singular and lasting influence would thus be lent to the learned and wise. However, since they are not so constructed, but are as nature willed them to be, it is impossible for men, while natural ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... his expression as a scientific man defends his, and demonstrate that they are true upon any assumptions whatsoever. Any loud fool may stand in front of a picture and call it inaccurate, untrustworthy, unbeautiful. That last, the most vital issue of all, is the one least assured. Loud fools always do do that sort of thing. Take quite ignorant people before almost any beautiful work of art and they will laugh ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... it is a good guide to the invalid—as it is a good guide to the differently-placed races of men—and as it is a good guide for every adult who leads a healthful life; it may safely be inferred that it is a good guide for childhood. It would be strange indeed were it here alone untrustworthy. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to his simple taste, this clay-brained earth-pig left the two she-children alone for a space while he slept. Discovering each other to be the creature of another part, they battled together and tore from one another the signs of recognition. When the untrustworthy gnome recovered from his stupor he saw what he had done, but being terror-driven he took up one of the she-children at a venture and returned with a pliant tale. It was not until a few moons ago that while in a close extremity he confessed his crime. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... Still more striking evidence that Scott lacked an infallible sense of the difference between genuine and spurious ballad material is afforded by his comments on Peter Buchan's collection, which is now considered particularly untrustworthy. He thought that with two or three exceptions the pieces in the book were genuine, and said: "I scarce know anything so easily discovered as the piecing and patching of an old ballad; the darns in a silk stocking are not more manifest." (Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... demanded his inheritance, which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; but Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairness that many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, who had always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thing to be done was to put down the murderers—Decimus Brutus was in Gaul, Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had also raised an ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... market, they are chained together in pairs, men and women, as if the wrongs they bore had made them untrustworthy. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... was indeed praiseworthy that considerations so patriotic should at that rude period have so firmly rooted themselves in the mind of the governing class; but that their object was rather to consolidate their own power and advance that of the city than to instruct mankind, is clear from the totally untrustworthy character of the special gentile records; and when history began to be cultivated in a literary way, we do not observe any higher motive at work. Fabius and Cincius wrote in Greek, partly, no doubt, because in the unformed state of their own language it ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... are true. There is a curse upon the earth: though not one which, by altering the laws of nature, has made natural facts untrustworthy. There is a curse on the earth; such a curse as is expressed, I believe, in the old Hebrew text, where the word "admah"—correctly translated in our version "the ground"—signifies, as I am told, not this ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... She frowned,—an untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. "One meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel Grimshaw; they ought to open ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... since it has so enormously developed itself, and formed branches, so as to constitute a library within a library, and to call for its own bibliographer. So far as the current value and general character of literary works are concerned, all the older authorities are more or less untrustworthy, and the same is to be predicated of a heavy proportion of auctioneers' and booksellers' catalogues, where the first and sole object is to realise the maximum price for an article. The system pursued by the former class ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... will, in the ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably, in the aggregate, to three hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his productions,—you may often find him superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Everything was in good order; their assortment of machine tools was admirable. Mr. Fawcett, who accompanied me, was full in his praises of my master, whom he regarded as the greatest pioneer in the substitution of the unerring accuracy of machine tools for the often untrustworthy results of mere ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... by far the most trustworthy of modern English works on the subject, and a valuable record of the established facts in Columbus's life, has proved a sound guide in nautical matters; while the monograph of Mr. Elton, which apparently did not promise much at first, since the author has followed some untrustworthy leaders as regards his facts, proved to be full of a fragrant charm produced by the writer's knowledge of and interest in sub-tropical vegetation; and it is delightfully filled with the names of gums and spices. To Mr. Vignaud I owe special thanks, not only ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... naturally hasty and untrustworthy, of doubtful birthright, and now rejected by the Church, John must have rather expected resistance than support from the great men of the realm. He tried to assure himself of those he suspected by taking hostages from their families; he confiscated the property of the ecclesiastics ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... best to trust them. If a girl is found to be utterly untrustworthy, I don't expel her, but I request her parents to remove her ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... lingered just within the kitchen doorway, fooling with the youngest of the maids who resented his teasing by a sharp clap on his cheek, but he had not been so absorbed in this pastime that he had not heard every word spoken between his mistress and her guest. Knowing that he was in truth an untrustworthy messenger, he resented its being told; and the statement that no payment would be accepted angered him. He was a bound-out servant, of course. So were many other lads of the Province and no disgrace in it; but if a free gift were offered, was it not ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... affluence, for Bruce had not yet learned that clothes are unsafe standards by which to judge the resources of city folks, just as on the plains and in the mountains faded overalls and a ragged shirt are equally untrustworthy guides to a man's financial rating. And the musty odor that met him in the gloomy hallway—he felt how she must loathe it. He had wondered at the early hour she'd set but when Helen came down she ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... is looked upon as unclean and untrustworthy by the Persian, who refuses to use him as a soldier, but who gladly employs him to do all sorts of dirty jobs which Persian pride would not allow him to do himself. His social level therefore stands even lower than ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... chiefly because every one is jealous of every one who surpasses him and is more or less inclined to distrust anything said that is higher than his own standard.[1] Moreover I know this, that those who make apparently untrustworthy statements not only persuade nobody but further have the appearance of cheats. And, indeed, if it were a case of announcing something that I was not intending to do immediately, I should hesitate very much about making it public, for fear of ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... untrustworthy Mohammedan!" said Colonel Carter in a pointed undertone, and Bellairs blushed crimson underneath the tan. "He's ridden through from Jundhra, with torture waiting for him if he happened to get caught, and no possible reward beyond his pay. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... ridiculous, and short-lived movements of his wretched body? on the day on which he becomes proof against pleasure he also becomes proof against pain. See, on the other hand, how evil and guilty a slavery a man is forced to serve who is dominated in turn by pleasures and pains, those most untrustworthy and passionate of masters. We must, therefore, escape from them into freedom. This nothing will bestow upon us save contempt of Fortune; but if we attain to this, then there will dawn upon us those invaluable ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... precisely that which history has had so often to recount. The sovereign, frightened, obstinate, and little able to appreciate the forces opposed to him, was wavering, fickle, timid, yet stubborn, and, above all, untrustworthy. The people were bent on pushing matters to extremes to which those who had so far been their leaders were unwilling to go, and, as usual, the best of those leaders were shunted from the road, happy if they were able, as Capponi was, to retire in safety to the tranquil ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... to do in any case, when now he was absolutely indifferent to her and showed it in every way. It made the whole thing all the more revolting—to have pretended he loved her on that first night! Yes, with certain modifications of classes and races men were all perfectly untrustworthy, if not brutes, and a woman, if she could relax her vigilance, as regards the defense of her person and virtue, could not afford to unbend a fraction as to ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... ideal portrait of an elephant from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of fact person compared with the daring visionary who conjures up a complete system of language from the same fertile but untrustworthy source. The piquancy of Senhor Pedro Carolino's New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English is enhanced by the evident bona fides and careful compilation of "the little book," or as Pedro himself gravely expresses it, ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... was barely acquainted with Goring. Sir John Ireton and the newspapers informed him that George Goring was a flashy, untrustworthy politician; and the former added that he was a terrible nuisance to poor Lord Ipswich and Lady Augusta. That such a man could attract Mildred would never have ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... violinist, from whom she was soon separated. She began as an understudy to actresses in leading parts, but quarrelled with her manager, Charles Fleetwood, on whom she wrote a one-act skit, The Art of Management (1735). She also wrote two comedies and two novels of small merit, and an untrustworthy, but amusing Narrative of Life of ... Charlotte Charke, ... by herself (1755), reprinted in Hunt and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... They had been successively the subjects of Greece, Rome, and the Califate, of the German-Roman emperors, and of the republic of Pisa. Their latest ruler was Genoa, which had now degenerated into an untrustworthy oligarchy. United to that state originally by terms which gave the island a "speaker" or advocate in the Genoese senate, and recognized the most cherished habits of a hardy, natural-minded, and primitive people, they had little by little ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lower temperature." This rule gives entirely inadequate amounts to be effective, the percentage by weight of the water being about 1 per cent. The familiar rules of enough salt to make a brine that will "float an egg" or "float a potato" are likewise untrustworthy; they call respectively, according to actual tests made by Mr. Sanford E. Thompson, for 15 per cent. and 11 per cent. of salt which is too much, according to the authorities quoted above, to be used safely. In practice an arbitrary quantity ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... was a pile of letters waiting for Mrs Lucas, for yesterday's post had not been forwarded her, for fear of its missing her—London postmen were probably very careless and untrustworthy—and she gave a little cry of dismay as she saw ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... thing will be to get a text. There are several modern texts published in Italy; but none of them are very correct. Giuliani's is an attractive little book; but the Abate was a somewhat reckless emendator, and some of his readings are very untrustworthy. The little pocket edition published by Barbera contains Fraticelli's text, which suffers rather from lack of correction. Messrs. Longmans publish one based on Witte, but embodying the results of later inquiry. ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... the errors of introspection, though numerous, are all too slight to render the process of introspection as a whole unsound and untrustworthy. Though, as we have seen, it involves, strictly speaking, an ingredient of representation, this fact does not do away with the broad distinction between presentative and representative cognition. Introspection is presentative in the sense that ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... say about extravagant or untrustworthy wives, who do not come into the subject at all. I am only referring to the magnificent multitude of good, careful, thrifty, typical American wives, whose sole aim in life is to make a happy home for husband and children. Nor am I denying that these women have all their wishes ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... Privy Council were weary of Culpeper's neglect of duty. They decided to rid themselves of so untrustworthy an officer and to appoint in his place a man that would remain in the colony and carry out their wishes and policies. An inquisition was held upon his conduct, and his letters patent as Governor-General were declared void.[948] On ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... but they could not be great men if they were not cold. A physician is often preferred by a family or patient because he is "so sympathizing," as they call it. They forget that a physician is necessarily untrustworthy in the degree that he is sympathetic with his patients. A physician may be thoroughly kind, and out of his kindness there may grow a gentle manner which seems to spring from sympathy; but I say unhesitatingly that in the degree by which a physician is sympathetic with his ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... untrustworthy. He roused their suspicions by constant attempts to mislead them, and eventually he had to point the way with a rope round his neck. Nevertheless, they met with no actual opposition during the whole journey other than a few ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... welfare of coming generations, crowns them with high honors, and brings them into judgment to account for all these advantages and obligations. Let the children of the Covenants take heed lest they forget the duties, forfeit the blessings, prove themselves untrustworthy, and trample their heavenly crown in the dust. Let them fear lest being exalted to heaven they be cast down to hell. The Covenants of the fathers bind ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... general rule I steer clear of friendships with men who are very much opposed to me in character; it saves a lot of bother in the end. However, in this case, although I believed Howard to be a weak, worthless, untrustworthy individual, I could not help liking him. He was talented and of a pleasing—at least to me—personality. When I came into his room he was sitting reading in a long chair ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... the silver-tip, and others with names known only in certain localities, such as the range bear, the roach-back, and the smut-face. But, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary, most old hunters are very untrustworthy in dealing with points of natural history. They usually know only so much about any given animal as will enable them to kill it. They study its habits solely with this end in view; and once slain they ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... ex-dentist's assistant and ex-policeman were to ensure their remaining so. The Ban is accused of having frustrated various designs of this couple. He is further accused of having placed at the head of the Koprivnica internment camp—where 6000 "politically untrustworthy" Serbs were assembled—the mayor, Kamenar, who himself had been dismissed for his political untrustworthiness; and when the military protested, they received no answer, while the mayor—so the wrathful writer ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... that Myrtle is an utterly untrustworthy person who would make him ultimately miserable. I'll remind him that her beauty is no deeper than he sees it. But that Caroline there, admirable girl, seething with affection in a figure warranted against time ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of Gustavus Adolphus had indeed disappeared. Charles XII was ere long to be a mere knight-errant at Bender. The Cossack independence, too, was a thing of the past. Its last and all too untrustworthy representative was to die in Turkey before many months were out—of despair, according to Russian testimony—of poison voluntarily swallowed, according to Swedish historians. The poison story has a touch of likelihood ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... to the creation of man, Mrs. Eddy accepts the first account given in Genesis, but the second, which states that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, she rejects as untrustworthy. The first account, she says, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... charming manner, just as if he enjoyed it." This charming manner, which was the outward expression of an inborn kindliness, won her entirely to his side before the bed-making was over. That any one so frank and pleasant, with such nice boyish eyes, and so rich a colour, should prove untrustworthy, was unbelievable to that part of her which ruled her judgment. And since this ruling part was not reason, but instinct, she possessed, perhaps, as infallible a guide to opinions as ever falls to the lot of erring humanity. "I know he's all right. Don't ask ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... At the first attempt to read the newly prescribed liturgy in St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, on July 23, 1637, a riot took place, in which the "fauld-stools," or folding stools, of the congregation were hurled as missiles. An untrustworthy tradition attributes the flinging of the first stool to a certain Jenny ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... said Akakiy Akakievitch, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, "I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—are an untrustworthy race." ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... fondly clinging to what remnants of liberty were still left to them,—and to alienate him from his uncle, not unfrequently well-meaning but always over-impetuous, and often in his later years selfish and untrustworthy. There was much in the king's character to encourage such efforts. With good natural abilities and a frank and amiable disposition, he had for their own selfish ends been encouraged by his early guardians in sensual pleasures, and never to the last freed himself from ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... stronger than when there is no pressure. Many a man will acknowledge that in difficulty he has surprised himself by a resource and coolness which he never suspected before. Mrs. Taylor I always thought to be rather weak and untrustworthy, but I found that when WEIGHT was placed upon her, she was steady as a rock, a systematic and a perfect manager. There was no doubt in a very short time as to the nature of the disease. It was typhoid fever, the cause probably being the ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... fact that a man who is absolutely untrustworthy about women is often the soul of honor to other men. The younger Wilson, taking his pleasures lightly and not too discriminatingly, was making an offer that meant his ultimate eclipse, and doing it cheerfully, ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... article written by a cynical woman who has lived in the Islands only a few months. I read part of it to father, the part which says that "the Filipinos are a worthless, shiftless, lazy people; improvident, untrustworthy and immoral!" After I had read that he thought a ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... vehicles and varnishes with which they are mixed. Many of these have been blamed, and often with justice, for their injurious effects on pigments. The reputation of the most permanent colour may be ruined, if the vehicle, &c., employed with it be untrustworthy. The presence of lead, for instance, in such materials renders them liable to be blackened by foul air, and by ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... one of the great pillars of civilization, and how does it matter what the heart says while the lips are silent? The Recording Angel can alone read hearts, and he must often find them singularly contradictory and untrustworthy writings. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... small glimpses as are given, in this extension of chap. iii., of the social state of Babylonia there is nothing clearly indicating that the interpolation (if such it be) is of an unhistoric or untrustworthy character, nothing wholly irreconcilable with the rest of the book. Indeed the author (W.T. Bullock) of the note on Daniel iii. 23 in the S.P.C.K. Commentary goes so far as to write of "that noble canticle Benedicite," as an "historical document." This expression ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... whereby to arrive at many others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date, except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agade. There was no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he could ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... by the very causes against which Socialism fights, and because in this world at the present time very few homes are at all like this ideal. In reality every poor home is haunted by the spectre of irregular employment and undermined by untrustworthy insurance, it must shelter in insanitary dwellings and its children eat adulterated food because none other can be got. And that, I am sorry to say, it is only too easy to prove, by a second appeal to a document of which I ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... himself—brought a whole world of recollected wonders, of all that other time when Ernest Henry had other things to do, other disciplines, other triumphs, other defeats, and other glories. Of late his memory of the other time had been untrustworthy. Things during the day-time would remind him, but would remind him, nevertheless, with a strange mingling of the world at present about him, so that he was not sure of his visions. But when his friend was with him the memories were real enough, and ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... tension steel in compression members, and the danger of sudden failure of a properly made strut is so little, that future practice will favor the use of hard steel in compression, unless the material should prove untrustworthy. In columns, even as long as forty diameters, steel of 90,000 pounds tenacity will exceed the mildest steel 35 per cent., or iron 50 per ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... nameless enemies, all combining their efforts to defeat so desirable a consummation; and, after all, there may be no one willing to make himself responsible for a repayment of the necessary expenses, for corporations and public bodies are proverbially untrustworthy. ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... by some—Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Leon Cladel, and "Champfleury" of Les Excentriques. The two first were themselves emphatically "eccentrics"—one an apostle of dandyism (he actually wrote a book about Brummel, whom he had met early), a disdainful critic of rather untrustworthy vigour, and a stalwart reactionary to Catholicism and Royalism; the other a devotee of the exact opposite of dandyism, as the title of his best-known book, Les Va-nu-pieds, shows, and a Republican to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... by the pinchbeck graces of that epicure in sensations." Miles fully granted his charm, his gentle melancholy, his caressing manner; but with it all Miles felt that he was so plainly "a wrong-'un," so clearly second-rate and untrustworthy—and a nice girl ought to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... useless reprints of Gulliver, based on Hawkesworth's untrustworthy edition, and mostly expurgated besides, is so great that we owe double thanks to Mr. Dennis, since he has not shirked the trouble of collating the five earliest editions, and has given us again at last—as far as is possible in the present case—the complete and authentic text of the original."—PROF. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... not suggest his name. He was a tallish, powerful-looking person with a smooth, handsome, audacious face, with fine, laughing, but somehow untrustworthy eyes—at least untrustworthy for women, though women had never profited by the warning. He dressed in excellent taste, almost conspicuously, and the gay and expensive details of his toilet suggested a man given over to liveliness. As a matter of fact, this liveliness was potential ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... my friends and hate my enemies—which may not be in accordance with the Gospel, but I have found it a good wearing creed for honest men." [But he only regarded as "enemies" those whom he found to be double-dealers, shufflers, insincere, untrustworthy; a fair opponent he respected, and he could agree to differ with a friend without altering ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... by the enthusiasm of the troops and of the populace, who clamoured loudly for arms. For he dignified this poor-spirited mob, which would never dare to do anything but shout, by the specious titles of 'the army' or 'his legions'. His friends were all untrustworthy in proportion to their eminence; but on the advice of his freedmen he held a levy for conscription and swore in all who gave their names. As their numbers were too great, he gave the task of selection to the two consuls. From each of the senators he levied a fixed number ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the old man. "I trusted you to go over there, and you come back a disreputable wreck. All my teaching seems to be thrown away upon a pugnacious untrustworthy boy." ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... habitually live by such inroad, you may retain nearly every moral and manly virtue, and become a heroic rider and reiver, and hero of song. But if you swindle me out of twenty shillings' worth of quality on each of a hundred bargains, I lose my hundred pounds all the same, and I get a hundred untrustworthy articles besides, which will fail me and injure me in all manner of ways, when I least expect it; and you, having done your thieving basely, are corrupted by the guilt of it to ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... biography of Cooper has, in consequence, ever appeared. Nor is it unjust to say that the sketches of his career, which are found either in magazines or cyclopaedias, are not only unsatisfactory on account of their incompleteness, but are all in greater or less degree untrustworthy in their details. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Peshawur with a brigade of four sepoy regiments just before the new year. He was destitute of artillery, his sepoys were in poor heart, and the Sikh contingent was utterly untrustworthy. To force the Khyber seemed hopeless. Wild, however, made the attempt energetically enough. But the Sikhs mutinied, expelled their officers, and marched back to Peshawur; Wild's sepoys, behaving badly, were driven back with loss from ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... income. The marriage is said not to have been a happy one, and perhaps it was not, for his wife was apparently a weak-minded woman; but the inference from the internal evidence of Dryden's plays, as of Shakespeare's, is very untrustworthy, ridicule of marriage having always been a common stock in trade of the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... be observed that within the narrow limits of this essay little or no effort has been made to interpret the state of mind of dogs from the vast but rather untrustworthy mass of anecdote with which our books are filled. So large a part of this evidence is contaminated by prepossessions, and a yet larger part is so unverified in any scientific sense, that for purposes of sound inquiry it is worthless. It ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... self-assertion. And even persons of good natural disposition, if brought up to expect such deference, are roused to unreasoning fury, and sometimes to the commission of atrocious crimes, by the slightest challenge to their authority. Thus a laborer may be dirty, drunken, untruthful, slothful, untrustworthy in every way without exhausting the indulgence of the country house. But let him dare to be "disrespectful" and he is a lost man, though he be the cleanest, soberest, most diligent, most veracious, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... constitution just as certainly as repeated strain of excitement in social life, or the like, which, as we know, frequently produces nervous exhaustion. Second, it is always dangerous to submit oneself to the influence of an inferior or untrustworthy person. This is just as true in hypnotism as it is in the moral realm. Bad companions corrupt. And since the hypnotic subject is in a condition especially susceptible, a little association of this kind, a little submission to the inferior or immoral, will produce ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... sure to meet with something unpleasant. Take Chatty home, that is far the best thing you can do. Frances would say the same if she had not that unfortunate desire to please everybody, to say what is agreeable, which makes women so untrustworthy. But my advice is, take Chatty home. In the circumstances it is the only thing ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... search for ultimate principles involved a mastery of the minutiae of the Venetian school I could only guess. But one could imagine the process. Seeking to ground his personal preferences in a general esthetic, he would have found his data absolutely untrustworthy. How could he presume to interpret a Giorgione or a Titian when what they painted was undetermined? Upon these shifting sands he declined to rear his tabernacle. To the work of classifying the Venetians, accordingly, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Catholic dogma to suppose that God might at times by way of exception, liberate a soul from Hell. Thus some argued from a false interpretation of I Peter III, 19 seq. that Christ freed several damned souls on the occasion of His descent into Hell. Others were led by untrustworthy stories into the belief that the prayers of Gregory the Great rescued the Emperor Trajan from Hell but now theologians are unanimous in teaching that such exceptions never take place and never have ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... undesirable element of Rumania's population consists of gipsies, whence their name of Romany, or Rumani. The Rumanian gipsies, who are nomads and vagrants like their kinsmen in the United States, are generally lazy, quarrelsome, dishonest and untrustworthy, supporting themselves by horse-trading and cattle-stealing or by their flocks and herds. We stopped near one of their picturesque encampments in order to repair a tire and I took a picture of a young woman with ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... cheek bones were high and his jaw square and cruel. He settled into his coat-collar the way a cat shortens its neck when it purrs. He, too, was purring, from gratification, perhaps, at having his portrait painted; but, wholly untrustworthy himself, he distrusted the world and held himself ready ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... with its interviewers and its photo-reproductions, had been then what it is now. To put life into the skeleton histories, to give us sea life as it was and sailors as they were, we have to trust mostly to the novelists, who, except in rare instances, draw untrustworthy exaggerations. ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... be that thine actions are loyal, but, Rolf, thy words are neither wise nor true. It is not wise to attempt to shake my confidence in my followers, and it is not true that many of them are untrustworthy. But, if thou wouldst prove thyself a real friend, go, get thy longships ready with all speed, for we fare south a few days hence, and there will be work for the weapons of stout ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... faithful friends, if at top of cup; in middle of cup, they are untrustworthy; at ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... known from long experience that there are no more untrustworthy witnesses than a man's own eyes; especially in ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... dismiss her without a character, as at first she had determined to do, but would let her stay on for the month, at the end of which time she must go, as she could never keep a maid who had proved so utterly untrustworthy. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... religious settlement without the consent of Parliament, but that in the meantime no attempt should be made to interfere with her household. A new privy council was appointed, in which the two principal members were Lord James Stuart and Maitland, Lord of Lethington, both equally untrustworthy. None of the Catholic bishops was offered a seat at the council board, and the Catholic lords were represented only by the Earls of Huntly and Argyll. A general assembly of the Reformers was held at Edinburgh (1561), which ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... well it would be extremely difficult to discover their man. Owing to the state of feeling throughout the reserves the source of information upon which the Police ordinarily relied had suddenly dried up or become untrustworthy. A marked change had come over the temper of the Indians. While as yet they were apparently on friendly terms and guilty of no open breach of the law, a sullen and suspicious aloofness marked the bearing of ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... is often said with exultation by writers of one party, and often admitted, more or less unwillingly, by their opponents, that these books are untrustworthy, by reason of being full of obviously unhistoric tales. And, as a notable example, the narrative of Saul's visit to the so-called "witch of Endor" is often cited. As I have already intimated, I have nothing to do with theological partisanship, either heterodox or orthodox, nor, for ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... anticipated it, and he was quite as sensible as the German writers of the hopelessness of seeking scientific revelations in the Biblical narrative; of the worthlessness of most of the common schemes for reconciling science and theology; of the untrustworthy character of Jewish chronology and Jewish figures; of the grave doubts that hang over the authorship and the date of some of the books; of the necessity of making full allowance, when reading them, for human fallibility and inaccuracy. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... monarchy such as the Chaldaean. The probability would seem to be that Berosus has been misreported, his numbers having suffered corruption during their passage through so many hands, and being in this instance quite untrustworthy. We may conjecture that the actual number of reigns which he intended to allow his fourth dynasty was nineteen, or at the utmost twenty-nine, the former of which numbers would give the common average of twenty-four years, while the latter ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... called "gameness," and even more than Smith he appreciated the commingling of Scotch shrewdness and Indian craft. He believed Susie to be honest; but he had believed many things in the past which time had not demonstrated to be facts. No, the chance was too great to take; for should she prove untrustworthy or indiscreet, his mission would be a ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... been shown in the last chapter how urgent has become the problem of discriminating between the true and false among relative 'truths.' For absolute truth has become a chimera, self-evidence an illusion, and intuition untrustworthy. All three are psychologically very real to those who believe in them, but logically they succumb to the assaults of a scepticism which infers from the fact that no 'truths' are absolute that all may reasonably ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... throws some doubt on this story in his "Cyclopaedia of Costume" (vol. ii., p. 240), and asks the question, "Was Mr. Batelier hoaxing the inquisitive secretary, or was it the idle gossip of the day, as untrustworthy as such gossip is in general?" But the same statement was made by the author of the "Character of a Trimmer," who wrote from actual knowledge of the Court: "About this time a general humour, in opposition to France, had made us throw off their fashion, and put on vests, that we might look ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... their loyal adherence to its rules. They have a horror of Catholic conclusions as, it may be also remarked, have Protestants likewise. On this account, both classes prefer rather to accept the most untrustworthy theories of physical science, even when they verge on gross and laughable absurdity, than to grant the conclusions of ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... intimacy between these two men. Reardon regarded his wife's brother as rather snobbish and disagreeably selfish; John Yule looked upon the novelist as a prig, and now of late as a shuffling, untrustworthy fellow. It appeared to John that his brother-in-law was assuming a manner wholly unjustifiable, and he had a difficulty in behaving to him with courtesy. Reardon, on the other hand, felt injured by the turn his visitor's remarks were taking, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... distances in the shallop involved a risk, as well as an additional expense. By rolling the hogsheads directly on board a ship anchored at his own wharf or only a few miles away the planter eliminated the danger involved in transporting his tobacco in an untrustworthy, heavily laden shallop, and he also saved the increase in freight charges for delivery to the ships by the seamen. Freight rates were the same from his wharf to England as they were from any ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... the Abbe. Even Ixtlilxochitl, who, as a native and of royal race, must have had access to all sources of information, and who had the advantage of writing more than three centuries ago, seems to have looked on the native traditions as extremely untrustworthy. See Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, Vol. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Guatemala, and had copies made of the works of Ximenes. These were published at Vienna, in 1856.[98] The French Abbe, however, was not satisfied with a mere reprint of the text and its Spanish translation by Ximenes, a translation which he qualifies as untrustworthy and frequently unintelligible. During his travels in America he acquired a practical knowledge of several of the native dialects, particularly of the Quiche, which is still spoken in various dialects by about six hundred ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... awning, and stared hard at a bright star near the horizon. He was realising that life is, after all, a sorry thing of chance, and that all his world might be hanging at that moment on the word of an untrustworthy man. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... severely tested by long marches and short rations. I never observed in him any vicious habit; a nervousness and restlessness and switch of the tail, when everything about him was in repose, being the only indication that he might be untrustworthy. No one but a novice could be deceived by this, however, for the intelligence evinced in every feature, and his thoroughbred appearance, were so striking that any person accustomed to horses could not misunderstand such a noble ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... while, as time went on, Mr Button took to his lessons as a matter of course, the small inventions of the children assisting their utterly untrustworthy knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, as useful as any other there amidst the lovely poetry of the palm ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... have heard much of the unemployed, but a very little search will show that the people out of work are those of bad habits, which make them unreliable and untrustworthy. The South, especially, needs the willing worker and the practical man. And best of all the South knows it, and stands ready to pay ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... a slight change of the wind would send the fire sweeping in that direction. She might get trapped. And none of these impossibilities took into account the prowling wild animals that are at the best untrustworthy in ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... purpose. They are for the most part dry and unemotional in style, and are put together so far as possible chronologically in the order of their importance without the slightest reference to literary effect. While nothing is more untrustworthy generally than personal recollections of events which took place over a third of a century ago, those which are supported by letters and diaries are of inestimable value in construing and reconciling the official reports. But this is not all. The daily journals and other contemporaneous ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... keep unimpaired all these glorious feeturs Thet characterize morril an' reasonin' creeturs, Thet give every paytriot all he can cram, Thet oust the untrustworthy Presidunt Flam, An' stick honest Presidunt Sham in his place, To the manifest gain o' the holl human race, An' to some indervidgewals on 't in partickler, Who love Public Opinion an' know how to tickle her,— I say thet a party with great aims like these ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the most trustworthy breed comparisons that have ever been obtained. When we go into the other breeds, however, with smaller numbers entered, the results show chance variation and become untrustworthy, for illustration: R.C. Brown Leghorns, with 42 birds entered, have an average of 176.4. This does not signify that the R.C. Browns are better than the S.S. Whites, for if the Whites were divided by chance into a dozen ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... had fallen to him by inheritance, or lapsed as fiefs of the crown. Frederick is the first of the emperors who really acquired great family possessions. These helped him to maintain his imperial power without having to rely too much on the often untrustworthy princes of the realm. The Salian estates, to which his father had fallen heir on the death of Henry V, formed a nucleus, while, by purchase and otherwise, he acquired castle after castle, and one stretch of territory after another, especially ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... of an industrial organization should know the ins and outs of the thinking machine on which they depend for guidance. With such knowledge each brain will give the greatest results, and without such knowledge the best brain may be untrustworthy. ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... did not think the worst part of the affair, and she said that the girl had been brought up to call the man Uncle Alfred, and very possibly did not understand that he was only so by courtesy, nor that he was so utterly untrustworthy. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conspiracy entered into in B.C. 64. [113] Per ignaviam, 'by means of cowardice,' here means, 'with the assistance of cowardly men,' 'such as you are not, since I have evidence of your valour and trustworthiness.' Vana ingenia are men of untrustworthy character. In both cases the abstract quality is mentioned instead of the person possessing it. [114] Diversi, 'separately;' that is, at different times, and in different places. [115] Tetrarcha is a title ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... the play of the Good-natured Man began to assume concrete form; insomuch that Johnson, always the friend of this erratic Irishman, had promised to write a Prologue for it. It is with regard to this Prologue that Boswell tells a foolish and untrustworthy story about Goldsmith. Dr. Johnson had recently been honoured by an interview with his Sovereign; and the members of the Club were in the habit of flattering him by begging for a repetition of his account of that famous event. On one occasion, during this recital, Boswell relates, Goldsmith "remained ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... recent acquisitions in Belgium, the Rhineland, Savoy, Nice, and Piedmont, numbered nearly 40,000,000 inhabitants: but the census returns of Great Britain for 1801 showed only a total of 10,942,000 souls, while the numbers for Ireland, arguing from the rather untrustworthy return of 1813, may be reckoned at about six and a half millions. The prodigious growth of the English-speaking people had not as yet fully commenced either in the motherland, the United States, or in the small and struggling settlements of Canada and Australia. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... branches of the family were maintained with an outward show of cordiality they were really not of the closest. Neri told him, as a matter of fact, that Margherita had always considered these people covetous and untrustworthy. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... untrustworthy," the first voice answered. "And with the sky falling, we dare not ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... evening, for animals on the trail are seldom staked down. For these, a rope had been strung from a rear wheel of the wagon and another from the end of the tongue, back to a stake driven in the ground, thus forming a triangular corral. Besides holding the untrustworthy horses, it afforded a temporary corral for ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... the flexible form, and listens to the words that he would admire, only the cynical suspicion is in his mind that she is talking for effect. His general habit was to consider all women mercenary and untrustworthy. Deep in his heart—for he had a heart, though contracted from want of use—lay a hungry desire to be loved, really loved for himself; and the very keenness of the longing, and the anxiety not to be deceived, lessened ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... it is desirable first of all to despatch two other objections made to him from different quarters, and on different lines of thought. The one objection (I should say that I do not fully espouse either of them) is that he is an untrustworthy critic of books; the other is that he is a very spiteful commentator ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... rest in the church of the Holy Apostles. If he was ever buried in S. Theodosia, he may have been buried there from the first. The lateness of the date when the tradition became public makes the whole story it tells untrustworthy. Before a statement published in the early part of the nineteenth century in regard to the interment of the last Byzantine emperor can have any value, it must be shown to rest on information furnished nearer the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... no longer a question of details, an inquiry whether the numerals are invariably authentic and accurate; whether the minute particulars of a king's death as told in Chronicles tally with the account in Kings. It is a question whether the Old Testament at large is not a singularly and flagrantly untrustworthy record. It is a question whether its literature as a whole is not to be explained, practically, by "natural causes"; including a causation by deliberate, elaborate, and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... (XVI.) which treats of the narrative of the Deluge, was to prove, by physical criticism, that no such event as that described ever took place; to exhibit the untrustworthy character of the narrative demonstrated by literary criticism; and, finally, to account for its origin, by producing a form of those ancient legends of pagan Chaldaea, from which the biblical compilation is manifestly derived. I have yet to learn that the main propositions ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... furnished by Dante, and obscure documents of the Compagni family, and expressed in language that has little of the fourteenth century. The one regards it as a faithful narrative, deficient only in minor details of accuracy. The other stigmatizes it as a wholly untrustworthy forgery, and calls attention to numberless mistakes, confusions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations of events, which place its genuineness beyond the pale of possibility. After a careful consideration of Scheffer's, Fanfani's, Gino Capponi's, and Isidoro ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a bad reputation all over this part of the Amazons, the semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white settlers. Everyone spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, and cruel. They have a greater repugnance than any other class of Indians to settled habits, regular labour, and the service of the whites; their distaste, in fact, to any approximation towards civilised life is invincible. Yet most of these faults are only an exaggeration of the fundamental ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... above fifteen miles an hour upon the even hard sands: they say this Invention was found out to entertain Spinola when he came thither to treat of the last Truce." Upon this wonder, which I did not see, civilisation has now improved, the wind being but a captious and untrustworthy servant compared with petrol or steam. None the less there is still a very ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... it seems to lie upon the water, there may be perplexing currents that ever foam and swirl about it —currents which are, at all tides and in the calmest weather, as dangerous as any tempest, and which make compass untrustworthy and helm powerless. It is to be remembered also that an island not only appears and disappears upon the horizon in brighter or darker skies, but it varies its height and shape, doubles itself in mirage, or looks as if broken asunder, divided into two or three. Indeed the buccaneer, Cowley, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... explored by himself from the North to the South Pacific, swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day and a night. He met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowly escaped being caught by the Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, and the Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up and down the seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarlet spotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and grow very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he never found an ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... was common that a small coterie of powerful strategists held the Senate in their hands and with it the control of important legislation. Most of all, and especially in the West, many thoughtful people believed that the state legislatures were easily influenced to choose inferior or untrustworthy men as senators. Whatever the reasons, however, there grew increasingly after 1870 and particularly after 1893 a demand for the popular election of senators. Between the latter year and 1911, at six different times resolutions were presented to Congress proposing an amendment to ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... are untrustworthy; dates are even less dependable. But, to avoid hairsplitting, what we call "modern" English literature may be said to date from about 1885. A few writers who are decidedly "of the period" are, as a matter of strict chronology, somewhat earlier. But the chief tendencies may be divided into seven ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... word with their action so that the meaning of the child's experiences is correlated with the words for them. A mature correlation between word and experience is one in which the child has the experience of finding people both trustworthy and untrustworthy, and has been helped to deal with the untrustworthiness in the context of trust. His first experience, therefore, is a realistic one in which he is strengthened by his experiences of trust, and is not made too anxious by his experiences ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... Perier, the Comte de Flahault, and Baron Louis, the financier. Meanwhile he was rapidly—indeed too rapidly—preparing his "Histoire de la Revolution Francaise." The first two volumes—there were ten in all—appeared in 1823. This work, although it has been demonstrated to be very untrustworthy and inaccurate, more especially in its estimates of persons, gave its author a prominent place among French politicians and men of letters. About this time, too, the gift by his admirer, Cotta, the German publisher, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... left them at the offices of the principal papers. They ran as follows:—"If E.C., who left Cheltenham suddenly, will return home he will find that he has acted under a misapprehension. The woman's story was untrustworthy. He is still regarded as a son by P.C. and L.C." Having done this he drove to Paddington, and went down by ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... background; not as finally disproved,—because denial, like affirmation, must, in order to be final, be logically supported; and spirit is, if not illogical, at any rate outside the domain of logic,—but as being a hopelessly vague and untrustworthy hypothesis. The Bible is a human book; Christ was a gentleman, related to the Buddha and Plato families; Joseph was an ill- used man; death, so far as we have any reason to believe, is annihilation of personal ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... the whole body of stage plays. He objected to the drama as a school of concupiscence, as a subtle or gross debaucher of the gravity and purity of the understanding, as essentially a charmer of the senses, and therefore the most equivocal and untrustworthy of teachers. He appeals to the fathers, to Scripture, to Plato, and even to Christ, who cried, Woe unto you that laugh.[347] There is a fine austerity about Bossuet's energetic criticism; it is so free from breathless eagerness, and so severe without being thinly bitter. The churchmen ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley |
