"Red tape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "They shall not escape! Am I set at naught by a crazed buffoon?" But in fifty fathoms of thin red tape The Lord Swank swaddled his portly shape, Like a large, insane cocoon. Then round and round and round and round. The Swanks, the Swanks, the whirling Swanks, The twirling Swanks they wound— The swathed and swaddled, molly-coddled ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... 2001-02, strong domestic activity in construction, agriculture, and consumption have kept GDP growth above 4%. However, macroeconomic gains have only recently started to spur creation of a middle class and address Romania's widespread poverty, while corruption and red tape continue to handicap the business environment. Romanian government confidence in continuing disinflation was underscored by its currency revaluation in 2005, making 10,000 "old" lei equal 1 "new" leu. The economy grew at 6.4% in 2006, the strongest growth in the last decade. Romania joined ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances of our civilization. Does a type survive its age; live on into times that have no room for it? The blood is there—and sometimes there's a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... how you can put up with that sneak, that nasty phiz. Ugh! how can you live here! The atmosphere is stifling and unclean! Do you call yourselves schoolmasters, teachers? You are paltry government clerks. You keep, not a temple of science, but a department for red tape and loyal behaviour, and it smells as sour as a police-station. No, my friends; I will stay with you for a while, and then I will go to my farm and there catch crabs and teach the Little Russians. I shall go, and you can stay here with ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... willingly forsook her beloved hunting-field, leaving a stable full of hunters idle at Melton Mowbray, for the committee-room and the writing-table. The scheme was one fraught with difficulties great and numerous, and not the least amongst them was the "red tape" that had to be cut; but Lady Georgiana Curzon took up the good cause with enthusiasm and ability, and she and her colleagues worked to such purpose that, on March 17, 1900, a base hospital containing over 500 beds (which number was subsequently increased to 1,000), fully equipped, left our shores. ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... red tape which held the letters together. Yes, there was a piece of circumstantial evidence which might have helped to convict my friend had he been on his trial in a criminal court. The red tape bore the mark of the place in which it had been tied for half a ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... I never did. It would mean a good deal of red tape for a man who changed his mind frequently. He could not fool his relations; they would know. The laws of the dark peoples have always amazed me, because if you dig deep enough into them you are likely to find common sense at the bottom. We ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... month," she thought. "I wonder if she's finished checking the catalogue yet? I saw her walking down the stream five minutes ago with Mabel Hoyle. Why shouldn't I have the American Gems for half an hour? It wouldn't do any harm. It really is the merest red tape that we mayn't use the books. I shall just take ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, at one end of a telephone, official red tape was quickly and effectively cut. Professor Herman Brierly was given the powers and privileges necessary ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... another officer. "What have you got there?" And when Jimmie answered maps, he demanded them; he seemed as greedy for maps as a child for his gifts on Christmas morning. He ripped open the packet—what is called "cutting red tape" in the army—and spread out the papers and began to call out figures to another officer who sat on a camp stool at a little folding table, with many sheets of figures in front of him. This officer went on noting down the information—and the men at the guns went on shoving ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... any value; but a piece of paper was discovered, wrapped up in oilskin, and carefully fastened with red tape, in the vest pocket of the dead man. It contained writing, and had been so securely wrapped up, that it was only a little damped. Davy Spink, who found it, tried in vain to read the writing; Davy's education had been neglected, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... one who has ever felt the tortures of bread hunger may imagine the sufferings of the men. For want of bread the meats became nauseating and repulsive. The whole fault lay in having too many bosses and red tape in the Department at Richmond. By order of these officials, all commissary supplies, even gathered in sight of the camps, had to be first sent to Richmond and issued out only on requisitions to the head of the departments. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the Western people to see immediate results from the Reclamation Act was so great that red tape was disregarded, and the work was pushed forward at a rate previously unknown in Government affairs. Later, as in almost all such cases, there followed the criticisms of alleged illegality and haste which ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... conceded that he saw, that his original diagnosis was at fault. Superimposed was the agitating thought of what would follow the death of this unwelcome guest: confusion, poking authorities, British and American red tape. It would send business elsewhere; and the hotel business in Canton was never so prosperous that one could afford to lose a single guest. Clientele was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... der bag for you," replied the watch-maker, taking a piece of red tape from one of his drawers, which he wound tightly over the original string ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... method by which a copyright is obtained under the revised acts of Congress is as simple and inexpensive as can be reasonably asked. All unnecessary red tape is dispensed with, and the cost to the author who is seeking thus to protect himself in the enjoyment of the profits of his work, is so small as to be scarcely appreciable. This is an example of cheapness and directness toward which ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... evening, who was fortunately a "popular" character, order was partially restored; and the favorite scene from Miss More's dialogue of David and Goliath was announced as the closing piece. The sight of little David in a white tunic edged with red tape, with a calico scrip and a very primitive-looking sling; and a huge Goliath decorated with a militia belt and sword, and a spear like a weaver's beam indeed, enchained everybody's attention. Even the peccant schoolmaster and his pretended letters were forgotten, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... neutral correspondents, and who, unofficially, I have reason to believe, is connected with the Secret Service. He is a pudgy sort of man, with a watery skin, and decidedly not of military build or bearing. When, after much red tape, I was finally admitted to an outer office, he stepped out to see me, merely taking my name and the names of the papers I represented. I was told to come back in the evening. When I did so and was admitted to His Holy of Holies, he said to ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... building houses for negroes. The City Council said they wanted the housing property for park purposes. The matter was taken to court. The Council condemned the property but failed to sustain the belief that it was needed for a park. Through various methods of red tape and legal procedure the matter was delayed. The company then built houses on a smaller scale. The plans included two apartment houses that would accommodate six families each. There were also in the course of ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... were putting some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was looking ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... time in the world's history when Christian men and women felt so led of God not to wait for committees nor the red tape of ecclesiastical authority, but to hurry forth under a personal call from God and do what they could with their individual means and talents for the saving of souls, the sanctifying of believers, and preparing the chosen few to meet Jesus. There ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... head? Did anyone tell you about Beth's giving away her things?" asked Laurie soberly, as Amy laid a bit of red tape, with sealing wax, a taper, and a ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... at Manchester on June 4, and again on June 5, before the employers and workmen of Lancashire, the new Minister of Munitions announced his policy of discontinuing the methods of red tape that had hindered the mobilization of labor for the production of arms and ammunition. His speech at Lancashire appears below ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... out of a store into a ship, and one of 'em said: ''T is a long heavy cable, I wish we could see the end of it.' 'Damn me,' says another, 'if I believe it has any end; somebody has cut it off.'" A cable twisted of British red tape was indeed a coil without an end. In this case, before the patent was granted, Franklin had become so unpopular, and the Revolution so imminent, that the matter was dropped by ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... rarely grave. No human power had yet been discovered to keep in order the brown curls. Their distressed owner tied them back firmly with a wide ribbon each morning; but the ribbon generally was missing early in the day, and might be replaced with anything that came handy—possibly a fragment of red tape from the office, or a bit of a New Zealand flax leaf, or haply even a scrap of green hide. Anything, said Norah, decidedly, was better than your hair all over your face. For the rest, a nondescript nose, somewhat freckled, and a square chin, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... government red tape!" he muttered wrathfully. "I didn't think the fool Secretary would do anything like this. I thought he'd just call Darrin down hard and plenty, and perhaps bounce him out of the Naval Academy. Humph! I guess all these Navy ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... Abercrombie,—"Mrs. Nabby Crombie" the soldiers called him. He was an indifferent, negative sort of man; and indifferent, negative sorts of people, by their dishwater goodness, can sometimes do more harm in critical positions than the branded criminal. Red tape had forced him on Pitt, but Pitt trusted to the excellence of the subordinate ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... it was miserably and criminally delayed by the soulless legal red tape then in vogue. On the night of February 1, 1932, Tim Haswell, a hold-up man, was shot during an attempted robbery by a citizen of Piedmont Heights. Tim Haswell lingered three days, during which time he not only confessed to the murder of Irene Tackley, but furnished conclusive proofs of ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... tape showed signs at first of declining to unwind, but further investigation proved the frauds so great, that even the red tape was thrilled into action, and the Government began a suit in the United States District Court at New York for $1,000,000 for penalties for fraudulent custom-house under-valuations. It sued William E. Dodge, William E. Dodge, Jr., D. Willis James, Anson Phelps Stokes, James Stokes ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "Red tape all wound up!" she finally announced in a whisper, and the quartette proceeded to the corner below, to be ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... circle, and to conduct a submarine campaign which should be from a military point of view effective, without at the same time leading to a breach with America. The order that "liners" should not be torpedoed under any circumstances was regarded simply as a piece of red tape, and not applicable to war conditions, as the submarine was not in a position to distinguish through its periscope between "liners" and other craft. We thus contrived at one and the same time to cripple ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... these matters we are all slaves to red tape! I can promise you, however, that your Captain will be released from prison before this month is out, so you are not ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... land office. Your applications can pass through for approval, for all I care, but I'll enter a contest, alleging fraud, against you in the General Land Office at Washington, and I'll hold you up for ten years in a mass of red tape. Hennage, you and McGraw have brains, I'll admit, but you can't play my game and beat me at it. If I'm not in on this melon-cutting, I'll spend a million dollars to delay the banquet. Let me tell you something. The day will come when you'll come scraping your feet at my office door, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... you have plenty of red tape here," said Coleman, shrugging his shoulders. "However, I must do ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... a leaden ink-stand, containing ink enough for a county; a magnifying glass; a carpenter's rule; several large steel pens, which it was high treason to touch; a glass bowl full of shot and water, to clean these precious pens; and some red tape, which he called 'one of the grammars of life'; a measuring line, and various other articles, more useful than ornamental. At this writing establishment, unique of its kind, he could turn his mind with equal facility, in company or alone, to any ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... between the crusts. We do not think that water alone quenched his thirst. He had the sympathy of the whole command, who believed that his sentence was out of all reason, for a violation of military "red tape," and perhaps, treading on some one's corns. But Lumsden saw the ill effects, threats were being made to tear the hut down, and release him; and the finest kind of soldiers were beginning to get sulky. So he ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... Stuart was promoted to brigadier general, and Captain Jones took his place as colonel of the First Virginia, Mosby became the latter's adjutant. There should have been a commission along with this post, but this seems to have been snarled in red tape at Richmond and never came through. It was about this time that Mosby first came to Stuart's personal attention. Mosby spent a night at headquarters after escorting a couple of young ladies who had been living outside ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... and as short a stay in Philadelphia, he took down his shingle forever, and proceeded to New Orleans to study law. In two years he was admitted to the bar of Louisiana. But because clients were few, or because the red tape of the law chafed his spirit, within a year, as already he had abandoned the Church and Medicine, he abandoned his law practice and became an editorial writer on the New Orleans Crescent. A year later ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Rosen, was abroad taking his doctor's degree. He came home to find his lectures deserted for the irresponsible teachings of a mere undergraduate. He made grievous complaint, and Linnaeus was silenced, to his great good luck. For so his friend the professor, though he was unable to break the red tape of the university, got him an appointment to go to Lapland on a botanical mission. His enemies were only too glad to ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... the efforts of a war correspondent of the London Times, the people at home were soon informed of the state of affairs in the Crimea, and gifts and supplies poured in profusely. But owing to the inefficiency and red tape of the War Department, the supplies were not delivered, but lay rotting in warehouses and in the holds of vessels while men died for the want of them. On one occasion, we are told, a consignment of shoes for the soldiers turned out to be in women's sizes. Improper inspections resulted ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... not one only, are to be taught; great prominence is to be given to the minor arts; at first there will be no fees; above all and before all, the great College of ours is not to be made a Government department, to be tied and bound by the hard-and-fast rules and red tape which are the curse of every department, nor is it to be under the direction of any School Board, but, like most things in this country that are of any use, it is to be governed by its ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... in restless melancholy and atrocity the insane Caesars, and were more to be pitied, as well as detested, than Tiberius or Nero—the nature of the landscape, the waste of steppes, the dreariness of winter, and the loneliness of summer—the barbaric extravagance of aristocratic life—the red tape, extortion, and cruelty of officers—the sublime patience of the common people—the devotion of the enduring, starving multitude to the Tsar—all this should be as familiar as a twice-told tale. There should also be a knowledge of Russian literature, from the passion of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... he declared, "is under embargo. I have been waiting here since half tide and there's nothing doing. Somebody's in there chewing red tape, but I don't calculate to let anybody else have a turn at it until I get my bit wound up an' tied in a knot. Now don't tell me ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... processes, and to adapt themselves to them. Could any one have made such an omelet without breaking a great many eggs? Is it wonderful that the employers have sometimes felt themselves unbearably hustled, sometimes misunderstood, and at other times annoyed, or worried by what seems to them the red tape of the new Ministry, and its apparent ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is to be the new permanent secretary at the War Office. Let's hope he has no connection with the firm of Gold Brade and Red Tape. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... rot," he flung at Lee. "Rot! Lodge knows it. Henney knows it. We all do. And so do you. It's a lot of damn red tape! Every last man who can pull a stroke with the Government runs in here to annoy good efficient engineers who are building the road. It's an outrage. It's more. It's not honest ... That section has forty miles in it. Five miles you claim must be resurveyed—regraded—relaid. Forty-six ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... to shrink substantially the cash and time consuming red tape burden imposed on business. They include my personally-directed policy of ambitiously increasing the Federal contracting dollars going to small firms, especially those owned by women and minorities. And they include my proposals to reinvigorate existing small businesses and assist the creation ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the upper limit of the National Bank of Poland's target range. Poland's economic performance could improve further if the country addresses some of the remaining deficiencies in its business environment. An inefficient commercial court system, a rigid labor code, bureaucratic red tape, and persistent low-level corruption keep the private sector from performing up to its full potential. Rising demands to fund health care, education, and the state pension system present a challenge to the Polish government's effort to ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... rival newspaper would annex them. One of the earliest sensations of the Flag was a correspondence exposing the misdeeds of some communal officials; but in the end the very persons who made the allegations ate humble pie. Evidently official pressure had been brought to bear, for red tape rampant might have been the heraldic device of Jewish officialdom. In no department did Jews exhibit more strikingly their marvellous powers of assimilation to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... debt, and exciting murder cases, which gave to lawyers more importance and better chances of advancement than they possessed in the older States. Mr. Clay had two strings to his bow. Besides being a man of red tape and pigeon-holes, exact, methodical, and strictly attentive to business, he had a power over a Kentucky jury such as no other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the regiment stationed at Soissons. I wrote to the Colonel, who said he would send it with pleasure, but that he couldn't on his own authority. An application must be made to the Ministere de la Guerre. There is always so much red tape in France. One writes and receives so many letters about anything one wants to do—a Christmas Tree in the school-house—a distribution of soup for the poor and old—a turn in a road to be rounded, etc. However, the permission was graciously accorded ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... baby—and she mustn't suffer," he urged. "There will be any amount of red tape. You really must let ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... come out in the open. I won't take a mate in a house, even if it has to be done with this foolish paper," he continued to rage as he sought in the bandana bundle and produced an official document with a red tape on it. "You go and put on your clothes, and I'll break up this foolishness and get 'em in ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wasted over this tax in a city like Amiens is an extraordinary burden on the patience of the people, trained as the French people are to submit to a torment of eternal red tape, a week of which would drive an American or English town into open revolt. At Amiens, for example, there is a central bureau of the octroi, where the tax is received from the great breweries and warehouses after ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to get people blind as bats to the radiant beauty of some lofty character, and insensible as rocks to the wants of a sad humanity, commend me to your religious formalists, whose religion is mainly a bundle of red tape tied round men's limbs to keep them from getting at things that they would like. These are the people who will be as hard as the nether millstones, and utterly blind to all enthusiasm and to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... then, was a mysterious 'Court of Chance,' where things dragged on for years, a political circumlocution office, hopelessly bound by its own interminable seals, parchments and red tape." ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... courtesy due to a post-captain. There was shaking of hands, and doffing of cocked hats, and calling for wine, and pipes, and coffee, in the Alhambra-like hall, where a table covered with papers tied with red tape, in front of a homely leathern chair, looked more homelike than suitable. Other chairs there were for Frank guests, who preferred them to the divan and piles of cushions on which the Moors ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Looking about for something to do, it occurred to him to write to the Secretary of the Navy asking permission to explore the Dead Sea. Under ordinary circumstances the proposal would doubtless have been strangled with red tape; but, fortunately, the Secretary at that time was Mr. John Y. Mason, of Virginia. Mr. Mason was famous for his good nature. Both at Washington and at Paris, where he was afterward minister, this predominant ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... same year, Jas. L. Allen acted as delegate from this association and reported our progress. The best organized woman's society in the State is probably the Women's Christian Temperance Union. In its different departments, although hampered by too much theological red tape, it is reaching thousands of ignorant, prejudiced, good sectarian women who would expect the "heavens to fall" if they accidentally got into a meeting where "woman's rights" was mentioned even in a whisper. Mrs. Clara Hoffman, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... way by which we had the slightest prospect of escaping. It was that the government authorities might have heard of the outbreak, and sent troops to attack the rebels. I did not know in those days that those sort of gentlemen considered the art of tying up packages neatly with red tape to be the most important of their official duties, and that they were not apt to do anything in a hurry of so trifling importance as attempting to save the lives of ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... same time, the "Prince" Gregoriev, together with a piece of gold, did serve to cut many yards from the red tape that impedes all progress in Russia. A brief explanation, two minutes' wait, the appearance of a young man garbed in spotless white, a walk up two flights of stairs and along a chilly corridor, and Ivan found ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... surely there is something very attractive about a system where everything is done as an act of friendship, and not as the soulless reflex of some official machine. It is easier to drink red wine than to eat red tape, and not nearly so wearing ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... have been made, I presume, but who owns the lucky cards is the secret that has not yet transpired. You young people have no respect for red tape, and methodical business routine. You want to clap spurs on fate, and make her lower her own last record? 'Bide ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... almost home-sick hearts. As we get within hailing distance, we sing out for our letters, and are answered: 'While you were chasing the schooner, we left your mail on board the Iroquois.' 'The devil you did!' say some in bitter disappointment, but red tape demands that we wait till the flagship sees fit to signal us to come for letters. The hours pass wearily. We have waited weeks for home news, and, now that it is here, we must wait again—a day, two days—a week even, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... or sleeping they walked about the streets till six in the morning, when they returned and were admitted. They stated their business, inquired for the children, produced photographs and, after a little delay, Turiddu and Gennaro came running to them naked. It took some days of red tape, including a legal act whereby Corrado constituted himself their second father, before they were allowed to remove the boys. At last on the 11th January they took possession of them and dressed them in the street with clothes they ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... of relatives that had advanced in close formation as their train drew into the station, and proceeded at once to the office of a lawyer who was none other than Tony's cousin Jack. It took only a couple of days to fix the thing all up for the doctor; indeed, it was so tied up with red tape and all that, that Zaidos was not sure anyone would ever get ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... he had ordered fitted up for a school for three hundred freed children in that part of his district. But he found that nothing had been done. "Upon my word," he exclaimed, "not a stroke, not a stone, not a window. O, I can't stand this red tape; I just want to leave every other duty and pitch into this house. I know I am too impulsive, but that is the way of an Irishman. I have often thought Peter was an ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... news and special writers, photographers, illustrators and painters, and, to handle them satisfactorily, organized this Presse Quartier, once admitted to which—the fakers and fly-by-nights were supposed to be weeded out by preliminary red tape—they were assumed to be serious workmen and treated as ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... wherever they get their pallium; of them as well keep to windward! thinks his Majesty. And indeed there is no Bishop here. The present Bishop of Bamberg—one of those Von Schonborns, Counts, sometimes Cardinals, common in that fat Office,—is a Kaiser's Minister of State; lives at Vienna, enveloped in red tape, as well as red hat and stockings; and needs no exhortation in the Kaiser's favor. Let us yoke again, and go.—Fir woods all round, and dead malefactors blackening in the wind: this latter point I know of the then Bamberg; and have explanation of it. Namely, that the Prince-Bishop, though a humane ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... replied, untying the red tape with trembling fingers. 'Here is the certificate of marriage which my poor Annie gave me on her dying bed. I would have shown it before to all Beorminster had I known of Mrs Pansey's false reports. Look ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... condition of Stoke Revel. We have advertised for a year, and advertisement is costly. Now comes an offer of a somewhat peculiar kind, but sound enough." Lavendar here produced a bundle of documents tied with the traditional red tape. "An artist," he continued, "Waller, R. A.—you ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with old dingy volumes, and with dusty rolls of papers tied with red tape—a tall desk, with a faded and ink-bespattered covering of brown cloth—a lofty set of "pigeon holes," nearly filled with documents of every description—and a set of chairs and stools in every state of dilapidation:—there was the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... impossible to live here and not feel very sorely the consequences of the horrid white mismanagement. I tried standing by and looking on, and it became too much for me. They are such illogical fools; a logical fool in an office, with a lot of red tape, is conceivable. Furthermore, he is as much as we have any reason to expect of officials—a thoroughly common-place, unintellectual lot. But these people are wholly on wires; laying their ears down, skimming away, pausing as though shot, and presto! full spread on the other tack. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tape which held the letters together. Yes, there was a piece of circumstantial evidence which might have helped to convict my friend had he been on his trial in a criminal court. The red tape bore the mark of the place in which it had been tied for half a century; and a little way within this mark the trace of a very recent tying. Some of the letters had been extracted, and the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Marine a plan for a rapid descent in force on the American coast. If his plan had been followed and properly executed the war might have been ended in America at one blow. But this project died in the procrastination and red tape of the Ministry of Marine, and a subsequent proposal for an attack on Liverpool dwindled into the mere commerce-destroying cruise which is memorable only for Jones's unparalleled fight with the Serapis. Eventually the navy of France was thrown into the balance to offset that of Great Britain, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... indefinable flavour of the pharmacopoeia lingers about the physician; the bombasine and horse-hair of the lawyer eat into his soul—his experiences are docketed in a clerkly hand, bound together with red tape, and put away in professional pigeon-holes. A man naturally becomes leavened by the profession which he has adopted. He thinks, speaks, and dreams "shop," as the colloquial phrase has it. Men of letters are affected by their profession just as merchants, physicians, and lawyers are. In ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... this. As they have established certain modes of lawful procedure for their own security, so may they adopt other modes when their safety demands it. Their laws and their codes of procedure are for their uses, not for their destruction. 'When a sister State is endangered, red tape must be cut,' said Governor Seymour, when it was telegraphed to him that some delaying forms must be gone through in order to arm and send off our State troops who were ordered to the defence of Harrisburg; and all the people said, Amen! The people of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... boasted that Minister —— had at length moved in the matter. The young man coolly replied, 'Yes, I spoke to my uncle last evening, and asked him to urge the matter with Cardinal Antonelli; but for that it would never have come!' There had been 'red tape,' and I had ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... it would not have the air of a proclamation. Extraordinary fact! you may overturn an entire country, but you must not touch the official style; it is immutable. One may triumph over empires, but must respect red tape. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... has made an innovation known as the "Cleveland plan" which seeks to minimize school routine, red tape and frequent examinations. Great stress is put on domestic and manual training courses, and promotion in the grammar schools is made dependent on the general knowledge and development of the pupil as estimated ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... and Findlayson watched him wield his powers temperately, learning what to overlook and what to look after. It was a long, long reverie, and it covered storm, sudden freshets, death in every manner and shape, violent and awful rage against red tape half frenzying a mind that knows it should be busy on other things; drought, sanitation, finance; birth, wedding, burial, and riot in the village of twenty warring castes; argument, expostulation, persuasion, and the blank despair that a man goes to bed ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... was very decidedly of opinion that even in October there was a glare—and in August—she shuddered to think of it! It was so tiresome, too, to have missed the Grandes Eaux. So like French red tape, to insist on stopping them on a particular date. Why should they be stopped? As to expense, that was nonsense. How could water cost anything! It was because the French were so doctrinaire, so tyrannical—so fond of managing for ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mismanaged, bore from the beginning fruits the very reverse of those it had promised." We seem here to be reading the history of more than one great railway enterprise undertaken by politicians without the red tape preliminaries of surveying or framing estimates, progress not deigning to wait upon trifles. This system of policy gave fine scope for the talents of the "log-roller," here defined as an especially wily and persuasive person, who could depict ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... and deaths of I don't know how many committees, after six weeks' struggling with something we imagined to be Red Tape, which proved to be the combined egoism of several persons all desperately anxious to "get to the Front," and desperately afraid of somebody else getting there too, and getting there first, we are actually off. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... Kavanagh had to enlist as a private, and you had to go wandering over the world for years, leaving your mother and sister in poverty and anxiety!" said Tom Strachan, meditatively. "People are always talking about red tape in the army; surely there is still more ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the requisition papers with which he was provided were good only in Colorado, and that it was simpler to wait than to go through all the red tape of having them reissued for Arizona. Knowing that the wires were completely at his service, the answer ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... father saw her and came to pull the tree out where she could see it, and, sure enough, there was a dust-pan tied on with a red tape, and a whisk-broom with another red tape, and a little sweeping-cap with a red bow, some gingham aprons and white aprons, and brown towels and red-and-white towels, and dust-cloths, all with red M's in their corners; and put at the top was a little book tied on the tree with a big red bow. Her mother ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... quick and safe wedding ceremony commend him to an enthusiastic, newly-arrived young missionary; and for rapid handling of red tape connected with a license, pin your faith to a fat and jolly American consul. So that was what the blessed rascal was doing all that afternoon he left me in Kioto to myself. Cannot you see success in life branded on ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... until it was overwhelmed by new forces, and I find extenuating circumstances even in remembrance of the high stupidities, the narrow imagination, the deep, impregnable, intolerant ignorance of Staff College men who with their red tape and their general orders were the inquisitors and torturers of the new armies. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. They were molded in an old system, and could not ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... his Regular training, Wetherall could appreciate and himself possessed to no small degree the peculiar virtues of the temporary officer, who based his methods on common sense and actual experience in the war rather than servile obedience to red tape and 'Regulations.' He had studied during the war as well as before it, with the result that military tradition—his regiment was the Gloucestershire—and his long service in the field combined to fit him for command of ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... avoidance of any official responsibility here in trying to find out where our passports are, and who is to return them. We have already unraveled yards of red tape, and still there is no end. Of course, ever since Peter came he has followed a schedule of visits—one day to the English Consul; another day to the secret police, then to the Military Governor, the Civil Governor, the Chief of Staff, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... hose & dublett with hookes & eyes," a "sute of Norden dussens or hampshire kersies lynd, the hose with skins, dublets with lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys," four bands, two handkerchiefs, a "wastcoate of greene cotton bound about with red tape," a leather girdle, a Monmouth cap, a "black hatt lyned in the browes with lether," five "Red knit capps mill'd about 5d a piece," two pair of gloves, a mandillion "lyned with cotton," one pair of breeches and waistcoat, and a "lether ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... night at the Ansonia and a hard night for M. Gritz. France is a land of infinite red tape where even such simple things as getting born or getting married lead to endless formalities. Judge, then, of the complicated procedure involved in so serious a matter as getting murdered—especially in a fashionable restaurant! Long before ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... or contemplated by the Government would be known to the so-called Government of the Confederate States almost as soon as thought of. All means to thwart and delay the carrying out of the Government's purposes that the excuses of routine and red tape admitted of would be used by the traitors within the camp to aid the traitors without. No one knew all this better than Mr. Lincoln. With no army, no navy, not even a revenue cutter left—with forts and arsenals, ammunition and arms, in possession of the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... without any traveling papers. He would arrange all irregularities with his friends in Genoa. Between captains they ought to exchange such services, and Ulysses Ferragut, who was awaiting his son in Naples (so Esteban told him), would not wish to waste time just because of some ridiculous, red tape formality. ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... for some minutes, walking slowly up and down the room and examining it. It was a very dull, serious room, almost depressing. On the large table lay bulbous important-looking briefs, tied up with red tape. Framed caricatures of judges and eminent barristers from Vanity Fair hung round the walls. The furniture was scarce, large and heavy. On the mantelpiece was a framed photograph with a closed leather cover. It looked interesting and expensive, and Nigel with his quick movements had the curiosity ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... received 60% of all foreign investment in Eastern Europe, and in 1992 received the largest single share. The growing private sector accounts for about one-third of national output according to unofficial estimates. Privatization of state enterprises is progressing, although excessive red tape, bureaucratic oversight, and uncertainties about pricing have slowed the process. Escalating unemployment and high rates of inflation may impede efforts to speed up privatization and budget reform, while Hungary's heavy foreign debt will make the government reluctant to introduce full ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Nor is this confidence in ultimate victory due to lack of information or to being kept in the dark by the "iron censorship," for the "iron censorship" is itself a myth. It is liberal, even judged by democratic standards, and surprisingly free from red tape. There is no embargo on the importation of foreign newspapers; even the anti-German journals of neutral countries have free entry and circulation, while at a number of well-known cosmopolitan cafes you can always ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... towards her. "Thanks," he drawled, "I dare say it's the kind of thing you'd like. They propose that I should stay on here at the Staff College for another year and write 'em a damned red tape report on Tibet." His irony, dropped from him. "If it was a job," he said in a low voice, ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... time the descriptive list and discharges of those who came under the exemption clause of the Conscription Act were made out, but there was so much red tape to be gone through with before all the provisions of the Act could be carried out, that the two friends were in a fever of suspense for fear that something might happen at the last minute to blast their hopes. Their ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... alone; hands off! and I will wager my new office against your old one that he steps into your honour's shoes.' Now you know perfectly well that Campbell has no more enthusiasm than a brick wall, or a roll of red tape; but he is as proud of the young man as if he were his son. Do you know that he has taken ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... beautiful, toy of man. The Government looks to you as its best aid, for moral sanction is its living soul; it looks to you for higher life, for, unless the heart of love is the throbbing life-pulse of Government, it sinks into a dull, lethargic mechanism. Far above the din of faction, the red tape of cabinets, the rivalry of generals, the strife of politicians, shines the resolve, and pulses the determination of woman, that mankind shall be free. For this, the dusky nation bless her as she moves; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Galaxy within moments after it had been sent, although the normal space distance was in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand light years. The message was bounced—in amazingly quick time—from office to office at the hub, cutting through the usual red tape because of its top priority. And—since none of the normal agencies at the Hub could handle it—the message finally arrived at an office which very rarely received official messages of any kind. This was the one unofficial, extra-legal office at the Hub of the Galaxy. Lacking official ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... of red tape, far above the ken of misguided mortals, lives an omnipotent being—the Censor. In imagination, he sits in a huge armchair, wreathed in tobacco smoke, casually sorting, from piles of manuscript, the ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... carrying comfort and hope from one rude couch to another. As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requisition for rations or for clothing, and easy as it is to rail at "red tape," the necessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justified the staff bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to support the quartermaster's and commissary's accounts. But here, too, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... on Ski-running advises people to carry some 60 metres of red tape and to let this trail behind them when crossing dangerous ground. Then, if overwhelmed by an avalanche, the red thread can be picked up by the search party and the victim may quickly be dug out. I have never met anyone who has carried out this suggestion and do not want the extra ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... ground. "I admit that he isn't what you might call orthodox," she said—"not the sort of man who would clothe himself in the rubric, tied on with red tape; but though he may not be a Christian, as we count Christianity, he believes with all his heart in an overruling Power which ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... little packet of manuscript; it is paginated, you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon of red tape. It has almost a legal air, hasn't it? Run your eye over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs. Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote this escaped with his life, but I do not think he ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... be difficult to find a more practical or comprehensive colonial program. It eliminates that bane of over-seas administration, red tape, and it puts the task of empire-building squarely up to the business man who is the best qualified for the work. I am quite certain that the advent of Monsieur Franck into office, and particularly his trip to the Congo, mean the beginning of an epoch of real ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... possible to avoid red tape, or indeed any methods likely to hinder initiative and enterprise, we are careful to apply a systemization comprehensible to the most untrained minds, so that we may make every one feel a proper degree of responsibility, as well as guard them from mere emotionalism and spasmodic ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... a feller that joined in France, so I know you can do it. You see, it cuts out a lot of red tape, and I'd kind of like hiking it alone—ever since I was a scout I've felt ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Active by salaaming peons from the government agent's office. At five o'clock the tug was ready to start Colomboward the instant the "despatches" I was to deliver came on board. At last the precious package, with a parade of red tape and impressive wax seals, was handed over the side. It may have contained something as priceless as a last year's directory; I never knew. It was my deep-seated suspicion, however, that the packet was somebody's excuse for letting the public treasury expend ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... waste our fishing-pots in their reckless course, so that our crabs walk backwards into the sea. We have had gentlefolks down from London about it, men who argue and palaver, and wear high hats and are said to have long bills, and there is talk of a Government cutter to protect us, towed by red tape, and the trawlers are to cast their nets farther asea. But beware of believing what you read in the Brixham papers,—we have no voice to represent us in the press, and so these Brixham organs spread falsehoods about us in every corner of the globe. A pretty pretence, forsooth, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... leather, ye hose & dublett with hooks & eyes." 1 "sute of Norden dussens or hampshire kersies lynd the hose with skins, dublets with lynen of gilford or gedlyman kerseys." 4 bands. 2 handkerchiefs. 1 "wastecoat of greene cotton bound about with red tape." 1 leather girdle. 1 "Monmouth cap." 1 "black hatt lyned in the brows with lether." 5 "Red knitt capps milf'd about 5d apiece." 2 "peares of gloves." 1 "Mandiliion lynd with cotton" [mantle or greatcoat]. 1 "peare of breeches and waistcoat." 1 "leather ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... thousands of valuable and curious manuscripts. A card of introduction to the Director from an influential source gave me the great pleasure of the use both of the library and the fine reading-rooms. Considerable time was consumed in the preliminaries, and there was red tape to be untied, but in general no unnecessary obstacles were thrown in the way even of a woman. On my first visit, before the requisite permission to use the library had been obtained, I was treated as a visitor, and most politely shown the treasures of the ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... fact by wiping her pen upon the green gown, and taking a pinch of snuff from a little round tin box which she carried in her pocket. Having disposed of this temperate refreshment, she arose from her stool, tied her papers into a formal packet with red tape, and taking them under her arm, marched ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... began to be treated as State assets and bought and sold like commercial chattels, the discharge of the functions connected with them becoming illusory, and the constant tendency being in the direction of multiplication of offices with a corresponding increase of red tape. Yoritomo and his councillors appreciated the evils of such a system and were careful not to imitate it at Kamakura. They took brevity and simplicity for guiding principles, and constructed a polity in marked contrast with ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... inharmonious to the eye at all times—most of all to one under the influence of a great grief. Laminae of white paper tied with twine were indiscriminately intermixed with other white papers bounded by black edges—these with blue foolscap wrapped round with crude red tape. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... a person would rarely speak with great ability. He would speak as a scribe. His habits must have been formed in the quiet of an office: he is used to red tape, placidity, and the respect of subordinates. Such a person will hardly ever be able to stand the hurly-burly of a public assembly. He will lose his head—he will say what he should not. He will get hot and red; he will feel he is a sort of culprit. After being used to the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... last generation. {77} His speeches on the revision of taxes, the corn laws, and British foreign trade, proved that, in a utilitarian age, he knew the science of utilities and had freed himself from bureaucratic red tape. His parliamentary career too had taught him the secret of the management of assemblies, and Canada would under him be spared the friction which the rigid attitude of soldiers, trained in the school of Wellington, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... to the Empire, had, as we have seen, first come out under direct appointment by the crown; and when parliamentary government was organized in British Columbia his position was confirmed as chief justice. He had less regard for red tape than most chief justices. Like Douglas, he first maintained law and order and then looked up to see if he had any authority for it. No man ever did more for a mining camp than Sir {92} Matthew Begbie. He stood for the rights of the poorest miner. In private life he was fond of music, ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... could have heard our remarks about the Divisional Baths and army red tape, he would have fainted at our wickedness. But Tommy is ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey |
