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More "Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a law of humanity," he said, "a law of civilization that whenever a man or a race of men show themselves incapable of managing their own affairs, they must consent to be governed by those who are capable of performing the duty.... In accordance with this principle, I assert that the negro race, under all circumstances, at all times, and in all countries, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... that we gather from this sole survivor of the Acrania are the more valuable for phylogenetic purposes, as paleontology, unfortunately, throws no light whatever on the origin of the Vertebrates. Their invertebrate ancestors were soft organisms without skeleton, and thus incapable of fossilisation, as is still the case with the lowest vertebrates—the Acrania and Cyclostoma. The same applies to the greater part of the Vermalia or worm-like animals, the various classes and orders ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... the bedroom, under various pretexts, Fanny grew utterly incapable to do more than sit and gaze stupidly at Therese, who busied herself in bringing the confusion of ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... their lives! Was it possible that they could have loved like that? No, no, they had lied, as they always did, they had lied to themselves: they had tried to idealize themselves.... Idealism! That meant that they were afraid of looking at life squarely, were incapable of seeing things like a man, as they are.—Everywhere the same timidity, the same lack of manly frankness. Everywhere the same chilly enthusiasm, the same pompous lying solemnity, in their patriotism, in their drinking, in their religion. The Trinklieder ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and among other things the drowsy snail. Upon a log he drifted down many a day's journey, till the river, subsiding, left him and his log upon the banks of the River of Fish. He was left in the slime, and the hot sun beamed fiercely upon him till he became baked to the earth and found himself incapable of moving. Gradually he grew in size and stature, and his form experienced a new change, till at length what was once a snail creeping on the earth ripened into man, erect, tall, and stately. For a long time after his change to a human being he remained stupefied, not knowing what ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... us suppose that one of them has been released, and compelled suddenly to stand up, and turn his neck round and walk with open eyes towards the light; and let us suppose that he goes through all these actions with pain, and that the dazzling splendour renders him incapable of discerning those objects of which he used formerly to see the shadows. What answer should you expect him to make, if some one were to tell him that in those days he was watching foolish phantoms, but that now he is somewhat nearer to reality, and is turned towards things more real, and sees ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... for him it would have been wasted by the swords of the Germans. His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused it for party purposes. The Senate had no reason to complain of him. He had touched none of their privileges, incapable and dishonest as he knew them to be. His crime in their eyes had been his eminence. They had now shown themselves as cruel as they were worthless; and if public justice was disposed to make an end of them, he saw ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... practitioner' dared do. I've described him in another story. Some said he was a quack, and some said he wasn't. There are scores of wrecks and mysteries like him in the Bush. He drank fearfully, and 'on his own', but was seldom incapable of performing an operation. Experienced Bushmen preferred him three-quarters drunk: when perfectly sober he was apt to be a bit shaky. He was tall, gaunt, had a pointed black moustache, bushy eyebrows, and piercing black eyes. His movements were eccentric. He lived where he happened ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Marshall plan aid have been able, through hard work, to expand their productive strength-in many cases, to levels higher than ever before in their history. Without this strength they would be completely incapable of defending themselves today. They are now ready to use this strength in helping to build a strong ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... law upon an incapable and merely real man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of sympathy govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put at the head. We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep insist on in a leader. With men who are too high intellectually, the mass have as little ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... had some difficulty in persuading Sir James to consent to ask a favour of the Archbishop. In his eyes, Cranmer was beyond the pale of decency; he had lived with two women, said the old man, whom he called his wives, although as a priest he was incapable of marriage; he had violated his consecration oath; he had blessed and annulled the frequent marriages of the King with equal readiness; he was a heretic confessed and open on numberless points ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... dependent. When it is conditioned by internal causes which are part of its own nature, it is free. No other freedom is known. An Indian would say that a man's nature is limited by Karma. Some minds are incapable of the higher forms of virtue and wisdom, just as some bodies are incapable of athletic feats. But within the limits of his own nature a human being is free. Indian theology is not much hampered by the mad doctrine that God has ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... justice to one among you who I find, much to my pain, has been an object of suspicion in connection with this same lost paper. Greenfield senior, I have no hesitation in saying, is perfectly clear of any such imputation as that you put upon him. I may say in his presence I believe him to be incapable of a fraudulent and mean act; and further than that, you boys will be interested to hear that the questions which he answered so brilliantly in that examination were not the questions which appeared on the lost paper at all, but an entirely ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... wrong: the presence of a man incapable of a falsehood, and that man devoted to her, was a little damaging to Severne, though not so much as Miss ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... finger-nails to-night; his hands are really bad, and, to my surprise, he shows signs of losing heart over it. He hasn't been cheerful since the accident."[321] "The party is not improving in condition, especially Evans, who is becoming rather dull and incapable." "Evans' nose is almost as bad as his fingers. He is ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... hind legs (including the tail) of a cold roast pig to his comrade; "and I must again express my regret that unavoidable circumstances have thrust your society upon me, and that necessity has compelled me to cultivate your acquaintance. Were it not that you are incapable of walking upon the water, I would order you, sir, out ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Those of the third class, who despise and deny the Divine precepts, not only remain natural, but also become sensual in the measure of their contempt and denial. Sensual men are the lowest natural men, who are incapable of thinking above the appearances and fallacies of the bodily senses. After death they ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... tingle to get to rubbing and smoothing out the aches there. And the reason for it is that friction makes active the nerves and blood vessels and exercises the tired or fretting muscles. Massage is exercise. If we were to cease using our arms the muscles would shrink and soon become incapable of movement. The skin outside would, of course, be affected by the general warpings of the tissues, and the result would be everything that is dreadful to the mind feminine—crow's feet, wrinkles, sallowness and lack of the tints and colors of health. You who have enjoyed the ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... and a "tip"; add to this two or three days and nights of revel in the grog-shop, which indicates the kind and quality of the recruits; in fact, very few could be obtained except among men more or less disqualified for civil and domestic life, incapable of spontaneous discipline and of steady labor, adventurers and outcasts, half-savage or half-blackguard, some of them sons of respectable parents thrown into the army in an angry fit, and others again, regular vagabonds ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... are able to take account of the physiological processes at a time when they are relatively simple—that is, before the nervous system has grown to maturity. For example, psychology used to hold that we have a "speech faculty," an inborn mental endowment which is incapable of further analysis; but support for the position is wanting when we turn to the brain of the infant. Not only do we fail to find the series of centres now known to be the "speech zone," but even those of them which we do find have not yet taken up this function, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... the strongest links of society. It forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. Indeed, civilization is carried down from generation to generation, or handed over from a superior to an inferior, by means of imitation. A people devoid of imitation is incapable of progress or advancement, and must retrograde. If it remains stagnant, it must of necessity bring its own decay. The quality of imitation has been the grand preservative of the Negro in all lands. Indeed, the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... actions than mortal nature could otherwise do. However, when it is freed from that weight which draws it down to the earth and is connected with it, it obtains its own proper place, and does then become a partaker of that blessed power, and those abilities, which are then every way incapable of being hindered in their operations. It continues invisible, indeed, to the eyes of men, as does God himself; for certainly it is not itself seen while it is in the body; for it is there after an invisible manner, and when it is freed from it, it is ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Roman law, and by it helped to the conception of a higher law. But the Greek and the Roman civilisations had, each of them, corrupted its way, and yielded to the seductions of pride, sense, and material prosperity; and, as a consequence, both had become incapable of rendering full justice to much that is highest in Christianity. That which they lacked the 'Barbaric' race alone was capable of supplying. In its wanderings under darkened skies and amid pitiless climates it had preserved an innocence ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... decisive moment for clever manoeuvring. What a disaster if this big industry should fall into the hands of one so incapable as Theodore! What a misfortune if Casimir took charge! Neither side thought that a partnership could be possible, and the two cousins share alike. Each ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... before which they now stood. The skin-contracting chill of terror uplifted their hair. The mystery that enveloped the origin of the sounds gave them an unearthliness which froze the very fountains of their life, and rendered them incapable even of motion. They stared at each other with a ghastly observance, which descried no comfort, only like images of horror. 'Man's hand is not able to taste' how long they might have thus stood, nor 'his tongue to conceive' what the consequences ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the savages. She has given us no protection whatever; and as allegiance and protection are reciprocal, we have a right on this principle to cast off her yoke. However, in my next I pledge myself to demonstrate that the Mexicans are wholly incapable of self-government, and that on that principle we are bound by the first law of nature—self-preservation—to dissolve all connexion, and take ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... cruelly tore his mother's heart and dashed her hopes by an unfeeling letter, in which he declared her incapable of being treated with, since she was a prisoner and deposed. The not unreasonable expectation, that his manhood might reverse the proceedings wrought in his name in his infancy, was frustrated. Mary could no longer believe ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... criminals. A number of different explanations have been offered to account for this disproportion. Thus, for instance, attention has been drawn to the fact that a girl's physical weakness renders her incapable of attempting violent assaults upon the person, and this would suffice to explain why it is that girls so rarely commit such crimes. In the case of offences for which bodily strength is less requisite, such as fraud, theft, &c., the number of youthful female offenders is proportionately larger, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... have not hitherto been looked upon as attacks upon Revelation, but rather as corroborations of it. What the Editor believes as a Christian (if he is one is therefore another affair, nor does he reckon himself so infallible or incapable of alteration in his sentiments, as not at another time to adopt different ones upon more reflexion and better information; therefore, though he has at present little or no doubt of what he asserts (taken upon the principles laid down) he shall hold himself totally freed from any necessity ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... from a far country his mind, she perceived, often traveled to meet hers. "There was a door to which she found no key." But Katherine, happily, could respect the individuality even of her best beloved. Unlike the majority of her sex she was incapable of intrusion, and did not make affection an excuse for familiarity. Love, in her opinion, enjoins obligation of service, rather than confers rights of examination and direction. She had learned the condition in which his servants had found ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... never be able to walk again as perfectly as he did before, for it is the reputation of surgeons and physicians of this hospital, in dealing with cases of such extreme folly, that they so manipulate an operation as to render the patient incapable of complete recovery. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... you ask, star voyager? Did you not also break free from the power of the disk when I led you by the underground ways, awaking in the river? Do you then rate this other one as less than your own breed that you think him incapable ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... 367. Paralytic limbs are in general only incapable of being stimulated into action by the power of the will; since the pulse continues to beat and the fluids to be absorbed in them; and it commonly happens, when paralytic people yawn and stretch themselves, (which is not a voluntary motion,) that the affected limb ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... and many Chinese, but also by Hsien-pi and Huns. These heterogeneous elements with their divergent cultures failed in the long run to hold together in this long but extremely narrow strip of territory, which was almost incapable of military defence. As early as 397 a group of Huns in the central section of the country made themselves independent, assuming the name of the "Northern Liang" (397-439). These Huns quickly conquered other parts of the "Later ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Umfraville. I wrote you such a letter as would inevitably draw you to your death. I wished your death. For Honoria would then be freed of you. I would condole with her. She is readily comforted, impatient of sorrow, incapable of it, I dare say. She would have married me. . . . Why must I tell you this? Oh, I am Fate's buffoon! For I have won, I have won! and there is that in me which will not accept the ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the scene, that the whole might afford a picture for romance. Indeed, if it were not for those fertile spots on the plains, and some few on the sides of the mountains, the whole country might be called a dreary waste. The mountains, and other high places, are, for the most part, incapable of cultivation, consisting chiefly of rocks, many of which are full of mundicks. The little soil that is upon them is scorched and burnt up with the sun; it is, nevertheless, coated with coarse grass and other plants, and here and there trees and shrubs. The country, in general, bore ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... harshly, as he faced the excited pair. "The Hunters don't have concerts," he said grimly. "You're deluding yourself, Dana. They laugh at our music, they scoff at our arts and twist them into obscene mockeries. They have no concept of beauty in their language. The Hunters are incapable ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... job. Philosophy is said to console a man under disappointment, although Shakespeare asserts that it is no remedy for toothache; so Mr Easy turned philosopher, the very best profession a man can take up, when he is fit for nothing else; he must be a very incapable person indeed who cannot talk nonsense. For some time, Mr Easy could not decide upon what description his nonsense should consist of; at last he fixed upon the rights of man, equality, and all that; how every person was ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to-night on the Small Urban Holdings Bill, and point out how the wave of Continental Socialism is at last invading England with its devastating flood.' And the Duke, who was a complacent, thick-headed, obstinate old gentleman, congenitally incapable of looking at any question from any other point of view whatsoever except that of his own order, fell headlong passively into Lady Hilda's cruel little trap, and murmured to himself as he rolled down luxuriously ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Bunker's Hill. But fighting behind earthworks is a very different matter to making long marches, and executing complicated manoeuvres under heavy fire. Without a trained staff and an efficient administration, an army is incapable of movement. Even with a well-organised commissariat it is a most difficult business to keep a marching column supplied with food and forage; and the problem of transport, unless a railway or a river be available, taxes ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... chambre du capitaine pour y prendre les fusils qui s'y trouvaient. Ceux qui seraient parvenus limer leurs fers devaient commencer l'attaque; mais, malgr le travail opinitre de plusieurs nuits, le plus grand nombre des esclaves tait encore incapable de prendre une part nergique l'action. Aussi trois noirs robustes avaient la charge de tuer l'homme qui portait dans sa poche la clef des fers, et d'aller aussitt dlivrer leurs ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... to humiliate you unnecessarily in the presence of my father," she said. "You have managed to deceive him into believing that you are what you claim to be. Mr. Bince has known from the start that you are incompetent and incapable of accomplishing the results father thinks you are accomplishing. Now that you know that I know you to be an impostor, what do you ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... purpose I have added some of it (with the necessary precautions against introducing foreign organisms) to very changeable liquids, such as veal broth, blood, and milk, and have found that there was no alteration. Such water, then, is incapable of transmitting the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... civilised societies a man may obtain the highest position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born, although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable, sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch in Germany have strongly emphasised these "anomalies," which nevertheless are the rule. That is to say that even from a Darwinian point of view all social ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... dine upon Dissertations, and go to bed supperless." The breakfast was indeed likely to prove the only substantial meal; how substantial it proved we have already noticed. No doubt Webster appeared to his friends, as half to himself, a restless, uneasy man, incapable of steady application to law, and making hazardous ventures in literature in that combined character of author and publisher which the circumstances of the time rendered almost necessary to any one who undertook to make ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... of clay that seemed utterly incapable of any expression whatever, save in the slight facial contortion consequent to the mechanical movement of his lower jaw—the skipper sat, with barometer in hand, eyeing the fatal finger that pointed to our doom: the rest of us were lashed to the legs of the centre-table, glad of any object ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... heart, and though, perhaps, he would have had no objection to try the fortune of the pistol or the sword, in any college broil or senseless riot of the populace, the circumstances under which he then stood were so new to him, that he was quite unmanned and incapable of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... not, however, always favourable. They were sometimes the reverse. The new horse was unmanageable, the bullocks were weak and could not draw the carts, the servants were remiss or incapable, the roads were in some places shockingly bad, we were left for hours without tent and food, and, as I have said, the weather now and then was wet and stormy. We had sometimes an amount of trouble which made us half regret we had left home. Ladies are generally ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... construct for himself frightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vague impression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he might deprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in them any one attribute of exalted intellectual or ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... authority, put any prince under the ban of the empire; that confiscated territory should never be conferred upon any members of his own family, and that no successor to the imperial crown should be chosen during his lifetime, unless absence from Germany or the infirmities of age rendered him incapable of administering ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... unexpectedly gentle close of the sentence, 'is not wise.' How much stronger the assertion might have been! Look at the drunkard as he staggers along, scoffing at everything purer and higher than himself, and ready to fight with his own shadow, and incapable of self-control. He has made himself the ugly spectacle you see. Will ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... himself. The compliment was, I need hardly say, much appreciated by me. I was actually lifted up the steps of the house by his servants, for it was supposed that the legs of such a grand personage must indeed be incapable of bearing his body, and thus I was brought into his presence. As usual, he was most affable, and full of wit and fun. So great had been his anxiety to be down on canvas, that he had been quite unable to sleep. He could only wish for the daylight to come, which was to immortalise him, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... thoughtfully, "Frederick is growing very old. Nothing remains of the former hero but a dotard, who is incapable of comprehending the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ship is ready!' so earnest were they to carry the flag of their beloved Admiral again into battle, and so sanguine in the expectation of victory, notwithstanding the disparity of force,—nearly two to one! This I could not consent to, as they would have been worn out and incapable of further exertion; but I directed that all hands should be employed during the day, and that they should work watch and watch during the night. They immediately commenced their various duties, with all the energy and zeal that could be expected from men under ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... into a design upon her, and even dared to make free with names that she ought never to mention but with reverence and gratitude; what would you say to that?—Say, sir! said she, I cannot tell what to say. But I hope Pamela incapable ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... perhaps—must come to break the monotony of that slowly unwinding chain of days, which was like a grotesquely dreary dream. To have flung himself heart and soul into his work not only demanded an effort of which he felt himself incapable, but it seemed to him that such an effort could only serve to identify him with this hideous life. So, with head bowed over interminable pages, he labored with patient indifference. On his left sat a clerk ten or fifteen years older than himself, a white-faced man, who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... England, had left three sons, the eldest of whom, Constantine, had entered a monastery, while the two others were too young to reign. Drawn from his retirement to wear a crown, Constantine proved incapable to maintain order, so his general, Vortigern, with the aid of the Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa, usurped his throne. Some time after, wishing to construct an impregnable fortress on Salisbury Plain, Vortigern sent for a host of masons, who were dismayed to see the work they had ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Petrovitch, he was positively incapable of maintaining his firm demeanour any longer. 'If you could only realise what it is you are doing for your country. No; it's enough to try the patience of an angel! Force! There's force in the savage Kalmuck, in the Mongolian; but what ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... more disagreeable than a very stupid and ill-set old woman, who, quite unaware what her opinion is worth, expresses it with entire confidence upon many subjects of which she knows nothing whatever, and as to which she is wholly incapable of judging. And the self-satisfied and confident air with which she settles the most difficult questions, and pronounces unfavorable judgment upon people ten thousand times wiser and better than herself, is an insufferably irritating phenomenon. It is a singular fact, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... already a familiar knowledge of English, need help to write it with taste and exactness. Some degree of knowledge is presumed in the reader; nevertheless we do not presume that he possesses so much as to render him incapable of profiting from lessons. Our object is, if possible, not merely to interest, but to teach; to write lessons, not essays,—lessons that may perhaps prove interesting to some who have passed beyond the routine ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... answered, expected that the boy either would or could know all that he said he knew; but the world was full of compromises; and there was hardly any affirmation which would bear being interpreted literally. Human language was too gross a vehicle of thought—thought being incapable of absolute translation. He added, that as there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... that you have not lost Montanelli. That noble mind is still spared to Italy. The Pope's heart is incapable of treason; but he has fallen short of the office ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the lion's cage is dangerous; you should not do it." Do so is the better expression, as a rule, for the word it is a pronoun, meaning a thing, or object, and therefore incapable of being done. Colloquially we may say do it, or do this, or do that, but in serious written discourse greater precision is desirable, and is better obtained, in most cases, by use ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... sufficiently acquainted with the mushroom literature of the day for all social purposes, and, partly from the authority which his wealth and position gave him, partly from his own dexterity, he contrived to turn conversation aside from those topics in the discussion of which he was incapable of mixing, and to promote that sort of half-serious, half-ludicrous talk, in which he was not only fitted to play a prominent part, but in which he exhibited a talent quite peculiar to himself. Never was there so great a master of what is called persiflage—of ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Bicker, who belonged to one of the most important among the ruling burgher-families of Amsterdam, brought to him enduring domestic happiness. It was likewise of no slight political value. Andries and Cornelis Bicker, who had headed the opposition to William II and had been declared by him in 1650 incapable of holding henceforth any municipal office, were her uncles; while her maternal uncle, Cornelis de Graeff, was a man of weight and influence both in his native town and in the Provincial Estates. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... officers were so surprised at the suddenness of the incident and the overthrow of their companion, and for the moment so amused at the latter's appearance, covered as he was from head to foot with the sticky liquor and bleeding from a cut inflicted by the edge of the can, that they were incapable of interference. ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... are of most value when cooked, although some authors affirm to the contrary. It seems possible to prove this on philosophical principles; for it is well known that the starch contained in the potato is incapable of affording nourishment until the containing globules are broken, and one of the most efficient means of doing this seems to be ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... the recommendation of the Secretary for the extension of the homestead laws to the Indians and for some sort of Territorial government for the Indian Territory. A great majority of the Indians occupying this Territory are believed yet to be incapable of maintaining their rights against the more civilized and enlightened white man. Any Territorial form of government given them, therefore, should protect them in their homes and property for a period of at least twenty years, and before its final adoption ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... Spectator, Mr. Steele's papers are marked with the letter T. and in them are contained the most picturesque descriptions of low life, of which he was perfect matter. Humour was his talent, though not so much confined to that cast of writing to be incapable of painting very tender scenes; witness his Conscious Lovers, which never fails to draw tears; and in some of his Spectators he has written in so feeling a manner, that none can read ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... fair for me," he sang to himself, "what care I how fair she be?" But he did care; he could not master that passion. She had been vile to him, unfeminine, untrue, coarsely abusive; she had shown herself to be mercenary, incapable of true love, a scold, fickle, and cruel. But yet he loved her. There was a gallant feeling at his heart that no misfortune could conquer him,—but one; that misfortune had fallen upon him,—and he ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... had I landed in Liverpool, and twice had I reason to admire their conduct and liberality. They knew I was incapable of trying to introduce anything contraband, and they were aware that I never dreamed of turning to profit the specimens I had procured. They considered that I had left a comfortable home in quest of science; ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... wrath left him. What a touching and moral spectacle! Coqueville reconciled, the Mahes and the Floches sleeping together! With the last glass the deadliest enemies had embraced. Tupain and Fouasse lay there snoring, hand in hand, like brothers, incapable of coming to dispute a legacy. As to the Rouget household, it offered a still more amiable picture, Marie slept between Rouget and Brisemotte, as much as to say that henceforth they were to live ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola
... social acquaintance must prejudice them in her favor, and perhaps render them incapable of unbiased judgment, should her evidence be incriminating. But in my secret heart, I confess, I felt glad of this. I was glad of anything that would keep even a shadow of suspicion away from this girl to whose fascinating charm I had already fallen ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... exception to that statement, uncharitable though it was; after all, someone whose only acquaintance with trees had been with the Terrestrial variety would naturally be incapable of appreciating the total tree ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... the documents necessary to gain the cause which he was on the verge of losing. The author has often heard this story told by persons who had the best access to know the facts, who were not likely themselves to be deceived, and were certainly incapable of deception. He cannot therefore refuse to give it credit, however extraordinary the circumstances may appear. The circumstantial character of the information given in the dream, takes it out of the general class of impressions of the kind which are occasioned by the fortuitous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... free soil, is incapable of sustaining a dense population. Slave labor calls for large spaces within which to multiply and prosper. The purchase of Louisiana and the acquisition of Florida met this agrarian necessity on the part of the South. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... closed, and Cinq-Mars was borne in by De Thou and his people, while the Duc de Richelieu, motionless and stupefied, still regarded the spot where this scene had passed. He appeared thunder-struck, and incapable of seeing or hearing those who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... naked and terrifying. With any other father, there might have been a chance of mercy. But there was none with this one. The malevolent old miser's nature had ever been at war with her own. From her birth, he had taunted her with being like her mother—a shallow, worthless, social creature, incapable of straight dealing and plain economy. From her childhood, she had deceived him, even in the matter of pennies. She had lied to him when she left home to elope with John Swinton; and it was only by threatening him with lawyers and a public scandal that ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... long time—perhaps even now—offerings were made to his departed spirit. An attempt was made to replace him by another American named Burgevine, who had been Ward's second in command. This man, however, was found to be incapable and was superceded; and in 1863 Major Gordon, R.E., was allowed by the British authorities to take over command of what was then an army of about five thousand men, and to act in co-operation with Tseng Kuo-fan and Li Hung-chang. Burgevine ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... of these immigrants are, therefore, incapable of understanding and appreciating our free institutions. They are not fit to vote intelligently, but are nevertheless quickly naturalized and form a very large per cent of our voting population, especially in our large cities. As a rule, they do not ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... papers," Hilda said, looking at him softly, as it were, through the film of the words. They sat down, he on the sofa, she on a chair very near it. There was another placed at a more usual distance, but she seemed incapable of taking the step or two toward it, away ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... "or else is ignorant of the fact, that the very object of the appointment of a guardian is because the law considers that a minor is incapable of acting for himself. He has no discretionary power in connection with his estate. He has no more right to go on the witness-stand and give voluntary hearsay evidence which shall be adverse to his own interests than he has to give away any part of his ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... are advanced in her effort to prove the inferior importance of form and metre in poesy. According to Mrs. Renshaw, the essence of all genuine poetry is a certain spontaneous and involuntary spiritual or psychological perception and expression; incapable of rendition in any prescribed structure, and utterly destroyed by subsequent correction or alteration of any kind. That is, the bard must respond unconsciously to the noble impulse furnished by a ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... other ancient Mystic Orders, much of which has never been printed, but which has passed down from teacher to pupil over the centuries even unto this day, among Occult Fraternities. But in order to show the student that we are not making statements incapable of proof by evidence available to him, we would refer him to any standard work of reference on the subject. For instance, if he will consult the "New International Encyclopedia" (Vol. VII, page 217) article on "Essenes," he will read the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... thin by the numbers on either side who had yielded themselves vanquished, had been compelled to the extremity of the lists, or been otherwise rendered incapable of continuing the strife, the Templar and the Disinherited Knight at length encountered hand to hand, with all the fury that mortal animosity, joined to rivalry of honour, could inspire. Such was the address ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... upon which to act; the bewildered multitude, who are directed by nothing and have not yet learned to direct themselves, know not what guide to follow; and in the midst of so many contradictory ideas, and incapable of separating truth from falsehood, the least evil that can happen is, that they may determine to remain in their ignorance and stupidity. While information is still so sparingly disseminated, the license ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical, and not a physical foundation; not among materialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... member of the royal family who may be incapable of governing, or who by his conduct may have forfeited his claim to the good-will of the nation, may be excluded from the succession by (p. 614) law. Disputes concerning rights or facts involved in the ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... truths on which it depends; there is no science of the coming and going of epidemics; no science of the breaking out and the cessation of wars; no science of popular likings and dislikings, or of the fashions. It is not that these subject-matters are themselves incapable of science, but that, under existing circumstances, we are incapable of subjecting them to it. And so, in like manner," says the philosopher in question, "without denying that in the matter of religion ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... rattled away from the station. The driver plied his whip freely, and soon left the business section of the city behind. As they sped along Washington Avenue, Edward endeavored to prepare himself for the worst, but he was incapable of calmness and reflection: his whole being rebelled against the supposition that he might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... envisage them and he could see them only as they had stood. He groped amid a hopeless confusion of thought—at one moment bewildered, piteously hurt, at the next suffering a sense of shameful betrayal. He had grown old and dull and feeble, too, and for the time being he was incapable of feeling the full force of a strong man's resentment. This ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Russell's Modern Europe. The late history by Miss Pardoe is one of the most interesting ever written. It may have too much gossip for what is called the "dignity of history;" but that fault, if fault it be, has been made by Macaulay also, and has been condemned, not unfrequently, by those most incapable of appreciating philosophical history. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to spend, From 'mongst the millions of our fallen race, Determined all such should behold his face In peace at last, in spite of Hell and sin. These would in time his Gospel Truth embrace, Or die incapable for Faith within. Thus did he view the triumphs of God's ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... you have taken, the feelings of humanity induce me to have recourse to this expedient to save you from the Destruction which hangs over you. Give me leave, Sir, to assure you that I am well acquainted with your situation. A great extent of works, in their nature incapable of defence, manned with a motley crew of sailors, the greatest part our friends; of citizens, who wish to see us within their walls, & a few of the worst troops who ever stiled themselves Soldiers. The impossibility of relief, and the certain prospect of wanting every ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... Catholicism. He lived in a state of profound indifference as to religion, and did not desire to come out of it. The rector was in despair. Not that Roubaud did any wrong; he never spoke against religion, and his duties were excuse enough for his absence from church; besides, he was incapable of trying to undermine the faith of others, and indeed behaved outwardly as the best of Catholics; he simply prohibited himself from thinking of a problem which he considered above the range of human thought. When the rector heard him say ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... has been observed, that it is degrading and untrue to describe the human species as incapable of receiving gratification only from comic scenes; that "there is a luxury in wo," independent of its purifying the bosom and suppressing the more ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... of of the Iroquois ownership of, in common severalty of Village Indians, rights in tenure of, among ancient Mexicans Languages, stock, number of great number of, among American aborigines verbal, incapable of permanence Lapham, J. A. Las Casas, B. de, cited Latin and Sabine gentes, coalescence of Lewis and Clark, cited Lintels of Pueblos of Mexico wood and stone Lolsel Long-House of the Iroquois described Onondaga described symbol ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... unerring clairvoyance that prompts devoted hearts in moments of danger, in crises demanding supernatural judgment? It is the very essence of much of our song and story, but the wise men do not grasp its origin; to them it is as elusive and incapable of isolation from its forms of manifestation as that phase of force we call electricity. An old gentleman whom I knew well, a learned man, far above all superstitions, arose from the sofa in his home one afternoon and announced to the startled family that his son was ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... replied the poet, "to suppose that one thing is not consistent with another; that the same proposition cannot be, at once, true and false; that the same number cannot be even and odd; that cogitation cannot be conferred on that which is created incapable of cogitation." ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... crazy to endure anything but the calmest sea and the most favourable winds. You have tried its sea-worthiness in one department, your military organisation, and you find that it literally falls to pieces. You are incapable of managing a line of operations extending only seven miles from its base. The next storm may attack your Colonial Administration. Will that stand any better? Altogether your machinery seems throughout out of gear. If ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... French writers estimate the total number of the Sioux at forty thousand. Mr. Riggs, in 1852, placed it at about twenty-five thousand. Lake many other Indian tribes, they seem practically incapable of civilization.] ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... speech showed, was that he was either deliberately parodying a style of scholastic reasoning with which he did not agree, or he was incapable of grasping the first conception of quantitative political thought. If the 'dogma' of universal suffrage means the assertion that all men who have votes are thereby made identical with each other in all ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... early morning disguised in an earthly fell, and the man who can resist his contagion is a sour, dour, miserable mistake, without bravery, without virtue, without music, with a cranky body and a shrivelled soul, and with eyes incapable of seeing the sunlight. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... no other example of a genius so universal as Leonardo's, so creative, so incapable of self- contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of his portraits Michelangelo's personages ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... stricken, incapable of thought. Not that the event was unexpected. He had been reckoning on that; he had seen her steadily failing, and knew that she could not go on indefinitely under such privations. And yet, when it came, it was appalling. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Baudru. The latter was asleep on the bench, his head rolling from side to side, his mouth half-opened, and an incredible expression of stupidity on his blotched face. No, such an adversary was incapable of deceiving old Ganimard. It was a stroke ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... was part of his inheritance from that grandfather who had fought the Britishers in the wars of the Revolution. Possibly, too, he had heard as a boy, in his native Vermont village, tales of British perfidy in the recent war of 1812. At all events, he was utterly incapable of anything but bitter animosity toward Great Britain. This unreasoning prejudice blinded his judgment in matters of diplomacy, and vitiated his utterances ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... in the world by lecturing on literature at the University of Breslau, but had severed his connection with that institution because he was not allowed to branch out into history. Possibly those who opposed him were right and the two subjects are incapable of amalgamation. Freytag in this, his last great work, revels in the fulness of his knowledge of facts, but shows more of the thoroughness of the scholar than of the imagination of the poet. The novels become epitomes of the history ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... love of honor. The good man, who subordinates his own welfare to that of society, acts under the same necessity as the evil-doer; hence repentance and pangs of conscience, which increase the amount of pain in the world, but are incapable of effecting amendment, are useless and reprehensible: the criminal is an ill man, and must not be more harshly punished than the safety of society requires. Materialism humanizes and exercises a tranquilizing influence on the mind, as ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... answered Remsen. "Of course, there are boys, and men too, for that matter, who are incapable of occupying their minds with two distinct interests. That kind should leave athletics alone. And there are others who are naturally—I guess I mean-unnaturally—stupid, and who, should they attempt to sandwich football or baseball ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... morning; a request, which occasioned her so much agitation, that she was unable to answer it. She wished to see him, and to terminate her present state of suspense, yet shrunk from the interview, and, incapable of deciding for herself, she, at length, sent to beg a few moments' conversation with the Count in his library, where she delivered to him the note, and requested his advice. After reading it, he said, that, if she believed herself well enough to support the interview, his opinion ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... going to say something farther, but as if incapable of attending to her, he hastened out ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... the supreme command would have been intrusted to him. But it was decreed that, at this conjuncture, England should lose the only man who united perfect disinterestedness to eminent talents, the only man who, being capable of gaining the victory for her, was incapable of abusing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that, although rude and ignorant, these men are not insensible to good impressions, or incapable of distinguishing between a kindly and paternal care of their well-doing, and the mercenary cold-blooded bargain which exacts the last scruple of flesh it has ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... feeling distinctly and vividly. Now I understand. These were flashes of Soul-Consciousness unfolded in a past life and struggling for "recognition" in this life. Such men face DEATH for themselves calmly. They know they can't die. Such men are incapable of sustained hatred. They too have their physiognomical signs and distinctions. They represent an advanced order of intellect. And, lastly, when the full blaze of realisation comes, your one object in life shall be to bestow your sense of ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... itself a great philosophical theory, which is every instant to be traced by its consequences in the practice of human affairs. Although man has many points of resemblance with the brute creation, one characteristic is peculiar to himself—he improves: they are incapable of improvement. Mankind could not fail to discover this difference from its earliest period. The idea of perfectibility is therefore as old as the world; equality did not give birth to it, although it has imparted to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... do. I'll show you you are not always right, nor often right. Just because I surround myself with wrestlers and charioteers and gladiators and other good fellows, not with senile self-styled philosophers, prosy and with unkempt beards and rough cloaks, as my father did, half of you think I am incapable of being serious, or haven't intellect enough to understand government or sense enough to care ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... your house to-night! Do you think I would remain another hour beneath the roof of a man who is as blind to justice, as deaf to mercy, as incapable of human sympathy as ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... could the majority betray the traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning capacity? That is just it, the majority cannot reason; it has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage, the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others. Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: "The most dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities, the damned compact majority." Without ambition or initiative, the compact mass hates nothing ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... remember how I first came to know Gregory, but I was instrumental in once getting him a little legal work to do, since when he has shown a dangerous disposition to require similar services of me, and even to confide in me. I am quite incapable—not on principle, but from a sort of feeble courtesy—of rejecting such overtures. It does more harm than good, because I am unable to help him in any way; and the result of our talks is only to send him away disappointed ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... deliver up our whole country, and every living soul who inhabits it, to certain destruction; hath not, as I remember, been permitted by the most favourable casuists on the side of corruption. It were far better, that all who have had the misfortune to be born in this kingdom, should be rendered incapable of holding any employment whatsoever, above the degree of a constable, (according to the scheme and intention of a great minister[2] gone to his own place)than to live under the daily apprehension of a few false brethren among ourselves. Because, in the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... were acquainted with all languages, the courses of the stars, and all the rest, what is there in that to be proud of? A single demon knows more on these subjects than all the men in this world put together.[17] But there is one thing that the demon is incapable of, and which is the glory of man: to ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the armies of the empire, whose discipline they acquired, and whose weakness they invaded: with the familiar use of the Latin tongue, they had learned to reverence the name and titles of Rome; and, though incapable of emulating, they were more inclined to admire, than to abolish, the arts and studies of a brighter period. In the transient possession of a rich and unresisting capital, the soldiers of Alaric and Genseric were stimulated by the passions of a victorious army; amidst the wanton ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... himself, showed he had a high esteem for them. The Duc de Rohan used to say that Louis XIII. was jealous of his own authority because he was ignorant of its full extent, for the Marechal d'Ancrel and M. de Luynes were mere dunces, incapable of informing him. Cardinal de Richelieu, who succeeded them, collected all the wicked designs and blunders of the two last centuries to serve his grand purpose. He laid them down as proper maxims for establishing the King's authority, and, fortune seconding ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... contrasted brothers we see what Minor[20] well enough calls the hot and cold passions. Karl is a hotspur whose emotions are always keyed up to the highest pitch; he is never calm and is incapable of sober reasoning. His boiling blood and his insensate ambition are his only oracles. We may say that his motives are lofty, but in trying to set the world right and make it conform to his perfervid dreams of justice and freedom, he becomes a madman and a criminal. Franz, on the other ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... mysterious relic of the Stone Age is disappointing and perplexing, we can only be thankful that the work of Farmer Green and Tom Robinson, the two despoilers mentioned by the earliest investigators, has been prevented in their descendants, and that though the circles are incapable of restoration, the few stones that remain will be ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... interior. The guacharo is of the size of the common fowl; its hooked bill is white, like that of the goat-sucker, and furnished at the base with stiff hairs, directed forwards. The plumage is of a sombre brownish grey, mixed with black stripes and large white spots. Their eyes are incapable of bearing the light of day, and their wings are disproportionately large, measuring no less than four and a-half feet from tip to tip. The birds quit the cavern only at nightfall, to feed on fruits. A most horrible noise is made by them in the dark recesses of ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hamann, himself a kind of Custom-house Clerk (at Konigsberg, in East Preussen), and on modest terms a Literary man of real merit and originality, who may be supposed to understand this subject: "And so," says Hamann, "the State has declared its own subjects incapable of managing its Finance system; and in this way has intrusted its heart, that is the purse of its subjects, to a company of Foreign Scoundrels, ignorant of everything relating to it!" ["Hamann to Jacobi" (see Preuss, iii. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sur un petit pont et le prince aussitot le saisit et le fait culbuter a l'eau, d'ou l'abbe se tire non sans peine, et non sans colere, car il court sur le prince avec un fouet pour le corriger, declarant a qui veut l'entendre ce qu'il pense d'un prince incapable de tenir parole. Les practical jokers de ce genre n'etaient pas rares: le duc de Cumberland fit partager le meme sort a une jeune fille qui servait de dame ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... to be sold abroad. So high an act of dominion must be recognised by the law of the country where it is used. The power of a master over his slave has been extremely different in different countries. The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political.... It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences therefore may follow from a decision, I cannot ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... constitution is transmitted: an alpine plant transmits its alpine tendency to its offspring, an American plant its American-bog constitution, and animals, those peculiarities, on which{77} when placed out of their natural conditions they are incapable of breeding; and moreover they transmit every part of their constitution, their respiration, their pulse, their instinct, which are all suddenly modified, can it be wondered at that they are incapable ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... money in it; by legal matters of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there, suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... her shrink. Did a cruel and secret instinct in him rejoice? He was mad with rage and misery, and he was incapable of ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... clerk conducted himself so well in the service of the Cardinal, and gained such esteem, that his master had no small regret that his secretary was incapable of holding a living, for which he was exceedingly ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... all oriental races, the Affghans had best resisted the effeminacy of oriental usages, and in some respects we may say—of Mahometan institutions. Their strength lay in their manly character; their weakness in their inveterate disunion. But this, though quite incapable of permanent remedy under Mahometan ideas, could be suspended under the compression of a common warlike interest; and that had been splendidly put on record by the grandfather of Shah Soojah. It was not to be denied—that in the event of a martial prince arising, favourably ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... peace or a solid League of Nations as long as Russia continued to be a prey to anarchy. But even with the prizes and penalties before their eyes to entice and spur them, they proved unequal to the task of devising an intelligent policy. Fitful and incoherent, their efforts were either incapable of being realized or, when feasible, were mischievous. Thus, by degrees, they hardened the great ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... from the kingdom of fancy and fashion and foolery to the kingdom of reason and righteousness, then would I hope for the elevation of woman, aye, and of man too, as perhaps I have never yet hoped. What should be the parts and particulars of such dress, I am incapable of saying. Whilst the "Bloomer dress" is unspeakably better than the common dress, it nevertheless affords not half that freedom of the person which woman is entitled and bound to enjoy. I add, on this point, that however much ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... amiability of disposition; one could not imagine her behaving harshly or with conscious injustice. Her manners—within the recognised limits—were frank, spontaneous; she had for the most part a liberal tone in conversation, and was evidently quite incapable of bitter feeling on any everyday subject. Piers Otway bent before her with unfeigned reverence; she dazzled him, she delighted and confused his senses. As often as he dared look at her, his eye discovered some new elegance in her attitude, some marvel of delicate beauty in the details ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the winter months picked up a meager education at the district school. He has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of his father that first turned his attention to machinery. He was not fitted for hard work, however, as he was frail in constitution and incapable of bearing much fatigue. Moreover, he inherited a species of lameness which proved a great obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live out on the farm ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... and solely absorbed in the mysterious guest who had just come to make him a visit. Strange intensity of these visions of love printed on the very floor of his thought and nevertheless lacking in contour! Pierre would have been incapable of saying what was the form of her features or what the color of her eyes or the modeling of her lips. All he could bring back was the emotion already in himself. All his attempts to give precision to the image merely ended ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... trouble would be the problem of determining what wages should be paid to shirkers and those incapable of working with efficiency. Would wage courts decide the value of their services? If so, how many thousands of such courts would be required? If not, would state officials or politicians decide the cases? The wages of such persons, no matter ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... we have no foreign wars, if conquests have come to an end, we serve at least to defend the integrity of Spanish soil, to guard our own homes. Is it that you think," said the cadet nettled, "we are incapable of ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... these theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in governments are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good,—in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason is a computing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Laid waste for ever—that concerns not thee. Indifferent thou tramplest in the dust Their happiness, who most are thine. The god Whom thou dost serve, is no benignant deity. Like as the blind irreconcileable 50 Fierce element, incapable of compact, Thy heart's wild impulse only ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... by the way. It is a beautiful and significant fact that in all times the years of learning have been also the years of romance. Those who love girls and boys pray that our colleges may be homes of sound learning, for knowledge is the condition of every college blessing. "Let no man incapable of mathematics enter here," Plato is reported to have inscribed over his Academy door. "Let no one to whom hard study is repulsive hope for anything from us," American colleges might paraphrase. Accordingly in my talk today I shall ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... in the most affectionate manner to attend to this duty; you will find it will strengthen you in the performance of others. "The more we exert our faculties, the more we can accomplish. He that does nothing, renders himself incapable of doing any thing. While we are executing one work, we are preparing ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... expense, and most likely a whisky-drinking, irresponsible, and incapable man to boot. Besides, I'd have the business more at heart than any man we could hire. As for capability, I tell you I can sail all around the average broken captain or promoted able seaman you find in the South Seas. And you know I am ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... taught that He in the beginning, since He is good, did for man's sake create all things out of unformed matter; and if men by their works show themselves worthy of His design, they are deemed worthy, for so we have received, of reigning in company with Him, having become incorruptible and incapable of suffering. For as in the beginning He created us when we were not, so we consider that, in like manner, those who choose what is pleasing to Him are, on account of their choice, deemed worthy of incorruption and of fellowship with Him. For the coming into being ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Wisconsin which have been farmed a little more than fifty years without fertilizing, it is found that about one-third of the phosphorus has been taken out of the soil, which would mean that in one hundred and fifty years, or a hundred years from now, the soil would be incapable of producing any living thing, and long before that time the crops would not pay for the labor of producing them. Almost every acre of land that has been farmed for ten years without fertilization is deficient in phosphorus, that is, so much has been ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... The archbishop was horror-stricken, settled an annuity upon the widow, and to the close of his life observed Tuesday, the day of the accident, as a weekly fast. This occurrence raised a hot dispute in the Church as to whether the archbishop, by having blood on his hands, had become incapable of discharging the duties of his sacred office. He retired to his hospital at Guildford while the inquiry was conducted, was ultimately exonerated, and in 1625 died. This hospital is built around a small quadrangle, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... a single mind, her movements, for either good or evil, are wholly dependent on the caprice, the ambition, or the absurdity of the individual on the throne. The idea that Russia would weaken her power by the possession of Constantinople, seems to us utterly incapable of proof. She has been able to maintain her power at once on the Black Sea, seven hundred miles from her capital; on the Danube, at nearly the same distance, and on the Vistula, pressing on the Prussian frontier. In Constantinople she would have the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... mentioned, without a prefix, the fixed or fatty oils are always understood. The volatile or essential oils are a distinct class. Occasionally, the fixed oils are called hydrocarbons, but hydrocarbon oils are quite different and consist of carbon and hydrogen alone. Of these, petroleum is incapable of digestion, whilst others ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... of birth to dread a mesalliance. Like many another parent, he resolved to marry his daughter, not so much on her account as for his own peace of mind. A noble or a country gentleman was the man for him, somebody not too clever, incapable of haggling over the account of the trust; stupid enough and easy enough to allow Nais to have her own way, and disinterested enough to take her without a dowry. But where to look for a son-in-law to suit father and daughter ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... know he did of me. The misconduct of the gunner grew more and more unbearable, and at length I was compelled to bring him, as also the boatswain and carpenter, to a court-martial. The result was that the former was broke, and rendered incapable of again serving his Majesty; while the other two, who did not deserve a less punishment, were severely reprimanded. They would have been broke likewise but for the difficulty which then existed of finding intelligent and educated men to fill ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... that Hamlet really knew more of his father's death than he professed, took up a strange resolution, from that time to counterfeit as if he were really and truly mad; thinking that he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle should believe him incapable of any serious project, and that his real perturbation of mind would be best covered and pass concealed under ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... lesson, however badly things might go down in the class, but contented himself with beating on the desk with his cane. He was little more than a shadow of his former self, his head was always shaking, and his hands were often incapable of grasping an object. He still brought the newspaper with him, and opened it out at the beginning of the lesson, but he did not read. He would fall into a dream, sitting bolt upright, with his hands on the desk and his back against ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... with the liveliest sensations, by reviving in the mind those pleasures which the study of their history afforded in early life. To Europeans the history of China has hitherto furnished no materials for such recurrence, and the country itself is therefore incapable of communicating such impressions. In vain should we here look for the massy and stupendous fabrics that appear in the pyramids and the pillars of the ancient Egyptians; the beautiful and symmetrical works of art displayed in the temples of the Greeks; the grand and magnificent remains ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... oath, or tremble; the story of Theramenes and the dream of Athalie are interdicted; you shall wander about them for the rest of your days, and never again be permitted to enter. You are a professor of philosophy; take the oath to M. Bonaparte,—if not, you become incapable of understanding the mysteries of the human conscience, and of explaining them to young men. You are a professor of medicine; take the oath,—if not, you no longer know how to feel the pulse of a feverish patient. But if the good professors ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... reason of our infringement of the old customs. Take, for example, the problem of the peculiar position of women among the Hindus. Perhaps"—and here the babou's voice grew very grave and earnest—"the human imagination is incapable of conceiving a lot more wretched than that of the Hindu widow. By immemorial tradition she could escape it only through the flames of the satti, the funeral-pile upon which she could burn herself with the dead body ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... whether he be St. Dunstan, Pollaiolo, Torrigiano, or Walter Crane, only executes a drawing which leaves his hands for good, and is translated into embroidery by the patient needlewoman who simply fills in an outline, ignorant of art, unappreciative of its subtleties, and incapable of giving life and expression, even when she is aware that they are indicated in the original design. This is almost always the case; but there are exceptions. Charlemagne's dalmatic, for instance, shows signs of having been either the work of the artist himself, or else carried ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... crest of it. These had been buried beneath the snow, and the crust had formed smoothly over them; and as it was upheld by no stronger support than such as the hidden shrubbery furnished, it was incapable ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... generals. I have known others, who have distinguished themselves at sieges, and in the different evolutions of an army, lose their presence of mind and appear ignorant of their profession, the instant they were taken from that particular line, and be incapable of commanding a few squadrons of horse. Should a man of this cast be put at the head of an army, he will confine himself to mere dispositions and manoeuvres; to them he will look for safety; and if once thwarted, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... as to their superior numbers and resources effecting their natural result, and although Gordon himself declared that the Taeping cause was a lost one before he assumed the command, no cause could be pronounced irretrievable with a leader so expert and resolute as Chung Wang, and opponents so incapable and craven as his were. But another thing was certainly incontestable, and that was that the Taepings could not in any sense be regarded as patriots. Their regular mode of conduct stamped them at once as undiscriminating plunderers ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... called the same natives whom Ann and Lord had questioned, and this time, without exception, they reversed their testimony. Lord was willing to believe the language had caused the difficulty. Niaga's people were entirely incapable of deception; what ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... of the empire and throne, than in the constitutional monarchy that preserved at once the king and liberty. Since the aristocracy lost the possession of the supreme power, its sole ambition—its only aim—was to see it fall into the hands of those most unworthy to hold it. Incapable of again rising by its own force, it sought to find in disorder the means of so doing; and from the first day of the Revolution to the last, this party had no other instinct, and it was thus that it ruined itself ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... I would have forgiven him if he had told the truth. I can bear with incompetency, but falsehood and deceit I cannot and will not tolerate," he said, so sternly that Dan's face paled. "I am convinced that you are incapable of either. Will you take ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sufficient for the cure of the majority of ills. But when the internal physician, the man himself, was tired or incapable, some remedy had to be applied, which should antagonize the spiritual seed of the disease.[247:1] Such remedies, known as arcana, were alleged to possess marvellous efficiency, but their composition was kept secret. That is to say, they ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... fearlessly appeal to Y.R.H. for a testimony on this point for the satisfaction of H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig. As for the conduct of the mother of my nephew, it is easily to be inferred from the fact of her having been declared by the Court wholly incapable of undertaking the guardianship of her son. All that she plotted in order to ruin her poor child can only be credited from her own depravity, and thence arises the unanimous agreement about this affair, and the boy being entirely withdrawn from ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... possible for two natures so incapable of disguise—the one from simplicity and frankness, the other from ungovernable temper,—to have continued in relations of amity, notwithstanding their disagreement upon a question which was at that moment setting the world in arms, both themselves ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Attempts to write, sew, or draw are imperfectly performed. Such children are very often punished for supposed ill-behavior or careless habits. Later on the symptoms become more unmistakable, and the presence of the disease is readily recognized. The patient may become incapable of dressing, and the limbs and face are no longer under the control of the will. Uncontrollable movements of the fingers, hands, shrugging of the shoulders, dancing of the legs, grimaces of the face, and distortions ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... not marry the co-respondent during the lifetime of the other party. If any divorced woman, who shall have been found guilty of adultery, shall afterward openly cohabit with the person proved to have been the partaker of her crime, she is rendered incapable of alienating either directly or indirectly any of her lands, tenements or hereditaments, and all wills, deeds, and other instruments of conveyance therefor are absolutely void, and after her death ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... than prophecy, and those who have any regard for facts will not again speak lightly of an order having such ancestors as the great Comacine Masters. Had Fergusson known their story, he would not have paused in his History of Architecture to belittle the Free-masons as incapable of designing a cathedral, while puzzling the while as to who did draw the plans for those dreams of beauty and prayer. Hereafter, if any one asks to know who uplifted those massive piles in which was portrayed the great drama of mediaeval ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... between this part he play'd And him he play'd it for, he needs will be Absolute Milan. Me, poor man—my library Was dukedom large enough: of temporal royalties He thinks me now incapable; confederates,— So dry he was for sway,—wi' th' King of Naples To give him annual tribute, do him homage; Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend The dukedom, yet unbow'd—alas, poor ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... suddenly took offence (or, at least, then first showed his offence) at something we had said, done, or omitted, and never spoke one syllable to either of us again. Being both of us amiably disposed, and incapable of having seriously meditated either word or deed likely to wound any person's feelings, we were much hurt at the time, and often retraced the little incidents upon the road, to discover, if possible, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Beth by the common standard of girls of her age, both failings and faults were more imaginary than real; yet it was her characteristic to suspect and despise in herself such weaknesses as others would condone, or at least regard leniently. For here was a girl true and staunch, incapable of intrigue or deceit, frank and outspoken, all these qualities having been proven more than once. Everyone loved Beth De Graf save herself, and at this stage of her development the influence of her cousins and of Uncle John had conspired to make the supersensitive girl more tolerant of herself ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... expectation of surprising Quebec, Arnold did not immediately relinquish the hope of obtaining possession of that important place. Not superior to the garrison in point of numbers, and without a single piece of artillery, he was obviously incapable of acting offensively; but he flattered himself that a defection in the town might yet put it in his hands. With this view, he paraded on the adjacent heights for some days, and sent two flags to demand a surrender. But the presence ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... see how eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any good end, therefore I am not able to believe in it. To chasten a man in order to perfect him might be reasonable enough; to annihilate him when he shall have proved himself incapable of reaching perfection might be reasonable enough; but to roast him forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him roast would not be reasonable—even the atrocious God imagined by the Jews would ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... he never failed to repeat several times, "the fools," referring to these same city authorities. However that may be, the authorities of Tours, coming to the conclusion, at last, that a child of twelve was incapable of overthrowing the Republic, gave me a passport, with the injunction to leave the city within twenty-four hours, which I proceeded to do with a hearty good-will, but not without deep grief also at seeing myself alone, and on foot, with a long journey before me. After ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... to the figures of speech, one must be struck at once with the delicacy and the vigor of Lanier's imagination. The poet's fancy personifies what at first blush seems to us incapable of personification. Thus at one time*1* he likens men to clover-leaves and the Course-of-things to the browsing ox, which makes way with the clover-heads; while at another he addresses an old red hill of Georgia as "Thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North—all tediously alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... moot question," Roger replied. "Many affirm that he can do so, and assuredly many abbots have exercised that power; others again hold that, although abbots cannot lawfully do so, bishops can; while a few maintain that even these are incapable, and that nothing short of the absolution by the Holy Father himself is of avail. Still, whatever be the true state of things, I should be well satisfied with an abbot's absolution, and still more so by a bishop's; for though, were ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... along the little brook. Packs and saddles had been removed. The men ate leisurely. There was little evidence of hurried flight. Yet Helen could not cast off uneasiness. Roy might have been deep, and careless, with a motive to spare the girls' anxiety, but Dale seemed incapable of anything ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... to my knowledge, has ever seen the bees house-hunting in the woods. Yet there can be no doubt that they look up new quarters either before or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees are wild bees and incapable of domestication; that is, the instinct to go back to nature and take up again their wild abodes in the trees is never eradicated. Years upon years of life in the apiary seems to have no appreciable effect towards their final, permanent ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... was going to give an Instance how incapable these Pieces are of raising the Passions. A mournful Dialogue, or Elegy is formed upon the Death of some Person. But if this Elegy raises not our Pity, 'tis a Trifle, and only a childish Copy of Verses. But in order to raise that most ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... from commerce, from public order, and from personal security, the human mind became conscious of powers which it did not formerly perceive, and fond of occupations or pursuits of which it was formerly incapable. Towards the beginning of the twelfth century, we discern the first symptoms of its awakening from that lethargy in which it had been long sunk, and observe it turning with curiosity and attention ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... the same effect on him, or rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. This was a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students I found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions to instantaneous raptures on ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... getting it from those, who were then actually deriving their livelihood from the trade: and yet I was determined to persevere; for I thought that some might be found in it who were not yet so hardened as to be incapable of being awakened on this subject. I thought that others might be found in it who wished to leave it upon principle, and that these would unbosom themselves to me: and I thought it not improbable ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... and toy candy-boxes in the shapes of guitars and fire-crackers. Miss Georgie Lancaster, at twenty-eight, was still very girlish and gay, and she shared with her mother and sisters the curious instinctive acquisitiveness of the woman who, powerless financially and incapable of ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Is thy progenitor alive, fair girl? And what doth he for lucre? Lo again! A shadow o'er the face of this fair dream! For thou may'st be as beautiful as Love Can make thee, and the ministering hands Of milliners, incapable of more, Be lifted at thy shapeliness and air, And still 'twixt me and thee, invisibly, May rise a wall of adamant. My breath Upon my pale lip freezes as I name Manhattan's orient verge, and eke the west In its far down extremity. Thy sire May be the signer ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... 'before we talk together, read these. One is a letter from the French Commissary—the other is my answer. I could not see you till I had written my reply, that you might be satisfied how safe you were with me, and how incapable I am of baseness.'"—Quarterly ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... (magnified be His name and glorified be His might!) abound in what confoundeth the thought of the keenest witted of human beings." Rejoined the Prince, "O sage, thou hast set before me of the power of the Creator what is incapable of denial; but tell me how He called His creatures into existence." Answered Shimas, "He created them by the sole power of His one Word,[FN121] which existed before time, and wherewith he created all things." Quoth the Prince, "Then Allah (be His name magnified ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the statue had ceased to give signs of life, the hairdresser remained gaping, incapable of thought or action. At last he ventured to approach cautiously, and on touching the figure, found it perfectly cold and hard. The animating principle had plainly departed, and left the ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... whitewashing Richard III, or representing him as a man of erect and graceful figure. It is not the place for proving that Guy Fawkes was an earnest Presbyterian, that Nell Gwynn was a lady of the strictest morals, or that George Washington was incapable of telling the truth. The playwright who deals with Henry VIII is bound to present him, in the schoolboy's phrase, as "a great widower." William the Silent must not be a chatterbox, Torquemada a humanitarian, Ivan the Terrible a conscientious opponent of capital punishment. And legend has its fixed ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... (he said) by the great and very unexpected honour which you have done to me in drinking my health, because I trust that I may infer from it that in your judgment, Sir, and in that of this company, I am not so incorrigibly barbarous as to be incapable of feeling the humanising influences which fall upon us from the noble works of art by which we are surrounded. And, as I have ventured to approach so nearly to the margin of a burning question, I hope that I may be allowed to take one ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... religious teachings concerning such wonderful mysteries as the Immaculate Conception (the Mystic Birth), the Crucifixion (the Mystic Death), the cleansing blood, the atonement, and other doctrines of the Church, which the intellect refuses to believe, as they are incapable of demonstration, and seemingly at war with natural law. Material advancement may be furthered when intellect is dominant and the longings of the heart unsatisfied, but soul growth will be retarded until the heart ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... than that he had invested money in it; by legal matters of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there, suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... feverish eagerness to acquire and accumulate money—had he loved money for money's sake, and accumulated it from the love of accumulation, the case would have been totally different. He might then have been justly despised, and characterized as being of the earth, earthy—incapable of high and generous sentiments and aspirations—sordid, grovelling, and utterly despicable. Sir William Follett had, during twenty years of intense and self-denying toil, succeeded in acquiring an ample fortune, which he disposed of, at his death, justly and generously; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... and Warwick fought with his rifle, and the native slashed again and again with the long knife that he carried at his belt. To a casual glance, a crocodile is wholly incapable of quick action. These two found him a slashing, darting, wolf-like thing, lunging with astounding speed through the muddied water, knocking them from their feet and striking ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... is thus somewhat incapable of strict formal definition, for all practical purposes it may be confined in Greek poetry to pieces written in a single metre, the elegiac couplet, the metre appropriated to inscriptions from the earliest recorded period.[1] ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... which elsewhere in North Italy garland happier trees and stretch gracefully from trunk to trunk. Especially the landscape looks sad and shabby about the little village of Villafranca, where, in 1864, the dejected prospect seemed incapable of a smile even in spring; as if it had lost all hope and cheerfulness since the peace was made which confirmed Venetia to the alien. It said as plainly as real estate could express the national sentiment, "Come si fa? Ci vuol pazienza!" and crept sullenly out ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... hundred and fifty had renounced Judaism at one time, but nearly all were soon driven back by persecution. Several of these now requested baptism, and were ready to suffer for the sake of becoming Christians; but they seemed incapable of understanding that anything more could be required of them than an exchange of external relations, and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... he had underestimated the brute courage of the fellow, the violent, desperate courage that is distilled of anger in men of his kind. Despising him, deeming him incapable of any overt act of villainy, Kirkwood had been a little less wary than he would have been with Calendar or Mulready. Hobbs had seemed more of the craven type which Stryker graced so conspicuously. But now the American ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Homilies is splendid; indeed, we may confidently say that here English appears fully qualified to be the medium of the highest learning." This is high praise, and should be well considered by those disposed to consider the Anglo-Saxon as a rude tongue, incapable of great development in itself, and only enabled by the Norman infusion to give expression to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Architect ought to consider, is the Convenience of the place where he would Build the Fabrick. This is the reason that Dinocrates was blamed by Alexander, for having propos'd him an Excellent Design for Building a City in a Barren place, and incapable of Nourishing those who ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... one of the most genial of companions; in character the personification of uprightness and honor; firm in his friendships and incapable of malice toward any one. Well situated financially, happy in his domestic circle, of wide popularity, and possessing the esteem of those who know him best, General Stager is one of those whose lot is enviable, and who has made his position thus enviable by his own force of character and ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... good deal else that we have, and would assuredly have spoilt other things that we have not. It has been observed, by all acute students of the novel, that the egotistic variety will not bear heavy crops of fruit by itself; and that it is incapable, or capable with very great difficulty, of letting the observed and so far altruistic kind grow from the same stool. Of what is sometimes called the dramatic faculty (though, in fact, it is only one side of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... always something more, or something less, or something different, in one as compared with the other, which hinders this complete equivalence. And, those words being excepted which designate objects in their nature absolutely incapable of a more or less and of every qualitative difference, I should be disposed to consider other exceptions to this assertion exceedingly rare. 'In all languages whatever,' to quote Bentley's words, 'a word of a moral or of a political significance, containing several complex ideas arbitrarily ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... can compel me to take arms against you. I would refuse any proposition which should rank me as hostile to you, if the natural generosity of your enemies could so far forget it. In reality they are as incapable of ordering a bad action as I am of listening to those who should show themselves so devoid of sense as to propose such a thing to me. "I am persuaded that you have understood me, and I am fully cleared in your eyes. It would be delightful to me to ascertain this with certainty. ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... subjection was like that of a bear, chequered with fits of surliness and rage; whereas Pickle bore the yoke like an ox, without repining. No wonder, then, that this indolence, this sluggishness, this stagnation of temper rendered Gamaliel incapable of withstanding the arguments and importunity of his friends, to which he at length surrendered. He acquiesced in the justice of their observations: and, taking his son by the hand, promised to favour him for the future with his love and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy sat at her needle-work before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I sat next Joe in the corner opposite my sister. The more I looked into the glowing coals, the more incapable I became of looking at Joe; the longer the silence lasted, the more unable I felt ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... myself, at translating, when I return; for I believe the language-master totally incapable ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... he asked himself, with a sudden start. "If he has his way he will die. Peevish, fretful, spoiled by the flattery of fools, he is incapable of taking care of himself under the conditions in which he finds himself. If I consent to his death am I not guilty of murder? Out of the heart are the issues of life! Have I the right to apply his own law? Could I save him in spite of himself if I made up my mind to do it? Pride and ceremony, high ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... music (if such they may be called) which I saw amongst them, were a rattle, and a small whistle, about an inch long, incapable of any variation, from having but one hole. They use the rattle when they sing; but upon what occasions they use the whistle I know not, unless it be when they dress themselves like particular animals, and endeavour to imitate ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... her that she was now at liberty to return to her home or go where she pleased. The joy expressed by the girl and by all who witnessed this scene was very great; for they had all considered him to be a mere ruffian, incapable of anything ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... even more completely than the financier. He realized that her extortion of a pledge from him had been subterfuge; her triumphant eyes flashed complete information on that point. Both anger and bewilderment made him incapable of any sane attempt to press his case with Marston at that time. He turned and started ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... own level and disgrace her as well as yourself. Thank God, my eyes are now opened to your true character. No self-respecting woman could afford to allow her name to be associated with yours. You are as incapable of disinterested friendship as you are of common honesty." Coldly she added: "I hope you quite understand that henceforth my house is closed to you. If we happen to meet in public, it ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... component parts and contributing to the strength and stability of the Empire; or whether the several Provinces of which it is constituted shall remain in their present fragmentary and isolated condition, comparatively powerless for mutual {85} aid, and incapable of undertaking their proper ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... viscous cohesive saliva, by licking its body with its tongue, which facilitates the power of swallowing it entire; this process is tedious, and it gradually sucks in the body, which, if large, renders it incapable of moving for some time, until it digests; and this is the period which the hunters watch to destroy it: it makes a hissing noise like a serpent, and has recourse to a variety of expedients to conceal itself; it is called by ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... of Harcourt, invited Edward to Normandy, where he landed, and having consumed his supplies was on his march to Flanders, when Philip, with the whole strength of the kingdom, endeavoured to intercept him at Crecy in Picardy, in 1348. Philip was utterly incapable as a general; his knights were wrong-headed and turbulent, and absolutely cut down their own Genoese hired archers for being in their way. The defeat was total. Philip rode away to Amiens, and Edward laid siege to Calais. The place was so strong that he was forced to blockade ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it does," said Mr. Palford, curtly. He had less and less taste for the situation. There was neither dignity nor proper sentiment in it. The young man was utterly incapable of comprehending the meaning and proportions of the extraordinary event which had befallen him. It appeared to present to him the aspect of a somewhat slangy ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a moment ago—" her mother began, and then subsided. She was accustomed to small tangles in her own processes of thought, and quite incapable, after years of blind ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to begin with, a nervous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks of life, are born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous organization, or of the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of any strong excitement or prolonged exertion without some lesion or derangement; so that they are continually being checked, laid up, and invalided in the midst of their drugs. Life here in America is so fervid, so fast, our climate is so stimulating, with its clear, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... thin puff of smoke, and a screaming echo went rolling and reverberating down the Wabash. Abram's eyes widened, and a curious whiteness settled on his lips. He stood as if incapable of moving. "Clang! Clang!" came Maria's ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... contemporary social novel. We have left behind the theoretic enthusiast, perplexed by the contrast between the semi-barbarism of the country and the old-fashioned apathy of its rulers; we have no more descriptions, serious or sarcastic, of rakish subalterns and disorderly regiments under ancient, incapable colonels; we are introduced to a reformed Anglo-India, full of hard-working, efficient officers, civil and military, and sufficiently decorous, except where hill-stations foster flirting and the ordinary dissipation of any garrison ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... that crushed attitude while Heyst talked to him soothingly with the utmost courtesy. The Swede was as much distressed as Morrison; for he understood the other's feelings perfectly. No decent feeling was ever scorned by Heyst. But he was incapable of outward cordiality of manner, and he felt acutely his defect. Consummate politeness is not the right tonic for an emotional collapse. They must have had, both of them, a fairly painful time of it in the cabin of the brig. In the end Morrison, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... in a loose sort of way which suggested the West and the open, in contrast to Gordon's metropolitan sophistication and immaculate tailoring. He was every inch the man, and a splendid actor—I knew. Yet there was the touch of youth about him. He seemed incapable of a crime such as this, unless it was in anger, or as the result of some deep- running ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... were meditating his destruction. His opinion is that a patriotic Minister should regard no others as his enemies but those conspiring against their country, and acknowledge no friends or favourites incapable of well serving the State. Prince de Z———— waited on him one day, and, after hesitating some time, began to compliment him on his liberal sentiments, and concluded by asking the place of a governor for his cousin, with whom he had reason to suppose the Count much offended. "I am happy," ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... times, and he treated prisoners with the severity of a Biblical Jehovah. Moreover, the infirmity which was the worry of his life, the childish lisp which, in his opinion, had alone prevented him from shining as a public prosecutor, made him ferociously ill-tempered, incapable of any intelligent indulgence. There were smiles, which he divined, as soon as he raised his sharp, shrill little voice, to ask his first questions. That droll voice of his took away whatever majesty might have remained attached to these proceedings, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... newcomer intended no harm—quite the contrary! After an instinctive recoil, he leaned against a table and wiped his forehead, breathing in gasps, incapable ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... October I sent Raouf Bey to Gondokoro, with orders to despatch to Khartoum all the really sick and incapable, but upon no account to permit any man to return unless he ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Dichotomy," "Achilles and the Tortoise," "The Arrow" and "The Stadium."] If movement is not everything, it is nothing, and if we postulate, to begin with, that the motionless is real, then we shall be incapable of grasping reality. The philosophies of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Plotinus were developed from the thesis that there is more in the immutable than in the moving, and that it is by way of diminution that we pass from the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... the commissioner to suspect Monsieur Florentin," cried the concierge. "He is a good young man, incapable of harming a fly. And then, there is a good reason why death could not have taken place between three o'clock and half-past; it is that Monsieur Caffie's lamp was lighted, and you know the poor gentleman was not a man to light his lamp in broad daylight, ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... one premise, and want of power over another, infer want of power over a conclusion. {335} As "Some men are not capable of tracing consequences; we cannot be sure that there are beings responsible for consequences who are incapable of tracing consequences; therefore, we cannot be sure that all men are responsible for the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... confining his operations to an aimless expedition whose advance extended only as far as Blain's crossroads, whence it was soon withdrawn. Meanwhile General Foster had superseded Burnside, but physical disabilities rendered him incapable of remaining in the field, and then the chief authority devolved on Parke. By this time the transmission of power seemed almost a disease; at any rate it was catching, so, while we were en route to Dandridge, Parke transferred the command ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... that a much smaller provision than 7000L would support her in affluence. For their brother's sake, too, for the sake of his own heart, she rejoiced; and she reproached herself for being unjust to his merit before, in believing him incapable of generosity. His attentive behaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that their welfare was dear to him, and, for a long time, she firmly relied on the liberality of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... accounts of the terrific cannonade and the murderous hand-to-hand struggles. At night she would start up from vivid dreams wherein she saw the field with thousands of ghastly faces turned towards the white moonlight. In her belief Merwyn was incapable of looking upon such scenes. Therefore why should she think of him with scorn and bitterness? She herself had never before realized how terrible they were. Now that the dread emergency, with its imperative demand for manhood and action, had passed, her heart became softened and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the Helvetii were terrified in the face 68 of danger. At the first alarm they had chosen Claudius Severus general, but they knew nothing of fighting or discipline and were incapable of combined action. An engagement with the Roman veterans would be disastrous; and the walls, dilapidated by time, could not stand a siege. They found themselves between Caecina and his powerful army on the one side, and on the other the Raetian ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... sting the insect in a vital part,—for in that case it would not keep fresh for its young,—but introduces its poison into certain nervous ganglia, the injury to which has the effect of paralyzing the victim and making it incapable of motion, though ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... people. How does he succeed here? He sends his messengers again, his angels, his prophets, one after another. He inspires a certain number of men to write a book to deliver his will to the people, fallen into such condition that they are incapable of discovering the truth for themselves. But, after all his efforts, they are so far from the truth that, when the second person of the Trinity appears, they have nothing to do with him except to put him to death. After that, God ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... Spencer Clay got hold of the facts of the case; and when young Clay got hold of anything, Marois Bay at large had it hot and fresh a few hours later; for Spencer was one of those slack-jawed youths who are constitutionally incapable of ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... The body has been found. I do not make excuses for not having sent off my news by last night's mail, for the simple reason that I was incapable of putting pen to paper. The events that attended the discovery bewildered me so completely that I needed what I could get of a night's rest to enable me to face the situation at all. Now I can give you my journal of the day, certainly the ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... advancing force has passed, and thus they may be led into killing those whom they would otherwise have spared. There will also be instances in which men intoxicated with the frenzy of battle slay even those whom on reflection they might have seen to be incapable of further harming them. The same kind of fury may vent itself on persons who are already surrendering, and even a soldier who is usually self-controlled or humane may, in the heat of the moment, go on killing, especially in a general melee, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... know all things, that you were acquainted with all languages, the courses of the stars, and all the rest, what is there in that to be proud of? A single demon knows more on these subjects than all the men in this world put together.[17] But there is one thing that the demon is incapable of, and which is the glory of man: ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... a grand old Boer in many respects, and no better, more righteous, and more upright man ever lived. He worked long and faithfully for his people, and he undoubtedly strove to do that which he believed to be the best for his country, but he was incapable of performing the duties of his office as a younger, more energetic, and a more warlike man would have attended to them. Joubert was in his dotage, and none of his people were aware of it until the crucial moment of the war was ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... material expression of the ideas communicated. Considering the operation of this law under these conditions, we find that the thought communicating only, as nearly as may be, the generic idea, will be distinguished from it by the addition of but a single attribute as the generic by itself is incapable of being represented in concrete form, the expression of this thought in form will present us matter distinguished from matter in general by but a single attribute. The least possible individualizing attribute added to the highest possible generalization ...
— The Philosophy of Evolution - and The Metaphysical Basis of Science • Stephen H. Carpenter
... if between these two Powers, which were more illusory than real, pending the advent of Russia, whose hour had not yet struck; in this gap in history, between a nation on the verge of its decline, or at least seemingly incapable of defending itself, and a nation that was still too young and incapable of attack, fate offered a magnificent place to whoso cared to take it. This is what Germany felt, at first instinctively, urged by all the ill-defined forces that impel mankind, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... magnificent specimen of crude humanity; strong, lithe, graceful, and not too big—just such a man as your novelist would picture as the nurse-swapped offspring of some rotund or ricketty aristocrat. But being, for my own part, as I plainly stated at the outset, incapable of such romancing, I must register Dixon as one whose ignoble blood had crept through scoundrels since the Flood. Though, when you come to look at it leisurely, this wouldn't interfere with aristocratic, or ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... predestined to torment and the second death; for my theme is of heaven, not of lost souls. I am speaking of the elect—those worms preordained to salvation and rebirth.) Probably they can feel only very weak sensations: they are certainly incapable of prayer. But if they were able to pray, they could not ask for anything more than they already receive from the youth who feeds and tends them. He is their providence, —a god of whose existence they can be aware in only the vaguest possible way, ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... to the donga. We had lain nine hours behind those ant-hills, and, strange to say, there were only two wounded on our side. We decided not to run the same risk again. In this way we lost our confidence in men like the brothers Erasmus, General and Commandant, who, in the first place, were incapable of organizing a good plan of attack, and, secondly, never took ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... by the coqueros. After a long and attentive observation of the effects of coca, I am fully convinced that its use, in moderation, is no way detrimental to health; and that without it the Peruvian Indian, with his spare diet, would be incapable of going through the labor which he now performs. The coca plant must be considered as a great blessing to Peru. It is an essential means of preserving the nationality of the Indians, and in some measure mitigating the melancholy fate of that once great race which disease and excessive ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... in England, she found that her school had suffered considerably in her absence. It can be little reproach to any one, to say that they were found incapable of supplying her place. She not only excelled in the management of the children, but had also the talent of being attentive and obliging to the ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... to see that his companion trembled in every limb, he raised himself and held out to him the flask with Sirona's wine, which the other, incapable of controlling himself, snatched eagerly from his hand, and emptied with frantic thirst. The fiery liquor revived his failing strength, brought the color to his cheeks, and lent a strange lustre to his eyes. "How much good that has done me!" he cried with a deep sigh and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... quite incapable of taking his Cabinet colleagues so seriously as people of that sort take themselves. Indeed, but for the more prominent ones, he never could remember what their jobs were, nor even recollect their names. It put one in a cold perspiration to hear him remark, when recounting ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... Every breeze wafts gaseous nutriment to their expanded leaves, and their rootlets ramify throughout the soil in search of appropriate mineral aliment. But no matter how abundant, or however easy of reach may be the food of plants, the vegetable organism is incapable of partaking of it unless under the influence of light. Exposed to this potent stimulus, the plant collects the gaseous carbonic acid and the vaporous water, solidifies them, decomposes them, and combines their elements ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... the Asiatic population. If it be, there is an end to republican government there, because it is very well ascertained that those people have no appreciation of that form of government; it seems to be obnoxious to their very nature; they seem to be incapable either of understanding it or of carrying it out; and I can not consent to say that California, or Oregon, or Colorado, or Nevada, or any of those States, shall be given over to an irruption of Chinese. I, for my part, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... add to these strange circumstances the facts that the French King, Charles VI., was mad, and incapable of any real share either in the internal government of his country or in resistance to its invader: that his only son, the Dauphin, was no more than a foolish boy, led by incompetent councillors, and even of doubtful legitimacy, regarded with hesitation and uncertainty by many, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... that the young lady preserved her presence of mind, for Bruce seemed incapable of connected thought or action. He roused himself, indeed, at his daughter's call, but gazed stupidly about him, stammered in his speech, and faltered in his step when he crossed the room. The shock of grief had evidently overmastered his faculties—something, too, besides ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... said it thoughtfully, but his mind was not working with his speech. The coals, as he knew—though he did not propose to tell the Doctor, at any rate just yet—had been delivered by Sam Bossom. Of complicity in any such plot as this Sam was by nature incapable. On the other hand, Sam was just the fellow to help a couple of children out of mere kindness of heart. Mr. Hucks decided to have a talk with Sam before committing himself. He suspected, of course—nay, was certain—that Glasson ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The old pressman was the only hand left in the printing-house; and when the master (otherwise the "gaffer") died, leaving a widow, but no children, the business seemed to be on the verge of extinction; for the solitary "bear" was quite incapable of the feat of transformation into a "monkey," and in his quality of pressman had never learned to read or write. Just then, however, a Representative of the People being in a mighty hurry to publish the Decrees of the Convention, bestowed ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... to explain matters in detail. I declined to listen to these explanations, being incapable of understanding business methods in general, and those of Maitre Mouche in particular. The notary then took it upon himself to justify Mademoiselle Prefere's educational system, and observed ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Arondelle remembered the "dream" Miss Levison had told him of the two persons whom she mistook to be himself and Rose Cameron talking together under her window. But Miss Levison was so far incapable of giving evidence as to be lying at the point of death with brain fever. So it would have been worse than useless to have spoken of her dream, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... medical gentleman, who had been physician in ordinary to Louis XIV., and was still living at the time of the marriage of Louis XV., told M. Campan's father an anecdote which seems too remarkable to have remained unknown; nevertheless he was a man of honour, incapable of inventing this story. His name was Lafosse. He said that Louis XIV. was informed that the officers of his table evinced, in the most disdainful and offensive manner, the mortification they felt at being obliged to eat at the table of the comptroller of the kitchen along with Moliere, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... here he had fondly hoped, that when men with affections and feelings like our own had been torn from their country, and everything dear to them, he should have found some mitigation of their sufferings; but the sad reverse was the case. This was the most wretched part of the whole subject. He was incapable, of impressing the House with what he felt upon it. A description of their conveyance was impossible. So much misery condensed, in so little room was more than the human imagination had ever before conceived. Think only of six hundred persons linked together, trying to get rid ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... which now animated him. As from a far country his mind, she perceived, often traveled to meet hers. "There was a door to which she found no key." But Katherine, happily, could respect the individuality even of her best beloved. Unlike the majority of her sex she was incapable of intrusion, and did not make affection an excuse for familiarity. Love, in her opinion, enjoins obligation of service, rather than confers rights of examination and direction. She had learned the condition in which his servants had found Richard, in the opera box of the great theatre at ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... reactions that increase in number the graver the peril becomes. We have all read of the "fascination" of the bird by the serpent, and there are other animals that in the presence of an enemy become so palsied with fear as to become incapable of defence, even that of flight. And with man it is not as the danger becomes most acute that his nerves become steadier and his courage firmer. The opposite is probably more often the case. In all these cases ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... house, says he, shall tremble, and the soldiers shall give way, and the diminished grinders shall cease. The limbs, and firmest parts of the body, are damaged by age: the hands and knees grow weak, thro' the relaxation of the nerves. Hence those are rendered incapable of defending us against injuries, and of performing innumerable other good offices, for which they were originally intended; and these becoming unequal to the weight they were wont to sustain, lose their ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... that little Di was probably a good judge on that point, being herself nearly incapable ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... causation to people who show so much ingenuity in the construction of houses, boats, weapons, and a great variety of mechanical devices, such as traps, and in other operations involving the intelligent application of mechanical principles. These operations show that, though they may be incapable of describing in abstract and general terms the principles involved, they nevertheless have a nice appreciation of them. If a trap fails to work owing to its faulty construction, the trapper treats it purely as a mechanical ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... they directed their course. Trusting to the fleetness of their steeds, they had reason to hope that they should keep ahead of their pursuers; for the Indians' horses, though strong and possessed of great endurance, were incapable, they knew, of going at any ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... possessed by any strong feeling, to show it. You see all this in children: this is the point which the pendulum starts from. It swings over, and we find a reaction from this. The reaction is, to maintain and exhibit perfect coolness and indifference in danger; to pretend to be incapable of fear. This state of things we find in the Red Indian, a rude and uncivilized being. But it is plain that with people who are able to think, there must be a reaction from this. The pendulum cannot ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... seemed to be at last almost assured, and largely thanks to Indian enterprise, it was gravely compromised by the miserable breakdown of the most important of all the services on which the very life of industry depends. The Indian railways proved altogether incapable of meeting the new demands made upon them. Even in the essential matter of coal supplies, though the output of the Indian coal mines suffices for present requirements, huge dumps of coal accumulated round the mines and could not be moved owing to the lack of rolling-stock and to the general inadequacy ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... opinion that all mathematics was arcane gobbledygook, and his precise knowledge of the mathematical odds in poker and dice games didn't abate that opinion one whit. Obviously, a mind like that is utterly incapable of understanding a projected thought of scientific content; such a thought bounces off the impregnable mind shield that the bigot has set up around his little area ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... placed on the bolster of the truck-bed destined presently for your devoted head. Oh! to do justice to a Sicilian locanda is plainly out of question, and the rest of our task may as well be sung as said, verse and prose being alike incapable of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... child born in this country, in fifty years, will be unfit; and, in one hundred years, the American race will have ceased to exist. We mean by this that every second child born will be born to die in infancy, or, if it lives, will be incapable of self-support during its life, because either of mental degeneracy or physical inefficiency. This appalling situation immediately becomes a problem of civilization. No state can exist under these conditions. If these statistics ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... therefore, as usual, went my own headstrong way, and eventually got into very serious trouble. I was obliged to fly; and learning that your mother—by this time married—was in Rome, I resolved to seek her in the first instance, and beg of her that pecuniary assistance which my other friends were incapable of affording me. I did so, found her, and, after considerable difficulty, succeeded in obtaining a private interview with her. I represented to her the danger of the position ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... (undrinkable) water; hence, desalination is the reverse process; also involves the accumulation of salts in topsoil caused by evaporation of excessive irrigation water, a process that can eventually render soil incapable of supporting crops. siltation - occurs when water channels and reservoirs become clotted with silt and mud, a side effect of deforestation and soil erosion. slash-and-burn agriculture - a rotating cultivation technique ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... off. Only the tender care of Frederick, who was with him, and the swift rush of Lockwood and Brainard to his aid, saved him from death. It tells a fine story of the unselfish devotion of the men, that this poor wreck, maimed and helpless, so that he had to be fed, and incapable of performing one act in his own service, should have been nursed throughout the winter, fed with double portions, and actually saved living until the rescue party arrived, while many of those who cared for him yielded up their ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... when Louis dived between the table and the form, with some trouble, and, at the expense of receiving a few unceremonious kicks, recovered the book and gave it to Ferrers, who hardly thanked him, but leaning his head on his hand, seemed almost incapable of doing any thing. Presently he looked up, and asked in a tone of mingled anger and weariness, what had become of the inkstand ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... assertions, but adduced no specific proof of them. The source of such criticisms was obvious enough, but they did no harm, and were not accompanied by denials of my facts. The only other form of attack brought against the book is comprised in the claim that I am a writer of fiction and as such incapable of telling the truth, about anything; that I was the dupe of designing persons who made me the mouthpiece for their factitious grievances or spites; and that I was myself animated by a spirit of revenge for the injury ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... recent modifications of this civil status, many of the special rules of law flowing from and dependent upon this cardinal principle still exist in full force in most States. One of these is, that a married woman is incapable, without her husband's consent, of making contracts which shall be binding on her or him. This very incapacity was one circumstance which the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed important in rendering a married woman incompetent fully to perform ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... regimen to be observed, certain strict rules of life to be kept, a certain asceticism to be imposed on the person, which was not quite agreeable to young men; and after the period of youth was passed, the human frame became incapable of being regenerated from the seeds of decay and death, which, by that time, had become strongly developed in it. In short, while young, the possessor of the secret found the terms of immortal life too ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fatuous speech which has been put into her Majesty's gracious mouth, shall be allowed to pass unquestioned. Then the leader of the House thanks his adversary for his consideration, explains to all men how happy the country ought to be that the Government has not fallen into the disgracefully incapable hands of his right honourable friend opposite; and after that the Address is carried amidst universal serenity. But such was not the order of the day on the present occasion. Mr. Mildmay, the veteran leader of the liberal side of the House, had moved an amendment to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... time, pervaded the two opposing armies. The British, flushed by their successes, and confident in that strength before which every opposing obstacle had thus far given way, were looking down with little other than absolute contempt on the American forces in their front, believing them wholly incapable, either from numbers or courage, of opposing any serious resistance to their march, when they chose to move forward. And here thus lay their proud and infatuated chief for weeks, dreaming of coronets, frittering away ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been Aylmer's underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side. Archie watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, but in one ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dick, with open eyes. It was the one manly accomplishment of which he was himself incapable. In the order of the things that he admired, next to having killed a man in single fight, came swimming. "Well," he said, "here is a lesson to despise no man. I promised to care for you as far as Holywood, and, by the rood, Jack, y' are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not restrict a commander, in his choice of a physical objective, to the armed forces of the enemy. Nor do these considerations require him to search for and destroy the enemy forces before directing his effort toward the attainment of an objective under circumstances where the enemy is seen to be incapable of presenting ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... have come under my observation and immediate attention, and suffice it to say, I have never failed to ameliorate the condition of every individual that has applied to me, who was suffering under chronic affections, if they would follow my prescriptions—unless the system was incapable ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... leper. The king made an offensive remark, and the good knight quitted the ball-room, followed by poor Marie in despair at the speech. She had in every way ruined the man she loved: she had destroyed his honour, and marred his life, since the physicians and master surgeons advance as a fact, incapable of contradiction, that persons Italianised by this love sickness, lost through it their greatest attractions, as well as their generative powers, and their ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... not a question," Lance implored. The mere suggestion increased a panic which seemed incapable of increase. "And for the shadow, why, that's true. The pipe's the shadow, and the shadow frightens me. A shadow! Yes! A shadow is a horrible, threatning thing! Show me a shadow cast by nothing and I am with you. But you might as easily hold that ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... heroic in size and manner. The lovely heiress to the house of the Capulets, on the turn of sixteen, swept in upon the stage as if she were mistress of the house, situation, and of fate, and bent on bringing the enemy to terms. Her face is sweet, at times positively beautiful, but incapable of expression. Her voice, while clear, is hard, metallic, at intervals nasal, and all the while stagey. She has been trained in the old Kemble tragic pump-handle style of elocution, that runs talk on stilts. Her manner is crude and awkward. In the balcony ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the canyon, the hold-up, and the double murder, a slight sound caused me to turn my head, and I saw in a doorway that led to another room the erect figure of Major Lessard listening intently, a black frown on his eagle face. When MacRae had finished his story and the incapable blockhead behind the desk sat there regarding the two of us as though he considered that we had been the victims of a rank hallucination, Lessard slammed the door shut behind him and ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... be condemned." Then he was interrogate, If he owned authority, and James VII. to be his lawful sovereign? He answered, "I own all authority that hath its prescriptions and limitations from the word of God, but cannot own this usurper as lawful king, seeing both by the word of God, such an one is incapable to bear rule, and likewise by the ancient laws of the kingdom, which admit none to the crown of Scotland, until he swear to defend the Protestant religion; which a man of his profession could not do."—They urged, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... and unembarrassed utterance. Instead of rising to the sublime boldness of the Nazarene Teacher, they set up prudential differences between God and man—differences not of degree only but of nature; and, in consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man is made incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. The poet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He, too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the human, and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral convictions. His moral inspiration ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... value of nursery rhymes is incapable of being better illustrated than in the following ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... professors of geomancy, rising to the occasion, triumphantly surmounted the difficulty and obviated the danger. By filling up two wells, which represented the eyes of the tortoise, they at once blinded that disreputable animal and rendered him incapable ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... are much obliged to you, but we must stand up for the rights of other atmospheres. I know a great deal more about Mr Marlowe's atmosphere than you know about mine even now. I saw him constantly for several years. I don't pretend to know all about him; but I do know that he is incapable of a crime of bloodshed. The idea of his planning a murder is as unthinkable to me as the idea of your picking a poor woman's pocket, Mr Trent. I can imagine you killing a man, you know... if the man deserved it and had an equal chance of killing you. I could ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... paternity of his brother made him secretly jealous. Why should that incapable fellow, who succeeded in nothing, have a son? It was only those ne'er-do-well sort of people who were thus favored. He, Michel, already called the rich Desvarennes, he had not a son. Was it just? But where is there justice in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... formidable indictment against it. They have shown democracy without respect for the past or care for the future, regardless of public faith and of national honour, extravagant and inconstant, jealous of talent and of knowledge, indifferent to justice but servile towards opinion, incapable of organisation, impatient of authority, averse from obedience, hostile to religion and to established law. Evidence indeed abounds, even if the true cause be not proved. But it is not to these symptoms that we must impute the permanent danger and the irrepressible ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... them aside" — here he named them by name, and their fathers as well — "for this sake, that one of them is Mord's second cousin by kinship, but the other for gossipry (2), for which sake it is lawful to challenge a neighbour on the inquest; ye two are for a lawful reason incapable of uttering a finding, for now a lawful challenge has overtaken you, therefore I challenge and set you aside by the rightful custom of pleading at the Althing, and by the law of the land; I challenge you in the cause which Flosi Thord's son has ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... propelled along the small intestine by the peristaltic action, the matter which it contains in solution is absorbed in the usual manner into the vessels of the villi by the process called osmosis. The fatty matters being subdivided into very minute particles, but not dissolved, and consequently incapable of being thus absorbed by osmosis, pass bodily through the epithelial lining of the intestine into the commencement of the lacteal tubes in the villi. The digested substances, as they are thrust along the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... those of the professional generally, are beyond comparison with those of the ordinary amateur. To hunt successfully in the chaparral, requires a special genius. One must have exhaustless patience, tact trained by a lifetime of this sort of work, perseverance incapable of discouragement, the silence of an Indian, and in this phrase—when we are dealing with the skill of one who can make progress without sound through the tangles of the dry and stiff California chaparral—is involved an exercise ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... intent that the same may be cancelled and destroyed, according to the true intent of this act, every such person and officer shall be, and is hereby adjudged and declared to be from thenceforth incapable of any office or employment whatsoever, and shall forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds, one-half thereof to his Majesty, and the other half to such person or persons that shall sue for the same by any action of debt, bill, plaint, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... female." When a servant entered his establishment, M. Gillenormand re-baptized him. He bestowed on the men the name of their province: Nimois, Comtois, Poitevin, Picard. His last valet was a big, foundered, short-winded fellow of fifty-five, who was incapable of running twenty paces; but, as he had been born at Bayonne, M. Gillenormand called him Basque. All the female servants in his house were called Nicolette (even the Magnon, of whom we shall hear more farther on). One day, a haughty cook, a cordon bleu, of the lofty race of porters, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... almost superhuman egotism fatally swayed him. He desired to lead in all things, and he had far too much vanity, far too little self-government, and not half enough true morality to lead with success and permanence in any. The wrongs which beyond doubt his country inflicted upon him he was incapable of bearing like a stoic. Virile and patriotic from one point of view, he was childish and weak-fibred from another. He has been likened to Marlborough, though by no means so great a soldier. Yet it is true ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... mental capacity, ability, and moral status of the Indians from one point of view, it is certain that the padres regarded them as ignorant, vile, incapable, and totally lost without the restraining and educating influences of the Church. As year after year opened up the complexities of the situation, the padres became more and more convinced that it would require an indefinite period of time to develop these ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... America is incapable of hating an entire people, but we do hate, we are fighting and we shall fight with every ounce of our might, the spirit which has power over the people of Germany, and which, if it were to prevail—as, under God, it never will—would destroy liberty, justice ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... closed, shutting out the vision, and he found himself able to dry his brow and get back his breath before moving forward in a cold and aristocratic attitude. Then he became incapable of any attitude—he was before her, and she greeted him. A buzzing of the universe confused him: he would have stood forever, but pressure from behind pushed him on; and so, enveloped in a scented cloud, he passed into a corner. He tried to remember what he had said to her, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... to lose!" cried Mr. Effingham, on whose bosom Eve lay, nearly incapable of motion. "The food and water are in the boat, and in the name of a merciful God, let us escape from this scene ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and wholly incapable of action, while the negroes howled dismally for Mas'r Hugh, who, Chloe ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... or imaginary sciences, which make no signs of progress and have no definite sphere, tends to interfere with the prosecution of living ones. The study of them is apt to blind the judgment and to render men incapable of seeing the value of evidence, and even of appreciating the nature of truth. Nor should we allow the living science to become confused with the dead by an ambiguity of language. The term logic has two different meanings, an ancient and a modern ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... the purely physical and material attraction. I am proposing marriage of our souls—a union, if you please, of our higher intellectual and spiritual selves. I feel, indeed, that by those higher laws which the vulgar, beastlike minds are incapable of recognizing, we are already one. I sense, as it were, that oneness which can exist only when two souls are mated by the great over-soul; I feel that you are already mine—that, I am—that we are already united in ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... a court-martial to be dismissed the service. By such sentence an officer is rendered ever after incapable of serving the sovereign in any ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Spotted Islands, and Forteau, that will depend upon the changing demands of local conditions. That the need of medical assistance exists is unquestionable, as is evidenced from the many appeals which I receive to start hospitals or supply doctors in districts at present utterly incapable of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... himself off sharp and turned to greet them. His face cleared instantly, his lips curved into a delighted smile and he welcomed them with such natural, innocent charm that one would have thought he was incapable of frowning. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... scouring the town every day without getting the smallest job. The day before yesterday I discovered an architect who works for a large contractor. You can have no idea of such an ignoramus of an architect—a downright numskull, incapable even of tracing a plan. He gives me twenty-five sous an hour, and I set his houses straight for him. It came just in time, too, for my mother sent me word that she was quite cleared out. Poor mother, what a lot of money ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Philetus's powers were equal to. Mrs. Douglass went off into fits which rendered her incapable of speaking and left the unlucky chicken-bearer to tell his story his own way, but all he brought forth was ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... incident from the veritable streets of Auxerre. What is it? Certainly, notwithstanding its grace, and wealth of graceful accessories, a suffering, tortured figure. With all the regular beauty of a pagan god, he has suffered after a manner of which we must suppose pagan gods incapable. It was as if one of those fair, triumphant beings had cast in his lot with the creatures of an age later than his own, people of larger spiritual capacity and assuredly of a larger capacity for melancholy. With this fancy in my mind, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Creator). Hither, on the breast of Himavat always dwelleth Maheswara endued with the effulgence of the fire that blazeth up at the end of the Yuga. As Purusha, he sporteth here with Prakriti (the universal mother). Except by Nara and Narayana, he is incapable of being seen by the diverse classes of Munis, the gods with Vasava at their head, the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, and the Siddhas. Though invested with Maya, him the eternal Vishnu alone, of a thousand ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... They seemed incapable of either mental or bodily effort, and their time was passed in indolence and enjoyment. They were, however, skilful in manufacturing a soft paper from the barks of trees; nets and lines from the fibres of the cocoa-nut; ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... for the sake of engaging the minds of mankind. The different gods are parts of God, though his essence remains undiminished, as rays of light leave the sun his undiminished splendor. He created the gods to perform those things in the government of the world, of which man was incapable. Some gods are parts of other gods, and there are deities of still inferior powers. If it be asked why God himself does not govern the world, the answer is, that it might subject him to exposure, and he chooses to be concealed: he therefore governs by the gods, who are emanations ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... that which concerns the moving of solid human bodies to and fro, and the limitations of the human senses. The dramatist must not expect his audience to be able to see or hear two things at once, nor to be incapable of fatigue. And he must not expect his interpreters to stroll round or come on or go off in a satisfactory manner unless he provides them with satisfactory reasons for strolling round, coming on, or going ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... want my advice?" Westover still felt physically incapable of the indignation which he strongly imagined. "I don't know what to say to you, Durgin. You transcend my powers. Are you able to see this ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... burned within the devout Italians of the early school. Through all his pictures of the Virgin and child we can see that the Madonna as the Christ-bearer is the ideal he always has in view. He falls short of it, not through any lack of earnestness, but because his type of womanhood is incapable of expressing such lofty idealism. His virgins are modelled upon the simple Andalusian maidens, sweet, timid, dark-eyed creatures. Their faces glow with gentle affection as they look wistfully out of the picture, or raise ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... inert, chloroforms it by means of a few tweaks which are easily distributed, if the lid but half-opens for a second. That will do. The besieger thereupon enters and, in perfect quiet, consumes a prey incapable of the least muscular effort. That is how I see things by the unaided light ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... wearied by the day's toil. They are now seeking relaxation, and not at all concerned with acquiring wisdom or grace. They are, indeed, the very kind of men to whom my play sets the cold steel, and their wives, of higher purpose, of gentler wills, are, nevertheless, quite as incapable of steady and serious thought. Not one of them has any interest in the problem I ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... approached the fire, where my mistress and I stood silent. Catherine looked up, and instinctively raised her hand to her cheek: his neighbourhood revived a painful sensation. Anybody else would have been incapable of regarding the childish act with sternness, but he scowled on her and muttered—'Oh! you are not afraid of me? Your courage is well disguised: you seem ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... of my childhood and we had lived in the closest intimacy for many years. He understood perfectly my love for my mistress and had several times intimated that bonds of this kind were sacred to a friend, and that he would be incapable of an attempt to supplant me even if he loved the same woman. In short, I had perfect confidence in him and I had perhaps never pressed the hand of any human creature more ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... good-nature, which was quite lost upon the child, who was beyond caring for kindness or unkindness just then. She was only conscious of some terrible burden, which she could not define nor reason upon, but which seemed to oppress and weigh her down, making her incapable of thought, or speech, or motion. When they got into the railway-carriage she could only lean back in the corner, with a general sense that something dreadful had happened, or was going to happen; but that her head ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... any brains. I was the youngest, and yet ventured to argue with my brother. Afraid of the results of my courage, they crushed me; they taught me nothing except to hunt and gamble; they succeeded in making a fool of me, one incapable of anything and who will yet be the laughing-stock ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... death, overclouded with the pangs of remorse, the Arian rule which he had fostered with so much skill showed itself to have no hold upon an Italy to which he had given a great temporal prosperity. The Goths, whom he had seemed to tame, were found incapable of self-government, and every Roman heart welcomed Belisarius and Narses as the restorers of a power which had not ceased to claim their allegiance, even through the turpitudes and betrayals ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... taken part in the rescue, nor availed myself of it to make my escape, and enjoined him to go down to the Hall, and call some of his party, who had been left there, to assist the wounded.— But Jobson's fears had so mastered and controlled every faculty of his mind, that he was totally incapable of moving. I now resolved to go myself, but in my way I stumbled over the body of a man, as I thought, dead or dying. It was, however, Andrew Fairservice, as well and whole as ever he was in his life, who had only taken this recumbent posture ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... be conducted off the premises like the honored guest. Nor would it do to retire by the way I had come. If I could have leaped the hedge with a single bound, that would have made a sufficiently dashing and debonair exit. But the hedge was high, and I was incapable at the moment of achieving a debonair leap over ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... a freshness, a general air of youth, unknown in our older countries. Man too, in his gait, in his independence of mind, and his boldness of enterprise, betrayed an exuberant vigour of which our populations, enervated by disappointing experiences, and crushed by routine as they are, have grown incapable. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the silk thread which held it. Such a task completed, he is away to exercise his pony, and later out again with the dogs, the last typically self-suggested, because for the moment there is no one else to care for these animals.... He is for the open air, seemingly incapable of realizing any discomfort from it, and yet his hours within doors spent with equal profit. For he is intent on tracking the problems of sledding food and clothes to their innermost bearings and is becoming an authority on past records. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... naturally sceptic and not at all bigoted, which, if I am not much deceived, is the proper character of our own."[6] It may be conceived that he was even painfully half-aware of having fallen upon a time incapable, not merely of a great poet, but perhaps of any poet at all; for nothing is so sensitive to the chill of a sceptical atmosphere as that enthusiasm which, if it be not genius, is at least the beautiful illusion that saves it from the baffling quibbles of self-consciousness. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... answer your expectations, and display, in his full perfection, the Orator you enquire after; I am afraid I shall retard the industry of many, who, enfeebled by despair, will no longer attempt what they think themselves incapable of attaining. It is but reasonable, however, that all those who covet what is excellent, and which cannot be acquired without the greatest application, should exert their utmost. But if any one is deficient in capacity, and destitute of that admirable force of genius ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the police are all-powerful, that we can arrest would-be murderers and render them incapable of harm? That is an error. We are prevented from taking effective action by a swarm of regulations. If I met Loupart on the street I would not be able to arrest him. I have no warrant. When a man holds his life cheap and is determined to risk ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... hast thou 45 Laid waste for ever—that concerns not thee. Indifferent thou tramplest in the dust Their happiness, who most are thine. The god Whom thou dost serve, is no benignant deity. Like as the blind irreconcileable 50 Fierce element, incapable of compact, Thy heart's wild ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... seemed to have suffered considerable bodily injury as well as want of food, for one of his arms hung down powerless at his side, and there was a broad cut across his face from some weapon—was as incapable of speech as he was apparently of moving. His lips only worked feebly, without any sound coming from them, and he stumbled and fell forwards on his face when he tried to rise by the aid of Mr ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... seemed to be incapable of fully supporting his body, and he behaved like an inexperienced athlete walking on a tight rope without a balancing-pole. His long arms served as this implement, and with a bend at the elbows and the hands dropped down, he waddled ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... beloved. He governed men by their reason and their affections; they knew that he was incapable of caprice or tyranny and they obeyed him with alacrity and joy, because he possessed their confidence as well as their love. "Our Nel," they used to say, "is as brave as a lion and as gentle as a lamb." Severe discipline he detested, though he had ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... against the French, where a division of 14,000 men surrendered to Castanos. This was on the 20th of July, and nine days afterwards Joseph retreated to Burgos with the crown jewels. The wretched Spaniards, however, were incapable of improving their victory; and General Castanos instead of following up the retreating enemy, went to Seville to fulfil a vow he had made of dedicating his unexpected victory to St. Ferdinand, on whose tomb he deposited the crown of laurel ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which he had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell, incapable ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... old man. I lose everything: I never know where I have put anything. I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself. In this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me. I must set to work ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... resent the waking of such doubt. Any attempt at the raising in them of their buried best they regard as an offence against intercourse. A man takes his social life in his hand who dares it. Few therefore understand the judgment of Hamlet upon himself; the common reader is so incapable of imagining he could mean it of his own general character as a man, that he attributes the utterance to shame for the postponement of a vengeance, which indeed he must have been such as his critic to be capable of performing upon no better proof than he had yet had. When the man whose unfolding ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... my lords, is the form of the bill now before us, that if it should pass into a statute, it would, in my opinion, put a stop to all future inquiry, by making those incapable of giving evidence, who have had most opportunities of knowing those transactions, which have given the chief occasion of suspicion, and from whom, therefore, the most important information ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... I had heard that they were extremely fond of the women, but were incapable; unfortunately {what has happened} never came into my mind; otherwise I should have shut him up somewhere, and not have ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... him from that, and many other ungracious pranks, of which he as undeservedly bore the blame;—but it was his misfortune all his life long to bear the imputation of saying and doing a thousand things, of which (unless my esteem blinds me) his nature was incapable. All I blame him for—or rather, all I blame and alternately like him for, was that singularity of his temper, which would never suffer him to take pains to set a story right with the world, however in ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... calm, and looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied; the Italian incapable of rest, she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greeks; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... say the savants, in order to remain quiet in their studies, or in their academic chairs. What are they doing—these men without God, who wish to preserve a faith for the use of the people? These savants,—they say, and print it, that religion is an error necessary for the multitudes who are incapable of rising to philosophy. Where is it that they say it, and print it? Is it in drawing-rooms with closed doors? Is it within the walls of Universities, or in scientific publications which are out of the reach of the masses? No. They say it in ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... that he is subject to the power of those very spirits to whom he has given existence; and that, in their turn, they frequently eat or devour him, though he possess the power of re-creating himself. They doubtless use this mode of expression, as they seem incapable of conversing about immaterial things, without constantly referring to material objects to convey their meaning. And in this manner they continue the account, by saying, that, in the tourooa, the deity enquires if they intend, or not, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... brief sentences, in which the warmth of personal affection is not permitted to disturb the measured appreciation, the habitual reserve of the eminent jurist. But, as it may be objected that the friendship which united Davis and Lincoln rendered the one incapable of a just judgment upon the merits of the other, we will also give an extract from the address delivered in Chicago by one of the ablest and most impartial lawyers who have ever honored the bar and the bench in the West. Judge ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... ancestors seems to have been every where the oldest systematized form of fetichistic religion. The reverence paid to the chieftain of the tribe while living was continued and exaggerated after his death The uncivilized man is everywhere incapable of grasping the idea of death as it is apprehended by civilized people. He cannot understand that a man should pass away so as to be no longer capable of communicating with his fellows. The image of his dead chief or comrade remains in his mind, and the savage's ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of the day, the wine he had drunk, overwhelming anger and his fiery blood, all mounted to Trenck's head. Incapable of further self-restraint, he flung himself upon the major, tore the coveted sword from his side, dashed out of the chamber, flung the two sentinels at the door down the stairs, took their entire length himself at a single bound and sprang into ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... successfully repulsed, and of a bombardment on the following Monday. The latter had been somewhat of a farce, and had done no damage, except to one or two buildings which, by an irony of fate, included the Dutch church and hotel and the convent. The shells were of such poor quality that they were incapable of any explosive force whatever.[26] After nine hours' bombardment, although some narrow escapes were recorded, the only casualties were one chicken killed and one dog wounded. An emissary from Commandant Snyman had then come solemnly into the town under a flag of truce, to ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's theory that the Volvox globator was an animal, and proved that his "monads" with stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of a vegetable cell, and were, when they reached their mature state, incapable of the act of conjugation, or any true generative act, without which no organism rising to any stage of life higher than vegetable can be said to be complete. It was I who resolved the singular problem of rotation in ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... invention consist in obtaining for the purposes of daily life a light which is maintained at no cost whatever, is free from the defects and contingent dangers arising from combustion or heat, and can be applied in many cases where all other sources of light would be inconvenient or incapable of application. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... tinkle. And yet, curious to say, we are told that the keenest eye has not yet been able to detect any peculiarity in these plants to account for these strange motions. It has been suggested that they are due to changes in the weather of such a slight character that, "our nerves are incapable of appreciating them, or the mercury ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... again replied Earnscliff, "you are incapable of judging of your own situation—you will perish in this wilderness, and we must, in compassion, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... your sister stands, and your own expectations of being able to assist her? It is time enough to refuse my advice when I offer any which you may think improper. I speak calmly to you, though 'tis against my nature; but don't urge me to impatience—it will only render me incapable of serving Effie." ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... nature's plan for all womankind, and that the nearer the actual woman approaches it, the more natural she is. I do not, and cannot think of her as a senseless image, but as a being that lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay and death; as young and fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, and still to be young and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical embodiment. I wonder how any sculptor has had the impertinence ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... old forgotten myth about the solar hero's hair came some superstition to which was due the Merovingian decree that only princes of the blood-royal should wear their hair long; cutting their long hair made them incapable of becoming kings. Their slaves were shaved. The barbarians ruled that only their free men should wear long hair, and that the slaves should be shaved. Professor Monier Williams, in the Contemporary Review for January 1879, p. 265, says that Govind, the 10th Guru ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... several times for lunch and tea—the former were hurried and, to him at least, rather unsatisfactory occasions, for she was sleepy-eyed and casual, incapable of concentrating upon anything or of giving consecutive attention to his remarks. When after two of these sallow meals he accused her of tendering him the skin and bones of the day she laughed ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... fully established, we now come to the next, which is the right acquired by cultivation. "The cultivation of the soil," we are told, "is an obligation imposed by nature on mankind. The whole world is appointed for the nourishment of its inhabitants; but it would be incapable of doing it, was it uncultivated. Every nation is then obliged by the law of nature to cultivate the ground that has fallen to its share. Those people, like the ancient Germans and modern Tartars, who, having fertile countries, disdain to cultivate the earth, and choose to ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... my conversation to topics of common interest; but this gave greater offence than the most ostentatious show of learning, for they concluded that I would not talk on such subjects, because I thought them incapable of understanding me. This was more wounding to their self-love than the most arrogant assumption on my part; and they regarded me with a jealous, envious stand-a-loofishness, that was so intolerable that I gave up all ideas of visiting them. I was so accustomed to hear the whispered ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... all its own necessities of life and incapable of expansion, a high birth-rate would eventually increase the struggle for existence and would lead to overpopulation, always provided that, firstly, the high birth-rate is accompanied by a low death-rate, and secondly, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... arrangement had but one drawback, although this did not present itself until after Bryce's return to Sequoia and his assumption of the direction of the Cardigan destinies. For Mrs. Tully had a failing common to many of her sex: she possessed for other people's business an interest absolutely incapable of satisfaction— and she was, in addition, garrulous beyond belief. The library was the one spot in the house which at the beginning of her employment John Cardigan had indicated to Mrs. Tully as sanctuary for him ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... acquaintance. Yet, with all his splendid genius, this sort of vanity certainly distinguished Lord Byron, and that among many other things proves how deeply a man may be read in human nature, what an insight he may acquire into the springs of action and feeling, and yet how incapable he may be of making any practical application of the knowledge he has acquired and the result of which he can faithfully delineate. He gives a list of the books he had read at eighteen which appears incredible, particularly as he ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of my hearing I have always been incapable of verbal conversation. I need not, however, inform you, madam, of this. At the first interview with which you favored me, you quickly discovered my peculiar unhappiness in this respect; you perceived from my manner that ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... scenes. The final suppression of the rebellion, which had been continued by the Archbishop of York, the sickness and death of Henry IV, and the accession of Prince Hal as Henry V, are matters essentially undramatic and incapable of unified treatment, while the growing separation of Hal and Falstaff deprived the underplot of that close connection with the main action which it had in the preceding play. Feeling the weakness ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... reinforcements. But, as the boat drew near, the fluttering of female dresses was seen, and then his unerring glass let him get a distant view of the sweet face of his young wife. From that moment the governor was incapable of giving a coherent or useful order, until Bridget had arrived. Vessels that came in from the southward were obliged to pass through the narrow entrance, between the Reef and the Hog Lot, where was the drawbridge ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... seen them and believe in them, and I ought to know. When I die I am persuaded that I, too, shall visit these haunts, whose pavement I have trod with staff and torch for fifty years. I took you for ghosts, look you, for you seem harmless and peaceable, incapable of visiting these sacred aisles for ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go a fine isolated verisimilitude, caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge." We have to trust God with His secrets, as well as try to penetrate them as far as our minds will carry us. We have to accustom ourselves to look uncomplainingly at darkness, while we walk obediently ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... an enterprising and grasping mind to objects of public advantage, in preference to designs for individual aggrandizement: influence of such a nature had never operated upon the views and faculties of the hero of Marathon. Habituated to the enjoyment of absolute command, he seemed incapable of the duties of civil subordination; and the custom of a life urged him onto the desire of power [1]. These features of his character fairly considered, we shall see little to astonish us in the later reverses of Miltiades, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inland, to make seventy-five per cent. profit on it, and they resent being deprived of this. A good deal is to be said in favour of their views; among other things that the greater part of the seaboard districts of West Africa, I may say every part from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, is structurally incapable of being self-supporting under existing conditions. Below Cameroon, on my beloved South-west coast, which is infinitely richer than the Bight of Benin, rich producing districts come down to the sea in most places until you reach the Congo; but here again the middleman is ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... control, and in which I have not the smallest interest. Why does Sir H.W. Tyler so ardently desire to prosecute, me for blasphemy? Is it because two convictions will under the 9th and 10th Will. III. cap. 32, render me 'for ever' incapable of sitting in Parliament?" The Whitehall Review frankly put this forward as an object to be gained, and Mr. Bradlaugh was summoned to the Mansion House on a charge of publishing blasphemous libels in the Freethinker; meanwhile Sir Henry Tyler put a notice on the Order Book to deprive ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... said Father John, in his soft, low voice. "The great fact is that Yellow Bird believed. She was inspired by a great confidence, and confidence and faith give to the mind a power which it is utterly incapable of possessing without them. I believe in the mind, children. I believe that in some day to come it will reach those heights where it will unlock the mystery of life itself to us. I have seen many strange ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... to Toulon. She would have made her an idol, a pretty little pet doll. On a slope so slippery the work of allurement doubtless moved apace. But the girl had scruples and a kind of fear. She made one great effort, of which her weak health would have made her seem incapable. She humbly asked leave to quit that dove's-nest, that couch too soft and delicate, to go and live in common with the novices ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... of great and immediate service, both to the public and to the company. To say the truth, something of this sort is absolutely necessary to vindicate the expense the nation is at; for if the trade, for the carrying on of which a company is established, proves, by a change of circumstances, incapable of supporting that company, and thereby brings a load upon the public, this ought to be a motive, it ought, indeed, to be the strongest motive, for that company to endeavour the extension of its commerce, or the ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... curious engines amongst mankind, has exposed this great machine of the universe to the view of the only creatures capable of contemplating it, so an exact and curious observer, who admires His workmanship, is much more acceptable to Him than one of the herd, who, like a beast incapable of reason, looks on this glorious scene with the eyes of a dull ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... This was the strongest confirmation of Montesma's charge. The man was a stupid man, an incapable man, a man to whose intelligence and care human life should never be trusted. A fig for his honesty! What would honesty be worth in a hurricane off the Chesil Beach? What would honesty serve a ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... over all the obstacles to her marriage with the man she loved; but, alas! before the triumph was fully accomplished, the love was gone. Darnley was selfish, unfeeling, and incapable of requiting affection like Mary's. He treated her with the most heartless indifference, though she had done every thing to awaken his gratitude and win his love. She bestowed upon him every honor which it was in her power to grant. She gave him the title of king. She admitted ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... new king, which some reactionaries imputed to him as a crime, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not well. Our literature he was incapable of enjoying or understanding. He never once appeared in the theatre. The poets who wrote Pindaric verse in his praise complained that their flights of sublimity were beyond his comprehension. But his wife did her best ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... said Sackville, who was incapable of perceiving a sneer or of knowing when older men were laughing at him. "It's one of those things that one's got to do—under the circumstances. Of course, Miss Bewery isn't Dr. Ransford's daughter, but she's his ward, and we can't allow suspicion to rest on her guardian. You leave ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... connection with the Widow de Freneuse. Nor will he reply, he says, to the governor's complaint to the court about a pretended cabal, of which he, De Goutin, was the head, and which was in reality only three or four honest men, incapable of any kind of deviation, who used to meet in a friendly way, and had given offence by not bowing down ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... a bore, of course, rather troublesome at times, But I'd rather have my nose made incapable of crimes, Than go free, With the chance of "going off," giving friend or foe a bite. And be clubbed to death or shot, murdered in my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... fresh—or as tired—as when he started. At sunset they took an hour. Then forward again by the dim intermittent light of the moon and stars through the ghostly haunted forest, until Thorpe thought he would drop with weariness, and was mentally incapable of contemplating more than ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless, like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam-engine whose fires had ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... affections; and she had an entire ascendancy over him, acquired by every species of enervating indulgences; and he remained all his life utterly without character, ignorant of the rudiments of public affairs, and altogether incapable of taking any ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... before his canvas. He could never imitate his illustrious master. He was incapable of painting anything but what he saw, and his brush, after reproducing the blue and white raiment, stopped, hesitating at the face, calling in vain on imagination. After futile efforts it was the grotesque mask of Rodriguez that appeared ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... practice to accuse American Indians of great coldness of temper, and to represent them as incapable of sincere and permanent attachment. It is a mistake. It is true that on the part of the males all expressions of affection are repressed, from the belief that the display of any passion or emotion inflicts deep and indelible disgrace upon a man, especially if he is a ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... once put an end to the harmony by seizing the bucket of rum and throwing it overboard, and the drunken people about him being incapable of offering much resistance, he put them in irons and tumbled them below. Kelly, who was a big, truculent-looking man, then produced a bowie knife of alarming dimensions and challenged Chace to combat, but was quickly ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... small share of the work for the past two years. But he had more than once lately talked to his wife of the necessity for selling his boat and nets and remaining at home. With this decision she quite agreed, feeling that he was indeed becoming incapable of doing the work, and every time he had gone out in anything but the calmest weather she had been filled with apprehension as to what would happen if a storm were to blow up. He was really sorry for the boy, being convinced ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... on the wretch's throat; but there was no occasion to use force: he recognized me, and nerveless, paralyzed, sank on the floor incapable of motion much less of resistance, and could only gaze in my face in dumb ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... be married. Indeed several very sensible and impartial collectors, with whom I have discoursed, also seem to think that the art of book-binding in France is just now, if not retrograding, at least stationary—and apparently incapable of being carried to a higher pitch of excellence. I doubt this very much. They can do what they have done before. And no such great conjuration is required in going even far beyond it. Let Thouvenin ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... years these two had been—not friends: she was incapable of so true a passion; he was too capable to misapply it so unerringly. Their association had assumed the character of one of those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the lives of aged men and women when ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... almost literally the interviews at Pozzuoli and at Naples, Cuthbert glanced at his father, and saw a purplish flush steal from neck to forehead, but the old man's eyes never quitted the floor. He seemed incapable of moving, Gorgonized by the beautiful Medusa whose invectives ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... desperate, and his friend's behaviour that of a Bedlamite. He announced several times impatiently that they would be too late for dinner. His friend did not budge. Dinner seemed nothing to him. There he lay plucking grass, and patting the old dog's nose, as if incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger was. Ripton took half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at last flung himself down beside the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the period of youth, we learn that girls constitute one-fifth only of the total number of youthful criminals. A number of different explanations have been offered to account for this disproportion. Thus, for instance, attention has been drawn to the fact that a girl's physical weakness renders her incapable of attempting violent assaults upon the person, and this would suffice to explain why it is that girls so rarely commit such crimes. In the case of offences for which bodily strength is less requisite, such as fraud, theft, &c., the number of youthful female ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... possessed four thousand camels, besides boundless wealth in date-palms, etc. Through my young Arab friend, who acted as interpreter, she told me I was welcome, and then as soon as we were seated she began an examination of my dress and ornaments. She seemed, indeed, in mind a perfect child, incapable of taking an interest in anything higher than dress and trinkets. To her, the great world without was a complete blank, a sealed book: the field of her observations was bounded by the four walls of her own abode, while books and society were alike forbidden. Certainly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... the perfect day, then the religion will be so spiritual, so intellectual, and so moral, that when it is preached to the former class it will not touch their minds or their hearts, it will be to them a string of meaningless phrases, incapable of arousing their latent intelligence, or of giving them any motive for conduct which will help them to ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... grazing along the little brook. Packs and saddles had been removed. The men ate leisurely. There was little evidence of hurried flight. Yet Helen could not cast off uneasiness. Roy might have been deep, and careless, with a motive to spare the girls' anxiety, but Dale seemed incapable of anything he did ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... XVI succeeds his father, as the last King of France. He is youthful, uneducated, imbecile. He is wedded to a giddy superficial queen. Both are infidels and incapable of any intelligent acts of government. With imbecility and credulity on the throne, corruption continues to prevail among high and low. Instead of individual thrift and general prosperity, poverty and famine prevail throughout ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... execution the act for fortifying our forts and harbors it is found that the sites most advantageous for their defense, and sometimes the only sites competent to that defense, are in some cases the property of minors incapable of giving a valid consent to their alienation; in others belong to persons who may refuse altogether to alienate, or demand a compensation far beyond the liberal justice allowable in such cases. From these causes the defense ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... no plan, and was just then incapable of forming any. He changed his route, not knowing why, and posted over the bridge, and a good way along the Inchicore road, and then turned about and strode back again and over the bridge, without stopping, and on towards Dublin; and suddenly the moon shone out, and he recollected how ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... politicians, they have frequently exhibited very great power.[240] They are constantly engaged in dangerous and difficult enterprises, where ingenuity and presence of mind are essential for their preservation. They are vigorous in the thought which is allied to action, but altogether incapable of speculation, deduction, or research. The ideas and attention of a savage are confined to the objects relating to his subsistence, safety, or indulgence: every thing else escapes his observation ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... continued to shower his arrows on his enemies. And Dhananjaya continued to slay well-decked horsemen and foot-soldiers of the foe. Indeed, Dhananjaya, resembling the very Sun as he rises at the end of the Yuga, dried up the samsaptaka ocean incapable of being dried up easily, by means of keen arrows constituting his rays. Without losing a moment, the son of Pandu once more pierced Drona's son resembling a huge hill, with shafts of great impetuosity and the splendour ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... level, from the beggar's position, from the place of weakness. There are some whose existence depends upon the response given to their supplications, who throw themselves directly on the charity and tender-heartedness of society. Inefficient, incapable of separate existence, this parasitic class is known to every social service group, to every rich or powerful man who helps at least in part to maintain them. I do not mean those who are physically ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... main-top, from which he began to play upon the fire. But by this time the flames had acquired such a firm hold upon the spars, canvas, and heavily tarred rigging that the jet of water from the hose proved quite incapable of producing any visible effect whatever upon them; and the mate himself soon became so hemmed in by the fire that he was in the very act of retreating to the deck when the flood-gates of heaven were opened, and the rain suddenly pelted down in such overwhelming torrents ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the English tongue," was in 1415, two centuries after Magna Carta. [14]. Up to this time, and for some seventy years later, the laws were generally written either in Latin or French; both languages incapable of being read by the common people, as well Normans as Saxons; and one of them, the Latin, not only incapable of being read by them, but of beingeven understood when it was ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... is sufficiently portrayed in her marvelous history. The annals of past ages may be searched in vain for her parallel. Two passions were ever predominant with her, love and ambition. Her mind seemed incapable of exhaustion, and notwithstanding the number of her successive favorites, with whom she entered into the most guilty connections, no monarch ever reigned with more dignity or with a more undisputed sway. Under her reign, notwithstanding ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... apparently good terms with his father, he was, from the time of his return, much at Greenwood; and, his simple nature being quite incapable of deceit, Janice very quickly perceived that his chief motive was not so much the lover's desire to be near, as it was to keep watch of her. Had the fellow deliberately planned to irritate the girl, he could have hit upon nothing more certain ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the measures taken subsequently, no one was present at that moment but the nurse. She was a young woman, and she was so startled that she was at first quite incapable of interfering. When she was able to do so her whole services were required by Miss Halcombe, who had for the moment sunk altogether in the effort to keep her own senses under the shock of the discovery. After waiting a few minutes in the fresh air ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... rendered the more potent in the present case by the fact that the Premier, M. Bratianu, is above all a practical man, and the Liberal Cabinet over which he presides one of the most colourless the country ever had: a Cabinet weak to the point of being incapable of realizing its own weakness and the imperative necessity at this fateful moment of placing the helm in the hands of a national ministry. M. Bratianu considered that Rumania was too exposed, and had suffered too much in the past ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... fellow, and quite dead to all but the paltriest considerations. I accept the issue. We can only know others by ourselves. The artistic temperament (a plague on the expression!) does not make us different from our fellowmen, or it would make us incapable of writing novels; and the average man (a murrain on the word!) is just like you and me, or he would not be average. It was Whitman who stamped a kind of Birmingham sacredness upon the latter phrase; but Whitman knew very well, and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sciences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts of external nature; only in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hour, finds himself chilled to the very bones. That is my first complaint. But as the boats are made for Americans, and as Americans like hot air, I do not put it forward with any idea that a change ought to be effected. My second complaint is equally unreasonable, and is quite as incapable of a remedy as the first. Nine-tenths of the travelers carry children with them. They are not tourists engaged on pleasure excursions, but men and women intent on the business of life. They are ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... by the awkwardness of nursing in a recumbent position, often feels desperate. Fortunately technical difficulties are confined to the first few days, and, trying as they sometimes are, no one should be discouraged or imagine that she is incapable of nursing; for practically every woman ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... particular island of Eden, when, if any of our possessions should chance to excite their cupidity, who could say what might happen? There was, of course, a way whereby this danger might be reduced to a minimum, and that was by so reducing the dimensions of the boat that she should be incapable of carrying more than two men at a time; and this I determined to do. As to material, there was plenty of such as I required to be obtained from the wreck, for I meant the boat to be of the simplest construction, being, in fact, nothing more than a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... firmly to the fact that characterlessness, which is incapable of overcoming opposition and takes the path that is easiest, is the result of the individual's inherited disposition, with the addition of his, or her, own experience; and of these it is the former that, as a rule, determines to prostitution. Every kind of moral and intellectual looseness and dullness ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... taking bribes, would soon be kicked out, etc. Then the party that was in had to say that the party that was out should look to its own sins and remember that everyone of its men when they were in proved himself incapable, insensible to every feeling of shame, with no susceptibilities except in his pocket, corrupt in every fibre, being justly rewarded when hurled from office by an indignant people, etc., etc. The wonder is that the country ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... troubled, but we know that there is some good, grand reason for it. The poor little children do not know even that. They find trouble utterly inconsequent and unreasonable. The problem of evil is to them absolutely incapable of solution. We know that beyond our horizon stretches the infinite universe. We grasp only one link of a chain whose beginning and end is eternity. So we readily adjust ourselves to mystery, and are content. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... be kept in subjection by a conspiracy to that effect, on the part of the whole free population—the lack of fidelity to which conspiracy is the only treason known in those regions—the existence of a people like the inhabitants of the Southern States would be a riddle incapable of solution. Slavery itself, is a remnant of barbarism overlapping the period of civilization; but, unlike the slaveries of the barbaric ages, American slavery has been stimulated into all the enterprising ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a good while at my new rulers, then to business, and towards noon to the Exchange with Creed, where we met with Sir J. Minnes coming in his coach from Westminster, who tells us, in great heat, that, by God, the Parliament will make mad work; that they will render all men incapable of any military or civil employment that have borne arms in the late troubles against the King, excepting some persons; which, if it be so, as I hope it is not, will give great cause of discontent, and I doubt will have but bad effects. I left them at the Exchange and walked to Paul's ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of his complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had been fined L5 or L20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely settling all scores together.—In what high spirits Lambert's ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... friend," cried Mr. Mavity, "I really don't think you ought to say that. Hate is a very dreadful word. I am sure Alix is incapable of actually hating any one. And as for David, he is kindness, gentleness itself. It is just one of those unfortunate situations that ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... ridicule. "Visions and manifestations from God," said they, "are of the past, and all such things ceased with the apostles of old; the canon of scripture is full; religion has reached its perfection in plan, and, unlike all other systems contrived or accepted by human kind, is incapable of development or growth. It is true God lives, but He cares not for His children of modern times as He did for those of ancient days; He has shut Himself away from the people, closed the windows of heaven, and has suspended ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... a high chamber in a well of houses, Carton threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed. Sadly, sadly the sun rose. It rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight upon him, and resigning himself to let it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... French call a poseur; or, as one of his own not unkindly intimates has described him, "an innocent charlatan." Although not altogether empty, he was vain; full of talk which had what was most often a false air of profundity; unpractical and incapable in the ordinary affairs of life to a degree not adequately compensated for by such a grasp as he was able to get on the realities that underlie them; and with an imposing aspect which corresponded ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... such an odium does this decree throw upon unerring wisdom; and all the quibbles in the world cannot clear it of the same. Again: let God speak like thunder, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God!" yet if the sinner is incapable of taking the warning, what empty bombast does it make of the awful threatening! But let God be true, and every man a liar who can cast such vile reflections upon his ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... remember your responsibilities as master of this brig. I will undertake to look after her and see that nothing goes wrong during the time that I have charge of the deck; but I cannot always be on deck, you know; and if you should happen to be intoxicated and incapable—as you were last night— while I am below, what would be the result of a sudden squall, for instance? Or how is the craft to be kept clear of possible collision on a dark and dirty night? There are a thousand sudden emergencies constantly ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... equally the delight of his wife. For many years their only walks in London had been taken on Sundays when the shops were shut; and when every day in the week became their holiday, they derived an enjoyment from the variety and fancy and beauty of the display in the windows, which seemed incapable of exhaustion. As if the principal streets were a great Theatre and the play were childishly new to them, Mr and Mrs Boffin, from the beginning of Bella's intimacy in their house, had been constantly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... resisted the effeminacy of oriental usages, and in some respects we may say—of Mahometan institutions. Their strength lay in their manly character; their weakness in their inveterate disunion. But this, though quite incapable of permanent remedy under Mahometan ideas, could be suspended under the compression of a common warlike interest; and that had been splendidly put on record by the grandfather of Shah Soojah. It was not to be denied—that in the event of a martial prince arising, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... well fitted to serve as ridge-tiles on the roof of a house. Although this chert could not have been brittle as now, when first folded into this shape, it presents, nevertheless, here and there, at the points of greatest flexure, small cracks, which show that it was solid, and not wholly incapable of breaking at the period of its displacement. The numerous rents alluded to are not empty, but filled with ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the servants of the company came up and broke the lance across Don Quixote's ribs. It was not until a countryman came by that the Don was extricated, and then he had to ride back to his own village on the ass of the poor labourer, being so stiff and sore as quite incapable to mount Rozinante. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... nations among whom the imagination is so predominant that they seem incapable of regarding things as they are. The literature of such nations will always be cast in a poetical mould, even when it takes the outward form of prose. Of this class India is a conspicuous example. In the opposite category ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... country and its war. When we remember the advantages which poor Russell enjoyed for acquiring information, his neglect of matters of importance seems amazing—until we find, in scores of petty personal matters and silly egotisms, a key to the whole. He is a small-souled man, utterly incapable of mastering the great principles involved in this war,—a man petrified in English conceit, and at the end of his art when, like a twopenny reporter, he has made a smart little sneer at something or somebody. He writes on America as Sala wrote on Russia, in the same petty, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... remaining. The General having completed dressing, took an affectionate farewell of his wife, assuring her he would soon be enabled to return. They left the house—but to gain the shore was a matter of some difficulty. The general was rendered incapable of making the slightest noise if he had wished to, and they had tied Mrs. Sullivan, and bound her mouth to prevent her giving any alarm. But the tents were not so easily passed. The morning was fast approaching, and the route they came would occupy too much time to retrace it—their ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
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