"Unreliable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as delightful as she expected that one to be, whither, in a few days, she must journey, and leave the dear home-folks, reluctantly, indeed. But then boys' fun always seemed like their idea of Fourth of July—just as noisy and just as unreliable. At the same time they always managed to put it off with a roar, and this roar had already set in for the Blanket ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... the chief value of the real expert often rests on his ability to influence the local physician.[14] At the late Wharton-Van Ness trial the defence desired to show that the work of the chemist employed by the prosecution was unreliable, because the analyses made by him in a previous case had "been condemned by the united voice of the whole scientific world." The court was not able to see the relevancy of this, and refused to allow the professional ability or standing of an expert to be called in question. The witness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... form of evidence is usually weak and unreliable. Most of the supposed allusions are much more vague than the two given. Where there have been similar events in history, the allusion might be to one which we had forgotten when we thought it was to a similar ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... time no observations had been taken. The altitude of the sun had been so low as to make observations unreliable. Moreover, we were traveling at a good clip, and the mean estimate of Bartlett, Marvin, and myself, based on our previous ice experience, was sufficient for dead reckoning. Now, a clear, calm day, with the temperature not lower than minus forty, made a checking of our dead reckoning seem ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... member." He has been reading Michelet's "History of France" which "gives him the essence of an old book which he had despaired of ever seeing, but which is the only authority extant, — save Froissart and a few others equally unreliable; it is the chronicle of the 'Continuator of Guillaume de Nangis'." With Olmsted's book of travels as a model, he planned a series of articles ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... an uncertain measure of relief. Tracheotomy, if done low in the neck, will completely relieve the dyspnea. By its therapeutic effect of rest, it favors the rapid subsidence of the inflammation in the larynx and is the treatment to be preferred. Intubation is treacherous and unreliable except in diphtheritic cases; but in the diphtheritic cases it is ideal, if constant skilled watching ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... considerable advantages might be expected from its use. Sometimes the smoke of the battle, and the difficulty of distinguishing the columns, that look like liliputians, so as to know to which party they belong, will make the reports of the balloonists very unreliable. For example, a balloonist would have been greatly embarrassed in deciding, at the battle of Waterloo, whether it was Grouchy or Bluecher who was seen coming up by the Saint-Lambert road; but this ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... sitting there abusing the poor man while they drink up the surplus of his existence. The men abuse the workmen, and their wives the servant girls. Just go in among the tables and listen! The poor are bestial, unreliable, ungrateful in spite of everything that is done for them; they are themselves to blame for their misery. It gives a spice to the feast to some of them, others dull their uneasy conscience with it. And yet all they eat and drink has been made ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the few claiming to have any insight into the real Hawk Carse who declared that a month went out of his life for every minute he spent in the cell then. The story, of course, came trickling out through various unreliable sources; we who delve in the lore of the great adventurer have to thank for our authorities Sewell, the great historian of that generation—who personally traveled several million miles to get what meager facts ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... they don't come true are you willing to acknowledge that all are unreliable? Or, if some prove true do you consider them all reliable? You can have either horn of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... for this wire to pass around a pulley, the revolution of which actuated the pen of the recording drum. This should have been successful but for the difficulty of making good mechanical connection between the recorder and the pulley. Backlash caused an unreliable record, and this arrangement had to be abandoned. The motion of the wire was then made to actuate the recorder through a hinged lever, and this arrangement holds, but days and even weeks have been lost in grappling the difficulties of adjustment between ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... in the Officers' Mess, which is in touch with sources of unreliable information not accessible to the rank and file. The humblest subaltern appears to be possessed of a friend at court, or a cousin in the Foreign Office, or an aunt in the Intelligence Department, from whom he can derive fresh and entirely different ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... opposite of whatever is instable, of whatever is practically disappointing, of whatever is useless, of whatever is lying and unreliable, of whatever is unverifiable and unsupported, of whatever is inconsistent and contradictory, of whatever is artificial and eccentric, of whatever is unreal in the sense of being of no practical account. Here ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the subject, for nearly every author in writing of our Indian tribes makes some mention of burial observances; but these notices are scattered far and wide on the sea of this special literature, and many of the accounts, unless supported by corroborative evidence, may be considered as entirely unreliable. To bring together and harmonize conflicting statements, and arrange collectively what is known of the subject, has been the writer's task, and an enormous mass of information has been acquired, the method of securing which has been already described in the preceding volume and need ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... undivided commune (why, it is difficult to see, when they are definitely exogamous), but regards the argument from terms of relationship as untrustworthy in this instance. If it is not reliable in one case it may well be unreliable in all; we are entitled to ask supporters of the hypothesis of group marriage what differentiates this case from those in which they have no doubt of the validity of ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... appear to be going on nearly all the time, and there does not seem to be any limit to the number of suckers who fall for them. But then, one can't blame the public when you realize how thoroughly unreliable is most of the market information given ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... twenty miles apart, the first kraal at which he arrived being within ten miles of the river bank. He described the Mashona as being a very fine race of people, almost if not quite equal in physique to the Zulus, but of a much more suspicious and unreliable character than the latter, and apparently exceedingly averse to the intrusion of strangers. Nevertheless, upon stating the nature of his mission, he had been passed on from kraal to kraal until finally ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... hopeful, trustful ones, who declared and repeatedly asseverated to the contrary. This is indeed, then, a scientific demonstration. It has proved, in most striking manner, the oft-repeated declarations of our text-books, that the evidence of the mortal senses is unreliable. ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... ranged in years from four to six; they were chiefly older than their host; this was a pity, it impaired his importance; but up to four years a child's sense of propriety, even of common decency, is altogether too unreliable for a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... employed with a very important and illuminating addition, in which we read, 'His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.' That is the secret of a fixed heart—continuous faith rooted and grounded in Him. This fluttering, changeful, unreliable, emotional nature of mine will be made calm and steadfast by faith, and duties done in the faith of God will bind me to Him; and sorrows borne and joys accepted in the faith of God will be links in the chain that knits Him ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... manuscript of Il Pastor Fido, the first new opera which he produced, is dated, at the end, "Londres, ce 24 Octobre." The opera-house was now under the management of Owen MacSwiney, who seems to have been both incompetent and unreliable. Il Pastor Fido did not attract the public, and was withdrawn after six performances, but Handel soon had another opera ready to take its place. Teseo was finished on December 19, and brought out on January 10, 1713; it was a romantic-heroic ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... The condition of the air, sometimes foggy and not pellucid, at another time particularly clear, makes an enormous difference, and statements whether about distance, size, colors, etc., are completely unreliable. A witness who has several times observed an unknown region in murky weather and has made his important observation under very clear skies, is not ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the moment he had fastened her mask, touching her hair and touched by her personality, he would rather have been without the honor; now he was disappointed, angry. She had found another escort and despised him. She was as other women, unreliable, changeable, inconstant. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... waiting, I might have learnt something of the management of the estate, but gross material preoccupations—the prospect of a passable luncheon at San Giovanni after the "Hotel Vittoria" fare—tempted me to press forwards. A boorish and unreliable-looking individual volunteered three pieces of information—that the house was built thirty years ago, that a large nursery for plants lies about ten kilometres distant, and that this particular domain covers "two or four thousand hectares." A young plantation ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... lobsters in Maine previous to 1880. It is therefore difficult to make comparisons, and one is compelled to depend largely upon the memory of the fishermen and the statements of the canners and dealers, which the lapse of time, etc., makes rather unreliable. The numerous petitions sent to the legislature asking for restrictive laws, while possibly exaggerated at times, indicate that there were fears of the exhaustion of the fishery for some years back. It is positively known, however, that certain ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... in the following pages endeavoured to resist the temptation to weave a web of pleasant but unreliable fiction round actual occurrences. That which is here set forth has been derived from facts, and in almost every case from manuscript records. It aims at telling the story of an eventful and exciting period according to historical and ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... quite commonly a peculiar glow of sunshine just before a storm, a brightness so obviously unreliable that we are torn between enjoyment and anxiety. I have known no greater revelation of Nature's glories, even in a sunset hour, than in one of these moments of glow before the darkness of storm. And in a man's life there is sometimes an episode so bright, so ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... when I am dead and gone, and I might as well have the good of giving them away. Most of the girls are married off and have husbands to provide for them. I used to think I'd take some orphan body to train and sort of fill Polly's place, for she grows more unreliable every day. Yet I do suppose it's Christian charity to keep her. And ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... only children and babies. Fifty banded together for such purposes! Is it possible? Three would be quite sufficient, and then they should be sure of one another—not babble over their cups. The babies! Then to hire unreliable people to change the notes at the money changers', persons whose hands tremble as they receive the rubles. On such their lives depend! Far better to strangle yourself! The man goes in, receives the change, counts some over, the last portion he takes on faith, stuffs all in his pocket, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Stephen, fretting Moses, crucifying Christ. Finding much that was admirable, and more that seemed ignoble, he gravely and reverently sought to possess himself of the subtle arcana of this marvellous book, rejecting as equally erroneous and unreliable the magnifying zeal of optimism and the gloomy jaundiced lenses of sneering pessimism,—thoroughly satisfied that it was a solemn duty, obligatory upon all, to study that complex paradoxical human nature, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Indian warriors. When they arrived near the mouth of the river, the Indians desired to be set on shore, that they might advance by land to the fort, and attack the Pequots by surprise. The English were very apprehensive that their unreliable allies were about to prove treacherous, and to desert to the Pequots. But, as it was desirable to test them before the hour of battle arrived, they were permitted to land. The Mohegans, however, proved faithful. On their ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... other order of things. In this point taste ranks with manners, which are, after all, a department of the same region of right feeling and discernment. If taste is untaught and spontaneous, it is generally unreliable and without consistency. If self-taught it can hardly help becoming dogmatic and oracular, as some highly gifted minds have become, making themselves the supreme court of appeal for their ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... answer, either for itself or for others. In its own consciousness the official Christian State is an Ought, which is impossible of realization. Only by lies can it persuade itself of the reality of its existence, and consequently it always remains for itself an object of doubt, an unreliable and ambiguous object. The critic is therefore quite justified in forcing the State, which appeals to the Bible, into a condition of mental derangement where it no longer knows whether it is a phantasm or a reality, where the infamy of its secular objects, for which ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the Blue Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and Guatemala (which was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word uttered by the delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As for the Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian delegation which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made public either in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but they would be put in the Secretariat Library ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... on which we split, and hate the shoal on which many a barque is stranded. When we become fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we have unshipped the rudder; and if ever we stop to meditate on what the gossips say, we have allowed a hawser to ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... the minority found that the testimony upon the point was "limited in amount, vague and indefinite in character and utterly unreliable, because of the disreputable character of the witnesses"—oddly overlooking the fact that one of these witnesses had been called for Apostle Smoot; that no attempt had been made to impeach the character of this witness; ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... their evenings than sitting about in a dim cellar gazing cross-eyed at their own scandalous noses. MacLachan was the first defection. He said that he thought he was going crazy and he knew he was going blind. The Little Red Doctor was unreliable owing to the pressure of professional calls. He complained with some justice that a green nose on a practicing physician tended to impair confidence. Then Leon Coventry went away, and Boggs discovered (or invented) an important engagement with a growing family of clothes-moths ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a still more arduous problem. It involved the assumption, very much at discretion, of an average parallax for the stars investigated; and Otto Struve's estimate of 154 million miles as the span yearly traversed was hence wholly unreliable. Fortunately, however, as will be seen further on, a method of determining the sun's velocity independently of any knowledge of star-distances, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... For it may easily be seen that while it is feasible to count the stamens even when converted into pistils, it is not possible when groups of them are more or less intimately united into single bodies. This combination makes all enumeration difficult and inaccurate and often wholly unreliable. In such cases the observation is limited to a computation of the degree of the change, rather than to a strict numerical inquiry. Happily the responses to the experimental influences are so marked and distinct that even this method of describing them has ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... might well have said, "Trust in the Lord and keep your powder dry!" For he had done all that naval foresight could have done to ensure success. And now, in one lightning flash of genius, he reviewed the situation. He knew the torpedoes of his day were often unreliable, that they exploded only on a special kind of shock, that those which did explode could not be replaced in action, that they were all fixed to their own spots, and that if one ship was blown up her next-astern would ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... refused, "because Dame Nature stood in the way,"—which she certainly did if tubular pneumatics had been used. The fact was that up to this time all the electric actions invented had proved more or less unreliable, and Willis, who had an artistic reputation to lose, refused to employ them. As an instance of their clumsiness we may mention that the best contact they could get was made by dipping a platinum point in a cell containing mercury! ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... the full confidence of his party, and perhaps with the exception of General Jackson, that of any individual. In moneyed matters, he was eminently unreliable; but all admitted his great abilities. In social qualities, he was entirely deficient. He had no powers of attraction to collect about him friends, or to attach even his political partisans. These were proud of his talents, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... repeated sternly, "but I cannot fight women. You cannot tell what they will do; they are absolutely unreliable; they are ungrateful, too. Many of these women who form the cursed Women's Club, are women I have been on friendly terms with; so has the Chief. We have granted them interviews; we have listened to their suggestions; always with courtesy, always with patience. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... amiss to meditate somewhat upon the expense which it involves. Experience has demonstrated, I believe, that all estimates concerning the probable future cost of a pension list are uncertain and unreliable and always fall far below ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... reckless and thoroughly unreliable," she said, "and she gets more stupid every day. If you were wise you would put her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... leaves of these trees appearing in the spring, and is supposed to be prophetic of the weather during the ensuing summer. I have, however, noticed for many years that the oak is invariably first, so that like some other prognostications, it seems to be unreliable. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... here," said he; "I will not put this in your hands. You are too hasty and unreliable to be entrusted with it. Your wife shall have it. It is useful, if taken in small quantities, just a drop or two, but if too much be taken by accident, then you will fall into a sleep from which there is no awaking. I can quite fancy that you in your irritable mood, because ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... seen working had no dividers, square, measure, or any instrument of precision. As before stated, I have seen scissors used as compasses, but as a rule they find approximate centers with the eye, and cut all shapes and engrave all figures by the unaided guidance of this unreliable organ. Often they cut out their designs in paper first and from them mark off patterns on the metal. Even in the matter of cutting patterns they do not seem to know the simple device of doubling the paper in order to ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews
... shall be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi apparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it worth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet who would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met with fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed, the very comparison employed in ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... to have written to Stella or to Swift—there are discrepancies in the versions given by Sheridan and Lord Orrery, both of whom are unreliable—asking whether the report that they were married was true. Swift, we are told, rode to Celbridge, threw down Vanessa's letter in a great rage, and left without speaking a word.(9) Vanessa, whose health had been failing for some time, died shortly ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sayings and doings, reliable or unreliable, that have been handed down to us, are extremely comical, looking at them from our religious standpoint in these days; for instance, Drake's method of dealing with insubordination, his idea of how treason was to be stamped out, and the trial of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... I always trouble you with all sorts of commissions—but my Vienna acquaintances are so lazy and unreliable that I have no other alternative but to set you ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... utility, and are characterized by defects which are at once forced upon us by a little close examination. Felt is an admirable non-conductor of heat, but owing to its combustible nature it is quite unreliable when subject to the heat of a high pressure of steam. A large fragment of this material which had been taken off the boiler of a North River steamboat was exhibited at the meeting, scorched and charred as if it had been exposed to the direct action ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... However unreliable Liszt's facts may be, the PHILOSOPHY of his account shows real insight. Karasowski, on the other hand, has neither facts nor insight. He speaks with a novelist's confidence and freedom of characters whom he in no way knows, and about whom he has nothing to tell but the vaguest ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that little valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a dreamer,—romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... whenever they desired an authority to prove that which they wished themselves and their readers to believe of trumped-up stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings. Certainly, Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the chroniclers that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor. Neither his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the impartial reader with confidence in either his criticisms ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... to go to school, Madge," argued Mrs. Curtis half-heartedly. "Tania does not know any of the things she should. Philip Holt, who does so much good work among the poor in Tania's tenement district, says that the child is most unreliable and does not tell ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... Heartily commended in Blackwood, it was generally recognised as one of the best English renderings of any foreign author; and Jeffrey, in his absurd review of Goethe's great prose drama, speaks in high terms of the skill displayed by the translator. The virulent attack of De Quincey—a writer as unreliable as brilliant—in the London Magazine does not seem to have carried much weight even then, and has none now. The Wanderjahre, constituting the third volume of the English edition, first appeared ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... offense. Said he drank when he got the chance. Now worked around the Army Hotel and received in return his bed and one meal ticket a day. Expected to leave the city as soon as the weather got warmer. Evidently a kind of tramp with a tendency to become worse. Looked wild and unreliable. ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... constantly resorted to in protection of individual and public interests. . . . If they are relied upon as agencies for accurate mathematical results in mensuration and astronomy, there is no reason why they should be deemed unreliable in matters of evidence. Wherever what they disclose can aid or elucidate the just determination of legal controversies there can be no well- founded objection to resorting to them." Frank v. Chemical Nat. Bank, 37 Superior ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... write, don't they? Namby-pamby, silly-billy stories, misleading in every line! They are the most unsafe pilots on the shores of human life. They start, without exception, from false premises. Their chart is wrong, their compass unreliable, their reckoning ridiculous from beginning to end. Where did you ever see a bit of real life that resembled these abortions? Do lovers usually fall on their knees when they propose? Is the modern girl an idiot, knowing less of the facts of nature than an oyster? Is the conversation between men and ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... they are submerged, is their sole weapon of attack, they have an uncertain means of striking their armed enemy. The eccentricities of the automobile torpedo are well known; but, even eliminating the fact that this missile is unreliable, the important question of accuracy in the estimate of range and speed which the submersible commander has to make before firing the torpedo must be considered. There is usually a large percentage of error in his calculations unless the submersible is extremely close to its target. Realizing these ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... haunting me. I had several times been called into the manager's room, and reprimanded for unpunctuality, or cautioned for wasting my time. The few friends who on my first coming to the town had taken an interest in me had dropped away, disgusted at my unreliable conduct, or because I myself had neglected their acquaintance. My employers had ceased to entrust me with any commissions requiring promptitude or care; and I was nothing more than an office drudge—and a very unprofitable drudge too. Such was ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... interposed, speaking on the prisoner's behalf. He appealed to the Judges to say whether such loose and unreliable evidence as this was evidence which could be ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... see how unreliable in pathological cases is the calculation of the amount of haemoglobin from the amount of iron. We have been particularly led to these observations by the work of Biernacki, since the procedure of inferring the amount of haemoglobin from the amount of iron has led to really remarkable conclusions. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... said the young 'squire's mother; "but the judge will appoint you, don't you think, since she is weak-minded, and Lige is so unreliable? Poor Sabriny would have very little comfort in that torn-down hut I'm afraid. Did the judge say he would see ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... is to feel safe. And we see to it that they do not. Death waits for them at the street corner, on their travels, at their own doorsteps. They never know at what moment the bomb may not be thrown, or the pistol fired. It is sad that explosives are so unreliable. There are many difficulties. You would not believe the obstacles that we find placed in our path at every turning. And for those who are suspected there is Siberia, and the mines. But it is worth it. It is worth anything to feel that one is working and risking all for one's country, and one's fellow-countrymen. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... my experiments with the motormen, accordingly, I had to satisfy only two demands. The method of examination promised to be valuable if, first, it showed good results with reliable motormen and bad results with unreliable ones; and secondly, if it vividly aroused in all the motormen the feeling that the mental function which they were going through during the experiment had the greatest possible similarity with their experience on the front platform of the electric car. These are the true tests of ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... Varya and his father-in-law, who had come to dinner. Varya's eyes were red with crying, and she complained of a headache, while Shelestov ate a great deal, saying that young men nowadays were unreliable, and that there was very ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... all the next day for a gang of six of them to get the place straightened up. Neither Conn nor Gomez, who was a roboticist himself, would trust any of the workers or the two supervisors; their experiences out of control had rendered them unreliable. They took out their power units and left them to be torn down and repaired later. Other robots were brought in to replace them. When they were through, the power-unit cartridge plant was ready ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the discussion is to be followed by resistance. Tyrants care nothing for discussions that are to end only in discussion. Discussions, which do not interfere with the enforcement of their laws, are but idle wind to them. Suffrage is equally powerless and unreliable. It can be exercised only periodically; and the tyranny must at least be borne until the time for suffrage comes. Be sides, when the suffrage is exercised, it gives no guaranty for the repeal of existing laws that are oppressive, and no security against the ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... portion of the dictionary which includes the common-place compliments of society. In her mouth they have a common place, indeed. Some people call such utterances "stuff," "nonsense," "puerilities," but nobody is so prejudiced and unreliable as the above-named some people. They complacently think they know a thing or two, but that is all it amounts to. ARABELLA hasn't any doubt about her being perfection. Unfortunately there is a question about some matters in this world in politics, religion, morality and other kindred ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... were found to be very inaccurate and unreliable, the actual position of places often proving to be many miles away from where shown; frequently roads followed quite a different route! In one place a railway line was omitted altogether from the map, while in another, a river marked ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... pursuit, profession, state, or occupation, whoever possesses capital, a revenue, an establishment, respectability, public esteem, education and mental and moral culture. The party in June, 1793, is composed of little more than unreliable workmen, town and country vagabonds, the habitues of hospices[34169], sluts of the gutter, degraded and dangerous persons,[34170] the declasse, the corrupt, the perverted, the maniacs of all sorts. In ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... interferes to prevent the circulation of spurious coin.' Counterfeit coin is more readily detected than a fictitious paper currency, yet no sane man would advocate the repeal of the laws which prohibit it. Why, then, permit the unlimited manufacture of paper money of an unreliable character? ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... had been, that the calloused spots were going under the steady rubbing of nightly oil massage, so lately he had added the same treatment to her feet; if they were not less bony, if the skin were not soft and taking on a pinkish colour, Mickey felt that his eyes were unreliable. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... POLITICAL SOCIALISTS: DIFFERENCES.—The chief difference between the two groups is one of method. The political socialists prefer political action to violence; the I.W.W. prefer violence to political action. The I.W.W. believe that political methods are altogether too slow and unreliable, and accordingly they have so far refused to affiliate with any political party. The extreme limits to which the I.W.W. have gone in the matter of violence have caused many political socialists to disavow this militant group. The attempt has even been made to prove that the I.W.W. are not socialists ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... thought of him? What did she think of him? Nothing perhaps. She had belonged to the "old guard." Many men had passed through her hands. He felt at that moment acute hostility to women. They were treacherous, unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women—he was thinking of women of the world—even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare even when war was over. One had to fight always against the instability ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... however, about which there is no doubt—that a panic seized the people and the courts, and made them as unreliable as in the days of the Salem witchcraft. But these striking exhibitions of the weakness of human nature under certain circumstances have been witnessed since the world was made, and probably will continue to the end of time, or until the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... is lucky to be rid of you. Such a foolish, deceitful, hypocritical Downie, such an unreliable little wisp, such a, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... political secret societies. Of course, with a large portion of the Secret Service fund at my disposal, I was able to buy expert assistance, and even to get information from anarchists themselves. This latter device, however, was always more or less unreliable. I have never yet met an anarchist I could believe on oath, and when one of them offered to sell exclusive information to the police, we rarely knew whether he was merely trying to get a few francs to keep himself from starving, or whether ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... picture-show, and even had these glimpses been afforded, they'd have been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is—and hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a hat ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... as to certain important dates in Audubon's life. He was often careless and unreliable in his statements of matters of fact, which weakness during his lifetime often led to his being accused of falsehood. Thus he speaks of the "memorable battle of Valley Forge" and of two brothers of his, both officers in the French army, ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... with Martha, daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, and married her in the Fleet on March 2, 1715. As was only to be expected from a person so volatile he from the beginning neglected his wife; but, as is put quaintly in that unreliable work, Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, which was concocted by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, "after some years of continu'd extravagance, the Duke, either through the natural Inconsistency of his Temper, or the Reflection how much he had ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... beverage, was rather a luxury and appears to have been used sparingly and rum, which retailed at 8 pence a pint, was used almost universally. Human nature was much the same in the eighteenth as in the twentieth century. The men often drank to excess, and some of them would have been utterly unreliable but for the fact that Simonds and White were masters of the situation and could cut off the supply. They generally doled out the liquor by half pints and gills to their laborers. On one occasion we find Mr. Simonds writing, "The men are in low spirts, have nothing to eat but pork ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Peterborough's only failure; with this exception every one of his plans had proved successful, and he only failed here from trusting for once to the cooperation of his wholly unreliable Spanish allies. After this nothing was done on either side ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... disapproves without comment. Evelyn had made a great success of her dressmaking, but such aid as she could give must be given her sister, for Marguerite's early and ill-considered marriage had come to the usual point when, with an unreliable husband, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and bitter poverty and want, she found herself much in the position of her mother, twenty years before. May was still living in Oakland, widowed. Her two sons were at home and working, and ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... more than sixty years afterward, was as vivid as on the succeeding day. Indeed, Stewart, as is often the case with aged persons, remarked that his memory of occurrences a half century old was unerring, while of quite recent incidents it was unreliable. ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... Wieland, for having provided him with such an unreliable weapon, Wittich was about to announce himself conquered, when Hildebrand, realizing that he had not acted honorably, gave him back his own blade. Dietrich, to his surprise and dismay, found himself conquered in this second encounter, and was forced to acknowledge that ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... invent. For they are arrangements of words which function in the absence of God. God is not exactly absent, to be sure, since the memory of Him lingers in the hearts of men. But it is a vague memory and at times unreliable. It would appear that He was on earth only for a short interval and failed ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... menagerie, and he spoke of them affectionately. "They bring to my mind the power and beauty of God," he said. He came to meals with the community, at least to dinner, until five or six years before his death, when his appetite became so unreliable that he took what food he could, and when he could, in his room. He also attended the community recreations after meals until a few years before the end; but it was often noticed that the process of humiliation ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... heart swelled with gratitude. Of course Donald Morley was nothing to her now. She had assured herself of that so continuously for two months that she was beginning to believe it. She knew that he was wild, reckless and unreliable, that he had failed her in her greatest need, and that she had put him out of her life forever. But it was good of the ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... through the senses, and the same may be said of all minds in a general way; but the approaches to a sensual mind are only through the senses, and they, being perverted, abused, exhausted, or unduly excited, furnish the utterly unreliable avenues by which truth reaches the soul. The grand reason why truth, published from the pulpit and the platform, revealed in periodicals and books, and embodied in pictures and statues, works no greater changes upon the minds and morals of men, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Obesity.—Many persons, the most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared with the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the novice should bear in mind the tendency of the curved sori of youth to become straightened and even confluent with age, although such changes are rather unreliable. Possibly the suggestion of the poetic Davenport may be helpful to some that there is "An indefinable charm about the various forms of the lady fern, which soon enables one to know it from its peculiarly graceful ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... to be so unreliable, monstrous to be so saltatory, so capricious, as to upset other ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... before, but she had had countless photographs made, and supposed herself thoroughly acquainted with the spot. But, to some minds, photographs are confusing things, jumbling up the points of compass in an unreliable manner. Joyce found that it was almost as strange as if never pictured out before her, and a great deal uglier than she had supposed. She shivered as she gazed around upon the bleakness everywhere, perhaps largely ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... ready to fulfill his engagement—if you are not I don't see how I can force you to do so. But you will do yourself no good if you leave us in the lurch—I'm afraid people who are arranging concerts will feel that you are a little unreliable." ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... a good rollicking song, preferably of a patriotic turn, but is very unreliable as to the sources ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... in the ranks," he replied, "as ever came out of them. The law of heredity is almost as unreliable as the law of variation. Everything rises out of the mud, and everything ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... is unreliable. I believe as little in phrenology as in palm-reading. I have directed thousands of men in business. Personal experience has proved to me that the permanent structure of a particular human body is not an invariably true index to the characteristics of the inner, or ego ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... Sazuki the day when he would come, 'a little speck in the distance, climbing the hillock'—how she would wait 'a bit to tease him and a bit so as not to die at our first meeting'—ending with the triumphant assurance (born of her woman's intuition, which, alas! proves so frequently unreliable) that it would all come to pass as ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... M. Le President," said he, "that the Russians are in secret treaty with the English, and the Russo-French Alliance is all nonsense—the most unreliable of broken reeds?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... ran counter to the prevailing views of his time. It was generally believed that, if Troy had ever any real existence at all, its site was to be looked for not at Hissarlik, but far inland near Bunarbashi; while the authority of Pausanias as to the graves of the Atreidae was held to be quite unreliable. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... especially touched by it because he had needlessly burned some of the beautiful homes of the very officers who were so gracious to him. This courtesy was very fine in Gates, but he failed in his duty to his Commander-in-Chief, and in many ways was unreliable. He did not report the victory to Washington, as was his duty, and paid no attention to his commands. He did not send the troops to Philadelphia, as he was ordered, and he did not even return the company of Virginia riflemen until ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay
... all, Madam; it's Fraser—'Fingerless' Fraser. He's an utterly worthless rogue, and absolutely unreliable so far as I can learn. I picked him up on the ice in Norton Sound, with a marshal ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... it is you are not near enough to be disenchanted!" Nattie replied to "C." "Your mind's eye is very unreliable. Tall! why, I'm only five feet! never was guilty of a dimple, and my eyes are of ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... teachers, that all the supernatural must be eliminated from the Bible as mythical and unreliable, and so I was robbed of my Christ, my God and my Bible. Misguided by rationalism, I thought it my conscientious duty to accept, step by step, the dictates of destructive criticism until the Bible was only inspired to me in religion as ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... see him?" Edna exclaimed, hotly. "Why didn't you go and find him? As if anything could be more important! That's the way with men—always afraid of intruding. Such a disappointment! Oh, what an unreliable, helpless, futile ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... known to the people of Ireland in the fourth century. The Greek Menology asserts that it was carried thither by Simon Zelotes, but this is contradicted by the Roman Breviary and the Martyrologists. Simeon Metaphrastes attributes it to St. Peter, Vincent of Beauvais to St. James. Unreliable as these traditions may be taken singly, they nevertheless agree in placing the conversion of Ireland at a very early date, probably, as Geoghegan says, in the fourth century. It is certain that about ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... place, the 2 volumes of ozone being changed back into 3 volumes of oxygen. It is possible that traces of ozone exist in the atmosphere, although its presence there has not been definitely proved, the tests formerly used for its detection having been shown to be unreliable. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... with a laugh: "we are very lasting. It is only the unfortunate people under military rule who prove unreliable. Let me sing you my latest song to cheer your spirits. I only learned ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... is a Goth in race, and has travelled over a great part of the world, has been here; he is a man of a good understanding, but unreliable. He said that he had seen the X. Decades of Livy, in two big and oblong volumes written in Lombard characters, and there was on the title page of one volume a note that the codex contained the ten decades ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... been wind during the day and the marks were blurred. He felt for a match, but his fingers were too numbed to open the watertight case, and he proceeded to measure the distance between the footprints. This was an unreliable test, as a big deer's stride varies with its pace, but he thought the tracks indicated a caribou. Then he stopped, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... had not interfered in their behalf. When therefore he heard the charge against him, and realised the fact that he was wholly in their power, and utterly at their mercy, his courage—which at the best of times was only of a very flimsy and unreliable character— utterly gave way; he involuntarily turned his eyes for a moment upon the miserable second mate; recalled the fact that the wretched man had been doomed to a speedy and degrading death by the same individuals ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the vicious and the unreliable. Other evils may flourish among the idle, the indolent, the treacherous, the deceitful and the dishonest, but industry and economy and integrity and faithfulness and honor and even God-fearing piety are desirable qualities in the usurer's victims. The higher the civilization, yes Christian ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... histories of nearly all of the large systems, as well as very accurate details of the financial reorganizations of all of the defaulted properties. The most comprehensive history of any American railroad system is "The Story of Erie", by H. S. Mott (1900), but even this is partially unreliable and much of it is compiled from unofficial sources. On the financial history of the Erie Railroad, the really valuable authority is Charles Francis Adams in his "Chapters of Erie" (1871). This book furnishes a full and accurate account ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... of a century ago, George Steevens, the acutest, and, perhaps, the most accomplished, but certainly the most perverse and unreliable of Shakespeare's commentators and critics, wrote thus of Shakespeare's life: "All that is known, with any degree of certainty, concerning Shakespeare, is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon; married and had children there; went to London, where he commenced actor,[A] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... proved that the routes across the isthmus of Central America are at best but a very uncertain and unreliable mode of communication. But even if this were not the case, they would at once be closed against us in the event of war with a naval power so much stronger than our own as to enable it to blockade the ports at either end of these routes. After ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... therefore, with true feminine confidence that I place my services at your disposal, and, my information being of the most unreliable description (derived invariably from the owners), I feel sure that those of your readers who follow my tips will have no cause to regret their temerity, as, being like all women, nothing if not original, I intend to tip, not ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... verging on childishness. Pluto was convinced that despite the old man's wonderful memory of details in the past, he was entirely irresponsible as to his accounts of the present, and he did not intend that the McVeigh family or any of their visitors should be the subject of his unreliable gossip. Pride of family was by no means restricted to the whites. Revolutionary as Pluto's sentiments were regarding slavery, his self esteem was enhanced by the fact that since he was a bondman it was, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... injudiciously allowed to make raids among the natives upon any occasion. The trouble comes to a head with the murder of the nephew of one of the chiefs, Dalinen, by another chief Calignao, the latter of whom appears to have been a thoroughly unreliable and malicious man. Dalinen, in order to avenge the murder in accordance with Zambal traditions, takes to the wilds, but with his followers, is pursued by the soldiers of the garrison. As Calignao has ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... little to gain. They were turbulent and rebellious. Revolts among the soldiers were common. They brought new vices to the camps, and learned in addition all the vices of the Romans. They were greedy, unreliable, and cherished concealed enmities. They had no common interest or bond of union. They were always ready for revolt, and gave away the highest prizes to fortunate generals. They sold the imperial dignity, and became the masters rather than the servants of the emperors. Diocletian ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... surprised. He rather expected a real and tangible manifestation, a vision of delight, clothed in some fair figure. He sat there, rigidly, watching for the least symptom of unholy pleasure. He had no clock by which to tell the time, and his watch was thoroughly unreliable. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... controversy of 1855-1865 in focus. The necessity for a reappraisal arises from the fact that today's references to the origin of Bessemer steel[2] often contain chronological and other inaccuracies arising in many cases from a dependence on secondary and sometimes unreliable sources. As a result, Kelly's contribution has, perhaps, been overemphasized, with the effect of derogating from the work of another American, Alexander Lyman Holley, who more than any man is entitled to credit for establishing Bessemer steel ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... most of the boys smiled when I said 'hookey,'" ventured Uncle Ben, critically. "But let me tell you! 'Hookey' is an innocent-looking vice that leads to great trouble. It is the seed of being unreliable. A man who is unreliable is a failure in the beginning. So, ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Blackfeet on horseback—and treeless plains, the English set him down as a lying impostor. Indians on horseback! They had never seen Indians but in canoes and on snowshoes! Hendry was dismissed as unreliable, and no Englishman went up the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... touched its shores—as probably no other Englishmen of his time knew India, not even those whose lives had been for the most part passed in the country. And this comprehensive knowledge Burke was able to impart again with a readiness that was never unreliable, with a copiousness that was never redundant. He gave a fascination to the figures of Indian finance; he made the facts of contemporary Indian history live with all the charm of the most famous events of Greek or ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... unreliable," sagely commented Jane. "But I'm afraid outside influence spoiled the plot for the spook tragedy. I hope my things come today for the prom. I feel rather in need of a first class time under the beneficent influence of a real orchestra and prudently ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... disquieting influence yet." "France and Germany are looked upon as certain to lead off the ball, and Germany, it is generally thought, will be found at the head of the set and take the initiative. Preparations for a big fight continue in every direction." "Russia, if we can believe the tales from that unreliable country, is quietly making preparations on a tremendous scale to have her ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... Buxtorfs, Bartolocci, Wolff, Surrenhuys, and De Rossi. Unfortunately, the interest dies out with them, and it is significant that to this day most eminent theologians, decidedly to their own disadvantage, "content themselves with unreliable secondary sources," instead of drinking from ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... had the same chance always, who knows what she might not have become by now! Everything is ticketed, it is called by a name and put down under such and such a heading—women are 'weak' and 'illogical' and 'unreliable' and men are 'brave' and 'sound' and 'to be trusted'—tosh! in quantities of cases—and if so, why so? Women are wonderful beings in many ways—of a courage! The way they bear things so gladly for men—think of their suffering when they have children. You don't ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... ladies of station are expected to possess. In the second place, I want to see whether Mr. Armadale will continue to think of you as he thinks now, without being encouraged in his attachment by seeing you, or reminded of it by hearing from you. If I am wrong in thinking him flighty and unreliable, and if your opinion of him is the right one, this is not putting the young man to an unfair test—true love survives much longer separations than a separation of six months. And when that time ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a cloud of smoke soon collects in front of a line firing at will, hiding, more or less completely, the enemy from view. The fire being then at random, it is, of course, unreliable. ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... unreliable and unsatisfactory treatment the simple and scientific, exact and efficient natural methods. The natural remedies can be applied from the first, at the slightest manifestation of inflammatory and febrile symptoms. No matter what the specific ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... to result from a combination of the scratch man with the 18 against the two players of medium handicaps, although the scratch man, if a selfish player, may not be disposed to saddle himself with the unreliable person at the other end of the scale. It is a point to be borne in mind that the 18 man, if, despite his handicap, he is a real and conscientious golfer, is more likely to play above his handicap than the scratch man. It is much easier for an 18-handicap player to perform like a 12 than ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... awfully sorry," he said. "This is the second time in succession that Dalla and I have had to bolt away from here, but policemen are like doctors—always on call, and consequently unreliable guests. While you're feasting, think commiseratingly of Dalla and me; we'll probably be having a sandwich and a ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... the English population was taken before 1805, the numbers were never exactly known, and eighteenth century economists spent much time and ingenuity in trying to ascertain the growth of population by calculations based upon the number of occupied houses, or by generalising from slender and unreliable local statistics, without in the end arriving at any close agreement. Still less reliable will be the estimates of the relative size and importance of the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Savoys neither head as readily (the "Improved American Savoy" being an exception) nor do the heads grow as large as the Drumhead varieties; indeed, most of the kinds in cultivation are so unreliable in these respects as to be utterly worthless for market purposes, and nearly ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... when one has a party, I believe it is customary to fee the company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple of hours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy had gone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person: always awake and ready to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off to sleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe—then I got up and lighted ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... possible. He showed her in great living pictures the functioning of the colossal gigantic machinery of the State, he tried to explain to her the working of the wheels, the multifarious transmissions, regulators and detents, unreliable pendulums and untrustworthy ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... discussion of the condition, incentive and motive of the Plautine actor, let us pass on to a more detailed consideration of his methods and technique. Naturally by far the most important part of this was gesture. Here again, while some of our evidence is somewhat unreliable, practically every shred of extant testimony indicates an extreme liveliness and vivacity. In the rhetoricians frequent warning is issued to the forensic neophyte to avoid the unrestraint of theatrical gesticulation. Cicero ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... seismologist, Professor Milne, urges very forcibly that measurements obtained from the projection or fall of columns are unreliable, for the earlier tremors might cause the columns to rock, and their overthrow need not therefore measure accurately the maximum velocity of the critical vibration.[16] There can be no doubt that Mallet was alive to this difficulty, ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... where the good is done for the sake of the good, do we find true morality, that unconditioned, self-grounded worth. The man who does that which is in accordance with duty out of reflection on its advantages, and he who does it from immediate—always unreliable—inclination, acts legally; he alone acts morally who, without listening to advantage and inclination, takes up the law into his disposition, and does his duty because it is duty. The sole moral motive is the consciousness of duty, respect ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... Promotion of Christian Knowledge. When he had finished the Arabic, i.e. somewhere about 1724 or 1725, he cut his own name in Roman type and placed it at the foot of the specimen. This attracted the notice of Samuel Palmer, the author of a very unreliable History of Printing, and with Palmer, Caslon worked for some time, but at length transferred his services to William Bowyer, for whom he cut the ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... prisoners marched in this afternoon. It is said a copy of the New York Herald is in town, which acknowledges Hooker's loss to be fully 40,000. There are rumors, also, that our army in Tennessee has gained a great victory. Rumors from the West have hitherto been so very unreliable, that I shall wait patiently for the confirmation of any reports ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the conservation of peace. However, I cannot—as I told you in my first telegram—consider the action of Austria-Hungary as an 'ignominious war.' Austria-Hungary knows from experience that the promises of Serbia as long as they are merely on paper are entirely unreliable. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... some hitch," she explained. "If you get the box, and it reaches Dorfield safely, then I'll accept the return of my money; but railroads are unreliable affairs and have queer rules, so let's ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum) |
