"Irresponsible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inclined to think the Private an irresponsible good-for-nothing, look hard at the next Commissionaire you meet on the street. That smart, clean, well-brushed man, with his bronzed face, his bright keen eyes, and general look of self-respect, was once a soldier, and indeed it is soldiering ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season.' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] He may not have been a great poet, but he was an exquisite critic of life; he shared his contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm, but he possessed a fine discrimination, and those less practical, more irresponsible qualities would have been merely an incumbrance to the apostle of good sense and moderation. For when men are young they are much occupied with the framing of ideals and the search after absolute truth; as ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the wrong he had suffered at his hands as by the contempt which he (Richard) had entertained for him. Without materials such as his father had possessed to back his pretensions he had imagined himself a sort of irresponsible and sovereign being. (Such infatuation is by no means rare, nor confined to despots and brigands, and when it exists in a poor man it is always fatal to himself.) His education, if it could be called such, had doubtless fostered this delusion; but Mr. Dodge was right; the Carew blood ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... for death from other hands, but he could never take it from his own. And, aside from his insuperable physical reluctance, another motive restrained him. He was possessed by the dogged desire to establish the truth of his story. He refused to be swept aside as an irresponsible dreamer—even if he had to kill himself in the end, he would not do so before proving to society that he had deserved ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... condescension and humility. I do not profess to understand the plan of Chambord, and I may add that I do not even desire to do so; for it is much more entertaining to think of it, as you can so easily, as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth. Within it is a wilderness of empty chambers, a royal and romantic barrack. The exiled prince to whom it gives its title has not the means to keep up four hundred rooms; he contents himself with preserving the huge outside. The repairs ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... is always the same, whether in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man, like the ox and the ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable, irresponsible being, who ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... continued to walk alone on his way. If some insist on finding modern El Greco versions of Inspectors and Inquisitors-general in this John gathering, compounded of comparatively innocuous personalities, the privilege is, of course, permissible, and incidentally brightens conversation in irresponsible circles." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... matter. If a man with a weak stomach like his cannot resist gorging himself with things he has been strictly prohibited from touching, he had better proclaim himself irresponsible and be done. It is nonsense to call me in when he persists in cutting up such ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... the suit, and to prevent collusion. The primary aim of the divorce laws should be to allow relief from a vicious and hopelessly wrecked union, but at the same time to prevent the misuse of the statutes by irresponsible and unscrupulous persons. ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... are Man and Woman. It is said that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are liberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of a whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchised forces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certain purposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundations are better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is a proud fact ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an aspect irresistibly humorous. Once he stopped to ask an old man standing in his dooryard how far it was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dark hint or two to escape him concerning possible suits for defamation of character against irresponsible newspapers. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... our midst! the irresponsible burglar whose exploits had been narrated in all the newspapers during the past few months! the mysterious individual with whom Ganimard, our shrewdest detective, had been engaged in an implacable conflict amidst interesting and picturesque surroundings. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... young sweetheart of the man that shot her husband, wuz with her. Good land! Arvilly didn't lay up nothin' aginst her or him; he wuz drunk as a fool when he fired the shot. He didn't know what he wuz doin'; he wuz made irresponsible by the law, till he did the deed, and then made responsible by the same law and shot. Waitstill wuz named from a Puritan great-great-aunt, whose beauty and goodness had fell onto her, poor girl! She stood by Arvilly. They ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... statesmen sentimentalize upon, and your journalists denounce, far-away tyrannies—the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons—the abridgment of personal freedom in continental countries—the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands—they would turn their eyes homeward and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would in all sincerity suggest that humane and well-meaning men who exert themselves for the remission of ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... conclusion that the position of the adherents of the closed as well as those of the open shop was economically and socially untenable. The inherent objection to the closed shop, he contends, is that it creates an uncontrolled and irresponsible monopoly of labor. ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... not come, and on the eighth the school reassembled and she made vague excuses. All their meetings amounted to this, that she sat on the wall, more or less in bounds as she expressed it, and let Mr. Polly fall in love with her and try to express it below. She sat in a state of irresponsible exaltation, watching him and at intervals prodding a vivisecting point of encouragement into him—with that strange passive cruelty which is natural to her ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... craze-provoking product supplied them by the fur-dealers—and it was clear that our cabin was to be the scene of an orgy. Fortunately, my brother James was at home on this occasion, and as the evening grew old and the Indians, grouped together around the fire, became more and more irresponsible, he devised a plan for our safety. Our attic was finished, and its sole entrance was by a ladder through a trap-door. At James's whispered command my sister Eleanor slipped up into the attic, and from the back window ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... wrote that he was limping about with a stick, and wanted to limp down to them as soon as they would ask him. Ward was home again, as always irresponsible, a little older and in some vague way a little coarser, Harriet thought, but still a most enlivening element in the quiet household. Madame Carter had brought with her, for several weeks' stay, a friend of ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... up untiringly, that Colorado has won this great victory. Woman suffrage is not alone for women, or to enable us to secure certain readjustments of law. It is for our country, which cannot exist half enfranchised and half irresponsible, half democracy and half a feudalism; half of it privileged to shirk or exercise its civic rights, and half denied aught but the burden of those rights. Women need the franchise if only to make their influence, of which we hear so much, effective, but more ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... to have done nothing," he exclaimed. "You look so young, so irresponsible, so like a bird on a bough, that I cannot associate dull care with you, yet you have lived more deeply than I. Life seems to have touched me on the shoulder and passed me by; these hands of mine have ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The creatures whom I met in the ways and byeways of Parisian life, whose gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I hungered to know, awoke in me a tense, irresponsible curiosity, but that was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might never, have occurred to me, had the suggestion to do so not come direct to me ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... tended and repressed young instincts stirred within him mightily. Scales fell from his eyes. From the car of the balloon he gazed down, and it seemed to him that they—Valentine, Cuckoo, and himself—were drifting over a new country, of which all the inhabitants were young, gay, careless, rightly irresponsible. The rows of open-mouthed, laughing faces called to him to join in their mirth,—more, to join in their lives, and in the lives of the pirouetting hours. He moved in his chair as if he were impelled to get up and leave his seat. And as he moved a voice ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... pretty embroidery frame met the same indignity. She sat now on the kitchen ledge, while Mata made the fire and washed the rice, toying idly with a white pebble chosen for its beauty from thousands on the garden path. Something in the childlike attitude, the placid, irresponsible face, brought the old servant's impatience to a climax. She deliberately hurled ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... on board now. Framsjaa [38] (news of, or outlook from, the Fram) is its name, and our doctor is its irresponsible editor. The first number was read aloud this evening, and gave occasion for much ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... is that sentence?" The rector fumbled for his glasses, and, with his lower lip thrust out, and his gray eyebrows gathered into a frown, glanced up and down the pages. "Ah, yes, here: 'Do you not think,' she says, 'that the presence in the world of suffering which cannot produce character, irresponsible suffering, so to speak, makes it hard to believe in the personal care of God?' It's perfect nonsense for Helen to talk in that way! What does she know about 'character' and 'irresponsible suffering'? I shall tell her to mend her husband's stockings, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... discovery, so important if true, was as yet—that is, at the time of our entering the room,—limited to the off-hand declaration of an irresponsible physician, but the possibility it involved was of so astonishing a nature that it influenced us unconsciously in our investigation and led us almost immediately into a consideration of the difficulties attending ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the constant reminder ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... advocate must, at times, especially in the trial of capital cases, be held popularly responsible for the acquittal of men whom the public has prejudged to be guilty. This unreasoning, impulsive, and irresponsible public never stops to inform itself; never discriminates between legal acumen and pettifogging trickery, between doing one's full duty to his client and interposing or misrepresenting his own personal opinions; and never remembers that the functions of law and the practice of law are to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... I'm just an irresponsible young person who is going to gets fits for having stayed out so late. But it was worth it, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... the bodies of ordinances mention such workmen and traders, men who have not gone through a regular apprenticeship, "foreigners" who have come in from some other locality and are not freemen of the city where they wish to work, irresponsible men who will not conform to the established rules of the trade. This class of persons was becoming more numerous through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, notwithstanding the efforts of the gilds, supported by municipal and national authority. The ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... apathetic, beaten aspect of a southern town; he and the temperate sky have fixed the tone for ever; and the nimble air—"nimbly and sweetly" recommending itself— has given the quaintness and the freaksomeness of the North. This bursts out, young and irresponsible, in pinnacle, crocket, and gable, in towers like spears, and in the eager lancet windows which peer upwards out of Orsammichele and the Dominican Church. This mixture is Florence and has made her art. The blue of the sky gives the key to her palette, the breath of the west wind, the salt wind ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... anything. She braced herself in the stirrups, took a firm grip of the saddlehorn with one hand, and waited for what might befall. She had no fear of Starr, no further uneasiness over the coming night, the loneliness, the goats, or anything else. She felt as irresponsible, as safe, as any sheltered woman in her own home. I did not say she felt serene; she did not know yet how the horse would perform; but she seemed to lay that responsibility also on ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Bohemian, but a misogynist. People would say, "Dear old Jimmy Cloyster. How he hates women!" It would add to my character a pleasant touch of dignity and reserve which would rather accentuate my otherwise irresponsible way of living. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... enough just now to wish that, too," admitted Anne. "No matter what deeper joys may come to us later on we'll never again have just the same delightful, irresponsible existence we've had here. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... civilization of nations with whom they have come in contact." Caste, "the great petrifier," we are again told, is the real cause of the stagnation that everywhere abounds. Caste, again, "upholds immutable distinctions by arbitrary and absurd laws, which are enforced by irresponsible authority, and maintains a standard of right and wrong entirely independent of the essential principles of moral science;" and, in order that everything may be included at one blow, we are finally told, in a note appended to the remarks of the Abbe on the moral and ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... I say, school hasn't really begun yet. And besides, Scabby here is almost as good as a master—and so is Lou Collingwood; I'm the only really irresponsible one in the bunch—" ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... control of about four men, two of whom were also largest owners of the lines they managed. Fierce competition and cutting of rates brought on utter demoralization among shippers, who could not calculate on the cost of transportation, and great favoritism to localities and individuals by irresponsible freight agents who controlled the rates. Under these influences railway earnings were fluctuating and uncertain. Improvements were delayed and the people on the weaker ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... was the first witness called by Hammer after the noon recess. Hammer quickly discovered his purpose in calling her as being nothing less than that of proving by her own mouth that her husband, Sol, was a gross and irresponsible liar. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... moment in the husky tones of Sister Magdalen's late favorite; when dignity was required she became the escaped nun; and in her rage she would burst into the melodramatic frenzy dear to the McMeeter audiences; but Colette, the heedless, irresponsible, half-mad butterfly, dominated these various parts, and to this charming personality she returned. Through his own sad experience this spectacle interested him. He subdued her finally by ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... brown Winona of twenty—perky, birdlike, with the quick trimness of a winging swallow, a little sharper featured perhaps, but superior in acuteness of desire and persistence, and with some furtive, irresponsible girlishness lurking timorously back ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... my barrister. He continued:—"The Dublin bar has decided—has formally decided—that so far as the action of the Executive is concerned the Irish Parliament will be a supreme and irresponsible body. The action of its officers will not be in any way subject to the review of the English Government. What does this mean? Simply that the life, the liberty, the property of every citizen will be entirely in the hands of the Irish Government. Do the English people ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... seemed to have grown years younger. All that was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from surface cynicism—quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... these transactions were audaciously entered upon by a body which had absolutely no revenues at all to pledge as security, which had not a dollar of property, nor authority to compel any living man to pay it a dollar. A more utterly irresponsible debtor than Congress never asked for a loan or offered a promissory note. For the security of a creditor there was only the moral probability that in case of success the people would be honest enough to pay their debts; and there was ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... event of the triumph of the Commons, the ceremony of periodical election may be retained (and we should not forget that the Long Parliament soon spared us that unnecessary form), the selected members will form a Senate as irresponsible as any House of Parliament whose anomalous constitution may now be the object of ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... patience, long suffering, meekness, gentleness, and forbearance. The sword of the Spirit was not a carnal weapon. Its work was of a higher and holier nature. It might have to be drawn forth in battle; but it must be wielded in obedience, and not in irresponsible rebellion. Faithful steadfastness was asked of all God's children; but not all were called on to go forth as champions of even a righteous cause. Their duty might be to stand and wait for what the Lord would bid ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... respectful fiction the king's desertion—called the flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the throne—regarding the throne itself as inviolable. The man disappeared, for it, in Louis XVI.:—in the irresponsible chief of the state. These three months may be considered as an interregnum, during which public reason was her sole constitution. There was no longer a king, for he was a captive, and his sanction was taken from him: there was no longer law, for the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the local land offices, the General Land Office, or to the Federal courts. The Government was thus required to part with its lands by proceedings executed by officials wholly outside of its jurisdiction, and irresponsible to its authority. The act not only abolished our rectangular system of surveys, but still further insulted the principles of mathematics and the dictates of common sense by providing that the claimant ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... explain the atrocities committed with the consent of German public opinion. William the Damned and his bureaucracy were believed to be above all moral or human law, and from the earthly standpoint were infallible and irresponsible. Their orders ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... thundering lot to spend. But then Ranny desired, he was determined to spend a thundering lot. It was extravagant, but he wished to be extravagant. It was reckless, irresponsible, but reckless and irresponsible was what he felt. He meant to go it. He meant to have his fling just for once. And he meant that Winny, who had never had hers, nor any share in anybody else's, should taste, just for once, the rapture of a fling. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... destroy all my papers unless I promised to become his wife! And I haven't the least idea how and where to find the English lawyers. I don't remember either their name or their address; and if I did, how could I prove my identity to their satisfaction? I don't know a soul in Paris save a few irresponsible millinery apprentices and Madame Cecile, who, no doubt, is hand in glove with Mr. Farewell. I am all alone in the world and friendless. . . . I have come to you, Monsieur, in my distress . . . and you will help ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that Bebel's position on this matter is really the more radical. Ledebour and Singer seemed to feel that the further democratization of the government depends on Socialist pressure. The more revolutionary view is that capitalism in Germany, with the irresponsible Kaiser, the unequal Reichstag election districts, the anti-democratic suffrage law and constitution in Prussia, is impregnable—but that the progressive capitalists may themselves force the reactionaries ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... scorned the tale-bearing and would have gone with more haste into the professor's way of thinking. In fact, she was in process of undermining herself., and the work could have been. retarded or advanced by any irresponsible, gossipy tongue. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... provocations compared with his attacks on the honor of their wives and daughters." The demand of the common people to substitute due process of law for wager by battle, and to be secure in their lives, their liberties, and their property from acts of lawless and irresponsible power, the Barons made their own, and by the same act claimed for others what they claimed for themselves. "The under tenants were protected against all exactions of their lords in precisely the same terms as they were protected against the lawless ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... you ain't going to be gone long, Massa Tom. And yo' father does like to get his nap undisturbed. And he'll want his pot o' tea afterwards. So I'll let dat irresponsible Koku go wid yo'. But yo' got to watch him, Massa Tom. Dat giant don't know what he's ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... Book of Discipline—the most interesting and in many respects the most important document in the history of Scotland. If any proof were needed that the revolt against the ancient Church was no ill-considered act of irresponsible men, we assuredly possess that proof in this extraordinary book. Though in its primary intention the scheme of its ecclesiastical polity, it is in fact the draft of a "republic," under which a nation should live its life on earth and prepare itself for heaven. It not only ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... had done no good with his own business, having failed to dispose of any of his cattle. He, a Dutchman, had returned with the feeling that no property was safe for the moment, and much alarmed by the irresponsible talk of those burghers who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by this period of confusion and upheaval. He also greatly disturbed Mr. Keeley by saying they meant to wreak vengeance on any who had fought for the English, and by warning him that a commando ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... in the proposed plan than a mere experiment. On the 8th of August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point. The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... simple fact of course is that in journalism, as probably in no other profession, success depends wholly upon the loyal co-operation, the perfect reliability, of a number of people—some great, some small, but none irresponsible. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... It has asserted that "no nation can endure half Republic and half Empire" and has "warned the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home." It has characterized the Republican government in the Insular regions as an "indefinite, irresponsible, discretionary and vague absolutism," and Republican policy as a policy of "colonial exploitation." That the American people have believed the Republican administration to have been good and beneficent, is shown by their retaining that party in power. But it is perhaps not too much to say that nearly ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... looking on, and seeing that their champion was likely to get the worst of it, did after the manner of such irresponsible bands. They gathered around Lincoln, struck and disabled him, and then Armstrong, by "legging" him, ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... she debated with herself the manner in which she was to conceal her destination from chance observers. Wilful and irresponsible as Rosebud always appeared to be, there was yet something strongly reliant in her nature. She was, as so many girls are, a child in thought and deed until some great event, perchance some bereavement, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... collection of "SAKI'S" fugitive works, with a sympathetic but all too brief memoir by Mr. ROTHAY REYNOLDS. Although "SAKI" is only occasionally at his very best in this volume—on the grim side, in "The Interlopers," and in his more familiar irresponsible and high-spirited way in "A Bread-and-Butter Miss" and "The Seven Cream Jugs;" although there may be no masterpiece of fun or raillery to put beside, say, "Esme;" there is in every story a phrase or fancy marked by his own inimitable felicity, audacity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... emphatic indorsement of decisive majorities in Congress, does, during its constitutional term of office, and while so supported, speak the mind and embody the will of the nation? Is there any show of reason for saying that such an Administration is an irresponsible despotism, governing the country without the moral countenance of its citizens, and in defiance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... a world that faded and grew clear again most puzzlingly, that danced and jerked to and fro in oddly irresponsible fashion. At first too deadly weary to explain the situation to myself, I presently made out that I was in a coach which lurched prodigiously and filled me with sharp pains. Fronting me was the apparently lifeless body of a man propped in the corner with the head against the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he wanders from home to work out his own unique destiny. One of the most ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... Charming rode into the country, and they talked about a thousand and one things. Had she ever been to France? Yes. To England? She had received part of her education there. Did she know the Princess Hildegarde? Slightly. What was she like? She was a madcap, irresponsible, but very much abused. Did she know Mr. Warrington, the American consul? She had seen him on his morning rides. Wasn't it a ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... of their own times. Ann. ii. 88, 'dum vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi.' He thinks that the emperors, from their irresponsible position, were often gradually led into wickedness, their downward career being helped by flatterers and satellites, and draws a moral lesson from the servile Senate and the delatores, who, like the emperors ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of feeling is not in any way dependent on the character of the materials upon which it plays; it is not an irresponsible temperamental quality which seeks the joyful or comic facts of life and ignores its sad and tragic aspects. The zest of spirit which one finds in Shakespeare, for instance, is not a blind optimism thoughtlessly escaping from the shadows into the sunshine. On the contrary, it ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... only wear, my son," he cried gaily. "In this cap and bells, I see life under a different aspect. Never has it appeared to me sweeter and more irresponsible. Don't you feel it? But I forgot. You haven't any motley. I apologise for my want of tact. Blanquette," he added in French, "why haven't you ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... individuals, not selected from the mass for their special wisdom or humanity, is a stupendous fact which must give pause to any one who is inclined to feel complacent about modern industrial progress. In days gone by political power was as irresponsible as the economic power wielded to-day by Lord Rhondda; and it descended from father to son by hereditary right in the same way as the control over the lives of countless American workers descends to-day as a matter of course from John D. Rockefeller senior to John D. Rockefeller junior. If ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Some irresponsible persons cut down a tree upon which several men had been lynched. The blame naturally fell upon the Sixth Virginia. The regiment was placed under arrest and remained so for nineteen days. The first day the Third Engineers guarded the camp, but ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... itself into the foreground of his mind, clad in the skirts of high comedy. Tragedy fled. The burden in his breast went with it. Far be it from him to cherish a grudge against the sex that so often reduced the trials of public life to insignificance. Women were delicious irresponsible beings; man was an ingrate to take ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of his address, which was meant as much for the public ear as for that of the judge, he said: "These paltry charges, may it please your Honor, these foul and slanderous charges, the filthy ooze of an irresponsible newspaper, are incredible, preposterous—nay, mendacious! They are not made in good faith. The purpose of those who are fomenting mischief, under the pretence of performing public duty, is not what it professes to be. The motives underlying this show ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... she assumed the personality of another. There she lay, her wispy form stretched in his arm-chair, her great dark eyes fixed, her mind at rest, sunk in some inscrutable dream. Her thin hand lay on the arm of the chair: when she woke from her day-dream she burst into irresponsible laughter, or questioned him with petulant curiosity. He looked again: her dark curling hair hung on her swarthy neck, and she was somewhat ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... an ultimate consequence of what man had willed or wrought, as even any of the pre-Adamic ages. It is simply one scene in a foreordained series,—a scene intermediate in place between the age of the irresponsible mammal and of glorified man; and to provide for the upward passage to the ultimate state, we know that, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, he through whom the work of restoration has been effected was in reality ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... and indifferently, as if his spirit had been bleached, like his face, by long confinement. He had lost his grip of the world and of human interests. As he looked at his son, his black eyes had a sort of irresponsible vagueness ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not the direct result of an act deliberately committed by the personal Ego of that life during which he happened to ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... themselves, and have them served to them in their cells; they can hold communication with one another and with the outer world; I suppose they might wear evening dress after six o'clock if they wanted to. They are not victims of despotic and irresponsible power, and this is not only good for them, but also for the keepers, who are not led into the degradation and monstrous inhumanities which the possession of such power ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... ease their aching hearts by telling him what they had undergone since that day when they so blithely parted from him at the railway station at Havana, it was a really heartrending story of cruel oppression and shameful, irresponsible tyranny to which he felt himself obliged to listen. There is no need to give the full details here; it is sufficient to simply state that upon their arrival at Bejucal, the first station beyond Santiago, they were accosted ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... would be sentimentally patriotic and irresponsible, that they would behave as though the New World was, indeed, a separate planet, and as though they had neither duties nor brotherhood in Europe. It is quite clear, on the contrary, that the people of the United States consider ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... potatoes or the question of whether human beings once had tails, and in his theological moods he will expound St. John's Epistles, or the principles of Christianity. The bookman, in fact, is a quite illogical and irresponsible being, who dare not claim that he searches for accurate information in his books as for fine gold, and he has been known to say that that department of books of various kinds which come under the head of "what's what," and "why's why," ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... to do than to rouse the irresponsible part of his audience by his patriotic eloquence. The countenances of his judges remained as cold to him as ever, and he turned to the serious business of his defence. His quick intelligence saw that the telling point in Coke's diatribe had been the emphasis he had laid on Raleigh's ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... he had previously directed upon the ceiling must have been fruitless. That Miss IRENE VANBRUGH has dispensed with whatever serious element there was in her part and relies for her brilliant effects almost completely on its irresponsible frivolity. That Mr. BEN WEBSTER has come on remarkably; and that the part of the flapper is now played according to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... lighting, and the telegraph, telephone, and messenger service. Surely no man knoweth the beginning or the end of the network which is woven over our heads, and which, besides all the useful wires already enumerated, is full of "dead" wires, many of them strung by defunct or irresponsible companies, who would never have been allowed to obstruct the streets if they had not been "competing" for the business. Can there be any doubt that it is the height of folly to continue this work, and that the only rational way of entrusting electric service to incorporated ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... trailing with her thunder-clouds of impulsive and childish ideas about doing good, and holding in her hands the dangerous weapon of wealth. It is hard to stand by and see one's life-work broken up before one's eyes by an irresponsible stranger, a foreigner, a girl, a young girl, a pretty girl; especially hard if one was born with an unbending character, tough and determined, ambitious and vain. These are not reproaches being piled up on ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... it a 'gentle Breeze' the next time, then drops back to 'gentle breeze' on July 21st. He repeats that on August 12th, the next raising it to 'gentle Breeze'; and then it's a 'gentle breeze,' a 'jentle Breeze,' 'gentle breeze,' and 'gentle Brease'—till he gets perfectly irresponsible, ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... comfortable dinner-table to bear the solemn formalities of such an evening. The paper is next committed, it is not known to whom, reported on in private, and either published, or deposited in the archives of the Society, according to the judgment of the unknown irresponsible parties to whom it is committed. Let us now look at the proceedings of the French Academy; it is open to the public, and the public take so great an interest in it, that to secure a seat an early attendance is always requisite. Every scientific point of daily and passing interest is brought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... that a Minister who was furnished with such documents for his own justification was bound by his oath of secresy not to reveal the contents, but the secrets of the State could not be imparted to any irresponsible person, who was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... sorry, Father, but you know I always thought it was a mistake to put Tony in charge of anything. Why, he might have had his commission if he were not such an irresponsible, downwright lazy beggar. What he needs, as my Colonel used to profanely say, is 'a good old-fashioned Sergeant-Major to knock hell out of him'. And, believe me, Tony was a rattling fine soldier if his officer would regularly, systematically and effectively expel his own special devil ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... then that discipline is the first and principal point to be considered on such occasions; unless indeed the leader be implicitly obeyed it is impossible that matters should go on regularly. For this reason it is objectionable to associate any irresponsible person in such an undertaking. When I engaged the men who were to accompany me, I made them sign an agreement, giving me power to diminish or increase the rations, and binding themselves not only to the performance of any particular duty, but ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... moment's silence Harry fairly laughed. Edge was surprised, not understanding what a difference the Comtesse's manoeuvre had made there too. He could not be expected to know all the difference it had made to Harry's life, even to the man himself. Two irresponsible ladies—say Addie and—well, Madame ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... millions was, nevertheless, to be paid, and the French garrisons in the Prussian fortresses of Glogau, Kuestrin, and Stettin were to be maintained at the expense of Prussia. The suppression of the monasteries in Silesia was far from lucrative, the commissioners, who were irresponsible, carrying on a system of pillage, and landed property having greatly fallen in value. The most extraordinary imposts of every description were resorted to for the purpose of raising a revenue, among other means, a third of all the gold ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... be compelled, on pain of being instantly garroted, to surrender their valuables, and even their invaluables, to the Property Clerk, Comic Headquarters, PUNCHINELLO Office, who should be held strictly irresponsible and be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... of Mr. Browning's new poem came before the critical tribunals, public and private, recognised or irresponsible, there was much lamentation even in quarters where a manlier humour might have been expected, over the poet's choice of a subject. With facile largeness of censure, it was pronounced a murky subject, sordid, unlovely, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... case of those that may be classed as feeble-minded, and who are just responsible enough to be quite irresponsible. Idiots and imbeciles have largely disappeared from country villages and small towns. They are well taken care of, for our large asylums are full of them; they have good quarters, good food, every attention, so they ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Kate waked with a defiant brightness when the first call came that took her temporarily over the threshold of the new life. She left her own school-room, where her role was as congenial and irresponsible as Sissy's, with an air of importance that roused envy in her ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... small, and it grows smaller every day. It's a single organic body, and one spot of gangrene is enough to vitiate the whole. There's no room upon it for dishonest, defaulting, tyrannical, irresponsible Governments. As long as they exist they will always be centres of trouble and of danger. But there are many races which appear to be so incapable of improvement that we can never hope to get a good Government out of them. What is to be done, then? The former device of Providence ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... leaf for age and feebleness, was a passionate partisan of Charles Edward, by whom my mention of him as the Pretender, if coming from a man, would have been held a personal insult. It was evident that I, though a mere chit of the irresponsible sex, had both hurt and offended him by it. His sole remaining interest in life was hunting out and collecting the smallest records or memorials of this shadow of a hero; surely the merest "royal apparition" that ever assumed kingship. "What a set those Stuarts must ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... modelling most like what is called "Greek," save for the nose, which was a trifle too short for that, and the features showed a happy purity of outline almost childlike; the blue eyes, clear, fleckless, serenely irresponsible, with more the look of refusing responsibility than being unconscious of it; eyes without care, without prudence, and without evil. A stranger might have said he was about twenty-five and had never a thought in his life. There were ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... have been an unimportant admission. Those who had already scrutinized Miss Tuttle with the curiosity of an ill-defined suspicion now scrutinized her with a more palpable one, and those who had hitherto seen nothing in this heavily-veiled woman but the bereaved sister of an irresponsible suicide allowed their looks to dwell piercingly on that concealing veil, as if they would be glad to penetrate its folds and read in those beautiful features the meaning of an allusion uttered with such a sting in ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... as irresponsible as if she had been hanging up by the hair all this time in a giant's larder," whispered Babie ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scenes absorbed the larger share of the profits. In brief, my unhappy and foolish father was a mere tool in the hands of the cunning scoundrel who pulled all the wires of the business, himself unseen and irresponsible. At last three companies, for the promotion of which my father was responsible, came to grief in a heap. Fraud was written large over all their history, and, while Foggatt retired with his plunder, my father was left to meet ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... Percival Ford answered. "You're up in the air with some obscure scientific theory of heredity and personal irresponsibility. But how any theory can hold Joe Garland irresponsible for his wrongdoings and at the same time hold me personally responsible for them—more responsible than any one else, including Joe Garland—is ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London |
