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More "Well-meaning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... answered the stiff and stolid Sabin; "I can see nothing suspicious about it. Indeed, it goes to show me that the rebellion is crushed; for, as I presume, the honest but well-meaning part of the rebels are ashamed, and their leaders afraid to show their faces here to-day, after last ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... head erect, pausing occasionally to look round for the captain. Edward Tredgold looked too, and a feeling of annoyance at the childish stratagems of his well-meaning ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... encourage Augustus to see as much as possible of his own people.—I have no doubt in my own mind that the account of Damaris' illness is absurdly exaggerated. You know how Charles spoils her! She has very much too much freedom; and little Miss Bilson, though well-meaning, is incapable of coping with a headstrong girl like Damaris. She ought—Damaris ought I mean—to have been sent to a finishing school for another year at least. She might then have found her level. If Charles had consulted me, or ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... full of worked cushions, each of which was a keepsake—a souvenir of some first communion. The Abbe did not know his visitor, but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with an honorable and well-meaning family. The lady was probably a mother who had come to put her child into his hands for religious instruction. He received visits from dozens of such mothers, some of whom were a little tiresome, from a wish ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Parable, with his cobbling-tools, his stories, and his gospel of universal love and good-will. The Tunkers welcomed him with delight, and the emigrants from New England looked upon him kindly as a good and well-meaning man. There were some fifteen or twenty children in the settlement, and here the peaceful disciple of Pestalozzi, and friend of Froebel, applied for a place to teach, and the school was by unanimous consent assigned ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... and sea, commissioners from France appeared on the part of Queen Mary Stuart and her husband, as they had now assumed the place of the Regent (who had died in the midst of these troubles), to attempt to bring about an agreement. The chief among them was Monluc, bishop of Valence, a well-meaning and moderate man even in religious matters, who, convinced of the impossibility of carrying on the war any further with success, gave way step by step before the inflexible purpose of the English plenipotentiary, William Cecil. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... supervision of the Press, punitive as well as preventive, will be one of the first military necessities, unless the tone and disposition, not of the best, but of the worst, of its members shall have become sensibly improved; for occasional unintentional leakage, by well-meaning officials possessing more information than native secretiveness, cannot be wholly obviated, and must be accepted, practically, as one of the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... an officious though well-meaning fellow, had sent away for the neighbouring clergyman; and when my gentleman began to speak of it to him, and talk of sending for him, 'Sir,' says he to him, 'my friend is in the house'; so without any more words he brought them together. When he came to the minister, he asked him if he would venture ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... he was successful; but during it he was induced to take a very fatal step. He was young, handsome, a clergyman, and unmarried. Now a young unmarried minister is pre-eminently one of sorrows and acquainted with grief. For that large body of well-meaning people who are by nature incapacitated from attending to their own business take him in hand without mercy. Innumerable are the ways in which he is informed that he ought to be married. Subtle and past finding out are the plots laid by all the old ladies and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... distaste seized him; after what he had been through, the thought of the well-meaning, brutish chatter of Nicodemus and his wife was not to be endured. He turned back again and went as far from them as he could get, down to the river-ford. Here he sat upon the beach, away from the passing ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... pretty china and your lovely fanciful articles for the table only so long as you can take all the care of them yourselves. As soon as you get tired of doing this, and put them into the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning creature is sure to break her heart and your own and your very pet, darling china pitcher all in one and the same minute; and then her frantic despair leaves you not even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... since that strange home-coming of his that Jervis had felt secure against the sudden irruption into the room of some well-meaning person. Of the two it was Jervis who had been silently determined to give the talkative, sentimental nurses no excuse for even the mildest, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... repelled by books which profess to show the reader how to do this or that. Technical books are unsuitable; and as for the goody-goody, it is out of the question. Most of the reading-rooms started in villages by well-meaning persons have failed ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... some more beer and told the barmaid to put a little gin in it. In a pitiable state of "nerves" he sat at the extreme end of a bench, and felt that he was an object of unwholesome interest to his acquaintances. The finishing touch was put to his discomfiture when a well-meaning friend in a vague and disjointed way advised him to give up drink, swearing, and any other bad habits ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... sports and games; playing at war; "Captain George."—But young Washington was not always copying good sayings; for he was a tall, strong boy, fond of all out-door sports and games. He was a well-meaning boy, but he had a hot temper, and at times his blue eyes flashed fire. In all trials of strength and in all deeds of daring, George took the lead; he could run faster, jump further, and throw a stone higher than any one in ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... reasonable in it, allowed his too sensitive conscience to persuade him into supporting it by his vote. Into such a plight fell a worthy alderman of the City of London—who had been sent into the House of Commons as a Radical reformer. This well-meaning person had permitted himself to become satisfied that there was something to be said for one of the Opposition amendments, and in a moment of rash ingenuousness he voted for it. He was immediately afterwards ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... use of The Book of Sports, set forth by authority, and positively compelling such ways of spending the Sabbath evening, had blunted the perception of many well-meaning people. The idea was that people must amuse themselves, or they would spend their leisure time in plotting treason! and the rulers having been what we should call Ritualists, they considered that the holiness of the day ended when Divine service was over, and people were ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... included the Punch Staff, together with Charles Dickens, the members of the Royal Academy, and a few newspaper men. Dickens has left it upon record how his feelings were hurt at the tactless way in which the well-meaning Lord Mayor, Sir James Duke, Bart., M.P., imparted to his guests the pleasure it was to him to meet with mere talent after being satiated with blood and rank in the persons of Royalties, Dukes, and Cabinet Ministers. He made them feel, in fact—and resent not a little—how hitherto the Mansion ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Count of Chinchon. The missive, dated at Madrid in 1633, condemned in the strongest terms all personal service (that is, forced labour) amongst the Indians, not only of the Jesuit missions, but of Peru and Mexico. With a touching confidence in his own powers, and absolute right Divine, the well-meaning King added to his orders a paragraph commanding all to be done as he had ordered within six months. Strange to find Philip IV., whom Velasquez has immortalized and shown us as he sat upon his horse ineffable, so far away from the Museo del Prado, where alone he ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... Doctor, "it is God's truth, and stands in no need of the endorsement of a set of well-meaning but purblind bigots and pedants, who presumed to set metes and bounds to Divine inspiration, and decide by vote what is God's truth and what is the Devil's falsehood. But, speaking of eagles, I never see one of these spiteful old sea-robbers without ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... listened to the deacon's address with no particular interest, but the conclusion struck her attention. The old man looked dignified and honest; but Father Karnis was a well-meaning man, no doubt, and one of those who are wont to keep on the winning side. How was it that the preacher could draw so pitiable a picture of the very same god whose greatness her uncle had praised in such glowing terms only two days since? How could the same thing appear so totally ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... milk, which, of course, has scarcely a veil of cream over the face of it as yet. But men, as you are doubtless willing to admit," she went on jocularly, "don't know about these things. You must pardon father, as much for his well-meaning ignorance of such matters, as for this cup of cream, which I am sure you ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... well-meaning but misguided singer reached its height about twenty years ago, when new discoveries about Villon threw a glamor over the poet of checkered life. [Footnote: See Edwin Markham, Villon; Swinburne, Burns, A Ballad of Francois Villon.] At the same time Verlaine and Baudelaire in France, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... first occupied by British troops the English newspapers were full of superficial advice suggested by numerous well-meaning correspondents who were utterly devoid of practical experience in tree-planting, and a unanimous verdict was given in favour of the Eucalyptus globulus, and other varieties of the same tree, irrespective of all knowledge of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... belonged to one man, were stretched eagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father bore her, dripping and senseless, to the ladies' cabin, where, as is usual in cases of the kind, there ensued a very well-meaning and kind-hearted strife among the female occupants generally as to who should do the most things to make a disturbance, and to hinder her recovery in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... am aware that the pulpit does its excellent one-tenth (and credits itself with it now and then, though most of the time a press of business causes it to forget it); I am aware that in its honest and well-meaning way it bores the people with uninflammable truisms about doing good; bores them with correct compositions on charity; bores them, chloroforms them, stupefies them with argumentative mercy without a flaw in the grammar or an emotion which ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... pleased with his friends, O bull among men, one that becomes angry on occasions that do not justify anger, one that is of restless mind, one that quarrels without cause, that sinful bloke who feels no scruple in deserting well-meaning friends, that wretch who is always mindful of his own interests and who, O king, quarrels with friends when those do him a very slight injury or inflict on him a wrong unconsciously, one who acts like a foe but ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... of the negro's cares. His demand for civil rights is no demand for "social equality." This is a mistaken view of the subject. It is this dread of social equality, this fear of social contact with the negro that precludes many well-meaning people from securing accurate information in regard to the aims, and purposes, and capabilities of those whom they desire to help. But there is light ahead, dark as at times it now may seem, and erroneous as are the views ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... not, my brother Edward's son, For that I was his father Edward's son. That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd: My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,— Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!— May be a precedent and witness good That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood: Join with the present sickness that I have; And thy unkindness be like ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... who knew what to say and what not to say. So few people did. Kind, well-meaning callers and comforters gave Rilla ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... watched your time: He fights this day unarmed,—without his rhyme;— And brings a tale which often has been told; As sad as Dido's; and almost as old. His hero, whom you wits his bully call, Bates of his mettle, and scarce rants at all; He's somewhat lewd; but a well-meaning mind; Weeps much; fights little; but is wond'rous kind. In short, a pattern, and companion fit, For all the keeping Tonies of the pit. I could name more: a wife, and mistress too; Both (to be plain) too good for most of you: The wife well-natured, and the mistress ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... good thing to begin on," said Mr. Fairfield. "Broadcloth is so tractable, so easy to fit; and that tailor-made effect can, of course, be attained by any well-meaning beginner." ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... or Bremen, hoarsely grumbling out their grating gutturals, were not to be moved by the most impassioned pleading of angels in human form, soft though their voices might be, and musical their tones. "Ach Himmel! was sagt er?" growled one. And peradventure some well-meaning interpreter replied: "Zu suchen und selig zu machen." When the Italian tried to repeat the words his utterance, not his faith, collapsed! The German-speaking people must wait till a door should be opened. Must England wait too? Yes! ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... never stuck in the Slough of Despond, nor met Apollyon in the Valley of the Shadow, nor was captive in Doubting Castle, nor stoned in Vanity Fair. And of Bunyan, Walton would have said that he was among those Nonconformists who 'might be sincere, well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, as thereby to cover a multitude of errors.' To Walton there seemed spiritual solace in remembering 'that we have comforted and been helpful to a dejected or distressed family.' Bunyan would have regarded this belief as a heresy, and (theoretically) ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... crystallising into a Great Conspiracy for a United Dutch South Africa, free from the flag that has elsewhere been regarded as the flag of freedom. And so inevitably to war—war with peculiar sadness and horror, in which the line of cleavage springs between all sorts of well-meaning people that used to know one another in friendship; but war which, whatever its fortunes, certainly sweeps the past into obscurity. We have done with 'a century of wrong.' God send us now ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... showed that letter to Mr. Evans,' said Mr. Burke; 'I don't like to expose Lord Clonbrony; he is a well-meaning gentleman, misled by ignorant or designing people; at all events, it is not for us to ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... delight in radical solutions by means of panaceas, and who have little taste for detailed local investigation and gradual improvement. I do not refer to the so-called "Saviours of the Fatherland" (Spasiteli Otetchestva), well-meaning cranks and visionaries who discover ingenious devices for making their native country at once prosperous and happy. I speak of the great majority of reasonable, educated men who devote some attention to the problem. Their favourite method of dealing with ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... stormy night and the simple old man who sought food and shelter, with the devoted little dog that "wasna 'is ain." Sick unto death he was, and full of ignorant prejudices and fears that needed wise handling. And there was the well-meaning landlord's blunder, humbly confessed, and the obscure and tragic result of it, in a foul and swarming rookery "juist ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... were often made magistrates, and had power to sentence a poor man, for a small offence, to lose his property and to corporeal punishment. Judges of this kind were still to be found; and in Jutland, so far from the capital, and from the enlightened, well-meaning, head of the Government, the law was still very loosely administered sometimes—the smallest grievance Jurgen could expect was that ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... for the cause of freedom that the first agitators of this subject were of that class which your lordship describes in your note as "well-meaning men." I speak sadly of their faults, for they were men of noble hearts. "But oppression maketh a wise man mad" and they spoke and did many things in the frenzy of outraged humanity that repelled sympathy and threw multitudes off to a hopeless distance. It is mournful to think ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... over-reached the good man, or that his first warmth had been but a tribute paid to appearance, was overjoyed at this sudden turn, and repeated the most magnificent promises, if he should succeed by the Friar's mediation. The well-meaning priest suffered him to deceive himself, fully determined to traverse his views, instead of ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... abound, and that Mrs. DOWDALL knows all about them; but I am not equally sure that the Susies deserve the encouragement of such a brilliant dissection. Yet the men whose happiness she played with believed in Susie's representation of herself as quite well-meaning, and other women who saw through her liked her in spite of their annoyance; and—after all the other things I have said—I am bound, in sincerity, to admit that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... saw a movie by the title of "Cluny Brown." The heroine was possessed with a passion for repairing plumbing, but was continually inhibited by well-meaning relatives who told her that she "didn't know her place." A scene early in the story shows Cluny on the floor under a stopped-up kitchen sink explaining her problem to a sympathetic professor who states a philosophy something like this. "To be happy, one should not have to be bound by what is appropriate. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... have done more Justice to Homer and to Virgil, to Livy and Thucydides, to Demosthenes and to Cicero, &c. and have bin more beneficial to the Republick of Learning, by their nice Comparisons and Observations, than all the honest Labours of those well-meaning Men, who rummage musty Manuscripts for various Lections. They did not Insistere in ipso cortice, verbisq; interpretandis intenti nihil ultra petere, (As Dacier has it) but search'd the inmost Recesses, open'd ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... he was married. She was a well-meaning girl, though her piety, as with most people, was of the negative order; and her antipathy to things evil much stronger than her sympathy with things good. For a much longer time than I had expected she kept him straight—perhaps, a little ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a space of time, had greater opportunities than I, to discover the secrets of state; especially when guided by Hyndford and Bernes, under the reign of a well-meaning but short-sighted Empress, whose first minister was a weak man, directed by the will of an able and ambitious wife, and which wife loved me, a stranger, an acquaintance of only a few months, so passionately ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... stranger is the small number usually present at the debates. The average attendance is less than fifty, and often one sees only fifteen or twenty peers in their seats. Two or three leading members of the Ministry, as many prominent members of the opposition, a bishop or two, a score of deluded, but well-meaning gentlemen, who obstinately adhere to the unfashionable notion, that, where great political powers are enjoyed, there are certain serious duties to the public closely connected therewith, a few prosy and pompous peers who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hot believe to have occurred, or to express an unjust sentiment. On the subject of his reformation, so far as "the tree is to be known by its fruits" it is entirely sincere; the language, deportment, habits, and consistency of this well-meaning tar, being those of a cheerful and confiding Christian, without the smallest disposition to cant or exaggeration. In this particular, he is a living proof of the efficacy of faith, and of the power of ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... the pen is too dangerous an instrument to trust to their hands. The art of writing he disapproves,—"Better women can naught of it." Religious observances he strictly recommends; but we shudder at some of the stories which even this well-meaning father relates as illustrations of the efficacy of religious austerities. Extravagance in dress prevailed at that time among men and women to such a degree that Parliament was appealed to on the subject in 1363. From the Knight's exhortations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... was immediately directed to an investigation of the cause of the general distress. This was right and proper, and precisely what a cautious and well-meaning government ought to do under such circumstances, in order to prevent, if possible, the recurrence of a similar disaster. But unfortunately the ministers of the day, though well-meaning, were any thing but cautious. The majority of them were imbued with speculative notions of political economy. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... a disquieting effect upon Bess, and Venters fancied that she entertained the same thought as to future seclusion. The breaking of their solitude, though by a well-meaning friend, had not only dispelled all its dream and much of its charm, but had instilled a canker of fear. Both had seen ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... themselves. The Rights of Man! How many wrongs have been done under that clause! The Bastille stormed; the Swiss Guard slaughtered; the Reign of Terror, with its daily procession of tumbrels through the streets of Paris; the murder of that amiable and well-meaning gentleman who did his best to atone for the sins of his ancestors; the fearful months of waiting suffered by his Queen before she, too, went to her death. Often as I lighted my candle of an evening in my little ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... domestic state of many well-meaning families: they were rejecting with the utmost abhorrence every resemblance to what they called the idolatry of Rome, while, in fact, the gloom of the monastic cell was settling over the houses of these melancholy puritans. Private fasts were more than ever practised; and a lady, said to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... obstinate Englishman, and has no position and no money. Apparently he is ready to let Meryl wreck her life, rather than bless his with herself and her fortune. Some men are like that. It is a mixture of pride and heroics very difficult for a well-meaning cousin like myself to cope with. I think it may even turn my hair grey yet." Again she spread out her hands. "Can you not see the rest?... You yourself led up to it. You urged your united service to South Africa (though why poor South Africa should be ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... if it were right," she sighed, her brows meeting thoughtfully, "such well-meaning persons as the Barnetts would not have to live as they do and bring helpless children ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... it once already, and the fish was only just going out of the room. Mrs. Fisher could see that the other respectable member of the party, Mrs. Arbuthnot, was noticing it too. Mrs. Arbuthnot was, she hoped and believed, respectable and well-meaning. It is true she also had invaded her sitting-room, but no doubt she had been dragged there by the other one, and Mrs. Fisher had little if anything against Mrs. Arbuthnot, and observed with approval that she only drank water. That was as it should ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... secresy with which a Pawnbroker's business is conducted, though very proper for the protection of the honest and well-meaning part of the population, to shield them from an exposure which might perhaps prove fatal to their business or credit, admits of great room for fraud on the part of the Money-lender; more particularly as it respects the interest allowed upon the pawns. Many persons are willing ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... work all summer to get back into college in the Fall, cannot pass those examinations equally with a rich man's son of equal mind, who can take a tutor to the seashore or the mountains and coach up all summer. Thus foundations, established by well-meaning people to help poor boys self-respectingly through college, become intellectual prizes for those who do not need them. That is ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... and we should naturally expect to find these in the higher rather than in the humbler walks of life. There is a vast deal of genuine charity in humble life, and the poor of every city derive a large part of their support from those but moderately blessed with worldly goods themselves; but many a well-meaning man will unintentionally make a remark that wounds your feelings and makes you uncomfortable for hours afterwards, while a person whose perceptions and sympathies have been more nicely trained would spare you the infliction. A certain fortune is indispensable ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... only too true as yet, in the case of many, that "the past, which still holds its ground in the back chambers of the brain, would persuade us that 'tis a demon-haunted world, where not God but the devil rules; we are not yet persuaded that this is a cheerful, homely, well-meaning universe, whose powers, if strict in their working, are nevertheless beneficent and not diabolic." Against these phantasmal fears the doctrine of God's immanence, rightly understood, offers the best of antidotes, and here lies its unquestionable value. At ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... marks a classical work. What was attempted in it, indeed, was within more immediate reach than the heart-trials of Adam Bede and Maggie Tulliver. A poor, dull-witted, disappointed Methodist cloth-weaver; a little golden-haired foundling child; a well-meaning, irresolute country squire, and his patient, childless wife;—these, with a chorus of simple, beer-loving villagers, make up the dramatis personae. More than any of its brother-works, "Silas Marner," I think, leaves upon the mind a deep impression ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... ille Frugi L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi (the man of worth), a convinced and honourable opponent of C. Gracchus. 8-9. legem frumentariam, by which corn was sold to Roman citizens at about half the market price. 'One of the worst measures ever proposed by a well-meaning statesman.' —Ihne. 12. qui how, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypotheses about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... civilized men. Let the offender be admonished and given time to think: but if, for all warning to the contrary, the wilful man will have his way, and still propagate his error to the confusion of society, he must be treated like any other virtuous and well-meaning criminal: he must be restrained and coerced to the extent that the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the deed of the farm and accepted only a "maintenance" on it—not an uncommon mode of procedure. Quite naturally, no doubt, after taking the farm off his father's hands, marrying and having a family of his own, this son, Jotham, wished to manage the farm as he saw fit. He was a fairly kind, well-meaning man, but he had a hasty temper and was a poor manager. His plans seemed never to prosper, and the farm ran down, to the great sorrow and dissatisfaction of his father, Jonathan, whose good advice was wholly disregarded. The farm ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... which I am supposed to belong to, and I want to thank you for using your eyes..... Did you ever read De Foe's 'Roxana'? If not, then read it, not merely for some of the deepest insights into the lying, suffering, sinning, well-meaning human soul, but for the best and most natural English that a book was ever ...
— Widger's Quotations from Albert Bigelow Paine on Mark Twain • David Widger
... and well-meaning person, who once spoke severely to me for treating a matter with levity. I lost my temper, and said, "You may make me ashamed of it, if you can, but you shall not bully me into treating a matter seriously which I ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mentality, they had no desire or capacity for any intellectual pursuit. So they took up this work for the pleasure of playing the grand lady and the superior person at a very small expense. Other of these visiting ladies were middle-aged, unmarried women with small private incomes—some of them well-meaning, compassionate, gentle creatures who did this work because they sincerely desired to help others, and they knew of no better way. These did not take much part in the business of the meetings; they paid their subscriptions and helped to distribute ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... my dear—once you get a girl away from her friends and relations. However, she has only her old grandmother to fall back on, and she seems a well-meaning girl enough, and perhaps she won't be considered so pretty in London as she has the name of being here. I hope she will keep straight, I'm sure; it would be such a worry to you, Lettice, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... which the young woman might even prove victorious if she consented to listen to his advice. And, once started, he delivered quite a lecture on the past, asserting that no actress had ever yet understood it properly, for at the outset Pauline was simply a well-meaning little creature of the middle classes, and the beauty of her conversion at the finish arose from the working of a miracle, a stroke of heavenly grace which endowed her with something divine. This was not the opinion of Silviane, who from the first lines regarded Pauline as the ideal ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... public reception at Buffalo, and died within the week. The years which have elapsed since his death enable us to view him more calmly than was possible while he lived, and the country has come to recognize in him an honest and well-meaning man, of more than ordinary ability, who might have risen to true statesmanship and won for himself a high place in the country's history had ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Buondelmonti to the Amidei in a broken marriage. Bologna never forgot the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi stretched in death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei's corpse. The story of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a myth which brings both factions into play, the well-meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and the ineffectual efforts of the Podesta to curb the violence ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... ferocity. All this time there had been growing, among the Russian people, a feeling that they were being robbed and betrayed by the grand dukes and high nobles. They distrusted the court. They felt that the Czar was well-meaning, but weak, and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of his German wife, his cousins the grand dukes, and above all a notorious monk, called Rasputin. This strange man, a son of the common people, had risen to great power ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... Only on the second visit were the ghost-seers scared; but then they were scared enough for twice, and they rarely mustered up courage enough to risk a third interview. One of the most curious characteristics of this well-meaning spook was that it had no face—or at least that nobody ever ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... UNCLE,—I have to thank you for a kind, short note of the 27th inst., which I received on Sunday. I gave your kind message to the King of Prussia, who was much touche by it. He is a most amiable man, so kind and well-meaning, and seems so much beloved. He is so amusing too. He is very anxious that Belgium should become liee with Germany, and I think, dearest Uncle, that it would be for the real good of Belgium if it could be so. You will have heard ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... to his school duties. He possessed a remarkable degree of reticence; and, owing to this blessed quality, no one but ourselves and Helen Legram ever knew of my share in that unfortunate accident. I felt rather guilty whenever allusion was made to it by some well-meaning person; but I noticed that Mr. Summers always turned the conversation as soon as possible. We were on more social terms after that disaster; and somehow the evenings spent over Latin and arithmetic became less practical, and decidedly more interesting. Mr. Summers, however, was very cautious, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... by-the-bye, of my using the word Christ rather than the word Jesus. I do so because it means more to my mind, and because the apostles use it much more frequently. I do hope my book will be a comfort and help to many well-meaning but inexperienced mothers. And I wish I practised more perfectly what I preach. But I have my infirmities and find it hard to be always on my guard.... A. and I are taking drawing-lessons of a very superior French teacher, who offers ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... person,—having absolutely no ear for music or time, silently but vigorously worked her jaws through the chorus, and affably ambled about, under everybody's feet, through the dance, displaying all the stiff-kneed grace of a young, well-meaning calf. ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... constantly to be seen on a neighbouring bench, playing with his snuff-box and the charms on his watch-guard or unfolding a newspaper, which he never read. He was dressed like a bourgeois of the old school in a gold-laced cocked hat, a plum-coloured coat and blue waistcoat embroidered in silver. He looked well-meaning enough, and was something of a musician to judge by a flute, one end of which peeped from his pocket. Never for a moment did his eyes wander from the supposed stripling, on whom he bestowed continual ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... were gone—those men who knew how to exist beyond the pale of life and within sight of eternity. They had been strong, as those are strong who know neither doubts nor hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent those men as whining over every mouthful of their food; as going about their work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew toil, privation, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Catholics, who were glad to show themselves on a public platform without being the puppets or the opponents of their bishops, Irish Protestants, who were irritated at the desertion of the Irish Church, a number of well-meaning people who were attracted by the opportunity of talking eloquently and vaguely about nothing in particular. This Academic scheme of Home Rule found an admirable exponent in Mr. Butt, an able lawyer of ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... like this, I may be able to pacify well-meaning opposers, and to confute invidious censurers, so as to induce the latter to repent of their unreasonable contradiction, and the former to be glad to learn; for they who admonish one in a friendly spirit should be instructed, they who attack ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... hence our rule in the East has ever rested, and will ever rest, upon the bayonet. We have never yet got beyond the stage of conquest; never assimilated a people to our ways, never even civilized a single tribe around the wide dominion of our empire. It is curious how frequently a well-meaning Briton will speak of a foreign church or temple as though it had presented itself to his mind in the same light in which the City of London appeared to Blucher—as something to loot. The other idea, that ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the members feel toward him that insipid kind of hatred which passes for friendship in public life. If he were naturally observant, he would see this; if he were given at all to self-doubt, he would feel it. But his way is to regard most men as ill-mannered and well-meaning. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... predominate in your country, the tranquillity in her international relations which she needs in order to devote herself to intellectual culture and to the development of her abundant and varied natural resources, while at the same time offering hospitality to all well-meaning persons who bring here their contingent of industry and civilization. With a program such as this, it has been easy—and will be still more easy in the future—to regulate our conduct towards you, the citizens of the great nation ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... brought, in addition to a great basket of needed appliances, a silver porringer, which, with wonderful foresight, had been ordered from a Hartford jeweller in advance. The out-of-door man, Larkin, took a well-meaning pride in this accession to the family,—walking up and down the street with a broad grin upon his face. He also became the bearer, in behalf of the Tew partners, of a certain artful contrivance of tin ware for the speedy stewing of pap, which, considering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... of Heaven is a garden full of fig-trees and mulberry-bushes at the appropriate season of the year. But it was raining hard, and I abominate week-ends; and Suzanne's relatives are well-meaning folk who always want to arrange your day ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... a slur on the German people. In point of racial characteristics there is no difference between them and their neighbours. And there is no reason to question their good intentions. Indeed, it may safely be asserted that no people is more consciously well-meaning than the children of the Fatherland. It is only that, with their archaic preconceptions of what is right and meritorious, their best intentions spell malevolence when projected into the civilised world as ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... residence of a gentleman named Abbas Koola Khan, and partake of tea and light refreshments in his garden. Here I learn that the Pasha Khan has carried his good intentions to the extent of having made arrangements to provide me armed escort from point to point; how far ahead this well-meaning arrangement is to extend I am unable to understand; neither do I care to find out, being already pretty well convinced that the escort will prove an insufferable nuisance to be gotten rid of at the first favorable opportunity. Abbas ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... it occurred to me that one of our country neighbours was probably at this time in the city. He kept a store as well as cultivated a farm. He was a plain and well-meaning man, and, should I be so fortunate as to meet him, his superior knowledge of the city might be of essential benefit to me in my present forlorn circumstances. His generosity might likewise induce him to lend me so much ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... recall too many, lest you cry, "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is second-hand. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing me with natural first-hand knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent compensations all that I have won and discovered ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... one of those well-meaning persons who are of opinion that the only reasonable attitude of childhood should be that of perpetual apology for ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... European institutions produce mere galvanic spasms, which leave it more exhausted than before. The rosy-colored accounts we have had of Turkish Progress are for the most part mere delusions. The Sultan is a well-meaning but weak man, and tyrannical through his very weakness. Had he strength enough to break through the meshes of falsehood and venality which are woven so close about him, he might accomplish some solid ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... said Dr. Latimer, "is only a bugbear which frightens well-meaning people from dealing justly with the negro. I know of no place on earth where there is perfect social equality, and I doubt if there is such a thing in heaven. The sinner who repents on his death-bed cannot be the equal of St. ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... But you must forgive him, because he is well-meaning, and because his conceit has made a fool of him. They're not all like him. But how is ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... here a well-meaning Booke. It doth at the firth entrance forewarne thee, that in contriving the same I have proposed unto my selfe no other than a familiar and private end: I have no respect or consideration at all, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... next round of toasts was a fancy quite new, For we drank—and you'll own 'twas benevolent too— To those well-meaning husbands, cits, parsons or peers, Whom we've any time honored by courting their dears: This museum of wittols was comical rather; Old Headfort gave Massey, and I gave your father. In short, not a soul till this morning would budge— We ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... grievances are the loudest to complain of them, and when those authors and their capital enemies shake hands, embrace, and join in a common cause, which set can we believe most or least sincere? And when every set of men have acted every part, to whom shall the well-meaning look up? What can the latter do, but sit with folded arms and pray for miracles? Yes, Sir, they may weep over a prospect of ruin too probably approaching, and regret a glorious country nodding to its fall, when victory, wealth, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to pinch and save and his brothers bide at the plough-tail all their lives in consequence—a law whose chief merit lies in the splendid sacrifices which its faithful fulfilment involves, and whose vital principle well-meaning but misguided philanthropy is now endeavouring to dole out of existence—he had been sent to Edinburgh to make the most of this, his one ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... brief moment of her life she saw herself clearly: a well-meaning woman, ambitious, but curiously narrow; not willing to work long for the Vision, but leaping at it rashly, blindly, with a deep-seated sense of duty which she made a source of offence by preening and parading it, and forcing ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... be heavy. He was very much in love with her, but there was nothing particularly exclusive, unique, individual, or interesting about his passion at that time. It was of the everyday sort which carries a well-meaning man to the altar, and sometimes, in cases of exceptional fervor and duration, even a little farther. Stock sizes of this article are common and inexpensive, and John Hathaway's love when he married Susanna was, judged by ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... photograph taken. Why Mr Cruden should have selected Mr Richmond as his man of business was a matter only known to Mr Cruden himself, for those who knew the lawyer best did not care for him, and, without being able to deny that he was an honest man and a well-meaning man, were at least glad that their affairs were in the hands ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... all the well-meaning instructors of the adult—the Chautauquans, the educational extensionists, the lecturers, the correspondence schools, the advisers of reading, the makers of booklists, the devisers of "courses." They deepen ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... he were wounded, as I read the telegram I should receive a wound myself, and try to be as brave as he. All which came direct from the war, would unite me to Michael. But interfering friends, however well-meaning, would come between. If he had not been shielded from a bullet or a sword-thrust, why should I be shielded from the ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... is not that he was a careless man, he was a most careful one; it is not that he was a morally lax man, he was almost morbidly the reverse. Neither was he morose or eccentric in his motives or bearing; he was genial, conversational, and well-meaning. But he had some sort of blindness towards his fellow-men, so that he never entirely grasped the spirit of everyday life, so that he, who was so copiously intelligent in the things of the study, misunderstood, blundered, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... before met with any one so ill bred as Mrs. Lovejoy. She supposed her own conduct had been almost criminal, whereas Mrs. Lovejoy was really much more at fault than herself. A woman who has no tenderness for a well-meaning little girl, no forgiveness for her thoughtless mistakes, can never ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... clue in another direction—into the home and family and private life of the average up-to-date woman. And it is permitted us to imagine, if we choose, that I am such a woman, while you are my well-meaning, but ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... we carried our load of wounded to the base hospital. I wish some of those well-meaning enthusiasts in Trafalgar Square who clamoured for war could have viewed the interior of these hospital tents and seen the poor twisted forms lying on the ground in every direction. What a stupid and brutal thing war ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... read, however, he talks. At present he talks for the most part on the pavement and in public-houses, but there is every indication that we shall see before long a rapid growth of workmen's clubs—not the tea-and-coffee make-believes set up by the well-meaning, but honest, independent clubs, in every respect such as those in Pall Mall, managed by the workmen themselves, who are not, and never will become, total abstainers, but have shown themselves, up to the present moment, strangely tolerant of those weaker brethren who can only keep ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Now then, we've had a capital lunch, and we're quite ready. Have all the painful preparations been made? PISH. Your Majesty, all is prepared. MIK. Then produce the unfortunate gentleman and his two well-meaning but misguided accomplices. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the heroine a terrific grandmother who are Miss MACNAMARA'S creations, and as she makes wife number one lie like a trooper in order to preserve the happiness of wife number two a soupcon of freshness is imparted to the rechauffe. Of course the well-meaning first wife is not allowed to succeed in her efforts, and Beau and Perry (you would never guess from that which was which, but in this case it doesn't matter) have a very bad time indeed until, reassured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... and cellar-flaps: I'm always thrown in some such state When on his face well-meaning chaps ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... of the Lord Jesus, one of the company, well-meaning, but dim and confused in his conceptions, made the remark, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." Observing that this man and the Pharisees around him were clinging to the notion that to be invited to enter the kingdom is the same thing as to be in it, he spoke the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... and don't want to be different. He points out how brief our time is, and how little we know what lies beyond. He shows us how the strong and unscrupulous and cruel people succeed and have a good time, and how many well-meaning, sensitive, muddled people come to hopeless grief. Oh, he has a score of instances, a quiver full of poisonous shafts." He was silent for a minute, and then he said, "Old boy, we won't heed him, you and I. We'll say, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning, but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... a few well-meaning people at the close of the Civil War proclaimed that, with upwards of two million trained men behind him, General Grant would become a military dictator, and that this would be followed by the disappearance of democracy in the nation. But the mind, the temper, the traditions of our people are ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... was I ever an apostle? O Buddha! Buddha! how hard are the paths of saintliness! How prone to error are the well-meaning! How huge is the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... [Footnote 12: "This well-meaning gentleman has spoilt some excellent shoemakers, and been accessary to the poetical undoing of many of the industrious poor. Nathaniel Bloomfield and his brother Bobby have set all Somersetshire singing. Nor has the malady confined itself to one county. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the inquiry, an objection meets us. There are in the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose judgments and opinions are entitled to the utmost respect on account of their sincerity, who are of opinion that Vital Phenomena, and especially all questions relating to the origin of vital phenomena, are ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... so absorbed in his exercise that he will not stop to speak to a friend; and when his exhilaration is so complete that he turns his eyes from well-meaning thumbs pointing significantly into doorways through which a man has often passed while seeking bracing influences, it is but natural that people should ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... properly. Persons I'd designed for each other were given to others, and a great deal of unhappiness resulted. There were nine thousand six hundred and seventy-six divorces as the result of that week's work. It's a terrible situation for a well-meaning chap to have to decide between his wife and ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... loud prayer at the bedside of the sick is utterly out of place. It may become necessary, in order to prevent such abuses, to exclude from the sick-room some who will be greatly offended thereby; but courage to defend a patient against well-meaning intruders is one essential qualification of a good nurse. Oil doors that squeak, fasten windows that rattle, but above all keep quiet the tongues that clatter. Let all whispering in the sick one's hearing be avoided. Speak quietly ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... patriotic men and eminent lawyers, proud of the Court and its history and anxious to add to its prestige. It is regrettable that the merits of some of them have been so obscured and their memory so clouded by a well-meaning but unfortunate excursion into the field of political passions. In the Dred Scott case[3] they thought to quiet agitation and contribute to the peace of their country by passing judgment upon certain angrily mooted questions of a political character. The effort was a failure and ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... case with direct and plausible force, addressing his readers vivaciously as plain people like himself, among whom as reasonable men there cannot be two opinions. He cuts rival arguments to pieces with dexterous strokes, representing them as the confused reasoning of well-meaning but dull intellects, and dances with lively mockery on the fragments. If the authors of such arguments knew their own minds, they would be entirely on his side. He echoes the pet prejudices of his readers as the props and mainstays of his thesis, and boldly laughs away misgivings ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... with exemplary patience for certainty that the train had stopped. Then spoke as one that gives a commission to speech, and observes its execution at a distance. Her expression remained immutable. "She is a well-meaning person," said she. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the situation seemed to have changed greatly, for the brawlers of Hardy Baker's class were now in the minority, and it was sober, well-meaning citizens who occupied the space under the ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... privately entertained a considerable good-will for our author—nay, he even once went so far as to declare, and that openly too, and at his own table, just after dinner, that "Knickerbocker was a very well-meaning sort of an old gentleman, and no fool." From all which may have been led to suppose, that, had our author been of different politics, and written for the newspapers instead of wasting his talents on histories, he might have risen to some post of honor and profit: peradventure to be a ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... hampered with many of Mrs. Grundy's rules, and so curious to see the "Boston lady," several of the young people had agreed together between the Sunday services to call at Mrs. Markham's the following night. They were well-meaning, kind-hearted people, and would any one of them gone far out of their way to serve either Richard or his young wife; but they were not Eastern bred, and feeling somewhat awed by Ethelyn's cold, frigid manner, they appeared shy and awkward—all except Will Parsons, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... case silently for a few minutes. He was a well-meaning man, but a doctor of the old school. He believed that if medicine was a good thing, the more one took the better. Also, if dieting was ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... never frightened anybody the first time it appeared. Only on the second visit were the ghost-seers scared; but then they were scared enough for twice, and they rarely mustered up courage enough to risk a third interview. One of the most curious characteristics of this well-meaning spook was that it had no face—or at least that nobody ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... comes the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade, an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry—in short, an agreeable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... me not, my brother Edward's son, For that I was his father Edward's son. That blood already, like the pelican, Hast thou tapp'd out, and drunkenly carous'd: My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul,— Whom fair befall in heaven 'mongst happy souls!— May be a precedent and witness good That thou respect'st not spilling Edward's blood: Join with the present sickness that I have; And thy unkindness be like crooked age, To crop at once a too-long withered flower. Live in thy shame, ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... added, "I die in the faith, that the truths of God, which he hath helped the church of Scotland to own, shall be owned by him as truths so long as sun and moon endure, and that independency, tho' there be good men and well-meaning professors of that way, will be found more to the prejudice of the work of God than many are aware of, for they evanish into vain opinions. I have had my own faults as well as other men, but he made me always abhor shews. I have, I ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Many good and well-meaning men have attempted to reconcile the statements of Genesis with the discoveries of science, but it is in vain. The divergence has increased so much, that it has become an absolute opposition. One of the antagonists must ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... a most benevolent smile on his sagacious visage, all purple as it was with the cold, this very well-meaning gentleman took the snow-child by the hand, and led her towards the house. She followed him, droopingly and reluctant; for all the glow and sparkle was gone out of her figure; and whereas just before she had resembled a bright, frosty, star-gemmed evening, with ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the noble working girl. She doesn't organize easily. Wait until the election is over. Then you come in on our schemes and we'll teach you how to do things. But don't butt in now, I beg of you. Misguided, well-meaning enthusiasts like you can do more harm to our cause than all ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... that is the way in which well-meaning policemen destroy valuable evidence. Not that it matters much in this particular instance; but it might have been a ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Isaiah would have been considerably astonished to be told that they would have to wait seven hundred years for fulfilment. To a certain extent they were fulfilled soon afterward in the advent of the well-meaning but not very brilliant king Hezekiah. I have dwelt upon this passage at some length because it is a fair example of the way in which Old Testament literature has been pressed into the service of Christian ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... with the relation of classes to one another in an industrial district, and especially with the faults of the class that rose to power with the development of manufacturing. Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the well-meaning pedant and the offensive parvenu, preach the same gospel. Political economy, as they understand it, is to rule life, and this dismal science is not concerned with human well-being and happiness, but only with the profit and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... though well-meaning youth, whom I was beginning to recognise as the cause of some misunderstanding among us. "If you don't want any more of his poem—and I don't blame you—my pal Ho, who is one of the popular Flip-Flap Troupe, ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... they were wedded, they were looking forward, joyously; now they recall the past, its losses and trials and misfortunes. They remember the children who are dead, or far away; or the prosperity once theirs, but now fled. Few old folks would care to celebrate their golden wedding; it is usually some well-meaning grandchild who sees in it "an occasion." Often, too, the excitement, the fatigue, the unusual strain on mind and body, result in ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... unfortunate truth that Miss Gibbs was not very popular at the Grange. She was clever, conscientious, and well-meaning, and preserved a high ideal of girlhood. Much too high for practical use, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... wanted to shake hands with Tom and Larry, and for several minutes the boys were at the mercy of their well-meaning admirers. Again the sheriff came to ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... or an aged and venerable statesman to appear with all the peculiarities of a young dandy. The flowers, feathers, and furbelows which a light-hearted young girl of seventeen embellishes by the airy grace with which she wears them, are simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet of her serious, well-meaning mamma, who bears them about with an anxious face, merely because a loquacious milliner has assured her, with many protestations, that it is the fashion, and the only thing remaining for her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... truly. I think, however, you have reversed the parable, and are but a well-meaning sheep that has donned a wolf's skin, and so we will put you to the test. We young people will give you a chance to draw up our petition, which, if you would save your character, you must do at once with sheep-like docility, asking no questions and causing no delay. There, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... clear-sighted she was. "Of course, it is quite a different thing to try to bring about a marriage. That is certainly taking a grave responsibility." She stopped with a jerk, for she caught herself denouncing the very course of action which well-meaning friends had adopted successfully in the case of herself and her husband. If it had not been for the jerk, Sir Hamilton would not have known the comparison that was passing in her mind. She recovered herself to continue:—"Of course, trying to bring about a marriage is a grave responsibility, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... There were some well-meaning people who are counted in the temperance ranks who advised Mr. Smith to submit to Mr. Brady, and take no more active part in temperance work rather than risk the loss of his agency. This advice was no doubt meant as a kindness, although it did not partake of the ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... volunteer, the service is still an episode; to the regular, a permanent career. No doubt, if a man is thoroughly conscientious, or thoroughly ambitious, or thoroughly enthusiastic, a temporary pursuit may prove as absorbing as if it were taken up for life; but the majority of men, however well-meaning, are not thorough at all. How often one hears the apology made by volunteer officers, even those of high rank,—"Military life is not my profession; I entered the army from patriotism, willing to serve my country faithfully for three years, but of course not pretending to perfection ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... within Miss Roberta Holland's fatally well-meaning soul. "Would it be a case where I could help? I'd love to put a real artist back on his feet. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... out in a few days the products of the patient labors of generations, subverting the fundamental principles of honesty, justice, and morality on which the organized public life of the community and the private life of the individual must rest, and rapidly changing even the well-meaning and reasonable among the peasants into frenzied madmen, Luther recognized that conciliatory measures and arbitration would not avail with these mobs. His duty as a teacher of God's Word and as a ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... came to New York, from Danielsville. He was a man of good standing, well-meaning, and honest in his intentions. Maroney had looked anxiously for his coming, as he supposed his brother would be able to effect his release on bail. He knew that his brother alone could not make the bail-bond good, as one hundred thousand dollars ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... was not the slightest reason why he should punish her so severely, for that very same day he received a letter (it was brought to the house by a liveried servant), which the nobleman so frequently alluded to wrote him with his own hand, and in which he expressed his grief that his innocent, well-meaning advances should have occasioned such a misunderstanding. He declared, moreover, that he regarded the whole family with the greatest respect, and as to his intercourse with Matilda, it was simply dictated by his enthusiasm for art. Nay, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... the Chinese possessed unbounded faith and assurance in the strength of England and her ultimate triumph, but since the agitation by shortsighted though well-meaning people, while some English dailies even advocate the sending of several Chinese divisions into Mesopotamia, this confidence has been ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... sorry to say, a good deal of truth in it, for though well-meaning, my brother was so stern and harsh that the poor little fellow was afraid of him, and took that very foolish step. It was long enough before I was able to trace him, and found the woman who kept the inn from which he ...
— The Powder Monkey • George Manville Fenn
... myriad; but I will not recall too many, lest you cry, "Hands off!" I cannot desist, however, from this word-game until I have set down a few. Whatever is not one's own by first possession is second-hand. That is what I am told my knowledge is. But my well-meaning friends come to my defence, and, not content with endowing me with natural first-hand knowledge which is rightfully mine, ascribe to me a preternatural sixth sense and credit to miracles and heaven-sent compensations ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... asks, achieved distinguished success in every country of Europe but his own? The state in which he is to be found in Ireland to-day must be, therefore, accounted for on some other theory than the inherent good-for-nothingness of his nature. "The sluggish, well-meaning mind of the English nation," he continues, "so willing to do its duty, so slow to discover that it has any duty to do, is now perforce rousing to ask itself the question, after five centuries of English domination over Ireland, how many millions it is inclined to pay, not in order to ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... the wrathful force of this voice which, with so little courtesy, bade the intruder begone, as fairly to stagger the well-meaning visitor. ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... and Gibellines, and France by those who were for and against the League: but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest, by a specious concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the publick good? What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... the Saturday-night was about to commence, and the officers of the pantry presented their compounds in good earnest. On this occasion the ladies had quietly, but firmly declined being present, but the earnest appeals of the well-meaning captain had overcome the scruples of the gentlemen, all of whom, to avoid the appearance of disrespect to his ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... be one of the rare occasions when we, Plymouth Fellows, are called upon to perform any kind of duty, and I must not be absent from my post. Captain Lennox and Mr. Thornton are here. The former seems a smart, well-meaning man; and has proposed to go over to Milton, and assist you in any search for the will; of course there is none, or you would have found it by this time, if you followed my directions. Then the Captain declares he must take you and his mother-in-law home; and, in his wife's present state, I don't ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Like all well-meaning and candid friends, the doctor found himself at once in for a deal of angry abuse, but, as he explained, he had taken so much abuse from patients at various periods of his career—and abuse fully justified—that nothing Barb could add, deserved or undeserved, to the volume would move him: "As ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... me as dead for the next six months, or gone where cubs can't follow me,—East. I know you love the baby; but do you think, dear boy,—now, really, do you think you COULD be a father to it? Consider this well. You are young, thoughtless, well-meaning enough; but dare you take upon yourself the functions of guide, genius, or guardian to one so young and guileless? Could you be the Mentor to this Telemachus? Think of the temptations of a metropolis. Look at the question well, and let me know speedily; ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... his well-meaning friend, "Think you I have not spent my whole life in preparing for this one thing?" And he handed back the smoothly polished manuscript with a smile. Montaigne says, "Should a suppliant voice have been heard out of the mouth of Socrates ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... as of all the damned onnat'ralness as come on a honest, well-meaning, civil-spoke cove—why, I'm that there cove, so 'elp me!" Saying which, he cracked his whip, the horses plunged forward, and, almost immediately, as it seemed, horses, chaise, and Postilion had lurched into the black murk of the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... silence or loss of contemporary writers, are circumstances sufficiently favourable, indeed, to romance, but altogether inimical to historical truth.' In these words Joseph Ritson, the first and most painstaking of those well-meaning scholars who have tried to associate the outlaw with 'historical truth,' begins his 'Life of Robin Hood,' an account which occupies ten pages of his book, and is annotated and illustrated through the following one hundred and five pages. The Dictionary of National ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... was married. She was a well-meaning girl, though her piety, as with most people, was of the negative order; and her antipathy to things evil much stronger than her sympathy with things good. For a much longer time than I had expected she kept him straight—perhaps, a little too straight. But ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... purposes of order, they allowed the means of vindication to fall into disuse. The regulator system, for example, was directed to the stern and thorough punishment of evil men, but no sooner was society freed from their depredations, than the well-meaning citizens withdrew from its ranks; and, though regulator companies still patrolled the country, and, for a time, assumed as much authority as ever, they were not supported by the solid approbation of those who alone could give them lasting strength. They did many outrageous things for ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... do its work. The instinct of domination is a weed that grows rank in the shadow of the temple, climbs over it, possesses it, covers its ruin, and feeds on its decay. The unchecked sway of priests has always been the most mischievous of tyrannies; and even were they all well-meaning and sincere, it would be ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... very terrible and well-meaning person, who once spoke severely to me for treating a matter with levity. I lost my temper, and said, "You may make me ashamed of it, if you can, but you shall not bully me into treating a matter seriously which I think is wholly absurd." He said, "You do not enough consider the grave issues ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it is not the military who are responsible. There is the highest authority for believing neither General Joffre nor Lord Kitchener approves of them. They are efforts launched for political effect by loyal and well-meaning, but possibly mistaken, members of the two governments. By them these expeditions were sent forth to seize some place in the sun already held by Germany, to prevent other places falling into her hands, or in the hope of turning some neutral ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... a simple well-meaning woman in her way, and, had the circumstances of her life been less exceptional, would have earned the reputation of a good creature and steadfast chapel-goer. But our lives do not always fall in the places most suitable to our dispositions; the restive are ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... show their scars. But it becomes us to wrap ourselves in silence, and not to show to the miserable, pitiful, and drivelling world, which envies and abuses, even while applauding us, that a king can also suffer. I thank you, madame, and from this hour you will find in me a true friend, a well-meaning brother, ever ready to serve you. Give me your hand to this contract, which shall be more lasting and holier than that blessed by priests, to which our ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... disputes and set him up in opposition to other people. His delight in the story of his father's encounter with Lord Castlederry troubled her, and she tried to convince her son that Lord Castlederry was a well-meaning man, but, as she knew, without success. She had delighted in her husband's great courage and self-sufficiency, his sureness, his strong decision and his unconquerable pride and independence ... but now, in contemplation, these ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... prevent her from seeing the tyranny and brutality in which the people indulged so soon as they obtained the mastery. Her treatment of the facts of the Revolution is characterized by honesty. She is above all else an impartial historian and philosopher. She distinguishes, it is true, between the well-meaning multitude—those who took the Bastille, for example—and the rabble composed of the dregs of society,—those who headed the march to Versailles. She declares, "There has been seen amongst the French a spurious race of men, a set of cannibals, who have gloried in their crimes; and, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the stiff and stolid Sabin; "I can see nothing suspicious about it. Indeed, it goes to show me that the rebellion is crushed; for, as I presume, the honest but well-meaning part of the rebels are ashamed, and their leaders afraid to show their faces here to-day, after last ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... somewhat resenting the unfortunate ending of his scheme, made allowances for me when the whole story was related to him. He smiled a kindly smile as I expressed to him all my regrets that I had failed to take advantage of his well-meaning ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... to my following Correspondent, Mr. Timothy Doodle, who seems a very well-meaning Man, that I have written this short Preface, to which I shall subjoin a Letter ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the devil. We are rather prone to think little of a generation that could take such nonsense seriously, but it would not be hard to find analogous false notions prevalent at the present time, which sometimes make life difficult, if not dangerous, for well-meaning individuals.[10] Life seems to have been made very uncomfortable for Constantine in Carthage. Just the extent to which persecution went, however, we do not know. About this time Constantine's work attracted the attention of Duke Robert of Salerno. ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... men should know how to put a lady up, because accidents in the field are constantly occurring, and some poor Diana who has had a tumble is always grateful to any good Samaritan who renders her this small service. A well-meaning sportsman who kindly offered me his help on such an occasion, knew so little about the mysteries of side-saddle riding, that he attempted to give me a "leg up," as if I were ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... Tiberius, which we had come go far and so toilsomely to see, it must be confessed there was very little left of it. When that well-meaning but mistaken prince died, the Senate demolished his pleasure-houses at Capri, and left only those fragments of the beautiful brick masonry which yet remain, clinging indestructible to the rocks, and strewing the ground with rubbish. The recent excavations ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... irresistible. It was Comstock himself, in fact, who invented the process whereby his followers in other fields of moral endeavour have forced laws into the statute books upon the pretence of putting down John Doe, an acknowledged malefactor, and then turned them savagely upon Richard Roe, a peaceable, well-meaning and hitherto law-abiding man. And it was Comstock who first capitalized moral endeavour like baseball or the soap business, and made himself the first of its kept professors, and erected about himself a ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... offender be admonished and given time to think: but if, for all warning to the contrary, the wilful man will have his way, and still propagate his error to the confusion of society, he must be treated like any other virtuous and well-meaning criminal: he must be restrained and coerced to the extent that the interests of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... his posthumous works and letters? I have only been able to procure the first volume, which contains his life—very confusedly and badly written, and interspersed with dull pathological and medical discussions. It is written by a Dr. Currie. Do you know the well-meaning doctor? Alas, ne sutor ultra crepitum! [A ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... between them, and I flatter myself that the insulting coldness and indifference with which they received each other's names carried to our landlord's bosom a dismay never before felt by a good-natured and well-meaning man. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... mischief was brewing in the Colonial Office of that unhappy government which did so many stupid things and got the credit for so many more. In 1775 the well-meaning Earl of Dartmouth was superseded by Lord George Germain, who continued the mismanagement of colonial affairs for seven disastrous years. Few characters have abused civil and military positions ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... unchanged in his relations with her, unless it was that in his deep and understanding sympathy he brought her greater spiritual and mental comfort than ever. The other neighbors were kind always, in their rough, well-meaning way; but he was her chief guide and comforter, and in him, and the books which Donald conscientiously sent to her every few weeks, she found the strength ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... ready, upon such incitements as are perpetually recurring, to join in attempts to overthrow them. There is no neutral ground here: from want of due attention to the state of society in large towns and manufacturing districts, and ignorance or disregard of these obvious truths, innumerable well-meaning persons became zealous supporters of a Reform Bill, the qualities and powers of which, whether destructive or constructive, they would otherwise have been afraid of: and even the framers of that bill, swayed as they might ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... there is ever to be any reform, and return to prosperity or to the possibility of prospering, it is urgent that the nonsense of all this (and it is mostly nonsense, but not quite) should be sent about its business straightway, and forbidden to deceive the well-meaning souls among us any more. Reform, if we will understand that divine word, cannot begin till then. One day, I do know, this, as is the doom of all nonsense, will be drummed out of the world, with due placard stuck on its back, and the populace flinging dead cats at it: but whether soon ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... for the rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late, his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature, and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of remorse and regret moved the Frenchman's compassion to a degree that ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... or it is never his, it never acquires the necessary warmth to interest him, the color and light to make it real. This is a curious fact, and one which your modest writer shrinks from trying to explain to his well-meaning friend, lest he seem egotistical. Only the blessed publicity of print could draw him out. Yet the psychology involved perhaps ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... getting rid of the crowd. Whatever his object, its consummation is far from being realized; the unappeased curiosity of the crowds of newly arriving people finds expression in noisy shouts and violent hammering on the door, creating a din so infernal that the well-meaning traveller quickly tires of his bargain. Following the instincts of the genuine Oriental, he conjures up the genius of diplomacy to rid himself of his guest and the annoyance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... by the theorists and doctrinaires who delight in radical solutions by means of panaceas, and who have little taste for detailed local investigation and gradual improvement. I do not refer to the so-called "Saviours of the Fatherland" (Spasiteli Otetchestva), well-meaning cranks and visionaries who discover ingenious devices for making their native country at once prosperous and happy. I speak of the great majority of reasonable, educated men who devote some attention to the problem. Their favourite method of dealing with it is this: The intensive ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the calm, cultivated, well-balanced voice of Chekhov, the Russian De Maupassant, nor even the apostolic, well-meaning, but comparatively faint voice of Tolstoy, the preacher: it is the roaring of a lion, the crash of thunder. In its elementary power is the heart rending cry of a sincere but suffering soul that saw the brutality of life in all its horrors, and now flings its experiences ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Heaven that he will return," said Gray to himself, "but there is too much mystery about all this, for the matter being a plain and well-meaning transaction. If he intends to treat this poor thing, as many a poor girl has been used before, I hope that my house will not be the scene in which he chooses to desert her. The leaving the money has somewhat a suspicious aspect, and ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... doctrine of revelation and faith, firmly trusting that God in the end would bring about the union of both. This is now also my firm conviction, that we must not mix them or bring them together forcibly, as many have done with well-meaning zeal but unclear views, and as many in Germany with impure designs ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... banks were very polite and well-meaning,' said the secretary. 'I sent word that I was coming to the city and asked the national banks, as intimately related to the treasury department, to select persons to meet me. I also notified the members of the old syndicate that I had some propositions ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Mister. "My name, translated, means gracious or kindly or well-meaning." His voice became brisker. "The translation is apropos. I'm here to do you a service. Now, about these ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... scandalized one or two innocent and patriotic critics who regarded the prowess of the British army as inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige. But our Government departments knew better: their problem was how to win the war with Augustus on their backs, well-meaning, brave, patriotic, but obstructively ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... equipped with professional scholarship, or contented with moral conformities, can minister to the sorrow and the mystery, the mingled shame and glory of a human being? This is why the average theologue, in his first parish, is like the well-meaning but meddling engineer endeavoring with clumsy tools and insensitive fingers to adjust the delicate and complicated mechanism of a Genevan watch. And here is one of the real reasons why we deprecate men entering our calling, without both the culture of a liberal education and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... she ever known, except the pale, girlish-looking mother who had died soon after they had come to London. The elderly landlady had let her stay on, helping in the work of the house; and when even this last refuge had failed her, well-meaning folk had interested themselves and secured her employment. It was light and fairly well paid, but there were objections to it, so he gathered, more from her halting silences than from what she said. She had tried for a time to find something ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... sure, she was most just and impartial in her treatment of the fifty scholars under her supervision, but, possessed of about as much imagination as a cat, she failed to analyze or understand the dispositions of her charges; and well-meaning ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... is used it should, without fail, be taken from a boy when he has read it. Much harm may, I fear, result from supplying boys with the cheap pamphlets which well-meaning ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... Well-meaning people in England found it difficult to understand the intensity of feeling in America. Britain had piled up a huge debt in driving France from America. Landowners were paying in taxes no less than ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... "Oh, I didn't mean that you were fatter, I meant that your skin is clearer and your eyes are brighter." Not having a sample of your former skin, nor another pair of eyes handy to confute him with, this well-meaning liar walks off triumphantly. I, myself, however, am no better than the rest of them, though my presenting the lithograph cost me dearly one day. In one of the towns where I stopped, a young girl came to the hotel the shadow of what ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... a good thing in its time. We are only now slowly learning how to apply the opposite social principles in behalf of the Man rather than the Master, and we have not yet surmounted all the difficulties or dangers of the experiment. It is droll how, in a tolerably well-meaning world like this, any sort of contempt becomes inclusive, and a whole population suffers for the vice, or it may be the virtue, of a very small majority, or a very powerful minority. Probably the most liberal and intelligent populations of Great Britain ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... and altar recesses, but beautiful examples of the Mozarabe or Moorish style which once covered the piers of the nave, as well as the wooden choir gallery with its finely panelled under side, have been swept away by a recent well-meaning if mistaken restoration. The outside of the church is more unusual than the inside. The two remaining original apses are much hidden by the sacristy, built probably by Bishop Jorge de Castello ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... connection with the peculiar circumstances of the time. It was an era of High Church reaction, which was fast becoming a shameful persecution. The two moderate prelates, Abbot and Williams, had for years been in disgrace, and the Church was ruled by the well-meaning, but sour, despotic, meddlesome bigot whom wise King James long refused to make a bishop because "he could not see when matters were well." But if Laud was infatuated as a statesman, he was astute as a manager; he had the Church completely under his control, he was fast filling it with his partisans ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... ever till now consider'd him as a respectful, well-meaning person, as far as regarded myself; and as such, gave him a prudent share of my civilities; but I never thought either his intellects or his person sufficient to entitle ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me it would not be open until the afternoon. From a drugstore I called "information" in Willdon, and finally got connected ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... form of insincerity used by a class of well-meaning but injudicious persons, who, rather than wound the feelings of their friends, conceal the truth from them, sometimes by prevarication and sometimes by positive falsehood; doing wrong, that, as they imagine, good may ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... workers thus make it their business to open up channels of publicity, at least giving the papers something to talk about, and reaching with the strikers' side of the story, churches, clubs, and other associations of well-meaning citizens, who are not at all in touch with organized labor. Allies, in particular, can do much to preserve traditions of fair play, in regard to the use of the streets for peaceful picketing. By providing bonds ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... more especially at this merry season—fraught with humour—and when reminiscences of the past make up for lack of realities of the present. To "notice" such a work is ten times more (we had almost said) trouble than to despatch half a dozen dull books, or a dozen harmless, well-meaning satires on human nature. But we will do our best to detach some of the good things from Mr. Croker's volumes, although the humour of the sketches which adorn them, is of too subtle a quality for our ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... Ours gives himself for gone; y' have watched your time: He fights this day unarmed,—without his rhyme;— And brings a tale which often has been told; As sad as Dido's; and almost as old. His hero, whom you wits his bully call, Bates of his mettle, and scarce rants at all; He's somewhat lewd; but a well-meaning mind; Weeps much; fights little; but is wond'rous kind. In short, a pattern, and companion fit, For all the keeping Tonies of the pit. I could name more: a wife, and mistress too; Both (to be plain) too good for most of you: The wife well-natured, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... result of the weakly health and refined nature which shrank from the barbarism of the outer world, and he thought it would pass away under shelter from the rude taunts of the fierce cousins, at a distance from the well-meaning exhortations of the monks, and at the spectacle of brave and active men who could also be pious, conscientious, and cultivated. In the renewed sojourn at Windsor which James apprehended, the training of such a youth as Malcolm of Glenuskie would be ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... going to describe the struggle that followed, in deference to certain good, kind, and well-meaning people who are unable to face the stern realities of life, or—to save their country. Such things, however, must be; and they would not happen if it were not for a hard, though very sound, purpose, among beasts as among ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... swam towards the beef, examined it carefully with their eyes, and rubbed it with their noses, and then returned to their lord and master. It required but a slight stretch of the imagination to suppose that these well-meaning servants made a favorable report, and whispered in his ear that "all was right," and thus unwittingly ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... fashion in Norway since the nation regained its independence to interest one's self in a lofty, condescending way in the life of the peasantry. A few well-meaning persons, like the poet Wergeland, had labored zealously for their enlightenment and the improvement of their economic condition; but, except in the case of such single individuals, no real and vital ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... is strictly necessary to keep a workman from dying of hunger. And, down in the sphere below, the evil increases, the workmen agonise with hunger and exasperation, while above them discussion still goes on, systems are bandied about, and well-meaning persons exhaust themselves in attempting to apply ridiculously inadequate remedies. There is much stir without any progress, all the wild bewilderment which precedes great catastrophes. And among the many, Catholic socialism, quite as ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... What could excel, or "beat" Buzfuz with his puffed, coarse face and hulking form? His brother Serjeant has the dried, "peaked" look of the overworked barrister, and though he is in his wig we recognize him at once, having seen him before at his chambers. Mr. Phunkey, behind, is the well-meaning but incapable performer to be exhibited in his examination of Winkle; and Mr. Skimpin is the alert, unscrupulous, wide- awake practitioner who "made such a hare" of Mr. Winkle. The composition of this picture is indeed ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... reviews, unions, associations, which had all the moral virtues, save one: self-denial; for not one of them would give way to the others: and, while they wrangled over the crumbs that fell from an honest and well-meaning public, small in numbers and poor in purse, they vegetated for a short time, starved and languished, and at last collapsed never to rise again, not under the assault of the enemy, but—(most pitiful!)—under the weight of their ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Marblehead, came out in a little boat to bring some of Clarendon's clothes, which had been left by accident. He is a clever fellow, for though Clarendon was not half civil to him, he was always polite in his way, and his frank, well-meaning civility so won upon brother, that when they parted he apologized for his rudeness, and told the Captain that he had shown himself the most of a ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... quarrel among themselves. The Rights of Man! How many wrongs have been done under that clause! The Bastille stormed; the Swiss Guard slaughtered; the Reign of Terror, with its daily procession of tumbrels through the streets of Paris; the murder of that amiable and well-meaning gentleman who did his best to atone for the sins of his ancestors; the fearful months of waiting suffered by his Queen before she, too, went to her death. Often as I lighted my candle of an evening in my little room to read of these things so far away, I would drop my Kentucky Gazette to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to me that one of our country neighbours was probably at this time in the city. He kept a store as well as cultivated a farm. He was a plain and well-meaning man, and, should I be so fortunate as to meet him, his superior knowledge of the city might be of essential benefit to me in my present forlorn circumstances. His generosity might likewise induce him to lend me so much as would purchase ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... as a simple-hearted, honest, well-meaning man, who, during a copartnership of twelve years, had gradually become impoverished, while his partner (his former clerk) having no funds but his share of the same business, into which he had been admitted without any advance of stock, had become ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... fully the glory of Greek letters, I was a very busy man, and bitter indeed was the thought that the well-meaning persons who maintain our university system had actually been keeping me all those years from the divine wells of grace and beauty. But for them, how many more years of enjoyment might I have drawn from the Socratic Dialogues, from ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... deal of the state of society under the old regime. Curious to know his opinions of their private characters, I asked a good many questions concerning the royal family. Louis XVI. he described as a-well-meaning man, addicted a little too much to the pleasures of the table, but who would have done well enough had he not been surrounded by bad advisers. I was greatly surprised by one of his remarks. "Louis XVI," observed Lafayette, "owed his death ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in a cause like this, I may be able to pacify well-meaning opposers, and to confute invidious censurers, so as to induce the latter to repent of their unreasonable contradiction, and the former to be glad to learn; for they who admonish one in a friendly spirit should be instructed, they who attack one like enemies should be repelled. But I observe ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... for to-night," thought Charles, "it is late already;" and he folded it up again and threw it on his dressing-table. "Some well-meaning person, I dare say, who thinks he knows me." He wound up his watch, gave a yawn, and put on his slippers. "Who can there be in this neighbourhood to write it?" He opened it again. "It's certainly a Catholic's writing," he ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... vexed sensibility of the soul, in this ferocity of reflection that repels the restless ardor of devotions and the well-meaning outrages of charity, he gradually saw arising the horror of those senile passions, those ripe loves, where one person yields while the other is still suspicious, where lassitude denies such couples the filial caresses whose apparent youthfulness seems new, and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 'of a character to cool emotion.' For indeed my anguish is very real. The collection I had amassed so carefully, during so many years, the collection I loved and revelled in, has been obliterated, swept away, destroyed utterly by a pair of ruthless, impious, well-meaning, idiotic, unseen hands. It cannot be restored to me. Nothing can compensate me for it gone. It was part and parcel ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the pool again. "I beg your pardon," said the Kangaroo nervously. "I didn't mean an altogether animal, or even a bird, but any a—a—a——." She seemed puzzled how to speak of the Platypus, when the strange creature, seeing the well-meaning embarrassment of the Kangaroo, said affably, "any mammal or ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... upon my teeth. If I remember correctly, an ugly fang was to be removed,—at any rate, pain was involved in the matter; but no sooner was the dentist's arm around my head, and his instrument in my mouth, than the well-meaning and zealous operator began to question me upon the subject of personal religion. Now it seemed quite as bad to undertake to propagate Christianity at the point of a surgical instrument, as it would be to win proselytes by the sword; and the utter incongruity ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... And thousands of honest, well-meaning men and women, who had seen, year after year, lie after lie, one stupendous story after another, punctured, riddled, and proved a vicious and malignant slander, swallowed this latest one whole, and marvelled that the American ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... a layman, land in the hands of a layman might be also tithe-free. So that there was an object which a layman might become seized of equitably and bona fide; there was something on which a prescription might attach, the end of which is, to secure the natural well-meaning ignorance of men, and to secure property by the best ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
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