"Untrustworthy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... illustrate their theories. With anything but human beings, that is an excellent method. Human beings, unfortunately, have individualities. They do what, theoretically, they ought not to do, and leave undone those things they ought to do. They are even said to possess souls—untrustworthy things beyond the reach of sociologists. The inductive method—reasoning from the particular to the general—though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... with the lives of other persons still living or lately dead. She owed heavy obligations to both. It is, therefore, not surprising, if her narrative is at times broken and obscure, and she a too partial biographer. Not that Madame Lenormant can be called untrustworthy. She cannot be accused of misrepresenting facts, but she does what is almost as bad,—she partially states them. Her vague allusions and half-and-half statements excite curiosity without gratifying it. We also crave to know more than she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Parish should be charged with their Maintainance; for he thought their oppressing Poverty had constrained them to wish for Death." Unhappily the neighbors made such an outcry that the women were found guilty and sentenced. This is from a later and somewhat untrustworthy account, but it fits in well with what North says of the case. The Life and Conversation of Temperance Floyd, Mary Lloyd [sic], and Susanna ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... better not ask me," she flashed back. "When a woman suddenly discovers that a man is untrustworthy, do you think ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... to one hundred and thirteen stades, before it empties into the sea near the city of Taracina; and very near that place is Mt. Circaeum, where they say Odysseus met Circe, though the story seems to me untrustworthy, for Homer declares that the habitation of Circe was on an island. This, however, I am able to say, that this Mt. Circaeum, extending as it does far into the sea, resembles an island, so that both ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... vindictive scowl of death. That's the mood which has made this strip of coast a grave-yard of dead ships. That's the mood, too, which has given color to the people's thought—or taken the color out of it, leaving it stout and faded like weatherbeaten timbers—making of it the untrustworthy thought of melancholia." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... rare-breed steeds, the Count of Ferroll might be said to have been brooding over the position of what he could scarcely call his country, but rather an aggregation of lands baptized by protocols, and christened and consolidated by treaties which he looked upon as eminently untrustworthy. One day he surprised his sovereign, with whom he was a favourite, by requesting to be appointed to the legation at London, which was vacant. The appointment was at once made, and the Count of Ferroll had now been two years at the Court of ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Berkshire. About a hundred pounds a year were thus added to his income. The marriage is said not to have been a happy one, and perhaps it was not, for his wife was apparently a weak-minded woman; but the inference from the internal evidence of Dryden's plays, as of Shakespeare's, is very untrustworthy, ridicule of marriage having always been a common stock in trade of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... normal space twelve days after leaving Deccan. The untrustworthy sun of Glamis still shone brightly. The inner planet revolved about it with one side glowing low red heat and the other side piled high with frozen atmosphere. The useless outer planet remained a lush ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... their last stand; but the hearts of the Thebans failed them, and they came towards the Persians holding out their hands in entreaty for mercy. Quarter was given to them, but they were all branded with the king's mark as untrustworthy deserters. The helots probably at this time escaped into the mountains; while the small desperate band stood side by side on the hill still fighting to the last, some with swords, others with daggers, others even with their hands and teeth, till not one living man remained ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be given upon data alone, without inspection of the mine. Most mining data present internal evidence as to credibility. The untrustworthy and inexperienced betray themselves in their every written production. Assuming the reliability of data, the methods already discussed for weighing the ultimate value of the property can be applied. It would be possible to cite hundreds of examples of valuation based upon second-hand data. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... line of thought, we gradually arrive at the conclusion that the visible attribute of a varying individual is perhaps the most untrustworthy and the most unreliable character for selection, even if it seems in many cases practically to be the only available one. The direct determination of the degree of heredity itself is obviously preferable by far. This degree is expressed by the proportion of its inheritors among the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... at present in Spain, and so fell back into Portugal, where for many months he occupied himself in preparing to meet the storm which would, he knew, fall ere long upon that country. The Portuguese authorities were as incapable, as untrustworthy, and as intractable as were those of Spain; but here, happily, Lord Wellington had more power. England was paying large subsidies towards keeping up the Portuguese army, which was commanded by Lord ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... heartfelt sobs for forgiveness, and Agatha, feeling a pity for her, told her she would not dismiss her without a character, as at first she had determined to do, but would let her stay on for the month, at the end of which time she must go, as she could never keep a maid who had proved so utterly untrustworthy. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... it is concluded that similar organic forms were once more widely spread than now, is doubly fallacious; and, consequently, the classifications of foreign strata based on the conclusion are untrustworthy. Judging from the present distribution of life, we cannot expect to find similar remains in geographically remote strata of the same age; and where, between the fossils of geographically remote strata, we do find much similarity, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Clemens in his next letter declared that Rice's reports might be parliamentary enough, but that they covered with glittering technicalities the most festering mass of misstatement, and even crime. He avowed that they were wholly untrustworthy; dubbed the author of them "The Unreliable," and in future letters never referred to him by any other term. Carson and the Comstock and the papers of the Coast delighted in this burlesque journalistic warfare, and Rice was ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... they say this Invention was found out to entertain Spinola when he came thither to treat of the last Truce." Upon this wonder, which I did not see, civilisation has now improved, the wind being but a captious and untrustworthy servant compared with petrol or steam. None the less there is still a very rapid ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... abatement in the way of discounts for six and twelve months' bills, fines for renewal, payments to banks for advances and the like—the 'clean' sums available at any given moment bear quite fantastic and untrustworthy relations to their nominal representatives. It may be strongly suspected, from the admitted decrease of a very valuable practice under Walter Scott pere, and from its practical disappearance under Thomas, that the genius of the Scott family did not precisely ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... rhythm consists of a succession of points of emphasis separated by equal time divisions. This is the ideal rhythm. When subjected to the conditions of metrical language it suffers two alterations. In the first place, our notions of time are extremely untrustworthy. Days vanish in a moment and they drag like years. Very few of us can estimate correctly the passage of five minutes: syllables are uttered in a few hundredths of a second. We are satisfied with the accuracy ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... had never known her to do, then burst out: "And now there is nothing in the way of it." She drew her thumb across the leaf-corners of a book that was lying on the table. "Oh, I know what you will say: how, now that Ephie has turned out to be weak and untrustworthy, there is all the more reason for me to remain with her, to look after her. But that is not possible." She faced him sharply, as though he had contradicted her. "I am incapable of pretending to be the same when my feelings have ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... whereby to arrive at many others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date, except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agade. There was no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he could not possibly ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... and bids farewell to his mother, and sets off for Drangey in the company of his youngest brother, Illugi, who will not leave him in this pinch, and a losel called "Noise," a good joker (we are told), but a slothful, untrustworthy poltroon. The three get out to Drangey, and possess themselves of the live-stock on it, and for a while all goes well; the land-owners who held the island in shares, despairing of ridding themselves of the outlaw, give their shares or sell them ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... stories circulating about the horrors of which it was guilty were demonstrably exaggerated; that many of the bloody atrocities were to be ascribed to crazy individuals on both sides; that the witnesses against Lenin were partial and untrustworthy; that something should be done without delay to solve a pressing problem, and that the Conference could think of nothing better, nor, in fact, of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... first impressions of the stranger, they were probably correct. We all disliked him; we thought him conceited, self-opinionated, selfish, and untrustworthy. But later, reflecting that this was possibly the result of Captain Jim's over-praise, and finding none of these qualities as yet offensively opposed to our own selfishness and conceit, we were induced, like many others, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the old man. "I trusted you to go over there, and you come back a disreputable wreck. All my teaching seems to be thrown away upon a pugnacious untrustworthy boy." ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... constructed them thus unfolded and obvious to the view! For if it had been so, not merely the virtues and vices of the mind would be easily visible, but also its knowledge of branches of study, displayed to the contemplation of the eyes, would not need testing by untrustworthy powers of judgement, but a singular and lasting influence would thus be lent to the learned and wise. However, since they are not so constructed, but are as nature willed them to be, it is impossible ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... in Parliament recognised by the Crown. There was nothing to ensure a fair trial for the victims of a royal prosecution, and testimony obtained by torture was accepted as authentic. All these are facts, and to neglect them is to go astray. But they do not prove that every public document is untrustworthy; or that the words of a statute have no more to do with reality than the words of a romance. It is a question of degree. Historical narrative could not be written under the conditions most properly imposed ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... to the creation of man, Mrs. Eddy accepts the first account given in Genesis, but the second, which states that God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, she rejects as untrustworthy. The first account, she says, "was science; the second was metaphorical and mythical, even the supposed utterances of matter; the scripture not being understood by its ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... good or evil. The beginner will wisely ignore all such interpretation, and for two reasons: first, because Spenser's allegories are too shadowy to be taken seriously; and second, because as a chronicler of the times he is outrageously partisan and untrustworthy. In short, to search for any reality in The Faery Queen is to spoil the poem as a work of the imagination. "If you do not meddle with the allegory," said Hazlitt, "the allegory will not ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... men are frequently denied a permanent resting place anywhere, and the frequent translations of their bodies not uncommonly end in their final whereabouts becoming a matter of dispute. Records are lost, graves are disturbed, witnesses are untrustworthy, and it finally becomes impossible to ascertain the last resting place of some great personage, whose whereabouts during almost every hour of his life were a matter of public interest and notoriety. Thus it has happened with the remains of this illustrious ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... miles from Paris; for Russia would fight to the death rather than lose the only possessions which put her into the heart of Europe, and thus be relegated to the character of an Asiatic power. The Emperor of the French had already seen after Eylau how untrustworthy the grand army was, even in Poland; if dejected and insubordinate there, as he may well have recalled was actually the case, what would it be on the banks of the Dnieper, in the plains of Lithuania? Such considerations probably determined not only the fact of peace, but its character. In order to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... on into the night. But as a matter of fact they could make little progress. They knew well it would be extremely difficult to discover their man. Owing to the state of feeling throughout the reserves the source of information upon which the Police ordinarily relied had suddenly dried up or become untrustworthy. A marked change had come over the temper of the Indians. While as yet they were apparently on friendly terms and guilty of no open breach of the law, a sullen and suspicious aloofness marked the bearing of ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... stubborn and unwilling witness through the mazes of a well-prepared story, to unravel, if possible, some of its well-planned knots and convince the jury if he could that the witness was not reliable and his testimony untrustworthy. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... an odd look under his flickering eyelids, and she noted with a scared minuteness of attention the gleam of the lamplight on their pale lashes. She had always hated pale eyelashes. They seemed to her untrustworthy. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... short-lived movements of his wretched body? on the day on which he becomes proof against pleasure he also becomes proof against pain. See, on the other hand, how evil and guilty a slavery a man is forced to serve who is dominated in turn by pleasures and pains, those most untrustworthy and passionate of masters. We must, therefore, escape from them into freedom. This nothing will bestow upon us save contempt of Fortune; but if we attain to this, then there will dawn upon us those invaluable blessings, the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... banks have not held so much money on deposit as at the present moment. Yet nobody pays his rent. The form of offering Griffith's valuation is gone through, albeit it is known that that calculation is absolutely untrustworthy so far as a pasture ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... no answer, but secretly thanked his stars that he had not proved himself untrustworthy by running away, and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... for this reason that these untrustworthy charioteers have for so long been defrauding us, one of them robbing us of daylight and the other nibbling ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... errors of introspection, though numerous, are all too slight to render the process of introspection as a whole unsound and untrustworthy. Though, as we have seen, it involves, strictly speaking, an ingredient of representation, this fact does not do away with the broad distinction between presentative and representative cognition. Introspection ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... will be to get a text. There are several modern texts published in Italy; but none of them are very correct. Giuliani's is an attractive little book; but the Abate was a somewhat reckless emendator, and some of his readings are very untrustworthy. The little pocket edition published by Barbera contains Fraticelli's text, which suffers rather from lack of correction. Messrs. Longmans publish one based on Witte, but embodying the results of later inquiry. A complete text of Dante's entire works has lately been issued by the Clarendon ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... very likely your father and you would not have so much as winced at it. Then there was Miss Sill, poor old Miss Sill. Annie, I am afraid you girls laughed at her. Girls will be girls, and she does dress outrageously. You all said her mantles were worse than my cap," tenderly touching that untrustworthy piece of head-gear. "When she sent for your father all of a sudden, just when he had been summoned to Dr. Hewett's brother, who was very ill, as we knew, while we thought Miss Sill had only one of her maiden-lady fancies, your father told you ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... a hundred people meeting for such an object—what an idea! Three would be too many, and then they want to have more faith in one another than in themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all collapses. Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the notes—what a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us suppose that these simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and what follows for the rest of their lives? Each is dependent on the others for the rest of his life! ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... has slain its thousands, the acceptance of instinct as evidence has slain its tens of thousands. Day by day, in the ordinary direction of their lives, men have learned during hundreds of generations how untrustworthy is the interpretation of fact which Instinct offers, and how bitter is the truth contained in such proverbs as "Anger is a bad counsellor," or "Love is blind." ... Wars are often started and maintained, neither from mere blind anger, nor because those on either side ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... hypothesis only among the parasites and the lowest and minutest organisms. It is just fifty years since Schwann and others proved that, even with respect to them, the supposed evidence of abiogenesis was untrustworthy. ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... with the constitution of the earth. These studies led him to see the disparity between certain accepted and traditional cosmologies and a scientific interpretation of the terrestrial globe and the forms of life which flourish upon it. Finding the supposed sacred and infallible records untrustworthy in one regard, he began to question their veracity at other points. Being of a critical frame of mind, he took the records rather more literally than a sympathetic, allegorical apologist would have done, ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... treacherous scoundrel like that is worse than a murderer in my opinion. So is anyone who is fundamentally untrustworthy." ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... you refer to. I have not myself found any reason to consider Felgate or Stafford untrustworthy. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... anticipated difficulty, if not danger. But now that he is out upon the open ocean, he is sure of the first, and keenly apprehensive of the last. For, in less than a single day's sailing, he has discovered that the sailors, besides counting short, are otherwise untrustworthy. Several of them are not sailors at all, but "longshore" men; one or two mere "land-lubbers," who never laid hand upon a ship's rope before clutching those of the Condor. With such, what chance will there be for working the ship in a storm? But there ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... invasions of the natural order and declines to accept such on any evidence whatsoever. All that one has time to say now of such an attitude is that it makes all religion impossible, and sets aside as untrustworthy all the deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were going to argue against this attitude (as I am not able to now) I should simply oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is noblest and best in the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... on such considerations, is to build a lighthouse on a quicksand. I could have referred the learned Critic to plenty of places where the thing he speaks of as incredible has been done. The proof that St. John used the uncompounded verb is the fact that it is found in all the copies except our two untrustworthy friends. The explanation of [Greek: DIerchomai] is sufficiently accounted for by the final syllable ([Greek: DE]) of [Greek: mede] which immediately precedes. Similarly ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... while, however, he began to notice that certain of his friends who protested most loudly against religion were quite untrustworthy in their morals as well. Moreover he attributed several errata of his own early life to lack of religious principles, and to remedy this defect he now undertook—deliberately if we may credit his later ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... at her but he could not answer her; like all the others, when one looked at her she seemed to shrivel beneath one's eyes and become worthless, malicious, and untrustworthy. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... self-appointed and all-knowing enemies of the whole missionary enterprise. While steaming up the Bay of Bengal, the anti-mission chorus appeared at its critical best. J.W. was told as they neared Calcutta that the Indian Christian was servile, and slick and totally untrustworthy. Never had these expert observers seen a genuine convert, but only hypocrites, liars, petty ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... natural religion. I say, that a power, possessed of infallibility in religious teaching, is happily adapted to be a working instrument, in the course of human affairs, for smiting hard and throwing back the immense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect:—and in saying this, as in the other things that I have to say, it must still be recollected that I am all along bearing in mind my main purpose, which ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... whilst the writer never clearly reveals to us who he himself is, it is equally manifest that his own convictions constitute the matrix in which the discourses and events are imbedded, and that there is nothing in this matrix to render that which it contains unreal or untrustworthy. ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... (i.e., Parliamentary Papers, 1854, vol. 71), part 6. Malmesbury, Memoirs of an ex-Minister, i. 402; the last probably inaccurate. Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, i. 11, This work is a Russian official publication, and, though loose and untrustworthy, is valuable as showing ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... conceal her disgust at this untrustworthy trait revealed in the character of her charge by the episode, "have you any idea why that candy rule was made?" Gladys shook her head. "It was made," said Nyoda, "to keep me from dishonor." Gladys looked at her uncomprehendingly. "It is a very ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... position without terrible losses, if the Boers could see to shoot It was pretty well known that not many of them occupied Gun Hill, but the number encamped within reach of it was a matter of pure speculation, dependent on the accuracy of Kaffir stories which might be true of one day, but quite untrustworthy twenty-four hours later; so rapid are the Boers in their movements, if they get any suspicion that ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... "Their guide was untrustworthy. He roused their suspicions by constant attempts to mislead them, and eventually he had to point the way with a rope round his neck. Nevertheless, they met with no actual opposition during the whole journey other than a few stray ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... quite as necessary in those cases where the process takes place naturally. Although there is little doubt but that some of the recorded instances of natural or artificial grafting of plants of distant botanical affinities are untrustworthy, yet the instances of adhesion between widely different plants are too numerous and too well attested to allow of doubt. Moreover, when parasitical plants are considered, such as the Orobanches, the Cuscutas, and specially the mistleto (Viscum), which may be found growing on plants ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... had prefaced their long outline of the boundaries of the United States by expressing their intention "that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented." So vague, however, were the terms of the treaty and so untrustworthy were the maps of the day that ultimately almost every clause in the boundary section ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... know, I shouldn't wonder if that was one reason for his being so untrustworthy, Dolly. Maybe if he finds that we are going to trust him, it will change him, and make ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... through the lively fancy of the Abbe. Even Ixtlilxochitl, who, as a native and of royal race, must have had access to all sources of information, and who had the advantage of writing more than three centuries ago, seems to have looked on the native traditions as extremely untrustworthy. See Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico, Vol. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Mr. Knowles], "I love my friends and hate my enemies—which may not be in accordance with the Gospel, but I have found it a good wearing creed for honest men." [But he only regarded as "enemies" those whom he found to be double-dealers, shufflers, insincere, untrustworthy; a fair opponent he respected, and he could agree to differ with a friend without altering ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... lesson here which he never forgot, namely, that these Spanish irregulars, useful as they might be in harassing an enemy or pursuing a beaten foe, were utterly untrustworthy in any plan of combined action. The succor, therefore, reached Montjuich in safety; two hundred of the men dismounted and entered the fort; the remainder, leading their horses, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... that the Swedish government had not kept their word, had broken their agreement etc. etc., and, when all of a sudden Sweden became identical with the government of Sweden she was pathetically pointed at as untrustworthy etc. etc. The amount of moral indignation contained in these Norwegian accusations has plainly been made manifest by late events. Their object—to throw on Sweden the responsibility of plans that were designed to be executed in Norway—was too transparent, but just on that account they ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... came to Virginia—there is absolutely no authority except Smith himself; but when he emerges from romance into history, he can be followed and checked by contemporary evidence. If he was always and uniformly untrustworthy it would be less perplexing to follow him, but his liability to tell the truth when vanity or prejudice does not interfere is annoying to the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. "One meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel Grimshaw; they ought to open some ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... yourselves to be misled by the common notion that an hypothesis is untrustworthy simply because it is an hypothesis. It is often urged, in respect to some scientific conclusion, that, after all, it is only an hypothesis. But what more have we to guide us in nine-tenths of the most important affairs of daily life than hypotheses, and often very ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... is ascribed in Charles Knight's untrustworthy Studies of Shakspere, Book XI., to William Richardson (1743-1814), Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow. Unfortunately the British Museum Catalogue lends some support to this injustice by giving it either to him or to Edward Taylor of Noan, Tipperary. The error is emphasised ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the actual masculinity ratio for the United States, for the Census gives the statistics for only one year in ten and even then is untrustworthy on this point. In a few states birth registration is attempted but the figures thus obtained do not harmonize with the Census and the situation is not greatly improved.[38] The masculinity varies considerably ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... yet their Northern allies; men who have suffered intensely from actual contact and struggle with the institution, and who have felt, in some measure, the steel of Slavery enter their own souls; but they are not numerous enough to stand without the aid of these same untrustworthy Northern auxiliaries, who already, at the first indication of incipient success for our arms, propose, like this writer, to remand them to the tender mercies of a Southern majority rule. It is the fear of this treachery which makes them so few as they are, and so weak. It is these men whom ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the other clerks. He was too quiet and reserved for the wilder spirits, too much of a gentleman for others, and in the eyes of the managers, and especially of the senior partner, a disgraced, untrustworthy youth foisted on the office by Mr. Castleford's weak partiality. That old Mr. Frith had, Clarence used to say, a perfectly venomous way of accepting his salute, and seemed always surprised and disappointed if ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... called "gameness," and even more than Smith he appreciated the commingling of Scotch shrewdness and Indian craft. He believed Susie to be honest; but he had believed many things in the past which time had not demonstrated to be facts. No, the chance was too great to take; for should she prove untrustworthy or indiscreet, his mission would be a failure. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... you to the keepeen of the women; so before we depart you will be fastened securely in your own room. But you will have one friend at home. Nancy, I believe, like myself, would do much to serve you, although she is obliged for her own safety, to pretend that she considers you both dangerous and untrustworthy.' ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... it off," said Wallis, rising from the side of a man whom he believed to be sillily drunk and altogether untrustworthy. "You know we get ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... faithless, perfidious, undutiful, renegade, apostate, recreant, derelict, false, treacherous, traitorous, treasonable, untrustworthy, pervert, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of St. Patrick," as Canon O'Hanlon has said, is "incomparably the worst" of the Latin lives of the Saint, and yet it is on this untrustworthy foundation, and on the contradictions of the Scholiast, that Usher and Ware rest their respective theories. Usher discovered a Roman camp at Kilpatrick, and found that the town was "not far from the Irish Sea," and ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... Sally, with a clearness that did her credit, repeated all the information she had had—all that her mother had told her—what she had extracted from Colonel Lund with difficulty—and lastly, but as the merest untrustworthy hearsay, the story that had reached her through her friend Laetitia. In fact, she went the length of discrediting it altogether, as "Only Goody Wilson, when all was said and done." The fact that her mother had told her so little never seemed to strike her as strange or to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... demanded his inheritance, which Antonius had seized, declaring that it was public money; but Octavianus, though only eighteen, showed so much prudence and fairness that many of the Senate were drawn towards him rather than Antonius, who had always been known as a bad, untrustworthy man; but the first thing to be done was to put down the murderers—Decimus Brutus was in Gaul, Marcus Brutus and Cassius in Macedonia, and Sextus Pompeius had also raised ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and their fondness for sallies, were always threatening the northern provinces like a torrent) from extending their inroads any further he was superseded by a count named Maurus, a man cruel, ferocious, fickle, and untrustworthy. This man, as we have related in our account of preceding transactions being one of Julian's body-guard to whom the defence of the palace was expressly committed, while that prince was doubting about accepting the imperial authority, took ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... England's example, reject protective tariffs. Neither anticipation was unreasonable, but the one was justified whilst the other was confuted by events. All that can be said is that on such anticipations, untrustworthy though they may be, the conduct no less of public than of private life depends. Criticism on anything that is new and untried, whether it be a new-built bridge or a new-made constitution, is of necessity predictive. But there is an essential difference between foresight and guessing. ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... without opposition. It was tried experimentally at the advice of the writer, and in the face of great incredulity on the part of certain Portuguese newspapers and of some officials. By many prominent persons the account published of the work of the insect in the United States was considered as untrustworthy, and simply another instance of American boasting. But the opposition was overruled, and the triumphant result silenced all opposition. It is safe to say that the general opinion among Portuguese orange-growers to-day is very favourable to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... preparations; also of the morale of the troops. In the next place, I shall be glad of any information you can gather of the country beyond the frontier, and the state of the roads in all that neighbourhood. Here, again, the native reports are absolutely untrustworthy. The line of the enemy's advance would be either direct from Lisbon through Vicosa, or up the Tagus, which offers them great facilities for carriage, and down through ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... Meanwhile he was rapidly—indeed too rapidly—preparing his "Histoire de la Revolution Francaise." The first two volumes—there were ten in all—appeared in 1823. This work, although it has been demonstrated to be very untrustworthy and inaccurate, more especially in its estimates of persons, gave its author a prominent place among French politicians and men of letters. About this time, too, the gift by his admirer, Cotta, the German publisher, of a share in the Constitutionnel raised ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... crept up from behind and grappled with him. Spider danced away as far as the rope would permit and snorted, and two struggling forms squirmed away from his untrustworthy heels. ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... Antichrist. Finally, in his Discourses on the Miracles (1726) he denied entirely the authenticity of miracles, and stated that they were merely stories and allegories. He thought that the literal account of the miracles is improbable and untrustworthy, that they were parables and prophetical recitations. These and many other such-like doctrines are found in his works. Woolston held at that time the post of tutor at Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge; ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the long grass, and took it in turns to hold the stick, amusing themselves by sending disks of paper up to the kite as messengers,—watching the paper circles as they skimmed lightly along the string. But they were very untrustworthy messengers as a rule, for some of them stopped half, quarter, or three-quarters of the distance up the string, sometimes for a long time, until an extra puff of wind started them again, and, what was worst of all, they none of them brought ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... declares, in contradiction to the opinion of all previous commentators, that Crispinus is to represent John Marston. Since then, Gifford's assertion has been taken for granted, without deeper inquiry. The authority of this fond editor of Jonson has, however, proved an untrustworthy one in many things, especially in matters relating to Shakspere. Thanks to the exertions of more recent inquirers, not a a few things are now seen in a better perspective than Gifford was able to ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... August 10th, followed by the actual deposition and imprisonment of the king, Lafayette sounded his army to ascertain if they would march to Paris in defence of constitutional government, but he found them vacillating and untrustworthy. His own dismissal from command came soon after: orders were sent for his arrest, and nothing remained for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... have thought that the views of your future husband would have more weight with you than those of a casual medical missionary, known to be irresponsible and untrustworthy." ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... such a thing as a "call" to any profession, there is a call to that of letters. So with an enthusiasm born of inexperience and delusive hope we embark as in a leaky and untrustworthy sailing ship, built, for ought we know, "in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," and at the mercy of every chance breeze are wafted by the winds of heaven through chaos and darkness into the boundless ocean of words and of books. When the waves run high they resemble ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... somewhere. Blake was not long in discovering that while the relations between the two branches of the family were maintained with an outward show of cordiality they were really not of the closest. Neri told him, as a matter of fact, that Margherita had always considered these people covetous and untrustworthy. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... a strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to pass judgment on circumstantial evidence. which is the most untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others which need not appear, I decline to state positively whether there was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you must form your own opinion, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... chose his chief officers unwisely. In Antoine du Prat, his new chancellor, he had a violent and lawless adviser; in Charles de Bourbon, his new constable, an untrustworthy commander. Forthwith he plunged into Italian politics, being determined to make good his claim both to Naples and to Milan; he made most friendly arrangements with the Archduke Charles, his future rival, promising to help ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... readers, who know not Mr. McLennan's works, entertain about that acute and intrepid pioneer, a man of warm temper, I admit, a man who threw out his daringly original theory at a heat, using at first such untrustworthy materials as lay at hand, but a man whom disease could not daunt, and whom only death prevented from building a stately edifice on the soil which he was the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... father? tell me, for you know; I myself know, I feel, (and not untrustworthy is this intuition) that I am not here a mere fortuitous foundling. Who was my mother? I charge you to ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... intelligent men, but there were some who were not; and an incident occurred in the Nashville campaign in the next year which showed what mischiefs were likely to happen when a telegraph operator was cowardly or untrustworthy. [Footnote: See "The Battle of Franklin," by the present writer, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... gray, the silver-tip, and others with names known only in certain localities, such as the range bear, the roach-back, and the smut-face. But, in spite of popular opinion to the contrary, most old hunters are very untrustworthy in dealing with points of natural history. They usually know only so much about any given animal as will enable them to kill it. They study its habits solely with this end in view; and once slain they only examine it ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... Gustavus Adolphus had indeed disappeared. Charles XII was ere long to be a mere knight-errant at Bender. The Cossack independence, too, was a thing of the past. Its last and all too untrustworthy representative was to die in Turkey before many months were out—of despair, according to Russian testimony—of poison voluntarily swallowed, according to Swedish historians. The poison story has a touch of likelihood about it, for Peter certainly proposed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Lord Saint Maur turning to with as much energy as the rest, officers and men pulling and hauling away at the ropes. To land the stores more rapidly, Adair directed the carpenter to construct several rafts, which would be serviceable as long as the sea continued smooth, but which would be most untrustworthy should it come ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... the nature of human knowledge, Anaxagoras, asserted that by the Intellect alone do we become acquainted with the truth, the senses being altogether untrustworthy. He illustrated this by putting a drop of coloured liquid into a quantity of clear water, the eye being unable to recognize any change. Upon such principles also he asserted that snow is not white, but black, since it is ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... covering the sound of our approach. The lightning's not so convenient. Ah, your house is fully illuminated! My clever Martin is punishing your stock of candles. He belongs to the unceremonious classes, which are also unlovely, untrustworthy, and so on." ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Coggeshall take his ship out of the harbor with more than one gun—a Long Tom—aboard. Nothing daunted, he started out with this armament, to which some twenty muskets were added, on a privateering cruise in the channel, which was full of British cruisers. Even the Long Tom proved untrustworthy, so recourse was finally had to carrying the enemy by boarding; and in this way four valuable prizes were taken, of which three were sent home with prize crews. But a gale carried away the "Leo's" foremast, and she fell a prey to an English frigate ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... absolutely without resources, there was no difficulty in his borrowing the money required for his share of the capital. The undertaking did not prove a success. Lincoln had no business experience and no particular business capacity, while his partner proved to be untrustworthy. The partner decamped, leaving Lincoln to close up the business and to take the responsibility for the joint indebtedness. It was seventeen years before Lincoln was able, from his modest earnings as a lawyer, to clear ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... makes Mamie Sue do, to remind me not to forget and tell. I thought I was stronger-minded than that, but I see I'm not. You see, leather Louise, I must be more trustworthy than just any girl; for if I'm untrustworthy, then it will be a tragedy, because it will prove that I inherited it and so be an evidence against Father in my own mind ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... little towns, some of whom had received no pay for three years. These half-starved men, being in their weak condition even more useless than the ordinary Egyptian soldier, he sent eastwards to be disbanded, and with an army of five hundred untrustworthy troops, who did not possess a single cannon, and whose arms were old-fashioned flint-lock guns, he had to prepare to face the attack of thousands of rebels ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... the public that the national Republican platform should not be taken seriously.... "The leaders of the party," he says, "put in the suffrage plank to please women in the voting States but they meant nothing by it." Are the men who are to lead a great party as double-faced and untrustworthy as Mr. Roraback paints them? Were they laughing in their sleeves as they wrote the solemn pledges in the rest of the national platform? We wonder if Connecticut Republicans will let Mr. Roraback smirch ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... natives flock from all parts of the island to see the wonderful work advance, bringing supplies of provisions to the whites as a sort of payment for admission to the show. The vessel was completed and launched after months of toil, but its sails of matting were found to be so untrustworthy that the plan of proceeding in it to Batavia had to be ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... activities to a certain class of books. 'What a blessing it is,' said a book-loving friend not long ago, 'not to have to worry about all sorts of books. I have never ceased congratulating myself that I took the resolution to confine myself entirely to Herbals. Before, I had a vast but untrustworthy knowledge of titles and editions which a bad memory did not assist. Now, thank goodness, I have forgotten all that, but I flatter myself that I really do know ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... exclude it; both are essential to every true science, and physics, which stops with physics, leads man by dazzling promises into some Utopian desert only to leave him there to die of hunger. And it is no less true that metaphysics, without this basis in experimental science, is illusory and untrustworthy, wherever the ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter
... reputation all over this part of the Amazons, the semi-civilised Indians being quite as severe upon them as the white settlers. Everyone spoke of them as lazy, thievish, untrustworthy, and cruel. They have a greater repugnance than any other class of Indians to settled habits, regular labour, and the service of the whites; their distaste, in fact, to any approximation towards civilised life is invincible. Yet most of these faults are only an exaggeration of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... called ruin was comparative affluence, for Bruce had not yet learned that clothes are unsafe standards by which to judge the resources of city folks, just as on the plains and in the mountains faded overalls and a ragged shirt are equally untrustworthy guides to a man's financial rating. And the musty odor that met him in the gloomy hallway—he felt how she must loathe it. He had wondered at the early hour she'd set but when Helen ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... are so wonderful, so patient. They are mothers and wage-earners and sick nurses, too; they're not the sort of women you describe. Perhaps," she added, with one of her fatal impulses toward concession, "perhaps your friends are untrustworthy and spiteful, ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... claim a much larger proportion of the original bulk of our population than the seven per cent included under the heading Scotch. Henry Jones Ford considers the conclusions as far as they pertain to the Scotch-Irish as "fallacious and untrustworthy." "Many Ulster names," he says,[5] "are also common English names.... Names classed as Scotch or Irish were probably mostly those of Scotch-Irish families.... The probability is that the English ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... travellers returned to Venice. The Pope was dead, and they waited two years fruitlessly for a successor to be elected. As, then, they did not wish the Great Khan to believe them untrustworthy, they decided to return to the Far East, and on this journey they took with them Nicolo's son, Marco Polo, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... precisely that which history has had so often to recount. The sovereign, frightened, obstinate, and little able to appreciate the forces opposed to him, was wavering, fickle, timid, yet stubborn, and, above all, untrustworthy. The people were bent on pushing matters to extremes to which those who had so far been their leaders were unwilling to go, and, as usual, the best of those leaders were shunted from the road, happy if they were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... entirely inadequate amounts to be effective, the percentage by weight of the water being about 1 per cent. The familiar rules of enough salt to make a brine that will "float an egg" or "float a potato" are likewise untrustworthy; they call respectively, according to actual tests made by Mr. Sanford E. Thompson, for 15 per cent. and 11 per cent. of salt which is too much, according to the authorities quoted above, to be used safely. In practice an arbitrary quantity ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... girl whom his father, also her lover, generously ceded to him. This event happened in A.D. 282. Assuming that Nintoku was then sixteen, he cannot have been less than 133 at the time of his death. It is thus seen that the chronology of this period, also, is untrustworthy. Nintoku's reign is remembered chiefly on account of the strange circumstances in which he came to the throne, his benevolent charity, and the slights he suffered at the hands of a jealous consort. His father, Ojin, by an exercise of caprice ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... how far Jevons took himself seriously. He certainly had no illusions as to the nature of his success. But whenever I come to this side of him I feel myself untrustworthy. I cannot see him properly. I am prejudiced by knowing him so well. I daresay if I hadn't known him, if he hadn't been so frank in his disclosures, if he hadn't explained so many times the deliberate calculations of his method, I should think him a great novelist. I daresay to a generation ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... patriotic should at that rude period have so firmly rooted themselves in the mind of the governing class; but that their object was rather to consolidate their own power and advance that of the city than to instruct mankind, is clear from the totally untrustworthy character of the special gentile records; and when history began to be cultivated in a literary way, we do not observe any higher motive at work. Fabius and Cincius wrote in Greek, partly, no doubt, because in the unformed state of their own language it was easier to do so; but ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... condemn Mrs. Murray outright, because of certain purely circumstantial evidence against her. That is the way of hot-headed youth. I, being mature, even-minded and clear-eyed, maintain that one accused must be given every opportunity to prove himself innocent. When you say that Mrs. Murray is untrustworthy——' ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... to a certain Marpon, who ceded it to Henri Auguste de Lomenie (whose wife, Louise de Beon, descended from the house of Luxemburg-Brienne) in 1640. The Limousin house of Lomenie (the genealogies which trace this family to the 15th century are untrustworthy) produced many well-known statesmen, among others the celebrated cardinal Etienne Charles de Lomenie de Brienne (1727-1794), minister of Louis XV.; and the last lords of Brienne were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... seven this morning in the small, unseaworthy, untrustworthy, unrigged steam-launch Moosmee, and after crawling for some hours at a speed of about five miles an hour along brown and yellow shores with a broad, dark belt of palms above them, we left the waveless, burning sea behind, and after a few miles of tortuous steaming through the mangrove ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the secret and the plans of the great commercial power, looked round when the lady of the house disappeared; but there were still several persons present whose opinions or interests marked them out as untrustworthy, so they continued to play. About half past eleven all had gone save intimates: M. Sauvager, M. Camusot, the examining magistrate, and his wife, M. and Mme. du Ronceret and their son Fabien, M. and Mme. du Coudrai, and Joseph ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... intelligent (this being judged rather from the young people), very superstitious, brave, with much power of enduring pain, cruel, not more revengeful perhaps than is usual among uncivilised natives, friendly one with another, not quarrelsome, but untrustworthy and not over-faithful even in their dealings with one another, though honest as regards boundaries and property rights and in the sense of not stealing from one another within their own communities (this being regarded as a most shameful offence), and of ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson |
