Recklessness

“ Like a child, realizing his danger only when it was close upon him, his old recklessness returned, and he moved down the path with his head held high, looking neither to the right nor to the left, planning how he might be rid of these clothes and evade his pursuers unaided. ”

“ Accident, that convenient word given to the imaginary hack to which so many fires are referred, if truthfully interpreted, will, in general, be found to be equivalent to carelessness, recklessness, or guilt. ”

“ Indeed, nowhere is man’s recklessness apt to run riot further nor more viciously. And to your astonishment, you see the minds of old men no less eager in this than the minds of young men, childless men no less eager than parents, kings than usurpers. ”

“ The uncertainty of their lives, liability to be revenged upon, and treacherous conduct generates suspicion. Being subject to severe reverses, extremes of want and danger, etc., a recklessness of life follows. ”

“ Whence, then, originates this ungovernable passion, this desperate recklessness that resists all control, and, disregarding consequences, rushes madly into sin, makes man an outlaw among his fellows, and drags him to the dungeon and the scaffold? ”

“ To men of hardy and energetic temperament, recklessness has an immense fascination. Life is so often in peril, they cease to care much for whatever endangers it; and thus, through all their stories, the one feeling ever predominated,—a careless indifference to every risk coupled with a most resolute conduct in time of danger.
I soon managed to make myself a favorite with this motley assemblage; my natural aptitude to pick up language, aided by what I already knew of French and German, assisted me to a knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese ”

“ If he hadn’t fallen a victim to an inborn streak of recklessness, a habit of taking chances,—well, I can’t say just how things would have panned out. I’m not fatalist enough to believe that we crawl or run or soar through our allotted span of years according to some prearranged scheme which we are powerless to modify. ”

“ One cannot restrain an expression of indignant feeling at such an exhibition of foolhardy recklessness. It is strange, after all the fearful accidents of this description upon the Western waters, and that terrible prodigality of human life which for years past has been constantly exhibited, there should yet be found individuals so utterly regardless of the safety of their fellow-men, and so destitute of every emotion of generous feeling, as to force their way heedlessly onward into [70] danger, careless of any issue save the paltry gratification of private vengeance. ”

“ It is the terrible attribute of this sort of mischief, however, that it is at once cause and effect. Peril to life, of this particular kind, generates the immorality which, in its turn, creates the recklessness which again imperils life. ”

“ Finally recklessness may be the cause of our harming another. It is a sound principle of morals that one is responsible for his acts in the measure of his foreseeing, and consenting to, the results and consequences. ”

“ The secret of good driving lies in this early and complete appreciation of difficulties and dangers encountered. "Blind recklessness" is a most expressive phrase; it means all the words indicate, and is contra-distinguished from open-eyed or wise recklessness.
The timid man is never reckless, the wise man frequently is, the fool always; the recklessness of the last is blind; if he gets through all right he is lucky. ”

“ With them money went as easily as it had come, and taking into account the hardness of the life, the risks that were undertaken, the possibility of losing their lives, or of being transported after conviction, it cannot be said that these men were any too well paid. Carelessness of danger led to recklessness; recklessness led on to a life that was dissolute and thriftless. ”

“ If we ourselves cut it short by recklessness or improper living, we are responsible, and the effect will assuredly be prejudicial; but if it is cut short by something entirely beyond our control, we may be sure that the curtailment is for our good. ”

“ Of course there are all degrees of recklessness and it certainly is not to be condoned on the theory that it is an inherited tendency. Might as well say that civilized man should continue the barbarous customs of head-hunting and cannibalism. ”

“ In the other scale of the balance fate set his delicate and high-strung nature, his burning desire for the great unknown something, the stinging impatience of bodily weakness, and the large element of recklessness he inherited from his father, besides a fine admixture of latent boyish vanity for women to play upon, and all the ordinary weaknesses of human nature in about the same proportion as every one has them. ”

“ When unduly excited, they lead to dissipation, obscenity, swearing, rowdyism, and licentiousness; when perverted, they are the source of recklessness, quarrels, frauds, falsehoods, robberies, and homicides. ”

“ He certainly does not do it blindly, but with a culpable recklessness, that is almost inexcusable. He will not stop to consider what may be the consequences of the first steps he takes in the path of sin. He is never deterred from his evil course by viewing the wreck of his fortune ”

“ Here for the first time in my life I realized I was indeed a very reckless man. Often the boys would get cold and sleepy and I would have to make them march at the point of old glory—my Gun—they would swear and blame every bit of hard luck to me. ”

“ But my soul is firm, and I can bring myself up to face a danger which a less-nervous man might shrink from. What I am doing now is done from no compulsion, but entirely from a sense of duty, and yet it is, beyond doubt, a desperate risk. ”

“ By what means the peril could be annihilated, and we be placed in security from his attempts, no efforts of mind could suggest. To devise these means, and employ them with success, demanded, as I conceived, the most powerful sagacity and the firmest courage. Now the danger was no more. The intelligence in which plans of mischief might be generated was extinguished or flown. Lifeless were the hands ready to execute the dictates of that intelligence. The contriver of enormous evil was, in one moment, bereft of the power and the will to injure. ”

“ The reckless daring with which he threw himself into danger—the almost impetuous quickness with which he followed up a scent, whenever information reached him of an important character—had their full effect upon a people who, long accustomed to the slowness and the uncertainty of the law were almost paralyzed at beholding detection and punishment follow on crime, as certainly as the thunder-crash follows the lightning. ”

“ The fear of one who sees how his haste and breed can be called punishable criminal negligence, was in his face. The things that had been human, sprawled stiff before him, accusing him. But the worst was the presence of those grim, silent men, who might add him forcibly to the death-list. ”

“ But I have now reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded and to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with a hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokes me to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate in reckless criminality. ”

“ I'm rather a—rather a reckless person, I'm afraid. If I weren't a little reckless I doubt if I should tell you what I'm going to; which is that I'm over here to commit a burglary, and, if the police don't stop me, I'm going to do it, too! ”

“ You were willing to risk everything here; you were willing to risk hereafter everything that may be the fate of those who lay violent hands upon their own lives. Why need you risk anything at all, either for the boy's sake or in the hereafter, because of laying violent hands upon your life? ”

“ Through your negligence, carelessness, laches, default, supineness, inattention, or whatever other quality it pleases you to attribute the circumstance, you allowed yourself to be hoodwinked like a schoolboy, trapped like a rat, tied like a helpless sack on a pack horse for an unstated number of miles, flung like a bundle into a pilot boat, and landed like a haddock on the beach. ”

“ I see danger in the future, begotten of the danger in the past—treachery that is the offspring of his treachery, and crime that is the child of my crime. Is the dread that now shakes me to the soul a phantom raised by the superstition of a dying man? ”

“ But danger, within a certain degree, is more likely to provoke adventurers than to deter them.
Sir Thomas More.—There thou hast uttered a comprehensive truth. No legislator has yet so graduated his scale of punishment as to ascertain that degree which shall neither encourage hope nor excite the audacity of desperate guilt. It is certain that there are states of mind in which the consciousness that he is about to play for life or death stimulates a gamester to the throw. ”

“ When we kill any of our own chaps, we say as little about it as possible. It’s generally—mostly always—their own fault. No, we never think of danger ourselves. We’re used to it, you see. But we’re not reckless. ”

“ If the cunning work of man be urged beyond its power of endurance, it has within it the elements of its own revenge; whereas the wretched mechanism of the Divine Hand is dangerous with no such property, but may be tampered with, and crushed, and broken, at the driver's pleasure. ”

“ To certain temperaments, especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling, there is perhaps nothing more exasperating, and which sooner explodes all self-command, than the coarse, jeering insolence of a porter, cabman, or hack-driver. Fetchers and carriers of the worst city infamy as many of them are; professionally familiar with the most abandoned haunts; in the heart of misery, they drive one of the most mercenary of all the trades of guilt. ”

“ The sudden sense of exposure after the re-established sense of safety came—not to the coarse organisation of a criminal but—to the susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such mastery and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him. ”

“ By your prompt courage and wisdom in sending for us by wire this evening, you have enabled us to capture and put out of mischief one of the most cruel and terrible of the enemies of humanity— a criminal whose plausibility and pitilessness have never been before combined in flesh. ”

“ When treachery and cunning are at work caution is no disgrace, even to a soldier. You will do your whole duty--I expect nothing less from you, but do not go beyond it and allow yourself to be carried away by your zeal to defy a danger which, after last night's occurrence, threatens you and you alone. ”

“ I remarked, "those who have warned you of the danger must know from whom it proceeds, and those who are employed in such an attack must run not only the ordinary risk of assassins, but the further risk entailed by the peculiar powers of those they assail." ”

“ Up to the present you have been hammering your way to the end like a strong man, and that was right. But you have been more or less reckless—and that isn't right or fair or just to a lot of other people. ”

“ Yes, anything, even one of those evil-smelling antiquated hackneys drawn by a decrepit brute who will doubtless stumble and fall before having dragged you the first five hundred yards, thereby bringing down the pitiless wrath of his aged driver, not only on his own, but your head. ”

“ Of course I know it, but if you run into danger, and expose yourself to the attack of those who are avowedly our enemies, you run the chance of being caught, and then, of course, it is our duty to get you out of trouble. ”

“ Some caution against treachery is also necessary at all times in dealing with these people, though, as a general rule, where they come without arms, and accompanied by women and children, no danger is to be apprehended. ”

“ One instance of their fury I very particularly remember: as a man was passing along the streets, the alarm was given that he was an informer against the retailers of spirituous liquors, the populace were immediately gathered as in a time of common danger, and united in the pursuit as of a beast of prey, which it was criminal not to destroy; the man discovered, either by consciousness or intelligence, his danger, and fled for his life with the utmost precipitation ”

“ Now he understood the weakness of man, and how plentifully life was strewn with dangers, and his lips muttered acridly, “All of us here below are even as criminals who are released on bail, and a net of transgression is spread over all existence.” ”

“ But, after all, it's no laughing matter to be talked about behind our backs in such a reckless and irresponsible way by reckless and irresponsible people, though no doubt some of them have the best intentions in the world and think that they, and they alone, can save us. ”

“ The driver in our brains is an intolerable fellow in sudden crisis. He loses his head; distracted he pulls the levers, and, behold, in a moment the thing is irrevocably done; we are a coward legging it down the street, a murderer with bloody hand, a liar with false words suddenly pumped. ”

“ There was danger of a fight every moment, and if one had been started there is little doubt that it would have been short and bloody, for the conduct of the rowdy portion of the travellers had enraged the decent persons, to whom the thought of drunkenness and ribaldry at such a time was abhorrent, and they were quite ready to undertake the work of pitching the demoralized beings off the cars. ”