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Unreliable   /ˌənrɪlˈaɪəbəl/  /ˌənrilˈaɪəbəl/   Listen
Unreliable

adjective
1.
Liable to be erroneous or misleading.  Synonym: undependable.
2.
Not worthy of reliance or trust.  Synonym: undependable.  "An undependable assistant"
3.
Dangerously unstable and unpredictable.  Synonym: treacherous.  "An unreliable trestle"
4.
Lacking a sense of responsibility.



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"Unreliable" Quotes from Famous Books



... would be paid, and paid in specie. In other words, they were to raise a revenue to pay this interest. This simple thing the old Congress had not thought of, or had neglected, or found impracticable. And how should the required revenue be raised? Direct taxation was odious and unreliable. Hamilton would raise it by duties on imports. But how was an impoverished country to raise money to pay the duties when there was no money? How was the dead corpse to be revived? He would develop the various industries of the nation, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... shall be told that our parallel does not hold good: if the Marconi apparatus failed seven times out of ten, we should hardly {211} think it worth while to provide our ships with so unreliable an instrument; yet who would say that even three out of ten prayers for stated objects met with fulfilment? The objection, however, is not unanswerable; indeed, the very comparison employed in stating it may enable us to supply at least a partial answer. For we understand ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... Mr. Grayson—these pawn-brokers," he said in his slow, measured way. "If every man was a Turk we could take his word, but when they are Jews and Christians and such other unreliable people, of course they want something for their ducats. It's the same old pound of flesh. Very respectable firm this, Mr. Arthur Breen & Co.—VERY respectable people. I used to press off the elder gentleman's coat—he had only two—one of them I made myself ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... often become the opprobrium of the practioner by remaining, as they frequently do, an eyesore on the top of the hock; they do not interfere, it is true, with the work of the horse, but fixing upon him the stigma of what, in human estimation, is a most unreliable and objectionable reputation, to wit, that of being an habitual "kicker," and, worse than all, one ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... were a choice between sex instruction in the home or in the school, there would be no hesitation about delegating it to the home; but since most homes neglect the discussion of sex matters, leaving the children to gain their knowledge of sex from unreliable sources on the streets, the choice lies between the perversion of sex as it is taught on the streets, and the science of sex as it should ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... the bitterness with which this feeling is expressed in his journalistic writings that helps to raise a doubt as to his capacity for work of the best class in fiction. Still, if it be true, as some of those who were his friends say, that this occasional work was seldom much studied, it becomes unreliable as an indicator of the writer's character. The same hand that in the famous Snob Papers so savagely, and in at least one case so intemperately, satirised types of English society, afterwards produced novels in which fidelity to the essential facts of life is the most conspicuous quality. So, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... of my experiments with the motormen, accordingly, I had to satisfy only two demands. The method of examination promised to be valuable if, first, it showed good results with reliable motormen and bad results with unreliable ones; and secondly, if it vividly aroused in all the motormen the feeling that the mental function which they were going through during the experiment had the greatest possible similarity with their experience ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... not always thus. We need not say anything about the poets, for they, with the unfortunate exception of Mr. Wordsworth, have been really faithful to their high mission, and are universally recognised as being absolutely unreliable. But in the works of Herodotus, who, in spite of the shallow and ungenerous attempts of modem sciolists to verify his history, may justly be called the "Father of Lies"; in the published speeches of Cicero and the biographies of Suetonius; ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... is yet determined, though the most reliable recent investigations make it probable that he lived after Gabirol and was indebted to the latter for some of his views in philosophy as well as in Ethics.[106] So far as traditional data are concerned we have equally reliable, or rather equally unreliable statements for regarding Bahya as an older contemporary of Gabirol (eleventh century), or of Abraham ibn Ezra (1088-1167). Neither of these two data being vouched for by any but their respective authors, who lived a long time after Bahya, we are left to such indirect evidence as may ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... 18, the best and most enjoyable match is always likely to result from a combination of the scratch man with the 18 against the two players of medium handicaps, although the scratch man, if a selfish player, may not be disposed to saddle himself with the unreliable person at the other end of the scale. It is a point to be borne in mind that the 18 man, if, despite his handicap, he is a real and conscientious golfer, is more likely to play above his handicap than the scratch man. It is much easier for an 18-handicap player to perform ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... DIFFERENCES.—The chief difference between the two groups is one of method. The political socialists prefer political action to violence; the I.W.W. prefer violence to political action. The I.W.W. believe that political methods are altogether too slow and unreliable, and accordingly they have so far refused to affiliate with any political party. The extreme limits to which the I.W.W. have gone in the matter of violence have caused many political socialists to disavow this militant ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... gone by. My memory has become vague and unreliable. Sometimes I think of the colonel, but without feeling again the terrors of those early days. All the doctors to whom I have described his afflictions have been unanimous as regards the inevitable end in store for the invalid, ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... means carrying one's soul in one's hand, setting one's feet on a narrow path, it means never placing ourselves in danger of meeting the cold look on the part of the child that tells us without words that he finds us insufficient and unreliable. It means the humble realisation of the truth that the ways of injuring the child are infinite, while the ways of being useful to him are few. How seldom does the educator remember that the child, even at four or five years of age, is making experiments with adults, seeing through them, with ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... emphatically pronounce conscientious, and accurate in the highest degree in their respective days; but these days were long ago, and the present state of knowledge has rendered a considerable proportion of their texts obsolete and unreliable. Dibdin has certainly added to Herbert, but he has not, on the contrary, in all cases faithfully reprinted him; if his book had been as great an advance on his predecessor as Herbert's was on Ames, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... composed body of troops proved, however, to be entirely unreliable. Agnew and Anderson were, within a few hours of their arrival at Mooltan, attacked and severely wounded by fanatics, and no one raised a hand to help them. Lying helpless and sorely wounded in the temporary asylum which their quarters afforded, they heard ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... of his watch. However, a time element is generally used. A combination of fixed light upon which is superposed a flash or a group of flashes of white or of colored light has been used, but it is in disrepute as being unreliable. A type known as "occulating lights" consists of a fixed light which is momentarily eclipsed, but the duration of the eclipse is usually less than that of the light. Obviously, groups of eclipses may be used. Sometimes lights of different ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... this time that a marked improvement was noted in the compass. Ever since the first approach to Adelie Land it had been found unreliable, for, on account of the proximity to the magnetic pole, the directive force of the needle was so slight that very large local ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century. We assume some of the most peculiar and temporary of our late advantages as natural, permanent, and to be depended on, and we lay our plans accordingly. On this sandy ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... often more so. But there are always some snobs who care more for dollars than sense. So Walter was destined to find out, for he made no secret of his loss of fortune. Most of his college friends sympathized with him, but there was one who proved unreliable. ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger

... incompetent, partly also, doubtless, to the effect of general professional stagnation upon those naturally inclined to worthlessness, there had accumulated a very considerable percentage of officers who were useless; or, worse, unreliable. In measure, this was also due to habits of drinking, much more common in all classes of men then than now. Even within the ten years with which I am dealing, an officer not much my senior remarked to me on the great improvement in this respect in his own experience; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... in 1549, and soon after his departure new disturbances broke out in Ireland. Desmond and O'Brien were regarded as unreliable; a union between the two great rival families of the Ormonds and the Desmonds was not improbable, and to make matters worse, news arrived in Dublin that Robert Wauchope, the papal Archbishop of Armagh, had arrived in the North to bring about a league between O'Donnell, O'Neill, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... Tom there, but discreetly withdrew before he saw her. The water-bucket was usually at its place, or, failing that, there were some muddy little pools on the stone below. But the garbage-box was very unreliable. Once it left her for three days without food. She searched along the high fence, and seeing a small hole, crawled through that and found herself in the open street. This was a new world, but before she had ventured far, there was a noisy, rumbling rush—a ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... diminished sufficiently to permit him to open his eyes he scanned his surroundings more carefully; but his vision was unreliable. His head, too, continued to feel as if his skull were being forcibly spread apart by some fiendish instrument concealed within it. His mouth was parched, his stomach violently rebellious. In spite of these distractions he began to note certain unfamiliar features about this place. The wall-paper, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... his father, Wieland, for having provided him with such an unreliable weapon, Wittich was about to announce himself conquered, when Hildebrand, realizing that he had not acted honorably, gave him back his own blade. Dietrich, to his surprise and dismay, found himself conquered ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... needs more than the mother. It needs as well the presence of men, the vibration from the present body of the man. There may not be any actual, palpable connection. But from the great voluntary center in the man pass unknowable communications and unreliable nourishment of the stream of manly blood, rays which we cannot see, and which so far we have refused to know, but none the less essential, quickening dark rays which pass from the great dark abdominal life-center in the father to ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... had in his seventeenth year eloped with Martha, daughter of Major-General Richard Holmes, and married her in the Fleet on March 2, 1715. As was only to be expected from a person so volatile he from the beginning neglected his wife; but, as is put quaintly in that unreliable work, Memoirs of a Certain Island adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, which was concocted by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, "after some years of continu'd extravagance, the Duke, either through the natural Inconsistency ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... probable that the actual combatants did not number more than ten thousand, all told. And only half of these were of any value—two thousand men under Galeotto, and three thousand Burgundians commanded by Charles and his immediate lieutenants. The remainder were unreliable mercenaries and the still more unreliable troops of Campobasso already pledged to the foe. La Marche estimates Rene's force at twelve thousand and adds: "The Duke of Burgundy was far behind, for, on my conscience, he had ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... spring freshets; and besides, we were absent from the Valley some weeks, endeavoring to recruit Jo's failing health at the sea-side. But this was a vain endeavor; that which sapped the springs of her life was past outward cure. She inherited her father's delicate and unreliable constitution, and a nervous organization, whose worst disease is ever the preying of doubt, anxiety, or regret. As winter drew on, she grew no better; a dim, dreamy abstraction brooded over her. She said to me often, with a vague alarm, "Sally, how far off you seem! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... liked to delay it, prevent it, if possible. He showed her in great living pictures the functioning of the colossal gigantic machinery of the State, he tried to explain to her the working of the wheels, the multifarious transmissions, regulators and detents, unreliable ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... to assist the water motor when the quantity of water decreases during the summer months. Wind motors were formerly extensively used for milling purposes, but they are now gradually disappearing. They are too irregular and unreliable, although they utilize a very cheap motive power. It is not advantageous to expend a large amount of capital for a mill which often is unable to work at the very time when there are favorable opportunities for doing profitable business. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... one half miles. At one quarter this range their shot would be utterly unable to penetrate even moderately thin armor. Besides these guns there were a few ten and twelve-inch rifles of cast-iron, and hence of unreliable and inferior material; some old smooth-bore cannon, converted into rifles by wrought-iron linings; and a number of mortars and pieces of small calibre, altogether contemptible in the light of the advances made in the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... they had played in the upbuilding of the South—left prostrate by the Civil War. One could see their eager, upturned faces glow with pride and self-satisfaction. But suddenly he would shift the tone of his comments and tell them how sadly those of them who were indolent and shiftless and unreliable and vicious were retarding the upward struggles of the industrious and self-respecting majority and how they were perpetuating the prejudice against the whole race. And as he pictured this seamy side of the situation ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... to do," he wrote to Atticus. "I do not think he knows himself. Certainly none of us know.—It is all panic and blunder. We are uncertain whether he will make a stand, or leave Italy. If he stays, I fear his army is too unreliable. If not, where will he go, and how and what are his plans? Like you, I am afraid that Caesar will be a Phalaris, and that we may expect the very worst. The flight of the Senate, the departure of the magistrates, the closing of the treasury, will not stop him.—I ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... of the blood tests are unreliable and uncertain. W. B. Scott, an expert evolutionist, says, "It must not be supposed that there is any exact mathematical ratio between the degrees of relationship indicated by the blood tests, and those which are shown by anatomical and palaeontological evidence.... ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... are perhaps the most characteristic symptoms of insanity. They colour so deeply the entire texture of Rousseau's prolix second part as to make it not only unreliable, but almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman; and this morbid condition had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... of—that his upper lip wouldn't keep stiff but would wobble, in spite of him. And of course a breakdown on his own part would be the worst possible thing that could happen to him. No potential soldier wants to feel his upper lip unreliable, no matter what happens. It's likely to make him flinch in a critical moment, when flinching ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond

... chief value of the real expert often rests on his ability to influence the local physician.[14] At the late Wharton-Van Ness trial the defence desired to show that the work of the chemist employed by the prosecution was unreliable, because the analyses made by him in a previous case had "been condemned by the united voice of the whole scientific world." The court was not able to see the relevancy of this, and refused to allow the professional ability or standing of an expert ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... Murchison, Gascoyne, Ashburton, the Fortescue, and De Grey. The Swan, on which the capital is situated, is the most important—the rivers North of this are not always running, the seasons in the country where they rise being very unreliable. Further North again, where Warburton's Desert abuts on the sea, we find an inhospitable sandy beach (the Eighty-mile Beach), along which no river mouths are seen. In the far North, the Kimberley Division, the coast-line ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... quantities are being constantly used for the cure of malaria without doing the pregnancy any harm. Many other drugs are reputed to have great efficacy in causing the expulsion of the product of conception; unfortunately, they are too well known to require enumeration. They are usually unreliable, and are absolutely inefficient in doses small enough not to endanger the mother's life, provided the pregnancy is ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... slaves lately freed who are honest" and truthful, but maintained that the Negroes were capable of improvement. The chief executives of Mississippi and Florida declared that there was no danger to the whites in admitting the more or less unreliable Negro testimony, for the courts and juries would in every case arrive at a proper valuation of it. Governors Marvin of Florida and Humphreys of Mississippi advocated practical civil equality, while in North Carolina and several other States there was a disposition ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... to his eldest son Murdoch, who, in his marriage contract, dated 1708, two years before his father's death, is designated "of Kernsary." Mr Dixon has several references to these men, but being traditional they are more or less unreliable; and as yet no papers have been discovered which throw any light on the original purchase ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... consciousness the official Christian State is an Ought, which is impossible of realization. Only by lies can it persuade itself of the reality of its existence, and consequently it always remains for itself an object of doubt, an unreliable and ambiguous object. The critic is therefore quite justified in forcing the State, which appeals to the Bible, into a condition of mental derangement where it no longer knows whether it is a phantasm ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... of political evasion. It was a huge, loose confederacy of differing political groups, embracing paupers and millionaires, moderate anti-slavery men and slave barons, all of whom were held together by the unreliable bond of an agreement not to tread on ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... before, but she had had countless photographs made, and supposed herself thoroughly acquainted with the spot. But, to some minds, photographs are confusing things, jumbling up the points of compass in an unreliable manner. Joyce found that it was almost as strange as if never pictured out before her, and a great deal uglier than she had supposed. She shivered as she gazed around upon the bleakness everywhere, perhaps largely accentuated by a gray, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... therefore difficult to make comparisons, and one is compelled to depend largely upon the memory of the fishermen and the statements of the canners and dealers, which the lapse of time, etc., makes rather unreliable. The numerous petitions sent to the legislature asking for restrictive laws, while possibly exaggerated at times, indicate that there were fears of the exhaustion of the fishery for some years back. It is positively known, ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb

... that any besides Jews were to be favored with the Gospel. But a man of his stamp of character, hard to be convinced, resolute even to drawing the sword in defense of his friend or faith, is not likely to be imposed upon by false appearances, nor deceived by unreliable promises. Just such a man Jesus needed, and just such a man Jesus chose to be foreman in his little band of disciples. But when all doubt was removed from Peter's mind, his faith became to be a part of himself. Its roots branched out into ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... glimpses been afforded, they'd have been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is—and hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... his mother as frankly as to his own heart, with the certainty of finding sympathy and aid. And she should not let him forget that he is not to seek information from outside sources, such information being unreliable. ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... is ridiculous enough, but somewhat alarming. To think that her precious life should be intrusted to the care and skill of so unreliable ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... time to assist in driving back the enemy, who now retreated towards the Prah at a more rapid rate than heretofore. While in pursuit of the enemy, large numbers of the native allies again took to flight, proving how utterly unreliable ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... years from this date, when we have succeeded in half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a beautifully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer of to-day, it will sweep the earth. Speaking roughly, you must employ either blackguards or gentlemen, or, best of all, blackguards commanded by gentlemen, to do butcher's ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... text is deficient or doubtful, but the older MS. has in the main been followed, the chief alterations being indicated in the notes. The only English translation hitherto given of this version is the unreliable one in Atlantis, vol. iii. There is a German translation in Thurneysen's Sagen aus dem alten Irland which may be consulted for literal renderings of most of the verse portions, which, however, are sometimes nearer the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy

... Mohegan sachem, led the Indian warriors. When they arrived near the mouth of the river, the Indians desired to be set on shore, that they might advance by land to the fort, and attack the Pequots by surprise. The English were very apprehensive that their unreliable allies were about to prove treacherous, and to desert to the Pequots. But, as it was desirable to test them before the hour of battle arrived, they were permitted to land. The Mohegans, however, proved faithful. On their way to the fort they fell in with forty Pequots, whom they attacked ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... a couple of unreliable members of the choir, Honor cycled last of all to a picturesque little bungalow near the Police Court, and dismounted at its tumble-down gate. From frequent removals for jumping competitions for raw ponies, it was considerably ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... his French and gave him a distaste for standard authors. His masters considered him idle, unreliable and superficially clever. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Telephone system: general assessment: unreliable; little attempt to modernize except for service to business domestic: trunks are primarily microwave radio relay; business data commonly transferred by a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) system international: satellite earth ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... were received northern manufactures, northern books and northern ideas. Northern newspapers came to the South; and except for matters of local information, or local policy, a large class of her readers drew their inspiration chiefly from journals of New York—catholic in their scope as unreliable in their principles. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... said MS-33. "Tonight you looked very suspicious when you left Argon City. I saw you and followed you here. You may as well know that I have never trusted you. All the old ones were unreliable. That is why ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns

... the amount. There has been no restriction upon their manufacture or sale in this country, therefore the user has only the manufacturer's statement as to the nature of the medicine and its uses, and these statements, in many instances, have been proved utterly false and unreliable. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... had great hopes of the small compass, but he and the others were doomed to disappointment. The compass proved unreliable, as they discovered that night, ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... Mr. Burnham," said our host. "I'll give you a start of three questions, and then you must be prepared to answer every reasonable question I put to you, or be branded publicly as an unreliable witness and ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... make such arrangements but had refused, "because Dame Nature stood in the way,"—which she certainly did if tubular pneumatics had been used. The fact was that up to this time all the electric actions invented had proved more or less unreliable, and Willis, who had an artistic reputation to lose, refused to employ them. As an instance of their clumsiness we may mention that the best contact they could get was made by dipping a platinum point in a cell ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... cattle pastures that adjoined their homes. He was even more interested in their rifles, which, the tribesmen told him, were repeaters. He was puzzled by the absence of a cylinder, such as could be found on the generally unreliable revolvers one ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry

... had not been in such dire need of another pair of hands than her own slender ones, or if the supply from Endbury intelligence offices had been a whit less unreliable and uncertain, she would not have felt justified in retaining the burly, uncouth Celt, in spite of her own affection, so intensely did Paul dislike her. As it was, she felt guilty for her presence and miserably responsible for her ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... the valley that that white farmers, unable to secure white labor, unable to trust Japanese labor, unable to endure Japanese neighbors or to enter into Japanese social life weary of paying taxes to support schools for the education of Japanese children, weary of daily contact with irritable, unreliable and unassimilable aliens, sold or leased their farms in order to escape into a white neighborhood. I presume, Mr. Parker, that nobody can realize the impossibility of withstanding this yellow flood except those who have been overwhelmed by it. We humanitarians of a later day gaze ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... impotent prince, with no vigor of mind or body, and the married life of this young couple was anything but happy. The country meanwhile continued in a state of unrest, and there were frequent revolutionary outbreaks. Isabella was no less unreliable than her mother had been, and her capricious manner of changing policy and changing advisers was productive of a state of lawlessness and disorder in all branches of the government which daily became more shameful. This shifting policy in matters of state was equally characteristic ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... regarded as the best all round Dessert pear grown. Marie Louise is tender and unreliable. Thompson's, some think, the best for flavour. It is smaller, and bears ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... difficulty in establishing the validity of these intuitions—the highest potential factors this side of Deity to be found anywhere in the universe. For if our intuitions are not to be relied upon—if their objects and perceptions are to be discarded as unreliable—then there can be no agreement or disagreement between any two ideas presented, objectively or subjectively, to the human mind. No processes of mental analysis or ratiocination, like those pursued in the elementary methods of Euclid, can present the basis of an intellectual ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... must buy seed corn for next spring's planting, on account of the failure of the '83 crop to ripen. We must look sharp to the seeds we buy, that they are better than our own, as many unreliable parties will offer inferior stocks, to take advantage of the demand. We suggest that every corn grower should send to Hiram Sibley & Co., the reliable seedsmen at Rochester, N. Y., and Chicago, Ill., for their catalogue and seed-corn ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... the so-called middle class are not only welcomed by Socialist parties, but constitute their most dependable and indispensable elements. Indeed, the majority of the Socialists agree with Kautsky that the danger lies in the opposite direction, that an unreliable small capitalist element has been admitted that will make trouble until it leaves the movement, in other words, that Socialist friendship for these classes has gone to the point of risking the existence of their ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... a dangerous alpenstock," he said. "The wood is unreliable. It might break. I will cut you a better one," and he swung the axe against a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... manuscript of Il Pastor Fido, the first new opera which he produced, is dated, at the end, "Londres, ce 24 Octobre." The opera-house was now under the management of Owen MacSwiney, who seems to have been both incompetent and unreliable. Il Pastor Fido did not attract the public, and was withdrawn after six performances, but Handel soon had another opera ready to take its place. Teseo was finished on December 19, and brought out on January 10, 1713; it was ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... portion of the Secret Service fund at my disposal, I was able to buy expert assistance, and even to get information from anarchists themselves. This latter device, however, was always more or less unreliable. I have never yet met an anarchist I could believe on oath, and when one of them offered to sell exclusive information to the police, we rarely knew whether he was merely trying to get a few francs to keep himself from starving, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... the most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid gland that the subcutaneous fat disappeared with the continuance of the treatment, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... with the mob which crowded round, while the voters—you may be sure, not all of them sober—were brought up to vote. The excitement was immense; there was the hourly publication of the state of the poll—more or less unreliable, but, nevertheless, exciting; and what a tumult there was as one or other of the rival candidates drove up to his temporary quarters in a carriage and pair, or carriage and four, made a short speech, which ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... travelling for children was possible only in the summer, and as the dogs were sometimes unreliable, the little ones were exposed to a certain amount of danger. For instance, whenever a train of dogs had been travelling for a long time, almost perishing with the heat and their heavy loads, a glimpse of water would cause them to forget all their responsibilities. Some of them, in spite of ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... considerations we see how unreliable in pathological cases is the calculation of the amount of haemoglobin from the amount of iron. We have been particularly led to these observations by the work of Biernacki, since the procedure of inferring the amount of ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... virtually composed of mercenaries from all nations, adventurers who had nothing to lose, who had but little to gain. They were turbulent and rebellious. Revolts among the soldiers were common. They brought new vices to the camps, and learned in addition all the vices of the Romans. They were greedy, unreliable, and cherished concealed enmities. They had no common interest or bond of union. They were always ready for revolt, and gave away the highest prizes to fortunate generals. They sold the imperial dignity, and became the masters rather than the servants of the emperors. Diocletian was obliged to ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... be one of the most unreasonable traits in character. It is said: "One of the most difficult things in science is to invent a lense that will not distort the object it reflects; the least deviation in the lines of the mirror will destroy the beauty of a star." How unreliable then must be the distorting lense ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... trust him any more. And we think that is 'worldly wisdom,' and 'the bitter fruit of earthly experience,' and 'sharpness,' and 'shrewdness,' and so forth. Jesus Christ, even whilst reminding Peter, by that 'more than these,' of his utterly hollow and unreliable boasting, shows Himself ready to accept once again the words of one whose unveracity He had proved. 'Charity hopeth all things, believeth all things,' and Jesus Christ is ready to trust us when we say, 'I love Thee,' even though often in the past our professed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... not only the adventuress who will persist in coming to life again every time she is slaughtered. They all do it on the stage. They are all so unreliable in this respect. It must be most disheartening to ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... delightful as she expected that one to be, whither, in a few days, she must journey, and leave the dear home-folks, reluctantly, indeed. But then boys' fun always seemed like their idea of Fourth of July—just as noisy and just as unreliable. At the same time they always managed to put it off with a roar, and this roar had already set in for the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... a paper man. We are the most unreliable people in the world," he answered. "Make the old mother happy, and don't keep her out ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... few claiming to have any insight into the real Hawk Carse who declared that a month went out of his life for every minute he spent in the cell then. The story, of course, came trickling out through various unreliable sources; we who delve in the lore of the great adventurer have to thank for our authorities Sewell, the great historian of that generation—who personally traveled several million miles to get what meager facts the Hawk would divulge concerning his life and career—equally with Friday, ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore

... scholar, Paul engaged him. He was not exactly Paul's idea of what an agent ought to be, as he showed too much fondness for the good things of this life. When seated with a dish of cutlets and truffles flanked by a generous sized bottle of wine, he was apt to make statements that were rather unreliable. Before leaving Milan for Turin, Paul told him, as the Po was to him an unknown river, he could not tell at what time he could make on it, so that he must use his judgment from the reports he would get from above, in regard ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... impatiently tapped her knee with a fan. "Be thankful you haven't got him on your conscience," she rejoined. "I call Eglington unscrupulous and unreliable. He has but one god—getting on; and he has got on, with a vengeance. Whenever I look at that dear thing he's married, I feel there's no trusting Providence, who seems to make the deserving a footstool for the undeserving. I've ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... shouldering my rod, when—odzooks! whom should I encounter but Mister BAGSHOT and a party of friends, who were watching his keepers capture salmons from a boat by means of a large net, a far more practical and effectual method than the cumbersome and unreliable device of a meretricious fly ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... referring to the relative times of the leaves of these trees appearing in the spring, and is supposed to be prophetic of the weather during the ensuing summer. I have, however, noticed for many years that the oak is invariably first, so that like some other prognostications, it seems to be unreliable. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... disapproves without comment. Evelyn had made a great success of her dressmaking, but such aid as she could give must be given her sister, for Marguerite's early and ill-considered marriage had come to the usual point when, with an unreliable husband, constantly arriving and badly managed babies, and bitter poverty and want, she found herself much in the position of her mother, twenty years before. May was still living in Oakland, widowed. Her ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... which we possess with regard to the habits and customs of the inhabitants of Boriquen at the time of discovery is too scanty and too unreliable to permit us to form more than a speculative opinion of the degree of culture attained ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... said Jeff, with an emphatic nod—"wouldn't you have imagined that? But a woman is an absolutely unreliable partner in any straight swindle. She's liable to turn honest on you when you are depending upon her the most. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... Mr. Gerard's display a not unnatural irritation against a critic whose facts prove unreliable and whose mental attitude suggests a somewhat querulous bias, but it is only fair to remind ourselves that after long internment all suffer from nerve strain and many suffer very severely. Under these circumstances complete reasonableness is probably more than any of us would ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... prisoners. He took exception to Ishmael's evidence because Mr. Worth had declined to give it under oath; to Judge Merlin's, because, he said, that ancient man was so well stricken with years as to be falling into his dotage; to old Katie's, because most decidedly he declared she was totally unreliable, being half monkey, half maniac, and whole knave; to Jim's, because he averred him to be wholly under the influence of others; to Sally's, for the same reason. It would be monstrous, he said, to send a nobleman and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... her of the untrustworthiness of the so-called history of to-day, although we had every facility for recording facts, and he pointed out how utterly unreliable it was when tradition was the only means of transmission. Mediocrity, he felt sure, had oftentimes been exalted into genius, and brilliant and patriotic exclamations attributed to great men, were never uttered ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... I am therefore in a position to give the exact amount spent on Secret Service, but I have not the faintest intention of doing anything of the sort. Suffice it to say that it is less than one-twentieth of the sum the average person would imagine. Bought information is nearly always unreliable information. A moment's consideration will show that, should a man be base enough to sell his country's secrets to his country's possible enemy, he would also unhesitatingly cheat, if he could, the man who purchases that information, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... mines of two patterns, and whilst proving unsatisfactory against submarines, they were also found to be somewhat unreliable when laid in minefields designed to catch surface vessels, owing to a defect in the mooring apparatus. This defect was remedied, but valuable time was lost whilst the necessary alterations were being carried out, and although we possessed in April, 1917, a stock of some 20,000 mines, only 1,500 of ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... has to choose between a partner who bids well and plays poorly, and one who is a wild or unreliable bidder, but handles his cards with perfection, without ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... chronometer. Some time later, Cook says, "I must here take notice that our longitude can never be erroneous while we have so good a guide as Mr. Kendal's watch." It may be observed, that at the beginning of the voyage, observations were made by the lunar tables; but these, being found unreliable, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... Bongao wrecking expedition, it will be seen how difficult the work was, in that in every instance, save from Zamboanga, Mindanao, to Sulu, on the island of Sulu, we had to make a preliminary trip, sounding and taking observations, before the cable could be laid, the Spanish charts being worse than unreliable. Then, too, a government transport dragged our cable with her anchor at one place, a fierce tropical storm wrecked it at another, while careless Moro trench diggers bruised it with stones at a third, which meant many extra days of work for the Signal Corps at each of these places, and for us ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... the numerous facts easily accessible in various works, which show that during slavery there was also a concubinage of white women with black men. In the next place, the author treats the Negro of today, depending mainly on a few unreliable sources of information such as the proceedings of certain Negro conventions, a Negro newspaper and the few books specially devoted to Negro history. In this it appears that he does not know that the chief sources of Negro history ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... doubt the truth of this statement. There is undoubtedly a large section of the public which, led astray by that cynicism and that distrust of newspapers and journalists which a certain section of our Press has engendered in the public, has come to regard all newspaper reports on the war as unreliable and the writings of so-called "experts" as mere vapourings, undertaken in the hope of assisting the circulation of the paper in which they appear rather than the circulation of the truth. If, then, any reader be inclined to include Mr. Belloc in such a denunciation ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... "Sam's a unsteady, unreliable, tricky old man," exclaimed the skipper, hotly; "the idea of going and leaving a boy on our hands like that. I'm surprised at him. I'm disappointed ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs

... not mention; but above all, Manetho gives us a list of Egyptian rulers arranged according to a regular system. But however important in this respect Manetho's work may be, it must not be forgotten what difficulties he had to contend with in the writing of it, and what unreliable sources lay in these difficulties. He could not use the sources in the form in which he found them. He was obliged to re-write them, and he added to them synchronisms and relations to other peoples which ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... probably the earliest developed example of this combination of Oriental and Occidental thought is found in the writings of Philo Judaeus.[24] To him the powers of man seemed to be wholly unreliable and delusive, and only the special grace of God enables one to perceive any truth—"{Autos theos arche kai pege technon kai epistemon anomologetai}." To approach God one must flee from one's self—"{ei gar zeteis theon exelthousa apo sautes anazetei}." Neither reason nor any other function ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole

... arising out of the war can, of course, possess only a limited value. It is obvious from the proceedings concerning the constitution of the Senate Committee that much of the evidence was prejudiced and unreliable, probably because it was based solely on information given by Germans or former Germans, whose identities were kept strictly secret, and who told deliberate lies, either because, like Judas, they ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... It may be a bit unreliable as an elevator, but you can let it out for steam-baths—fifty cents a ticket, you know, until you've made ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... Moses, crucifying Christ. Finding much that was admirable, and more that seemed ignoble, he gravely and reverently sought to possess himself of the subtle arcana of this marvellous book, rejecting as equally erroneous and unreliable the magnifying zeal of optimism and the gloomy jaundiced lenses of sneering pessimism,—thoroughly satisfied that it was a solemn duty, obligatory upon all, to study that complex paradoxical human ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... confidence of his party, and perhaps with the exception of General Jackson, that of any individual. In moneyed matters, he was eminently unreliable; but all admitted his great abilities. In social qualities, he was entirely deficient. He had no powers of attraction to collect about him friends, or to attach even his political partisans. These were proud of his talents, and felt honored in his representation, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... under the anomalous state of things, has arisen over the office of Vice-President. There is now only one means by which Irish opinion can, if it be so disposed, displace the holder of the office, and that is a thoroughly unreliable and unhealthy means, namely, through pressure brought to bear by one or other of the Irish Parliamentary parties upon a newly elected British Ministry.[53] But why in the world should the British ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... with gratitude. Of course Donald Morley was nothing to her now. She had assured herself of that so continuously for two months that she was beginning to believe it. She knew that he was wild, reckless and unreliable, that he had failed her in her greatest need, and that she had put him out of her life forever. But it was good of the Doctor ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... tribes makes some mention of burial observances; but these notices are scattered far and wide on the sea of this special literature, and many of the accounts, unless supported by corroborative evidence, may be considered as entirely unreliable. To bring together and harmonize conflicting statements, and arrange collectively what is known of the subject, has been the writer's task, and an enormous mass of information has been acquired, the method of securing which has been ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... that the American is at the same business, and in the same fanatical manner. From all the complex and colourful life of the country, save only the one enterprise of money-making, he is shut off almost hermetically, and so he concludes that that one enterprise embraces the whole show. Here the unreliable promptings of his sub-conscious passion are helped out by observations that are more logical. Unfamiliar with the language, excluded from all free social intercourse with the native, and regarded as, if actually ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... his uncle Archias to care for him like a brother, and his own kind heart bade him stay with Myrtilus, and not leave him to the nursing of his very skilful but utterly unreliable body-servant, after the last night had proved to what severe attacks of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt. Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of Egypt proved unreliable. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... five to ten miles. The engineer in charge of the lighthouses of Canada says: "The expense for repairs, and the frequent stoppages to make these repairs during the four years they continued in use, made them [the trumpets] expensive and unreliable. The frequent stoppages during foggy weather made them sources of danger instead of aids to navigation. The sound of these trumpets has deteriorated during the last year or so." Gen. Duane, reporting as to his experiments in 1881, says: ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses. Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser ebbed away, and from that day ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... six of hearts promises a generous, open, credulous disposition, often a dupe; if this card comes before your king or queen (as the case may be) YOU will be the dupe; if after, you will get the upper hand: five of hearts portends a wavering, unsteady, unreliable individual of either sex: four of hearts indicates late marriage from 'delicacy in making a choice:' trey of hearts is rather a 'poser;' 'it shows that your own impudence will greatly contribute to your experiencing the ill-will of others:' deuce of hearts promises extraordinary success ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... Christianity was known to the people of Ireland in the fourth century. The Greek Menology asserts that it was carried thither by Simon Zelotes, but this is contradicted by the Roman Breviary and the Martyrologists. Simeon Metaphrastes attributes it to St. Peter, Vincent of Beauvais to St. James. Unreliable as these traditions may be taken singly, they nevertheless agree in placing the conversion of Ireland at a very early date, probably, as Geoghegan says, in the fourth century. It is certain that ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... to the launch in silence. Patsy was quite disappointed in Maurie. He had so many admirable qualities that it was a shame he could be so untruthful and unreliable. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... most fiercely in the Officers' Mess, which is in touch with sources of unreliable information not accessible to the rank and file. The humblest subaltern appears to be possessed of a friend at court, or a cousin in the Foreign Office, or an aunt in the Intelligence Department, from whom he can derive fresh and entirely different ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... must become. She will know but few days for years when she will not be compelled to practice for hours. She becomes a kind of chattel of the musical public. She will be harassed by ignorant critics and perhaps annoyed by unreliable managers. In return she has money and fame, but, in fact, far less of the great joy and purpose of life than if she followed the customary domestic career with some splendid man as her husband. When I was younger I used to preach quite an opposite sermon, but the more I see ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... sin was still haunting me. I had several times been called into the manager's room, and reprimanded for unpunctuality, or cautioned for wasting my time. The few friends who on my first coming to the town had taken an interest in me had dropped away, disgusted at my unreliable conduct, or because I myself had neglected their acquaintance. My employers had ceased to entrust me with any commissions requiring promptitude or care; and I was nothing more than an office drudge—and a very unprofitable drudge too. Such was my condition ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... proved that the routes across the isthmus of Central America are at best but a very uncertain and unreliable mode of communication. But even if this were not the case, they would at once be closed against us in the event of war with a naval power so much stronger than our own as to enable it to blockade the ports at either end of these routes. After all, therefore, we can only rely upon a military road ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... not easy to estimate the number of persons who become habitual mendicants in consequence of slackness of work and the temporary loss of employment. As a matter of fact the whole body of statistical information bearing upon vagrancy is rather unreliable in character, and it is difficult to see how it can be anything else. In almost all cases of begging the initiative is taken by the police; it very seldom happens that a private citizen gives a beggar in charge. The regular and systematic enforcement of the Vagrancy Acts by the public ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... accuracy of which all subsequent astronomical measurers depend, merely upon hearsay and testimony, and subject to all those contingencies of error and prejudice, and mistakes of copyists, which, in your opinion, render the Bible so unreliable in matters ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... popular delusion and superstition. The revelations of the microscope are constantly resorted to in protection of individual and public interests. . . . If they are relied upon as agencies for accurate mathematical results in mensuration and astronomy, there is no reason why they should be deemed unreliable in matters of evidence. Wherever what they disclose can aid or elucidate the just determination of legal controversies there can be no well- founded objection to resorting to them." Frank v. Chemical Nat. Bank, 37 Superior Court ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... "Sin is not reckoned [imputed] when there is no law" (Rom. 5:13). (3) That would mean a child of God, redeemed and adopted (Gal. 4:4-7), and born again (1 Peter 1:23), born of the Holy Spirit (John 3:8), sent to Hell. (4) That would mean to make the Saviour unreliable and untruthful in His statements. "Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out demons? and in thy name done many wonderful works? ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... not heard from you since the shout you gave when you set out from the station on your way home I guess you have not received some seven or eight letters from me, and hence your silence. The mails are so unreliable that they may all have been lost. If you don't get this you had better send to Washington and get them to look over the dead letter office for the others. I have nothing to tell you of any interest, except that we all nearly ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... the South Atlantic Quarterly Gilbert T. Stephenson, Judge of the Municipal Court of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, writes on the subject, "Education and Crime among Negroes." Although he accepts as facts certain unreliable statistics concerning the criminality of Negroes, he nevertheless presents the subject in a liberal manner. His following ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... with a sneer upon his face. He was about the same age and size as Hector, but his features were mean and insignificant, and there was a shifty look in his eye that stamped him as unreliable. He did not look like the Roscoes, though in many respects he was in disposition and ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... believe it is customary to fee the company, which will drink hot coffee and keep awake a couple of hours longer. But the lights were gone for good that night. Liddy had gone to sleep, as I knew she would. She was a very unreliable person: always awake and ready to talk when she wasn't wanted and dozing off to sleep when she was. I called her once or twice, the only result being an explosive snore that threatened her very windpipe—then I got up and ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... from unreliable insurance companies, there is an officer called the insurance commissioner. No insurance company can legally transact business in the state until it has satisfied the commissioner that its methods of insurance and its financial condition are such as to give the security ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... Olympus, in Lycia. The statements that he also held other sees are unreliable. He died in 311 as a martyr. Nothing else is known with certainty as to his life. Of his numerous and well-written works, only one, The Banquet, or Symposium, has been preserved entire. His work On the Resurrection is most strongly opposed ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... the process by which information is acquired, converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers. Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary, contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated, analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product of the Intelligence Cycle ready to be ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... to fulfill and make good my promise, and trust to the future to compel James Wilson to perform his. I thought this the right course. I did not deem that I would be justified in breaking my promise because Wilson was unreliable and broke his. I concluded that if Leadbitter kept me longer than one month he would have to be smarter than I gave him credit for being. I asked Leadbitter how many days there were in ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson

... Cardinal Wolsey set out for Paris as the representative of England. While Wolsey was absent in France arranging the terms of the alliance, Anne Boleyn took occasion to warn Henry that his great minister was unreliable, that in his heart he was opposed to the separation, and that without his knowledge or consent negotiations should be opened directly with the Roman court. An agent was dispatched to Rome and succeeded in securing an interview with Clement VII., after the latter had made his escape ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... have seemed a splendid vision in that little valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a dreamer,—romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a passionate revolt against the world. He, too, was small, but squarish. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... subjects round about the planet, but is down on the ground, she is kin to us and one of us: sentimental as a girl, garrulous, ungrammatical, incomprehensible, affected, vain of her little human ancestry, unstable, inconsistent, unreliable in statement, and naively and everlastingly self-contradictory-oh, trivial and common and commonplace as the commonest of us! just a Napoleon as Madame de Remusat saw him, a brass ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... said he; "I will not put this in your hands. You are too hasty and unreliable to be entrusted with it. Your wife shall have it. It is useful, if taken in small quantities, just a drop or two, but if too much be taken by accident, then you will fall into a sleep from which there is no awaking. I can quite fancy that you in your irritable mood, because you could not ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... will be home by now, but I should not allow him to touch the woodwork, as he is too careless and unreliable. ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... they would eat out of their attendants' hands, and the buffaloes bred in a state of domestication exhibited exactly the same character as the ordinary domestic cattle. The bulls, especially when old, continued to be somewhat unreliable; but the cows and oxen, on the other hand, were as gentle and docile as any ruminant could be. They were never valued among us as milch kine—for, though their milk was rich, it was not great in quantity—but ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... afloat about everything. Those which concern me most relate to the vacant seat on the bench; but I give little heed to any of them. My experience in Washington taught me how unreliable they are. If what I hear is any index to the state of opinion, Mr. Lincoln must be satisfied that in acting on the purpose expressed in your letters, he will have the almost, if not quite, unanimous approval of the Union ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... him? What did she think of him? Nothing perhaps. She had belonged to the "old guard." Many men had passed through her hands. He felt at that moment acute hostility to women. They were treacherous, unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women—he was thinking of women of the world—even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare even when war was over. One had to fight always ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... him," said Dame Niafer, comfortably, "and not for an instant, Manuel, am I defending his conduct, as I trust you quite understand. But even so, if you had stopped for a moment to think how hard it is to replace a servant nowadays, and how unreliable is the best of them, I believe you would have seen how completely ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... shown in my annotations in similar positions, it is absolutely injurious to White's game to allow three well-supportable Pawns against two to be established on the Queen's side. The prospect of a King's side attack on which White speculates is quite unreliable in comparison to the disadvantage on the Queen's side to which he is subjected. At any rate, Pawns ought to be exchanged first, and ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"

... throughout these pages that the press contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before the public. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... hands, the newspaper recipe has become a synonym for something utterly unreliable, and, therefore, a byword among those so old-fashioned as to believe that a woman who holds a pen is, of course, a ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... thinking the other day—Here is something that no one doubted, has proved unreliable; and the thought flashed across our mind: Is there not something like it in the Church ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... own special activities the brain is usually undisciplined and unreliable. We never know what it will do next. We give it some work to do, say, as we are walking along the street to the office. Perhaps it has to devise some scheme for making L150 suffice for L200, or perhaps it has to plan ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... vowed solemnly that they would weather the gale together. The disbanding of the team by Miss Archer and Ellen Seymour's vindication, could not be hushed up, however, and, despite their protests that Miss Archer was unfair, and that the statements of certain other girls were wholly unreliable, they lost ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... dividers, square, measure, or any instrument of precision. As before stated, I have seen scissors used as compasses, but as a rule they find approximate centers with the eye, and cut all shapes and engrave all figures by the unaided guidance of this unreliable organ. Often they cut out their designs in paper first and from them mark off patterns on the metal. Even in the matter of cutting patterns they do not seem to know the simple device of doubling the paper in ...
— Navajo Silversmiths • Washington Matthews

... matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... Leuchtmar, after a slight pause—"Prince, forgive me, but I can not say it, for it would be an untruth. For a Prince, want of punctuality is a very dangerous and bad fault, and if he first becomes unreliable in his outer being, he will be so soon in his inner nature as well. But I do admit that perhaps I spoke in too excited a tone of voice, and the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... profession, state, or occupation, whoever possesses capital, a revenue, an establishment, respectability, public esteem, education and mental and moral culture. The party in June, 1793, is composed of little more than unreliable workmen, town and country vagabonds, the habitues of hospices[34169], sluts of the gutter, degraded and dangerous persons,[34170] the declasse, the corrupt, the perverted, the maniacs of all sorts. In Paris, from which they command the rest ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Ben Franklin, in the passage from Black Rock. He was landed in a yawl, at the mouth of the river, near a bluff that stood where the Toledo Railroad Machine Shops have since been built, about seventy-five rods west of the present entrance to the harbor. In those days the river entrance was of a very unreliable character, being sometimes entirely blocked up with sand, so that people walked across. It was no uncommon thing for people to ride over, or jump the outlet with the help ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... War Department during the summer and fall of 1945. With few exceptions, the senior officers queried expressed uniform reactions. They reiterated a story of frustration and difficulty in training and employing black units, characterized black soldiers as unreliable and inefficient, and criticized the performance of black officers and noncommissioned officers. They were particularly concerned with racial disturbances, which, they believed, were not only the work of racial agitators but also the result of poor ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.



Words linked to "Unreliable" :   unsound, uncertain, untrustworthy, fallible, dependable, undependable, temperamental, unreliableness, unreliability, erratic, reliable, untrusty, unsafe, irresponsible, dangerous



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