"Incapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clammy. He was shaken, transpierced. He saw now that, in all the three years since he had heard she was married, he hadn't really known it. Perhaps it was his imagination that was at fault—perhaps his incapacity for believing what wasn't under his very eyes—perhaps his own success in keeping the dreadful fact at a distance—but he hadn't really known it. Nothing could have brought it home to him like this—this glimpse of her intimate association ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... he shows me his incapacity by allowing you to live on pastry and sweets, things that are utter poison to you. Disease of the lungs is curable, but not by ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... people, after all, accept every tyrant, so long as they are allowed to keep their snouts in the mess, Napoleon has done right. Let him gag them, the rabble, and exterminate them—this will never be too much for their hatred of right, their cowardice, their incapacity, and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... recognition as partner with capital. We must under all circumstances pay as a minimum a decent living wage to everyone who works for a living. We must devise means to cope with the problem of unemployment and to meet the dread advent of sickness, incapacity and old age in the case of those whose means do not permit them to provide for ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... Dieu, mon Dieu, c'est navrant. Nous sommes un peuple desarconne.)" In his eyes, Palikao was no better than a robber, Jerome David than a murderer. He considered the fall of Strasburg imminent. He was less surprised than I at the unbounded incapacity shown by the French fleet under the difficult conditions; all plans for a descent on Northern Germany had already been given up, and the French fleet was unable to set about even so much as a blockade of the ports, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... without garbling any of the dispatches.—'I said that Her Majesty's Government were most sincerely anxious to act with the Imperial Government in this question.' No doubt they were. I am vindicating your conduct. I believe in your sincerity throughout. It is only your intense incapacity that I denounce. The passage in the dispatch is Shakespearian; it is one of those dramatic descriptions which only a masterly pen could ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... of the world was brought about by the preference of the commanding general of the conquered army for an Emperor who was already dethroned, as against a true devotion to his country. There was also in the case a measure of incapacity. Bazaine was no match as a military commander for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who surrounded him, and brought him and his army ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... up their successes in that quarter with their usual celerity. Scherer, who commanded there, owed his advancement to any other cause than his merit: he was a favourite of the directory; but for the present, through the influence of Barras, he was removed from a command for which his incapacity was afterwards clearly proved, and Buonaparte was appointed to succeed him. Buonaparte had given indications of his military talents at Toulon, and of his remorseless nature at Paris; but the extent either of his ability or his wickedness was at this time known to none, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... my friend pleaded his daily engagements as reasons for leaving me. He counselled me to strive for some repose, but I was conscious of incapacity to sleep. I was desirous of escaping, as soon as possible, from this tainted atmosphere, and reflected whether any thing remained to be ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... after the death of my grandfather, when our band degraded itself to exploits of a different nature, I fell back under his odious sway. I was by no means fitted for lying and fraud. I displayed not only aversion but also incapacity for this new industry. Consequently my uncle looked upon me as useless, and began to maltreat me again. They would have driven me away had they not been afraid that I might make my peace with society, and become a dangerous enemy to themselves. While they were in doubt ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... for God's reward for what I have done, I can hardly appreciate it; it is more like punishment for misdeeds (of which I've done many) than grace for good ones (if I've done any). Homelessness is the actor's fate; physical incapacity to attain what is most required and desired by such a spirit as I am a slave to. If there be rewards, I am certainly well paid, but hard schooling in life's thankless lessons has made we somewhat of a philosopher, and I've learned to take the buffets and rewards of fortune with equal ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... was the only man Masupha had the slightest regard for." If our Government had more men of the type of General Gordon, we may rest assured that we should have fewer of these petty little "nigger wars," which, more often than not, are brought on by incapacity and want of sympathy on the part of our representatives abroad. One great charm about Gordon's character was his sympathy for the weak and helpless. It mattered not whether the helpless one were a king or a slave, so long as he was weak he was sure of ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... was very great, and the boat about which we are writing, being small, ran considerable risk of being capsized by the heavy seas. In fact, almost the only difference between lifeboats and ordinary boats, at this time, was the incapacity of the former to sink when filled with water, owing to the buoyancy of the air-chambers fitted round their sides. If filled by a sea, much valuable time had to be lost in baling out the water before the oars could be effectively resumed, and ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... To give him something to do, and so something to eat, he went to his block and put his foot on it. The boy bustled up, snatched at his brushes, and began operations. But, whether from the coldness or incapacity of his hands, Clare soon saw that his boots would ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the nation," said Dr. Leete, "bear now like a feather the burden that broke the backs of the women of your day. Their misery came, with all your other miseries, from that incapacity for cooperation which followed from the individualism on which your social system was founded, from your inability to perceive that you could make ten times more profit out of your fellow men by uniting with them than by contending with them. The wonder is, not that you did ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Congregation. They rebelled; they were driven by Mary into England, by October 1565, and Bothwell came at her call from France. The Queen had new advisers—Riccio, Balfour, Bothwell, the eldest son of the late Huntly, and Lennox, till the wretched Darnley in a few weeks proved his incapacity. Lethington, rather neglected, hung about the Court, as he remained with Mary of Guise long after he ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... ungladdened course of the crowd before me, whose days were all alike, and a long lifetime like each day. But the sentiment startled me. For a moment I doubted whether my dear-bought wisdom were anything but the incapacity to pursue fresh follies, and whether, if health and strength could be restored that night, I should be found in the ...
— Fragments From The Journal of a Solitary Man - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Spain was caused partly from want of transport, but more by the utter incapacity of the Spanish Junta or government, and by the arrogance and folly of Cuesta, the Spanish Commander-in-Chief, who was always proposing impracticable schemes to Wellington, and, inflated with Spanish pride and obstinacy, believed that his own worthless troops were fully a match for the French, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... insect. The instruments of smell are the antennae. A poor ant without antennae is as lost as a blind man who is also deaf and dumb. This appears from its complete social inactivity, its isolation, its incapacity to guide itself and to find its food. It can, therefore, be boldly supposed that the antennae and their power of smell, as much on contact as at a distance, constitute the social sense of ants, the sense which allows them to recognise one another, to tend to their larvae, and mutually help ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... perfection and ideality for marriage, had also a practical system of concession to human weakness, by which it could meet cases of unhappy marriage. In the canon law, divorce and remarriage of the innocent party has been allowed to the man, in case of adultery, physical incapacity, leprosy, desertion, captivity, disappearance, and conspiracy to murder the husband, on the part of the wife; and to the wife, when the husband's misconduct rendered living with him impossible. However, a dispensation from the ecclesiastical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... in the garden of life, and all that, how is this to be done in a country where a state of things like this is the commonest of occurrences? And is it any kindness or reverence to woman, to educate her for such an inevitable destiny by a life of complete physical delicacy and incapacity? Many a woman who has been brought into these cruel circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowledge of German and Italian, and all her graceful accomplishments, for a good physical development, and some respectable savoir ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in poetry, which is part of God's order, which men have learnt ages ago, for they, too, had their teaching from above; to offend against which is absolutely wrong, an offence to be put down mildly in those who offend ignorantly; but those who offend from dulness, from the incapacity to see the beautiful, or from carelessness about it, when praise or gain tempts them the other way, have some moral defect in them; they are what Solomon calls fools: they are the enemies of man; and he will "hate them right sore, even as though they were his own enemies"—which ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was a wreck. On being brought to the institution he was at once placed in a cell in the Bull Pen, probably because of his previous history for violence while at his own home. But his violence (if it ever existed) had already spent itself, and had come to be nothing more than an utter incapacity to obey. His offence was that he was too weak to attend to his common wants. The day after his arrival, shortly before noon, he lay stark naked and helpless upon the bed in his cell. This I know, for I went to investigate immediately after ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... ear. But when Father Eustace hinted at the duty of dedicating to the service of the Church, talents which seemed fitted to defend and adorn it, the dame endeavoured always to shift the subject; and when pressed farther, enlarged on her own incapacity, as a lone woman, to manage the feu; on the advantage which her neighbours of the township were often taking of her unprotected state, and on the wish she had that Edward might fill his father's place, remain in the tower, and close ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... over the face of the earth, without any organization of their different hordes; and all concert between them entirely precluded by separations of hundreds of miles from each other, in different parts of the globe, and by their incapacity for literary communication; they have, however, whilst speaking the languages of the respective countries they inhabit, preserved in all places one peculiar to themselves, and have transmitted it through a lapse of centuries to ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... evidence can be advanced in favour of the Pallasian doctrine (14. The 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. p. 109. I may here remind the reader that the sterility of species when crossed is not a specially-acquired quality, but, like the incapacity of certain trees to be grafted together, is incidental on other acquired differences. The nature of these differences is unknown, but they relate more especially to the reproductive system, and much less so to external structure or to ordinary differences in constitution. One important ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Reconstruction has served as the text for discrediting Negro Suffrage and is always the apt illustration that gives point to the argument of those who attempt to prove the incapacity of the Negro to exercise the right of suffrage. There is no doubt that the effort to mould public sentiment away from Negro Suffrage has been generally successful and this success has been achieved very largely through misrepresentation in regard to the facts of Reconstruction. The great body of ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... the healths of Mr Melmotte and Mr Fisker, and two speeches were of course made by them. Mr Melmotte may have been held to have clearly proved the genuineness of that English birth which he claimed by the awkwardness and incapacity which he showed on the occasion. He stood with his hands on the table and with his face turned to his plate blurted out his assurance that the floating of this railway company would be one of the greatest and most successful commercial operations ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... consider in a brief survey the state of the country at the moment when the incapacity of General Menou compelled the French to withdraw from Egypt. Arrayed against each other were the troops of the sultan, numbering four thousand Albanians and those forces sent from England under the command of Admiral Keith, on one side; ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... is more frequently the result of bad habits of speaking and imperfect training than of incapacity of the vocal organs. Mr. Murdock, the well-known actor and elocutionist, tells us that, by appropriate vocal training, he gained, within the space of some months, to such an extent, in power and depth of voice, as to add to its previous range a full octave; and this improvement ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... for office, irrespective of his politics, stands an examination before impartial commissioners, and is rated according to his qualifications. Once he enters the public service, he cannot be discharged except for incapacity, and this must be proven before ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... asked a moment to consider: "Well, I think is of the earth, earthy. There's a mixture of idiocy in it the Devil might fairly repudiate. Young gentleman, the English Statutes of Lunacy are famous monuments of legislatorial incapacity: and indeed, as a general rule, if you want justice and wisdom, don't you go to Acts of Parliament, but to the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... imagined. In no place does favouritism flourish with much more rank luxuriance than in that city—in no place do personal prepossessions more frequently operate to the overthrow of judgment, to the exclusion of merit, and to the fostering of incapacity. The multitude had their favourites whose merit touched the highest standard of their conceptions—any thing beyond that was hid in an intellectual mist. The taste of the many was formed upon the kind of merit ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... accustomed to flattery, my brother. Daun did not flatter you, and you now see the consequences. But little hope remains. I shall commence the attack—if we do not conquer, we shall die together. I do not bewail the loss of your heart, but rather your utter incapacity and want of judgment. I tell you this plainly, for with one who has perhaps but a few days to live, there is no use of deception. I wish you more happiness than has fallen to my lot, and hope that your misfortunes ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... blacks appears to them impossible; and every change, every concession granted to the slave population, is regarded as a sign of weakness. The horrible catastrophe of San Domingo is declared to have been only the effect of the incapacity of its government. Such are the illusions which prevail amidst the great mass of the planters of the West Indies, and which are alike opposed to an amelioration of the condition of the blacks in Georgia and ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the beginning of the decline of medical science in ancient times, and this decline was contemporaneous with the overthrow of the Roman State. As everybody knows, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire resulted from the profligacy and incapacity of the emperors, luxurious living and vice among the people, tyranny of an overbearing soldiery at home, and the attacks of barbarian foes gradually increasing in strength. Rome fell quickly into the hands of the barbarians, and her power was broken. In A.D. 395, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... frequently, than in the bush; nor is it exhibited by the lower classes in so shameless a manner as by the gentlemen settlers, from whom a better example might be expected. It would not be difficult to point out the causes which too often lead to these melancholy results. Loss of property, incapacity for hard labour, yielding the mind to low and degrading vices, which destroy self-respect and paralyse honest exertion, and the annihilation of those extravagant hopes that false statements, made by interested ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... during a long minority, postponed the season of calamity; and when it at length arrived, it was concealed for some time from the eyes of the vulgar by the pomp and brilliant festivities, which distinguished the court of the young monarch. His indisposition, if not incapacity for business, however, gradually became manifest; and, while he resigned himself without reserve to pleasures, which it must be confessed were not unfrequently of a refined and intellectual character, he abandoned the government of his kingdom to ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Gamaliel, who, through a long course of years, was so habituated to Trunnion's company, that he could as easily have parted with a limb as have relinquished the club all at once. He therefore ventured to represent his own incapacity to follow her advice, and begged that he might, at least, be allowed to drop the connection gradually, protesting that he would do his endeavour to give her all ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... his incapacity. There are some men that can't rise even when 'tis a question of all Europe at war. But did you hear the light he made, or tried to ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... general of the Legion when that force was organized, was selected as the first chancellor of the new university, and was elected to the First Presidency of the church in the following April, to take the place of Sidney Rigdon during the incapacity of the latter from illness. Judge Stephen A. Douglas also appointed ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... development; that is to say, not until most of the settlements had discarded the connection with Spain; and even then, the defects bred into the people by three centuries of reactionary and unenlightened government produced in them an incapacity to use their newly won freedom, and condemned these lands to a long period of anarchy. It would be too strong to say that it would have been better had the Spaniards never come to America; for, when all is said, they have done more than any other people, save the British, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... to the other day described him as a moral pervert. He said he was a type of insanity usually associated with physical incapacity or a low order of intelligence, but when, as in Mannering's case, both physique and intelligence were above the average, the moral pervert is a greater danger to the community than an army of ordinary criminals. If ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... day to date this letter, which is in fact a confession of incapacity. During my wife's illness I somewhat lost my head, and entirely lost a great quire of corrected proofs. This is one of the results; I hope there are none more serious. I was never so sick of any volume as I was of that; I was continually ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... give you a proof of my incapacity," she said, turning her large luminous gaze upon her instructor, "in order to make you duly appreciate what you have undertaken. Now, tell me truly and honestly, are ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... she forgave blunders, incapacity for business, and waste of money, had always told her plainly there was one thing she ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... ready opinions, gentle loving incapacity to become a machine, Maria was at discord with every principle of Cowan's Bridge. She incurred the bitter resentment of one of the teachers, who sought all means of humiliating and mortifying the sweet-natured, shiftless little creature. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... love dethrones reason, but observe with what admirable logic, what cogency of deduction Stephen La Mothe could argue upon Commines' incapacity for judgment—thus. He had misjudged Ursula de Vesc, why not also Villon? If there had been this undeserved prejudice against an innocent and helpless girl, was not his contempt for Villon equally unjustified? How, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... suppressing the reproduction of madness, is the idea of breeding it! Let us take all these dull, stagnant, respectable people, one might say, who do nothing but conform to whatever rule is established about them and obstruct whatever change is proposed to them, whose chief quality is a sheer incapacity to imagine anything beyond their petty experiences, and let us tell them plainly, "It is time a lunatic married into your family." Let no one run away from this with the statement that I propose such a thing ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... morning of their wedding-day they are seated at a table, to receive presents from their relations and friends; a yard of cloth from one, some silk from another, some beads from a third, according to the taste incapacity of the donors. My companions were not much struck with the beauty of the Queens, for they declared that some of the pretty young slave-girls had much more lovely looks. Each of the Duke's wives bring, or send, a jug of water for his large brass-pan bath every morning, and his favourite wife remains ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... think. Evan did think, and he began to open his mind to a wider criticism of the business. He began to wonder if he had been cut out for a bankclerk. Why had Robb repeatedly made anti-banking suggestions to him? Had he seen incapacity for clerical work in the Mt. Alban swipe? Did Jones discern a similar inaptitude for bank service and hint things for the teller's benefit? Was there a chance that he (Evan) possessed faculties that must die in the business of his mother's choice, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... grumbles, it does not matter. Given a furious Opposition screaming for the disgrace of tyrannical and corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is trying now: that is, to combine the devoted silence and obedience of the German system ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... that many others suffer from the same disease. . . . I thought about that 'improductivite slave' all night. He had his wits about him who summed the thing up in these two words. There is something in us,—an incapacity to give forth all that is in us. One might say, God has given us bow and arrow, but refused us the power to string the bow and send the arrow straight to its aim. I should like to discuss it with my father, but am afraid ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... long ruminated on these matters, before it occurred to his memory that he had a brother who was under no such unhappy incapacity. This brother he made no doubt would succeed; for he discerned, as he thought, an inclination to marriage in the lady; and the reader perhaps, when he hears the brother's qualifications, will not blame the confidence which he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... statesman. If, resting securely in the conviction that a nobleman does not need to be instructed, he will not condescend to study, and does not avail himself of his most enviable advantages, whatever may be his social rank, his ignorance and incapacity cannot be disguised, but will even become more odious and culpable in the view of impartial criticism by reason of his conspicuous position and his neglect of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... opinion may be inconsistent with my wishes as herein expressed, or improper or injudicious; to take care that the duties of every professor or other officer on this foundation be intelligently and faithfully discharged, and to admonish or remove such professor or officer either for misbehavior, incapacity, or neglect of the duties of his office; to examine into the proficiency of the students, and to admonish, dismiss, or suspend any student for negligence, contumacy or crime, or disobedience to the rules hereafter to be established for the government of said school or department; and to see ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... based upon an open discussion regulated solely by the caprice of the Cardinal of Lorraine, it was certainly furnished by the experience of the last session. Catharine, however, was loth to abandon the scheme from which she had expected such important results to flow. With her usual incapacity to understand the strength of religious convictions deeply implanted in the soul, she still hoped to secure, from a private interview of the more moderate Roman Catholics with a few of the leading Protestants, a plan of agreement that might serve to unite ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... insurance. In the first place, the definition of total disability adopted by the companies is much stricter than that of the insurance departments of the railway brotherhoods. A typical insurance company's definition of total disability is incapacity for "prosecuting any and every kind of business pertaining to a regular occupation from the loss of both eyes, both hands, both feet, or one hand and one foot;" while partial disability is "the loss of one ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy
... in themselves; for in that case it is, with all to which it serves as condition, a nonentity. But the foundation for this kind of idealism we have already destroyed in the transcendental aesthetic. Problematical idealism, which makes no such assertion, but only alleges our incapacity to prove the existence of anything besides ourselves by means of immediate experience, is a theory rational and evidencing a thorough and philosophical mode of thinking, for it observes the rule not to form a decisive judgement before sufficient proof be shown. The desired proof must therefore ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... it was to observe, the six correspondents, Robinson, Thomas, Gibbs, Philips, Russell and myself, went and came always with a sense of incapacity and sometimes with a feeling that writing was a worthless business when others were fighting. The line of advance on the big map at our quarters extended as the brief army reports were read into the squares every morning by the key of figures and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... some reasoners who frequently confound innocence with the mere incapacity of guilt; but he that never saw, or heard, or thought of strong liquors, cannot be proposed as a pattern of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... that of a man who believed all that Darwin believed and one hundred years before Darwin, and who yet was afraid to say it because of the Church to which he belonged. This mistake is partly due to that lamentable ignorance of Catholic teaching, not to say that lamentable incapacity for clear thinking, on these matters, which afflicts some non-Catholic writers. Let us take an example from an eminently fairly written book, in which, dealing with Buffon, the author says: "I cannot agree with those who think that Buffon was an out-and-out ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... psychology continued to hold sway, and showed, with Dugald Stewart's miserable attempt at establishing two forms of association, its incapacity to rise to the conception of the imagination. With the poet Coleridge, England also showed the influence of German thought, and Coleridge elaborated with Wordsworth a more correct conception of poetry and ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... of his incapacity for swift flight, the turtle, when in the act of running away from danger, makes use of each flipper alternately in dashing the sand to an incredible height behind and around him, to the endangering of the pursuer's eyes, if he be not particularly careful. Sometimes incautious men have their eyes ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... it is contained the Open Sesame which gives access to the hidden spirit-treasures of the world. In this unawareness of Reid's of the importance of what he thus had found we must see the reason for his incapacity to develop his philosophy beyond its first beginnings. This handicap arose from the fact that in all his thinking he was guided by a picture of the being of man which - as a child of his time, dominated by the contemporary religious outlook - he could never realize distinctly. Yet without ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... while his wife, who had successfully intrigued with Roger Mortimer, leader of the Barons, observed the Christmas festivities with her son at Wallingford, glad at the downfall of her husband. Edward was an irresolute and weak-minded king. He displayed singular incapacity for government, wasting almost all his time in frivolous amusements. The chief characteristics of his reign were defeat and disgrace abroad, and misrule ending in misery at home. Instead of following the example ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... with some further remarks, but the grandmother had turned away and gone quickly towards her own room. She was surprised at what she had been told about Heidi's incapacity for learning, and determined to find out more concerning this matter, not by inquiries from the tutor, however, although she esteemed him highly for his uprightness of character; she had always a friendly greeting for him, but always avoided being drawn into conversation with him, ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... numbers of pupils and students than upon the weak points of the system. Nevertheless, there is one unsatisfactory feature that the most confirmed optimists cannot ignore. Hardly a single one of these reports but makes some reference to the deficiencies and incapacity of the native teaching staff. The last quinquennial report issued by Mr. Orange, the able Director-General of Public Education, who is now leaving India, contains a terse but very significant passage. "Speaking generally," he writes, "it ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Apostate succeeded peacefully to the empire whereto he was about to assert his right by force of arms; and Sapor found that the war which he had provoked with Rome, in reliance upon his adversary's weakness and incapacity, had to be carried on with a prince of far greater natural powers and of much superior ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... cannot be in the playground, whither they invite me. Harold Skimpole is fettered—by what? By items! I regret my incapacity for details. It may be the tinker or the tailor at whose suit I am detained. I am certain it is not at that of the soldier, or the sailor, or the ploughboy, or the thief. But, for the apothecary— why, yes—it MAY be the apothecary! In the dawn of ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... : in an unusual, out of cycle change in executive power, Congress on 11 February 1997 elected then Congress President ALARCON to be Interim President until August 1998 after ousting former President BUCARAM because of "mental incapacity;" ARTEAGA remained vice president cabinet : Cabinet appointed by the president elections: president and vice president elected on the same ticket by popular vote for four-year terms; election last held 19 May 1996; runoff election held 7 July 1996; note - because of ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the religious profession—a dishonest lawyer sinks the legal character—and even the bravest men care but little for promotion in an army, when cowardice and incompetency are rewarded with rank and power. But manifest incapacity, culpable neglect of duty, or even a positively vicious character, will not reduce a calling to contempt, or bring it into disrepute so soon, as any quality which ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... about their homes, and their wives and children, and all about Ulysses, and everything else, except this banquet, at which they wanted to keep feasting forever. But at length they began to give over, from mere incapacity ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... incapacity, power to sign and to act for him had been vested in Hamish; and the matter was concluded at once. The court poured out its crowd. Hamish was on the point of taking Arthur's arm, but was pushed aside by Roland Yorke, who seized ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... being fixed upon M. de Sartines. You may suppose that a lieutenant of police, particularly one who piqued himself upon knowing every thing, could not feel very much at his ease, when each word that was uttered convicted him either of incapacity or negligence. His brow became contracted, he hemmed, choked, fidgeted about, and appeared as though he would have given every thing in the world f or liberty to justify himself, but etiquette ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the battlefield; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. In order to do even a little one has to know a great deal, and to know it well. . . . The right solution imposes itself; namely, the application, according to circumstances, of fixed principles. . . . Incapacity and ignorance cannot be called extenuating circumstances, for knowledge is within the reach of all" (Marshal Foch); and in the words of Napoleon's own maxim: "The only way to learn the art of war is to read and re-read the campaigns of the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... of absolute unconsciousness into which he had fallen at first, and Mr. Ferrars did not think there would be much change for a few days. He also did not apprehend any immediate danger, and they all took courage from this. Sickness and incapacity did not daunt them; but it was death the separator of whom they ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... disciple. His definition of virtue as 'the power and desire of attaining things honourable,' like the first definition of justice in the Republic, is taken from a poet. His answers have a sophistical ring, and at the same time show the sophistical incapacity ...
— Meno • Plato
... to return to the world, and owing to his incapacity the post of Civil Governor of Montenegro now became important. The office, till now held always by a Vukotitch, had meant little save the leadership of tribal Soviets or councils. The Vukotitches exchanged the office with the Radonitches for that of Serdar, and under the title of Gubernator ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... defects. But, in good truth, no man, now-a-days, composes verses for publication, with a slovenly neglect of their language. It is a fine and laborious manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry; and the faults which it has, may, for the most part, be set down to bad taste or incapacity, rather than to carelessness or oversight. With Mr. Wordsworth and his friends it is plain that their peculiarities of diction are things of choice, and not of accident. They write as they do, upon principle and system; and it evidently costs them much pains to keep ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... capable of as much enterprise in using the means ordained by Christ for rescuing souls from eternal burnings, and raising them to a seat at his right hand? Had the same enterprise been required of men in some former century, they might have plead incapacity. But it is too late now to plead incapacity. Unless we choose to keep back from God a very important talent, we must put forth this enterprise to its full extent in the great work of the ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... illustration of what would happen in the ranks of the syndicalists if the business idea of labor's intellectual and emotional incapacity for functioning, gave way before a community's confidence in the capacity of labor—we have in the case of the migratory workers in the harvesting of our western crops. The harvesters who follow the crops with the seasons from the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... even terms, nor neglect to render in some degree mutual the assistance so freely at their command, and that men in a Leicestershire field so punctiliously afford to each other. The point on which they so prominently fail in this particular is, to speak plainly, their habitual, neglect—or incapacity—at gateways. Given the rush and crush of three hundred people starting for a run and pressing eagerly through a single way of exit—to wit, an ordinary gate swinging easily and lightly, and requiring only that each passer through should ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... fur-traders. Neither father nor son had the slightest taste for field sports, so that when they saw the track of an animal they found it almost impossible to follow it up with success, and when, by good fortune, they chanced to discover a "partridge" or a squirrel they invariably missed it! This incapacity and a scarcity of game had at ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... 5. The Duke moved the Address in a very short speech, not adverting to the regency. Lord Grey followed and declared his opinion of the incapacity of Government as exhibited in their measures during the last five months. Goderich said 'nothing had been done,' and was for going on with the business. Lord Harrowby wished a short Regency Bill to be passed, giving the regency to the Queen for six weeks, to provide for the case ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... have written on the Vanity of the Creature, and represented the Barrenness of every thing in this World, and its Incapacity of producing any solid or substantial Happiness. As Discourses of this Nature are very useful to the Sensual and Voluptuous; those Speculations which shew the bright Side of Things, and lay forth those innocent Entertainments ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... questioned his ability to teach Greek. In his own line, and not an inch beyond, the Governors were assured that Rutford was a success. In due time he accepted a Small House, so small that its autocrat's incapacity as an administrator escaped notice. Rutford waited patiently for a big morsel. He wrote a couple of text-books; he married a wife with money and influence; he entertained handsomely. It is true he became popular neither ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... niggling little buttresses flush with the massive walls of the great towers. I wished I could have had M. Viollet-le-Duc there by both his ears and knocked his head against the abomination he has created. He had a splendid opportunity, and through incapacity ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... us into a state of listless complacency, but even then, if possessed of the least internal activity, we cannot avoid being soon wearied. The great bulk of mankind merely from their situation in life, or from their incapacity for extraordinary exertions, are confined within a narrow circle of insignificant operations. Their days flow on in succession under the sleepy rule of custom, their life advances by an insensible progress, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... and the pedant is, that for the first the rules of prosody and rhyme are only useful in so far as they make the licenses he takes appreciable at their just value; while for the pedant such licenses ever anew seem to imply ignorance of the rule or incapacity to follow it,—an absurd mistake, since the power to create and impress has little to do with the means employed; and if a man builds up for himself a barrier of foregone conclusions about the exact manner in which ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... recollection of the glad feeling of security and comfortable well-being which filled my breast as I paced round and about our cart and all it had brought us. Long before sun-up next morning, Ted was off again to Werrina; but, seeing our incapacity on the domestic side, the good fellow gave an hour or two before starting to washing up and cooking work; and I pretended to work with him, out there in the star-light, conversing the while in whispers to ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... pseudo-democracy which wants to live without working, consume without producing, obtain posts without being trained for them, and arrive at honours without desert—the selfish and purblind pseudo-democracy of incapacity ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... that ignorance and incapacity on the part of the employees were not confined to the surveyor's department, but were found in other branches of the service—creating delays and mistakes, imperiling the safety of the revenues and the interests of importers, and bringing the service ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... that unhappy affair, I can see more clearly the matter as a whole, and that the miseries of Crete especially, and of the Greeks in the Levant in general, have been mainly due to the want of commonsense in the race, and the incapacity of individuals to subordinate their personal views and interests to the general good. The Italians have a proverb, "Six Greeks, seven captains," which in a pithy way expresses the reason why the Greeks have never been able to succeed in any national movement—the necessary ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... have had everything to do with it!" cried the Duchess. "The Princess's accident may have the most unfortunate results for you and for me. People will not fail to attribute it to the incapacity of the Ministers, and possibly to their malevolence. Can one tell how far calumny may reach? You are already accused of niggardliness. According to what is being said, you refused, on my advice, to pay for warders for the young and ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... rebellious States once upon a time, for the simple reason that he will not let us alone. It is as curious an exhibition of human nature to note the surprise which always seizes the owner when one of these "faithful" creatures bites any of his friends and neighbors as is the proverbial incapacity of the householder to admit the existence of malaria on his premises. A little friend of mine who can hardly toddle, while visiting with his parents, was recently sprung upon by a great house-dog and bitten seriously in the cheek. And the philosophical explanation, which ought to have been highly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... that he ought to be beaten himself. What he did say was, that those who were useful neither in word nor deed, who were incapable of rendering assistance in time of need to the army or the state or the people itself, be they never so wealthy, ought to be restrained, and especially if to incapacity ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... transmitting a medal for Sir Walter Scott; sums generously sent for his brother John's medical education in Germany; loans to Alexander, and a frustrate scheme for starting a new Annual Register, designed to be a literary resume of the year, make up the record. The "rift in the lute," Carlyle's incapacity for domestic life, was already showing itself. Within the course of an orthodox honeymoon he had begun to shut himself up in interior solitude, seldom saw his wife from breakfast till 4 P.M., when they dined together and read Don Quixote in Spanish. ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... throughout—particularly perhaps in those parts which are not concerned with the education of Henry Adams. Where this recondite and cosmic problem is touched upon, there are often qualifications to be made. The perpetual profession of ignorance and incapacity seems at times a bit disingenuous; and we have to do for the most part, not with the way things struck Adams at the time, but with the way it seemed to him, as an old man looking back upon the "broken arch," they should have struck him. Besides, in the later chapters, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... AND GENTLEMEN:—It was with great diffidence that I accepted the invitation of your President to respond to a toast to-night. I realized my incapacity to do justice to the occasion, while at the same time I recognized the high compliment conveyed. I felt somewhat as the man did respecting the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy; he said he didn't know whether ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... character. Power is tacitly committed to the leading chief, to be held so long as he governs to general satisfaction, subject, however, to the advice of the soldiers. Age, debility, or any other natural defect, or incapacity to act, advise, or command, would lead a chief to resign in favor of ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... considerable dexterity and vigour, but never attain the slightest sense of those modulations in form which can only be expressed by gradations in shade. They leave sharp edges to their blots of colour, sharp angles in their contours of lines, and conceal from themselves their incapacity of completion by redundance of object. The assurance to such persons that no object could be rightly seen or drawn until the draughtsman had acquired the power of modulating surfaces by gradations wrought with some pointed instrument ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... later Babylonian law, according to which, if the services of a slave have been hired by a second person and the slave falls ill or is otherwise rendered incapable of work, the hirer is fined for as long a time as the illness or incapacity continues. The object of the law is clear. It was intended to prevent the slave from being overworked by one who had not, as it were, a family interest in him. It protected the slave and at the same time protected the master to ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... been rapidly regaining the complete control of Numidia, which had been momentarily shaken by the Roman invasion. The presence of the Roman army, some portion of which was still quartered in a part of his dominions, was no check on his activity; for the absence of the commander, the incapacity and dishonesty of the delegates whom he had left in his place, and the demoralising indolence of the rank and file, had reduced the forces to a condition lower than that of mere ineffectiveness ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... necessary," answered Ian. While he spoke he saw in a flash both that his confidence was profound that it was not necessary, and that that incapacity to betray that might be predicated of Old Steadfast was confined to but one of the two upon this rock. The enlightenment stung, then immediately brought out a reaction. "To each some specialty in error! I no more than he am monstrous!" There arose a desire to defend ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... they are not chiefly economic, be the actual poverty of the people and the potential wealth of the country what they may. The Irish Question is a broad and deeply interesting human problem which has baffled generation after generation of a great and virile race, who complacently attribute their incapacity to master it to Irish perversity, and pass on, leaving it unsolved by Anglo-Saxons, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... that little children should rest, we are referring to one side only of the question of work. We mean that they should rest from that external visible work to which the little child through his weakness and incapacity cannot make any contribution useful either to himself or ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... individualistic genius is always destined to do, is rapidly conquering the opposition and prejudice even of those whose obtuse minds seldom discover the intrinsic good motive frequently underlying an indifferent form. Those whose objections rested on their incapacity of penetrating further than the surface of the headline are rapidly beginning to discern in Walt Whitman's writings a force, a sentiment, a moral passion, and a natural grandeur that is amply compensating for the occasional roughness or looseness of the expressions ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... sorrow he was recalling every fleeting expression on his mother's face, every slight intonation of her voice when she was able to share in his game; he hated his uncle and aunt so profoundly that he revelled in their incapacity to understand him, and he would have accounted it a desecration of her memory to share his ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... merely mention, as a familiar example of such errors, that an enlightened student of phrenology called upon me yesterday, to whom phrenologists had given the character of avaricious selfishness and an incapacity for friendship, which indeed was the correct application of the old system, but was the reverse of his true character. The old system did not explain friendship correctly, and entirely mislocated the organ ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... to offer were, however, of the lamest character, as the ambassador took care to show. Firstly, they said they had been taken by surprise. This was manifestly false, as the ambassador attended at the Guildhall upon invitation. They next pleaded ignorance and incapacity in receiving one of so high degree, when the ambassador reminded them that they had recently done honour to the Spanish ambassador; and lastly they endeavoured to throw the whole of the blame upon the master of the ceremonies. This ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... characteristic features. The swelling may attain a considerable size without the patient being aware of its existence, and, as a matter of fact, it is often discovered accidentally. The absence of toxaemia is to be associated with the incapacity of the wall of the abscess to permit of absorption; this is shown also by the fact that when even a large quantity of iodoform is inserted into the cavity of the abscess, there are no symptoms of poisoning. The abscess varies in size from a small cherry ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... be understood,—that is, when he speaks about business. Ye ken yoursell, that Miss Clara is no just like other folk; and were I you—it's my duty to speak plain—I wad e'en gie in a bit scroll of a petition to the Lords, to be appointed Curator Bonis, in respect of her incapacity to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... accomplished, and the savings he made, without even the imputation of avarice or meanness, with the sum comparatively inconsiderable of fifteen millions of francs a year, are marvellous, and expose his successors, and indeed all European Princes, to the reproach of negligence or incapacity. In this branch of his government he owed much to Duroc. It is said that they often visited the markets of Paris (les halles) dressed in plain clothes and early in the morning. When any great accounts were to be submitted to the Emperor, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the tribunals—the minor judges, comprising the private auditors of the Vicar of Rome—have the power of legitimatizing all contracts for persons affected by legal incapacity. This is generally done without examination, and merely in consideration of the fee which they receive. It would take a long chapter to narrate the sums which have been, by a single stroke of the pen, wrongfully taken from poor ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... is followed with reasonable accuracy, if we make due allowance for dramatic requirements. It can hardly be said that the author's representation of Edward is impartial: a kindly veil is drawn over the lawlessness of his government and the disgrace brought upon English arms by his military incapacity. But the political intrigue, the friction between monarch and subjects, the helplessness of the king to enforce his wishes, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... world there have been several noticable facts in the last month. The opera company, perhaps from the utter incapacity of its director, has been divided, and the best portion of it has been singing at Niblo's Theatre. Jenny Lind's farewell series of concerts was prevented by intelligence of the death of the great singer's ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Seraphina herself, whose charms one would imagine should infuse alacrity into the limbs of a cripple sooner than the Bath waters, was to offer herself for his partner, he would answer he never danced, even though the ladies lost their ball by it. Nor doth this denial arise from incapacity, for he was in his youth an excellent dancer, and still retains sufficient knowledge of the art, and sufficient abilities in his limbs to practise it, but from an affectation of gravity which he will not sacrifice to the eagerest desire ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... other hand, there are those who stand aside (either from incapacity or disinclination or both) from the management of affairs and the life of action, and spend their lives in observation and contemplation. Plato and Aristotle regarded this as the highest type of life; it may have been because they were themselves both philosophers. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... but mere Necessaries, and in Half a Week after spend a thousand Pound. When he says this of him with Relation to Expence, he describes him as unequal to himself in every other Circumstance of Life. And indeed, if we consider lavish Men carefully, we shall find it always proceeds from a certain Incapacity of possessing themselves, and finding Enjoyment in their own Minds. Mr. Dryden has expressed this very excellently in the Character of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... planet, like a plodding insect, toward the regions of the sun. After a voyage of fifteen days, wrestling with all manner of baffling winds, and with storms attended, I suppose, with some danger, though, from a happy incapacity of apprehending peril at sea till it is over, I suffered no disquiet from them, we came in sight of the two inlets which form the Turk's Island passage. A winter voyage, however unpleasant, has this advantage, that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... elephant," ch. i. Sir CHARLES BELL, in his essay on The Hand and its Mechanism, which forms one of the "Bridgewater Treatises," has exhibited the reasons deducible from organisation, which show the incapacity of the elephant to spring or leap like the horse and other animals whose structure is designed to facilitate agility and speed. In them the various bones of the shoulder and fore limbs, especially the clavicle and humerus, are set at such an ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... Hackston of Rathillet, Russell of Kettle, and John Balfour of Burley, or, more correctly, of Kinloch. These three men were typical of the class who at this time began to come to the front among the Covenanters, and by their incapacity, folly, and brutality discredited and did their best to ruin a cause whose original justice had been already too much obscured by such parasites. It is impossible to believe that they, or such as they, were inspired by any strong religious feelings. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... threadbare in Congress, on the platform, in the pulpit, in the press, in poetry, in fiction, in impassioned rhetoric, is the reconstruction period. And yet the evils of that period were due far more to the venality and indifference of white men than to the incapacity of black voters. The revised Southern constitutions adopted under reconstruction reveal a higher statesmanship than any which preceded or have followed them, and prove that the freed voters could as easily have been led into the paths ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... bromide, perhaps it was his nervous and bodily exhaustion; the most frightening part of this latest illness was the attendant utter incapacity to make up his mind. When Barbara left him for Crawleigh Abbey, he had resigned from his department and withdrawn the resignation, accepted an invitation to lecture in America—and cancelled the acceptance; every night he led Gaisford through ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... did, and made a current, and I thought a good speech, laying open the ill state of the Navy: by the greatness of the debt; greatness of the work to do against next year; the time and materials it would take; and our incapacity, through a total want of money. I had no sooner done, but Prince Rupert rose up and told the King in a heat, that whatever the gentleman had said, he had brought home his fleet in as good a condition as ever any fleet was brought home; that twenty boats would be as many as the fleet ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... us to believe this, is the Knowledge we have of our selves: We are conscious within of the little Power which Christianity has over our Hearts, and the small Influence it has over our Actions. Finding our own Incapacity of subduing strong Passions, but by the Help of others that are more violent, we judge of others in the same Manner: And therefore when we see a vain, worldly Man gain such a Conquest over his known and ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... happened to modern English religion; I have been in many churches, chapels, and halls where a confident pride in having got beyond creeds was coupled with quite a paralysed incapacity to get beyond catchwords. But wherever the falsity appears it comes from neglect of the same truth: that men should agree on a principle, that they may differ on everything else; that God gave men a law that they ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... have been more opportune than this for the encouragement of our Lord. On earth He had found incredulity among His best friends; incapacity to see why He should die; indifference to His object here. He now meets with those who, with breathless interest, await His death as if it were the one only future event. In their persons He sees, at one view, all who had put their trust in God from the foundation ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... Benedek's incapacity was now completely demonstrated. He telegraphed to the emperor to make peace at any cost, and retreated on Olmutz. Then he changed his mind and decided to fight, seeking to throw the blame for his own errors ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... how they got in. The act of Parliament makes two exceptions: first, it lets in, without examination— and that is very unwise—any foreign doctor who shall be practicing in England at the date of the act, although, with equal incapacity, it omits to provide that any future foreign doctor shall be able to demand examination (in with the old foreign fogies, blindfold, right or wrong; out with the rising foreign luminaries of an ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... ministers will retain their positions, every thing will be in vain. Every thing is so diseased and rotten that, unless the whole be thrown away, there is no reasonable hope left. I hoped the Emperor of Russia would boldly denounce the incapacity of the cabinet, and by his powerful influence succeed in cleansing our Augean stable, but he is too gentle for such an undertaking, and has no man of irresistible power and energy at his side. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... that time had been allowed to pass, the clear policy of the Pretender was to permit the fears of Englishmen to go to sleep for a while, to endeavor to reorganize his plans and his party; to wait until a certain reaction should set in, a reaction very likely to come about because of the apparent incapacity and the unattractive character of George the First, and then at some timely hour, with well-matured preparations, to strike an energetic blow. George the First was only a year on the throne when the adherents of James got up a ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... partly in the right!"—Wise is he who, when beaten, learns the reasons of it, and alters these. This wisdom, it must be owned, is Friedrich's; and much distinguishes him among generals and men. Veracity of mind, as I say, loyal eyesight superior to sophistries; noble incapacity of self-delusion, the root of all good qualities in man. His epilogue to this Campaign is remarkable;—too long for quoting here, except the first word of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... commands and prohibitions, it enacts light or serious penalties against the recalcitrant, all the way from political or civil incapacity to fines, imprisonment, exile and the guillotine. In other words, the money I do not owe it, and of which it robs me, pays for the persecution which it inflicts upon me; I am reduced to paying out of my own purse the wages of my ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... book dropped from her lap. Why this excited her laughter she could not understand; but she laughed for a long time, until her eyes were dim with tears. It might be better to go to bed. What was the hour? She tried vainly to read her watch, and again laughed at such absurd incapacity. Then— ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... to justify his theory by examples, and only proved his own incapacity as a writer for the stage. His friend SEDAINE (1719-97) was more fortunate. Of the bourgeois drama of the eighteenth century, Le Philosophe sans le savoir alone survives. It is little more than a domestic ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... they sell us many slaves without any other right than that of their tyranny, relieving their necessities and making their payments with the first person whom they meet—bringing him, beguiled by some other pretext, to the Spaniards; and the injury was suffered without any complaint, because of the incapacity and dullness of the poor Subanos. The latter, as they are so unused to intercourse with us, and so shut up in their own lives, had no arguments to oppose to what they did not understand; and showed their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... impassable for the average intellect. The deadly rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, of Englishman and Spaniard, have left indelible traces upon their descendants which intensify race prejudice and misunderstanding. The Englishman or American looks with a contempt upon the economic blindness or incapacity of the Spaniard that veils his eyes to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... to Barbados) on Washington's face creates a natural suspicion as to accuracy in detail of any of the portraits. Perhaps the divergence among them is not greater than that among those of Mary, Queen of Scots, and indicates only the marked incapacity of some of the painters who did them. We are certainly justified in saying that Washington's features varied considerably from his early prime to the days when he was President. We have come to talk about him as an old man because from the time when he ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... answers can hardly think that there is any natural incapacity in these children to acquire with maturity of years the ideas and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... utter stodginess and stupidity of humanity EN MASSE had of late struck him very forcibly, and he found every excuse for the so-called incapacity of Governments, seeing the kind of folk they are called upon to govern. He realised, as we all who read history, must do, that we are no worse and no better than the peoples of the past,—we are just as ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... was impossible to set up a rival society against him; and an exclusive monopoly in music was, therefore, held by him. According to M. Saint-Saens he was a mediocre musician, and had, in spite of his passion for music, "immense incapacity." In Harmonie et Melodie M. Saint-Saens says: "The few chamber-music societies that existed were also closed to all new-comers; their programmes only contained the names of undisputed celebrities, the writers of classic symphonies. In those times one ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... you are among those who introduced and obtained the adoption of the Leavenworth resolution, and who are endeavoring to organize a force for the purpose of general retaliation upon Missouri. Those who so deplore my 'imbecility' and 'incapacity' are the very men who are endeavoring to bring about a collision between the people of Kansas and the troops under ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... situation in the calm of my room, I had no qualms as to either the elopement or the suicide, hut I felt a revulsion of feeling towards Peter. His lack of moral indignation and purpose, his intractability in all that was serious and his incapacity to improve had been cutting a deep though unconscious division between us for years; and I determined at whatever cost, after this, that I would ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... gratification by Bacon's plea of Guilty, and was obliged to content himself with attending the Speaker to the bar of the House of Lords when judgment was to be prayed, and with hearing the Chief Justice, by order of the Lords, condemn Bacon to a fine of L40,000, incapacity ever to hold any office again, exile from Court, and imprisonment in the Tower during ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... system organized with military energy, could scarcely develop great results in national administration; yet the Americans prided themselves chiefly on their political capacity. Even the war did not undeceive them, although the incapacity brought into evidence by the war was undisputed, and was most remarkable among the communities which believed themselves to be most gifted with political sagacity. Virginia and Massachusetts by turns admitted failure in dealing with issues so simple ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... trampled all the combinations of diplomatists into the dust. In the early part of July, 536, he had succeeded in capturing the important city of Neapolis, and had begun to threaten Rome. The Gothic warriors, disgusted at the incapacity of their King, and probably suspecting his disloyalty to the nation, met (August, 536) under arms upon the plain of Regeta[66], deposed Theodahad, and elected a veteran named Witigis as his successor. Witigis at once ordered Theodahad to be put to death, and being ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... exiles to whom he had given so princely a welcome. Yet neither commiseration nor good will could prevent him from speedily discovering that his brother of England was the dullest and most perverse of human beings. The folly of James, his incapacity to read the characters of men and the signs of the times, his obstinacy, always most offensively displayed when wisdom enjoined concession, his vacillation, always exhibited most pitiably in emergencies which required firmness, had made him an outcast from England, and might, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this theory; if Olivia had confessed the broken engagement she would have thought her shallow and untrustworthy. She was confident, with inexperience's sublime incapacity for self-doubt, that in all the wide world there was only one man whom she could have loved or ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... refined of this city as you will find among the ignorant and the vicious and the criminal classes. Is stupidity a sin? asks Thomas in his Forty-Sixth Question. And the great schoolman answers himself, "Stupidity may come of natural incapacity, in which case it is not a sin. But it may come, on the other hand, of a man immersing his soul in the things of this world so as to shut out all the things of God and of the world to come, in which case stupidity is a deadly sin." Now, from all ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... at these evidences of hopeless incapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence of Mrs. Reed—a soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried in her small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitterness and antagonism of the typical ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... place. Hence to partisanship was added jealousy. At the daily tasks there was but one topic of conversation—O'Shimo's favour with her lord. The charms she used were evident enough, for Nature had been lavish with the kind to meet his lordship's wishes. How was it their own parents had spawned such incapacity? "Deign, O'Shimo Dono, to teach the art so sadly lacking. How bring to prominence such meagre gifts of proportion as one does possess? In turn shall be taught the art of the hanaike—the arrangement of flowers, of the koto ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Almost all my life I have taken alcoholic liquors in moderation, but have also been a total abstainer for a short period. My experience is that neither course with either ingredient has anything to do with mental work as capacity for it; unless, indeed, we are to except the incapacity produced by excessive drinking, of which, however, I have ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... the business. His father had been to the manner born, and things had prospered with him, but Alan by himself would not have been able to achieve a like success. He knew this, and was proud of his incapacity; and he took the first opportunity of handing over the establishment to a successor. The money which he received for the transfer, added to that which his father had left, secured him an income on which it was possible ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant |
