"Avoidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... master of his passions to avoid mistaking a merely temporary infatuation for such a genuine spiritual affinity as will survive the satisfaction of immediate desires and prove the stable basis of a life-companionship. Hasty marriages are a common and avoidable cause of subsequent unhappiness. It is obviously undesirable that couples should enter upon matrimony until there has been a sufficiently prolonged and intimate acquaintance to enable them to become reasonably sure both of themselves and of one another. In many cases there ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... the small rate of pay from which English artisans in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him he could not very well tell—and certainly if it had been left to Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at first ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... mind to be called as a witness at a possible inquest; and business of far greater import urged him, the real business of his life, this: to discover the whereabouts of Marian Blessington with the least avoidable delay. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... very promptly afforded their assistance, and in a short time Lance was laid carefully in his berth, and packed there with flags, shawls, and other yielding materials in such a way as to prevent the increasing motion of the ship from causing him any avoidable discomfort. ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... noticed that it was he who laid the shawl on her shoulders, if she remembered, that, when he fastened her dropping bracelet, biting his lip and looking down, he held the wrist an instant with a clasp that left its whitened pressure there, she remembered, too, that he never spoke to her, were it avoidable, that he failed in small politenesses of the footstool or the fan, and that, if once he had looked at her in an instant's intentness of singular expression, and let a smile well up and flood his eyes and lips and face, in a heart-beat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of mind. The money difficulties on which he dwelt were also, it is now to be admitted, unquestionable. Beyond his own domestic expenses necessarily increasing, there were many, never-satisfied, constantly-recurring claims from family quarters, not the more easily avoidable because unreasonable and unjust; and it was after describing to me one such with great bitterness, a few days following the letter last quoted, that he thus replied on the following day (19th of November) to the comment I had made upon it. "I was most horribly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... shown a disposition to cultivate relations of amity with that Empire that it is hoped the unequivocal tokens of the same spirit toward us which an adjustment of the affairs referred to would afford will be given without further avoidable delay. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... which the inquirer wanted; of the rejoinder of "what do you want?" for the repeated outstretching of the "middle finger," a special term for which was sought, and numerous other mistakes, are often perfectly avoidable, and it was therefore desirable that the traveller, armed with an inexhaustible patience, should not content himself with a collection of words, but also add the sentences in which they occur, and, if possible, also collect fables, songs, and ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... restrictions on American commerce imposed by Great Britain. It had been delayed in the hope that the announced intention of the British Government "to exercise their belligerent rights with every possible consideration for the interest of neutrals," and their intention of "removing all causes of avoidable delay in dealing with American cargoes," and of causing "the least possible amount of inconvenience to persons engaged in legitimate trade," as well as their "assurance to the United States Government that they would make it their first aim ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Rufio, no. Eat, my son. Eat. (He takes another turn, Rufio chewing dates meanwhile.) The Egyptians cannot be such fools as not to storm the barricade and swoop down on us here before it is finished. It is the first time I have ever run an avoidable risk. I should not ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... the Mediterranean while Australasian troops were perpetually passing westwards through the Mediterranean. Military forces belonging to the one belligerent Empire were, in fact, crossing each other at sea. This involved an avoidable absorption of ship-tonnage, it threw an avoidable strain upon the naval forces of the Entente, and it imposed an avoidable period of inaction upon the troops concerned. Look upon the Anzacs simply as ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of virtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins to care about what others will say of circumstances not under his own control, such ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows of the past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which this was but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the garden and the garden was too small for me; I went out to wander on the moors. "The past is past," I cried, and all the while across the gulf of five and twenty years I could hear my ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one. People are so inured to the evils that they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to complain of them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind lover of liberty on whose mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at the discovery that they could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more certain than that ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... unnecessary suffering—and an altogether laudable feeling of humanity has led good people to band themselves together for the purpose of putting a stop to vivisection, or at least of greatly restricting the practice and of freeing it from all avoidable infliction of pain. These praiseworthy efforts have in some instances been carried so far, unfortunately, as to seriously hamper scientific investigation—investigation which has for its object the alleviation of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... cruisers, Graves did not learn their contents until his return to port, August 16. The information sent by Hood of his coming was also intercepted. After Hood's arrival, it does not appear that there was avoidable delay in going to sea; but there does seem to have been misjudgment in the direction given to the fleet. It was known that De Barras had sailed from Newport with eight ships, bound probably for the Chesapeake, certainly to effect a junction with De Grasse; and it has been judiciously ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... on one point," Batley objected dryly. "I'm acquainted with your temperament—it's not one that would lead you into avoidable difficulties. Well, you came through and your cousin died, but you failed to pay me off when you ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... his speech and the careless ease with which he took unnecessary and avoidable risks I had a feeling that there was deep design under everything he did. Though I couldn't have proved it if I'd been asked, I felt sure that he was trying my nerve. After all there's no better test of that than the crowded traffic of a big city. I've met men who'd cheerfully face a crowd of howling ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh |
