"Recklessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its rich, and its military nobles, was so extraordinary that it amazed the crowd. Having spoken, the "farmer" turned away and was soon lost among the bazaars. Some looked after him, astonished at his recklessness in laying himself open to the revenge of the powers that be. Others looked after him, amazed at his bravery ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... habits which all men wear, and in which little more is sought than comfort and convenience, we have an expression of the laborious and the lavish spirit of the times,—the right hand gathering with painful, unremitting toil, the left scattering with splendid recklessness. Dress has an appreciable effect upon the mental condition of individuals, whatever their gravity or intelligence. There are few men not far advanced in years, and still fewer women, who do not feel more confidence in themselves, perhaps more self-respect, for the consciousness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... into the stream. A bolder, more energetic, or more provident man would have followed the act by quickly making his way back to the thicket to reconnoitre, taking with him a supply of fish for future needs. But Elijah Martin succumbed again to the recklessness of inertia; he yielded once more to the animal instinct of momentary security. He returned to the interior of the hut, curled himself again on the ashes, and weakly resolving to sleep until moonrise, and as weakly hesitating, ended by falling ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... his history of the 'last hundred days of English liberty.' He returned in a couple of years, damaged in reputation and broken in fortune; but only to carry on the war with indomitable energy, although with a recklessness and extravagance which alienated his allies and lowered his character. He tried to cover his errors by brags and bombast, which became ridiculous, and which are yet not ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... soldiers with fixed bayonets swarmed out of the German trenches and came to the help of their hard-beset comrades, and met a similar fate. Then a third platoon came on, and a fourth. The resources of the enemy in men seemed endless, their persistence remarkable, their recklessness in the face of sure death almost unbelievable. The noise was terrific; the constant rattle of the machine guns, the spitting of rifles, the booming of the artillery, the whining and crashing of shells, the yells of the charging ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... repeated the ductile crowd, its holiday humor subtly passing into another form of recklessness. Some who loved the Friar were genuinely worked upon, others in mad, vicious mood were ready for any diversion. A few, and these the loudest, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... such a court as had not been seen before, nor was ever seen again, whether one count beauty first, or riches and magnificence, or the marvel of splendid ceremony and the faultless grace of studied manners, or even the cool recklessness of great lords and ladies who could lose a fortune at play, as if they were throwing a handful of coin to ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... golden ringlets, made her a very lovely little creature; her quietness was a relief after her sister's boisterous merriment, and her dislike of dirt and brambles, continually contrasted with poor Phyllis's recklessness of such impediments. Ada readily learnt lessons, which cost Phyllis and her teacher hours of toil; Ada worked deftly when Phyllis's stiff fingers never willingly touched a needle; Ada played with a ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Tweed. They were both brave, determined fellows, but Sandy's spirit was troubled, not so much, apparently, by the fearful position in which we were placed, as by what he called Pat Brady's recklessness and frivolity. Even when thus clinging to our frail raft, now tossed high up on a foaming sea, now sent gliding down into the bottom of the trough with darkness around us, almost starved, and our throats parched by thirst, Brady's love of a joke would still break forth. "Arrah, but it's ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... swept away my little fortune. With recklessness which repeated loss engenders I proposed we scatter the remaining coin in the street, but Skenedonk prudently said we would divide and conceal it in our clothes. I gave the kind valet a handful to keep his heart warm; and our anxieties ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... all energy, is going on the restoration of some, the disinterment of others, and the conservation of all the existing monuments; and time will probably ere long give us back, so far as is possible, all that the vandalism or recklessness of modern ages has obscured or destroyed. On the Acropolis the results of these efforts at restoration are chiefly visible; day by day the debris of ruined fortifications, of Turkish batteries, mosques, and magazines, are disappearing; every thing which is not Pentelic marble ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... pretty well got rid of that they are at all a cowardly people, when properly paid and efficiently led; while the regularity and order of their habits, which dispose them to peace in ordinary times, give place to a daring bordering on recklessness in times of war. Their intelligence and capacity for remembering facts render them well fitted for use in modern warfare, as do also the coolness and the calmness of their disposition. Physically, they are, on the average, not so strong as Europeans, but considerably more so than most ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... a most outrageous extent. As a result of the misapprehensions thus created, what is known as cowboy or prairie fever is quite a common disease among youths who are trying to raise a mustache for a first time. The feats of recklessness, the absolute disregard of conventionality and the general defiance attributed to the man who herds cattle on the prairie, seem to create a longing on the part of sensationally inclined youths, and many of these have cut their teeth and learned their lesson in a very different ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... love with Capes; at moments she had a giddy intimation that he was beginning to feel keenly interested in her. She realized more and more the quality of the brink upon which she stood—the dreadful readiness with which in certain moods she might plunge, the unmitigated wrongness and recklessness of such a self-abandonment. "He must never know," she would whisper to herself, "he must never know. Or else—Else it will be impossible that ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... recklessness animated Ringfield; he was now the one to dash aside convention and make a bold attempt for mastery. "It is not yet very late. The snow is dry and hard—we can walk for ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... whisky. This is no fancy sketch, Our overtasked commercial men frequently go on what might with propriety be called "a business spree," in which for a month at a time, whether using stimulants or not, they plunge into as mad a vortex with as thorough a recklessness as those of the periodical inebriate; finding out in the long run that the fascinations of speculation, and the spring and fall trade, bring as dire destruction to soul and body as those of the bowl and the laudanum ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... the centre of a world of graft, where the highest offices in the land were bartered for gold, and every noble had an itching palm. In this scene of disorder women played no little part, and through intrigue and cajolery they often won the day for their favored lovers. Religion gave place to recklessness, valor disappeared in vanity, and a splendid idleness replaced a splendid industry. One Cortes after another protested, measures were adopted which sought to bring the nation to its senses, new sumptuary laws were enacted, but all to no avail; for ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... very anxious to conceal things which are entrusted to them. They may not wish to make mischief, exactly; but there is a sort of recklessness about them, that renders them very ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the Pilgrim nevertheless escaped, because Billy did not happen to come across him before his rage had cooled to reason. He rode on to Hardup, spent the night there swallowing more whisky than he had drunk before in six months, and after that playing poker with a recklessness that found a bitter satisfaction in losing and thus proving how vilely the world was using him, and went home rather unsteadily at sunrise and slept heavily in the bunk-house all that day. For Billy Boyle was distressingly human in his rages as in his happier moods, and was not given to gentle, picturesque ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... their snow-shoe tracks, and wondered how far behind them he had been. I don't know whether it was a vein of real courage that nerved him up to doing such a foolhardy thing as to follow a man with the intention of attacking him, or whether it was simply a case of recklessness. The probability is, however, that he was hungrier than usual, and that the smell of the warm blood made him forget everything else. Anyhow, he had a pretty close call, for the shanty-boy had a revolver in ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... considerably since its first inception. Indeed, had Mrs Ffolliot realised what proportions it had assumed since she received the friendly informal invitation some five weeks before, she would have risked the recklessness of the twins, and made a ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... and ponies and carts ridden or driven with recklessness that was amazing. The English youth had started gasping exclamations as he ran in, and tried to fetch his breath, when from the back of the Austrian Legation came a rapid roll of musketry. Austrian marines, who were spread-eagled ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... in friend or foe, no other quality more than bravery—bravery as distinguished from recklessness. We had respect for brave foes, and when the fortunes of war entrusted such as prisoners-of-war to our care, we always treated them with the courtesy gallant ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... the keenest delight. There is nothing that so pleases Him as the most daring and reckless and romantic faith. He is never so joyed as when men trust Him with mad abandon. Never once did He praise a prudent and conservative faith. All His encomiums are for those who trust Him with a romantic recklessness. ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... great, if not good man, whose virtues even would have been the vices of our own age, we find as the most prominent parts of his disposition a thorough contempt for the maxims and opinions of the world, and an utter recklessness of its censure or esteem. Marrying into the family of the Harringtons, he resided the latter part of his life at the Castle of Hornby, where we find him engaged in schemes for the most part tending to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fate and hell is round us now, And all the city's flower to death is done! Alas, we wept thee once, and weep again! O Lord of lords, by recklessness twofold The land is wasted of its men, And down to death are rolled Wreckage of sail and oar, Ships that are ships no more, And bodies of the slain! [The ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... whether such men are not always loved. Much is said of the rashness of women in giving away their hearts wildly; but the charge when made generally is, I think, an unjust one. I am more often astonished by the prudence of girls than by their recklessness. A woman of thirty will often love well and not wisely; but the girls of twenty seem to me to like propriety of demeanour, decency of outward life, and a competence. It is, of course, good that it should be so; but if it is so, they should not also claim a general character for generous and passionate ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... as wicked as people say you are?" a reckless young woman once asked him. She belonged to the younger set which was that season trying recklessness, in a tentative way, as a ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... below "concert pitch"—a precaution which they were sure to remember, in view of what they had passed through so recently. For all that, the Mohawk advanced with a confidence which at times resembled recklessness, and Ned Clinton more than once was on the point of remonstrating with him. But he held his peace, through fear of offending him. The journey was continued in this fashion, the party walking quite rapidly ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... Perverse, unfavourable views? Is it that human restlessness For ever carps, condemns, pursues? Is it that ardent souls of flame By recklessness amuse or shame Selfish nonentities around? That mind which yearns for space is bound? And that too often we receive Professions eagerly for deeds, That crass stupidity misleads, That we by cant ourselves deceive, That mediocrity alone Without ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... It is courage carried to a point of daring that amounts to what I have called it, audacity, or, as the world would call it, foolhardiness. It is the merciful blindness which will not see difficulties; it is the glorious recklessness which will not be stopped by them. It is neither blindness nor recklessness; it is the baptism with which a young man must be baptized whose life is penalized ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... the confusion on deck appeared to grow greater the nearer midnight came. The wind had been rising gradually and determinedly since we first left the deck, and now had arrived at the force and recklessness of a strong breeze. Rare, but great drops of rain struck the deck like lumps of molten lead, and flashes of lightning, yet without the sound of thunder, brought intelligence of an advancing storm. From mouth to mouth ran the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... path easy to them. There was little need for either fear or caution. Indeed, their safest course lay in recklessness, and they took it. To Sennett the house was always open. It was Blake himself who, when unable to accompany his wife, would suggest Sennett as a substitute. Club friends shrugged their shoulders. Was ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... heavily laden boat. At first I thought he must have gone mad, but on heaving to, I saw him some little distance away in the water struggling with a turtle. He managed to get it on its back after a time, and though I felt annoyed at his recklessness, I could not help laughing at his antics and the comical efforts made by the turtle to escape. The turtle was duly hauled aboard, and we then continued our voyage without delay. I was dreadfully afraid of being caught in a storm. Our boat must inevitably have ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... willingly promised, and observed Birt closely that he might know him again. He was a slight young fellow of about twenty, with delicate features and large melancholy eyes which he bent on the ground; so shame-faced and sad looking, and such a contrast in his bearing to the recklessness of many of the other men, that my father's heart was at once touched with ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... revolt of all the chaotic and unclassed parts of human nature, the parts that are left over, and will always be left over, by every rationalistic system of life. This does not merely account for the revolt of the vices and of that empty recklessness and horseplay which is sometimes more irritating than any vice. It accounts also for the return of the virtue of politeness, for that also is a nameless thing ignored by logical codes. Politeness has indeed about it something ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... difficulties on the coast, which so often added to Mr. Duncan's burdens, were not always the fault of the Indians. As often as not they were due to the recklessness of unscrupulous and drunken white men. In 1872, a party going up to the gold mines on the Skeena River burned an Indian village. This brought the Governor of British Columbia, J. W. Trutch, Esq., up the coast with two ships of war, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... forests with his railroads, and made such a rapid stride in civilization as the world has never yet witnessed. What of all this could he have done on his own resources? Something, we must allow—because his spirit of enterprise is great, even to recklessness, and a young and forming country can afford to run risks which are impossible for an older state—but a very small part, unquestionably, without the use of British capital. We cannot, and we will not, believe that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... told that sternest, kindest, wisest of friends, Doctor Sevier. As the family's trustee he might yet have to be told. But on that night of fantastical recklessness he had been away, himself at Corinth to show them there how to have vastly better hospitals, and to prescribe for his old friend Beauregard. He had got back but yesterday. Or she might have told the gray detective, just to make him more careful, as Hilary, by letter, suggested. In part she had ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... and vigorous powers of reasoning. They abetted those very tendencies in his nature which required to be checked. Their countenance, as clergymen, would allay the scruples and misgivings he might otherwise have felt, and stimulate to still wilder recklessness whatever profanity he might be tempted to indulge in. When he had let loose his first shafts of satire against their stricter brethren, those New Light ministers heartily applauded him; and hounded him on to still more daring assaults. He ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... office of the commandant being wide open, and that official being seated there in consultation with three or four of his assistants, and as Mr. McKay's voice was as well known to them as to the corps, there was no alternative. The colonel himself "confounded" the young scamp for his recklessness, and directed a report to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... an absence from a recitation, a lecture, or from prayers, prompted by recklessness rather than by necessity, is called a shark. He who is absent under these circumstances is also known ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... poet, was a captain in the army—a man of small mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of "Mad Jack Byron." When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is outside the pale of possibilities. Love ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... speed along the streets, each fresh arrival being hailed with enthusiastic cheering. There were firemen, too, in their picturesque dresses, who had turned out at the first sound of the bells, and their services were soon put in requisition, for enthusiasm produced recklessness, and two or three shingle-roofs were set on fire by the descent of rockets upon them. This display of attachment to England was not confined to the loyal and aristocratic city of Toronto; at Hamilton, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... moment she looked as though she were about to strike him with the electric torch which she was carrying. With a great effort of self-control, however, she changed her mind and threw herself into his easy-chair with a little gesture of recklessness. Julian seated himself opposite to her. Although she kept her face as far as possible averted, he realised more than ever in those few moments that she was really an extraordinarily beautiful person. Her very attitude was full of an angry grace. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... into a chair and there was a spirit of recklessness in his reply, as though he were letting go of himself again. "How is a blind man to recognize a quack? I would to God I ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... of the fact which now struck me for the first time—Brande must have unlimited money. His mode of life in London and in the country, notwithstanding his pleasant house, was in the simplest style. From the moment we entered his special train at Charing Cross, he flung money about him with wanton recklessness. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... party were driven out to the camp by the Maharajah's Australian trainer in a brake-and-four. I had heard before of the recklessness and skill of Australian stage-coach drivers, but had had no previous personal experience of it. Frankly, it is not an experience I should care to repeat indefinitely. I have my own suspicions that ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Burr, in the popular imagination, have been blackened beyond the hope of bleaching. Of course, he was a man mixed of good and bad; and was not such an unmitigated devil as some would paint him. But his selfishness, sensuality, recklessness, and degradation give, in one respect, a peculiar interest and instructiveness to the enthusiastic friendship subsisting between him and his daughter. It is no disproof of the need of the great virtues to serve as the basis of a true and enduring friendship. It proves that a sincere love, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... willing ear to sensible remonstrances or to the requirements of propriety and decency. He has graduated at the high-school of libertinism, and any resistance whatever provokes him to a passionate struggle in which he shrinks from no manifestation of his utter recklessness. Well, am I not right? Does he not even dare to defy ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... looked a little doubtful, for he could see that the enemy, though apparently single-handed, was a man of powerful frame and apparently fearless even to recklessness. He had a strong suspicion that Bill Mosely was a coward and would afford him very little assistance in ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... contented, had wives and children, went out on Sundays, and amused themselves; and after all why should one behave as if the world was coming to an end because one hadn't a barrel of salt pork or a clamp of potatoes to see one through the winter? Recklessness was finally Pelle's refuge too; when all the lights seemed to have gone out of the future it helped him to take up the fairy-tale of life anew, and lent a glamor to naked poverty. Imagination entered even into starvation: are you or ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... turns the world away From wanton sport and recklessness; That eye beams with a cheerful ray, And smiles propitiously to bless. O come, my Isabella, dear! O come, and fill these longing arms! Come, let me see thy beauty here, And bend in worship ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... up all over it. It is a very melancholy sight to see. The visitors who go into the room walk mournfully about, trying to imagine how Queen Mary looked, as an infant in her mother's arms, and reflecting on the recklessness of the soldiers in wantonly destroying so beautiful a palace. Then they go to the window, or, rather, to the crumbling opening in the wall where the window once was, and look out upon the loch, now so deserted and lonely; over their heads it is all open ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... only respecting the baptists, but all other sects as well. What his own ideas of religion were I never could make out. Universalism I fancied it was, but differing much from the theories of those evanescent preachers who sometimes flashed like meteors through the land, leaving doubt and recklessness in their path. The first truths of Christianity had been imparted to him, and these, mingling with his own innate ideas of veneration, formed his faith; as original, though more lofty in its aspirations, than the wild Indian's who tells ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... their waists, in which each man carried his revolver and a formidable bowie-knife; the whole topped off with a soft, broad-brimmed, battered felt hat dashed on to the head in a fashion eloquently suggestive of the utmost extreme of recklessness,—I think I never saw a party of men who, under ordinary circumstances, I would have been less willing to ship as a crew than these. Yet, when I spoke to them, they answered me respectfully, and there was scarcely more than the merest tinge of that defiant ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... could have been discovered at any time after its erection by careful examination. Hardly had the public recovered from the shock of this terrible disaster when the Tariffville calamity added its list of dead and wounded to the long roll already charged to the ignorance and recklessness which characterize so much of the management of the public ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... wettings, and some foolish young ones even seek exposure. We would impress upon all such that the effects of exposure may be, and often are, cumulative: that is, you may escape any direct effect for years, and then find your recklessness end in rheumatism for the rest of your life. Let care, then, be taken to avoid wettings, unless these lie in the way of duty. Change clothes as speedily as possible when they are wet, and encourage the skin ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Pope compared some of the speeches delivered in Heaven to the arguments of a "School-divine." The comparison does injustice to the scholastic philosophers. There was never one of them who could have walked into a metaphysical bramble-bush with the blind recklessness that Milton displays. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the pure, simple old atmosphere had somewhat affected Susan, in spite of herself. She could much more easily have gone away with Stephen Bocqueraz without this interval. Life in the Saunders home stimulated whatever she had of recklessness and independence, frivolity and irreverence of law. She would be admired for this step by the people she had left; she could not think without a heartache of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... a remote corner. Wetter was in the throes of excitement. A strange coolness and recklessness now possessed me. I was insensible of everything at this moment except the impulse of rivalry and the desire for victory. Nothing in the scene had power to repel me, my eyes were blind to everything of ugly ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... he glared up at the skylight feeling as if he would give anything to have a fair chance on deck, his men against the American skipper's, and the victory to the bravest and most strong. He was ready, boy as he was, to lead them on, being wound up to a pitch of utter recklessness. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... Pleasure," translated from the Italian novelist, Bandello; and it is entirely possible that it has a foundation in fact. In any case, it portrays with a terrible vividness one side of the court life of the Italian Renaissance; and its picture of the fierce quest of pleasure, the recklessness of crime, and the worldliness of the great princes of the Church finds only too ready corroboration in the annals of ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... afterwards the party separated at Sacramento, Frank only remaining two days in that town. The wild scenes of dissipation and recklessness disgusted him; he looked with loathing upon the saloons where gambling went on from morning till night, broken only by an occasional fierce quarrel, followed in most cases by the sharp crack of a revolver, or by desperate encounters with bowie ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... than his own ideas of justice and his own convictions of duty. These ideas and convictions, however, refused obedience to accepted laws and morals, and were mere fantastic and pernicious outgrowths of his religious fanaticism. His courage partook of the recklessness of insanity. He did not count odds. "What are five to one?" he asked; and at another time he said, "One man in the right, ready to die, will chase a thousand." Perhaps he even believed he held a charmed life, for he ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the ground passed under my feet pretty rapidly; and the probability is, the hostile party would have been distanced in less than ten minutes but for an unfortunate accident. It was necessary to cross the ruins already described. Here, in the recklessness of my flight, I stumbled over a beam, and fell prostrate in a pile of ashes. Before I could regain my feet the ruffians were upon me. While two of them held my arms, the third clapped his dirty hand over my mouth, and in this way they dragged me back into the alley. As soon as they ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... companies began to seek sources of supply to take the place of those around the Great Lakes. They turned to the South and the Far West. The methods which were used for getting control of the land, and the recklessness with which the supplies of timber were cut off became of importance as causes of the conservation movement. The main handicap in the way of the development of trade between the Far West and the East ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... advancement of the welfare of mankind is a most intricate problem: all ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage. On the other hand, as Mr. Galton has remarked, if the prudent avoid marriage, while the reckless marry, the inferior members will tend to supplant the ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... when it came, was all my own making, and my dismissal was entirely due to an act of silly recklessness and my own idiocy. I had taken chances before and had not been caught; several times I ran the sentries at night for the sake of a noisy, drunken spree at a road- side tavern, and several times I had risked my chevrons because I did not choose to respect ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... part, that the brutality of the English people is only the excess and plethora of that healthful, muscular robustness and full-bloodedness for which the nation has always been famous, and which it should prize beyond almost anything else. But for our brutality, our recklessness of life and property, the brazen ruffianism in our great cities, the hellish greed and robbery and plunder in high places, I should have to look a long time to find ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But follow the good clergyman or doctor, who, with his life imperilled at every breath he draws, goes down into their dens, lying within the echoes of our carriage wheels and daily tread upon the pavement stones. Look round upon the world of odious ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... self-control. Self-control, however, was habitual to her. She had long since schooled herself into the acceptance of her stupidly maimed life, seeing herself in no pathetic similes at all, but, rather, as a foolish, unformed creature who, partly through blindness, partly through recklessness, had managed badly to cripple herself at the outset of life's walk, and who must make the best of a hop-skip-and-jump gait for the rest of it. She had felt, when she decided that she had a right to live away from Everard, that she had no right ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hole, and he believed, and always insisted, in telling the story afterwards, that if she had been willing to help herself it could have been accomplished. But Julia Crosby, triumphant leader of her class, and Julia Crosby cold and wet as a result of her own recklessness, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... so content with my success thus far, as to already believe thoroughly in the final result of my mission. This confidence developed almost into sheer recklessness. There were some difficulties ahead, to be sure. I remained sane enough to recognize these, yet I had already conquered easily, what at first had appeared insurmountable, and, in consequence of this good ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... but a bare half of our journey done when the storm burst, and in a very short time we were reduced to the recklessness which comes of being as wet as you can ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... was an act of fine and desperate recklessness—the recklessness of a soul possessed and set on one dominating purpose. This was Hervey Willetts all over. And because he had a brain and the eagle none or little, he thus used his very enemy to help ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of the Sullan party at this time was Lucius Sergius Catiline, an aristocrat, who, during the proscription, behaved with fiendish atrocity towards those of the opposite party, torturing and killing men with the utmost recklessness. His early years had been passed in undisguised debaucheries and unrestrained vice, but in spite of all his acts, he made political progress, was prtor, governor of Africa, and candidate for the consulship by ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... civilization than that which had given Barney Ryan's daughter her frankness and her force, and it did not cross his mind that the heiress of millions might cast tender eyes upon the penniless sons of New England farmers. He said to himself with impatient recklessness that he ought not to and would not fall in love with her. There was too great a distance between them. It would be King Cophetua and the beggar-maid reversed. Clerks at one hundred and fifty dollars a month were not supposed to aspire to only daughters of bonanza kings in the circle from which ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... heavy blow on receiving news of a loss not by death, and I venture to fancy that cuttings and gashings at funerals are merely a more violent form of appeal to a counter-irritant of grief, and, again, a token of recklessness caused by a sorrow which makes void the world. One of John Nicholson's native adorers killed himself on news of that warrior's death, saying, 'What is left worth living for?' This was not a sacrifice to the Manes of Nicholson. The sacrifice of the mourner's hair, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... There is nothing that men dislike so much, in critical circumstances, where action is necessary, as uncertainty or want of decision on the part of their leader. The loss of their ship, and their forlorn, almost desperate condition, had sunk their spirits so much that an air of apathetic recklessness had, for a few minutes, crossed the countenances of some of the boldest among the sailors; but while the captain was speaking this expression passed away, and when he had finished they all gave one hearty cheer, and ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dogged recklessness of a man goaded to desperation. Mollie turned again to her guardian and laid her face on ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... take even the ordinary precaution of asking for guarantees. He consented to accompany Breuil at once, merely asking how far he had to go. This recklessness was the result of his supposed triumphant crime. Believing that I was safely interred in the English cemetery, he thought there was no one left ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... rage had left him dazed and nerveless. He had sunk into a state of fatalistic indifference. He moved quickly downstream from turning-point to turning-point, driven by Blake's will, but with a heedless recklessness that all ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... strong green tea, lemon juice, and sugar; in other less expensive bowls was found a cheaper concoction. But punch abounded everywhere, and the bibulous found Washington a rosy place, where jocund mirth and joyful recklessness went arm in arm to flout vile melancholy, and kick, with ardent fervor, dull care out of the window. Christmas carols were sung in the streets by the young colored people, and yule logs were burned in the old houses where the fireplaces ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of people could be more unlike than the salmon-fishers of Sunburst and the mill-hands and river-drivers of Viking. The life of the river-men was exciting, hardy, and perilous; tending to boisterousness, recklessness, daring, and wild humour: that of the salmon-fishers was cheerful, picturesque, infrequently dangerous, mostly simple and quiet. The river-driver chose to spend his idle hours in crude, rough sprightliness; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... barely reached the age of manhood when he won the heart of his royal mistress, already verging on threescore. Gifted by nature with a handsome person, undoubted courage, and many generous qualities, he exhibited, in the most important transactions of life, the recklessness of a madman and the levity of a spoiled child; it was apparent to the world that nothing short of the personal fascination which he exercised over the Queen could so long have preserved him from the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... When she had given Garth that impetuous assurance of her confidence, she had not, in her crudest imaginings, dreamed of anything so hideous and ignoble as the actual truth had proved to be. Vaguely, she had deemed him outcast for some big, reckless sin that by the splendour of its recklessness almost earned ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... lived in habits of the most unreserved familiarity with his soldiers. He associated freely with them, ate and drank with them in the open air, and joined in their noisy mirth and rude and boisterous hilarity. His commanding powers of mind, and the desperate recklessness of his courage, enabled him to do all this without danger. These qualities inspired in the minds of the soldiers a feeling of profound respect for their commander; and this good opinion he was enabled ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... and everywhere are anxious parents hurrying about, seeking food to stuff hungry little mouths, or trying to keep too venturesome young folk out of danger. For Young Americans in feathers are wonderfully like Young Americans in lawn in self-confidence and recklessness. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Revolution broke out he was living in Hartford, Connecticut, where his business was that of druggist, and where his reputation was not of the most savory among the more respectable merchants of the town. His character, however, contained those elements of recklessness and personal daring which stand for bravery with many people, and he was something of a hero in the eyes of ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... nicely graduated mean between political recklessness and national old fogyism, which alone guarantees an enduring progress, is the object of search to all disinterested political reformers. For only by following such a golden mean, in which political reform shall keep even pace with intellectual and moral advancement, can physical and mental ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... criticised for the apparent recklessness with which he delivered his assault, even after having announced to Mouton his intention of waiting; yet it is clear that he was sent there to attack; if he was to attack at all, he had nothing to gain by waiting; an assault by daylight would have been wholesale ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... that way. It is easier for me; I think it is—I know it is. But there are things to combat—impulses, a recklessness, perhaps something almost ruthless. What else I do not know, for I have never experienced violent emotions of any sort—never even ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... them admirably, managed, it is none the less a fact that the greater portion are directed in a manner far from satisfactory,—many, indeed, being subjected to the combined influence of ignorance and recklessness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals —morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man's ire —by what evil magic their souls were ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... had thrown their rose color about the young days of his marriage. His hopes had never blossomed into fulfilment. His promises to the little wife had been choked by the weeds of his own inefficiency. Worse than this, the bursting into bloom of seeds of selfish recklessness in himself was what had turned the garden of their life into an arid waste. And now, in their dry and withered old age, he and Angy were being torn up by the roots, flung as so ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... salons of Frescati's, or other Parisian gaming-house, where females are admitted to participate in the game, and witness the madness and folly of the stronger sex. The party are chiefly about a rouge et noir table, and are in the highest stage of recklessness. One of them, a female, has flung herself from the lure across a chair, apparently in the last stage of wretchedness and despair. The excitement of the players is powerfully wrought up and contrasted with the sang froid of the croupier, who seems ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... his charge's throat mighty superciliously from the very first; and presently, falling into some favourite and absorbing train of thought, he fixed his eye on vacancy, and handed the spoonfuls over his left shoulder with such rapidity and recklessness that it was more like sowing than feeding. Alfred cried out "Quarter! I can't eat so fast as that, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... involving the architect's great trust, harmony of proportion), which my friend could bring to bear on the materials given him, the result is still only—a sporting neckerchief—that is to say, the materials addressed, first, to recklessness, in the shape of a mere blot; then to computativeness in a series of figures; and then to absurdity and ignorance, in the shape of an ill-drawn caricature—such materials, however treated, can only work up into what will please ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... horse on the course which was beaten that day. The recklessness of his bets, his violent gesticulations and imprecations, outdid all competition. If I had been told that he was to be a future President of the United States, I should have thought it a ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... this unwise recklessness, he had had to mortgage the old farm, and when the proceeds of that had been spent, he had to sell out. "Perhaps his going west, where he would have to work hard for his living, would be his ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a mixture of wildness, outflamings of satire on the virtues, witty defiance of the fates, and recklessness of everything save reference to women. Not a word escaped his lips whereby his keenest, most delighted listener could have probed to the heart of his mood. To the loss of his claim was attributed all his ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... He was strong in body (being in his forty-second year when he began to rule) [so that in every enterprise he toiled almost as much as the rest;] and his intellectual powers were at their highest, so that he had neither the recklessness of youth nor the sluggishness of old age. He did not envy nor kill any one, but honored and exalted all without exception that were men of worth, and hence he neither feared nor hated one of them. To slanders he paid very little heed and was no ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... two human beings are finer than the finest gossamer and can be easily broken and scattered even though they may or must be brought together again after long lapses of time. But so many opportunities had already been wasted, I thought, through some recklessness or folly, either on his part or mine. Which of us was to blame? I looked at him half in fear, half in appeal, as he sat in the boat with his head turned a little aside from me,—he seemed grave and preoccupied. A sudden thrill of emotion stirred my heart— tears ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... through the inadequate supply of material to his army by the home authorities. Every fortress which was not strategically abandoned by the French, was won by the skill of the general-in-chief, and the recklessness of life shown by his soldiers, in spite of the want of almost every appliance proper for an army. The sieges which Wellington prosecuted to a successful result "will always reflect immortal honour on the troops engaged, and will always attract the strongest interests of an English ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... numerous. A mania possessed the people. The whole State was being cut up into towns and cities and house-lots, so that town-lots were said to be the only article of export.[42] A system of internal improvements at the public expense was pushed forward with incredible recklessness. The State was to be "gridironed" with thirteen hundred miles of railroad; the courses of the rivers were to be straightened; and where nature had neglected to supply rivers, canals were to be dug. A loan of twelve millions ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... bring associated pictures to mind: Restaurant suppers; Paris! Distinguished-looking audiences; London! The essence of charm in society; Rome! Beguiling and informal joyousness; San Francisco! Recklessness; Colorado Springs! The afternoon visit; Washington! Hectic and splendid gaiety; New York! Beautiful ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... penance; it prevents any beginning of good works; it causes despair of God's mercy, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost; it induces somnolency and neglect of communion in prayer with God; and it breeds negligence or recklessness, that cares for nothing, and is the nurse of all mischiefs, if ignorance is their mother. Against Sloth, and these and other branches and fruits of it, the remedy lies in the virtue of fortitude or strength, in its various ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... two sisters were looking intently into each other's eyes when he raised his own. Then Euphemia met his bow with a momentary accession of color, a coquettish wave of her hand across the table, a slight exaggeration of her usual fascinating recklessness, and smilingly moved away. He turned to Clementina, but here an ominous tapping at the farther end of the long table revealed the fact that Mr. Harcourt was standing on a chair with oratorical possibilities in his face and attitude. There was another forward movement ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... was lifted in silent concord with the singers. Atsu in his chariot, close by, scanned his lists absorbedly, but one of the drivers hurried forward with a demand for silence. A young Hebrew, who had tramped in agitated silence just ahead, worked up into recklessness by the fervor of the singers, defied him. His voice ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... evils resulting from their having had no practical training in youth in respect to pecuniary responsibilities and obligations, that evil consequences will fall. The great cities are full of wealthy men whose lives are rendered miserable by the recklessness in respect to money which is displayed by their sons and daughters as they advance towards maturity, and by the utter want, on their part, of all sense of delicacy, and of obligation or of responsibility ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... last Alice said, with an odd expression of recklessness, "Oh, very well, if you must have it, I will sing it. But I hate these sentimental songs, that say so much and mean nothing." Striking the chords nervously she sang, with a voice at first tremulous but at last full of strong and deep feeling, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... insisting, as we phrase it, that the administration of affairs shall be conducted by persons enjoying their confidence. It is not wonderful that a privilege of this kind should be exercised at first with some degree of recklessness, and that, while no great principles of policy are at stake, methods of a more questionable character for winning and retaining the confidence of these arbiters of destiny should be resorted to. My course in these circumstances is, I think, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... that she, too, had been fighting herself—that she, too, feared passion, stirred every brutal fibre in him to a fiercer recklessness that halted him in his tracks under the calm stars. But what held him there was something else, perhaps what he believed had died in him; for he did not even turn again. And at last, through the dark and throbbing silence he moved on ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... within her. It was not obstinacy, she know; and that bit of injustice hindered her from seeing that it was really wilful recklessness. She was elated with Ernest's foolish school-boy account of her, which a more maidenly little girl would not have relished; she was strengthened in her notion that she was ill-used, by hearing that the De la Poers pitied her; and because she found that Aunt Barbara was considered to be ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He did not understand this new phase in Adrea's development. There was a curious hardness in her tone and a recklessness in her speech which were strange to him. And with it all he felt very helpless. He could not play the part of guardian and reprove her; he scarcely knew how to argue with her. Women and their ways were strange to him; and, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down. She denied herself ordinary comforts to prepare for the crash. Thanks to Emmanuel, the boys were now advancing in their studies, and their future was at least unclouded. But Balthazar had developed the gambler's recklessness. He sold a forest; he mortgaged his house and silver; he had no more food than a nigger who sells his wife for a glass of brandy in the morning, and weeps over his loss at night. Once Marguerite spoke to her father. She acknowledged that he was master, that his children would ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... field continued to bear back the enemy. Jackson was not yet able to stop the fierce masses in blue. A formidable body of men issuing from the Northern side of the wood charged with the bayonet, pushing the charge home with a courage and a recklessness of death that the war had not yet seen surpassed. The Southern rifles and cannon raked them, but they never stopped, bursting like ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... circus in his town. Of all the State and grand social functions in which he had participated, not one, so far as he could remember, had ever inspired him with such anticipations. An indescribable joy and spirit of recklessness, born of desperation, filled him, and he silently vowed that he would drink to the moon that night even though there might perchance ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... influence was profound and lasting. His wit and his lyric fire excused his morbidness and his sentimental posing as a waif, unfriended in a cold and treacherous world of women and men; and his genius made misanthropy and personal recklessness a fashion. The world took his posing seriously and his grievances to heart, sighed with him, copied his dress, tried to imitate his adventures, many of them imaginary, and accepted him as a perturbed, storm-tost spirit, representative ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... made my bed, and must lie on it.' I pressed a couple of sovereigns into his hand, and made him promise to call on me next day. He came and gave me the details of his descent, the old story of course—wine and its alliterative concomitant, conjoined with utter recklessness." "Well, and could you help him?" "I'm glad to say I could. I got him the place of stud-groom to a nobleman in the south of Ireland: he's turned over a new leaf, is perfectly steady, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... world to whom she will give without a shadow of the desire for the value in return. What was there in the world now to prevent her from taking what life offered of its small, distracting pleasures? A moment of recklessness brought a deceptive ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston |
