"Unfitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this purpose, the Marine Committee have already ordered some vessels to France, under your direction as to their future operations, and more, we expect, will be sent. But our frigates are not capable of carrying much bulky commodity for commercial purposes, without unfitting them for war; besides, there is the consideration of our being obliged to get them away, how, and when we can, or endanger their being taken, which prevents our sending them to those staple Colonies, where the commodities wanted are to be obtained. The reciprocal benefits ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... Necessity must bound its limits. In this case the course of events to the very end of the trial shows that summary measures were not necessary to enable the trial to go on. Departure from established judicial practice, which makes it unfitting for a judge who is personally involved to sit in his own case, was therefore unwarranted. Neither self-respect nor the good name of the law required it. Quite otherwise. Despite the many incidents of contempt that ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... bad habit," said my lord, lighting another seagar: "a disgusting and filthy practice, which you, my dear child, will do well to avoid. It is at best, dear Algernon, but a nasty, idle pastime, unfitting a man as well for mental exertion as for respectable society; sacrificing, at once, the vigor of the intellect and the graces of the person. By-the-by, what infernal bad tobacco they have, too, in this hotel. Could not you send ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... officer had gone the men grouped around the two players. It was to be an interesting game. The elder ladies meanwhile had surrounded the curate, to talk with him of the things of religion; but Brother Salvi seemed to judge the time unfitting and made but vague replies, his rather irritated glance being directed almost everywhere except toward ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... law, and which the Saviour came not to destroy but to complete (for what he completed was not alien to Him, but yet it was not perfect); secondly, the part comprising evil and unrighteous things, which the Saviour did away with as something unfitting His nature; and thirdly, the part which is for types and symbols, which is given as a law, as images of things spiritual and excellent which, from being evident and manifest to the senses, the Saviour changed ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... than any other calling for sympathy and care, we see him cast among strangers and mercenaries, without either nurse or friend;—the self-collectedness of woman being, as we shall find, wanting for the former office, and the youth and inexperience of Count Gamba unfitting him wholly for the other. The very firmness with which a position so lone and disheartening was sustained, serves, by interesting us more deeply in the man, to increase our sympathy, till we almost forget admiration in pity, and half regret that he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "It were unfitting," he said; "I shall take a lowlier seat." Then he drew a stool to him, and sat down before her, and said: "What ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... much of were so wrong as I in my soul felt them to be. One of them—I had gone to him with a scruple—told me that, even if I were raised to high contemplation, those occasions and conversations were not unfitting for me. This was towards the end, when, by the grace of God, I was withdrawing more and more from those great dangers, but not wholly from the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... present population and the small number of the people who either permanently or temporarily reside in the district as compared with its vast expanse and the variety of the interests that have to be subserved, make it altogether unfitting in my judgment to provide for a popular election of a legislative body. The present system is not adequate and does not furnish the character of local control that ought to be there. The only compromise it seems to me which may give needed local legislation and secure a conservative ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... then let them have their way. After all, a guest's women helped the woman of the house, and as there was no woman in Keeper's House, it was not unfitting ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... "And most unfitting for you, were it not that you laboured in a great cause; but it must soon be decided, and then that fair lily shall be transplanted, like a wild flower from the rock, and be nurtured in ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... parlor, Mrs. Tulliver came down to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... acts. And I do not repeat what might be added, as it is almost all of the same sort as those of which I have written—being the effects of a depraved character, as is evident, for his will is governed by unfitting motives. He has, moreover, a son who is accustomed to argue with him, increasing his covetous disposition, although there is no need for that. [In the margin: "Let the papers in regard to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... and their tone was good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's protegee had been softened. ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I hold, and hold strongly, that the study of physical science, far from interfering with an officer's studies, much less unfitting for them, must assist him in them, by keeping his mind always in the very attitude and the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... him, I was trying to become great—and with him went from me that sphere of labour which was to witness the triumph of my pride. I saw the estate pass into other hands; a mighty change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting, for me to analyse. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was so: there is a divine insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers worlds. At least, when that period was past, I had done, and suffered so strangely, that nothing ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... cruelty of science, sacrificing its best loved object to its curiosity. And may we not turn the whole tale into a parable of the isolation produced by a peculiar and unnatural rearing, say in heterodox beliefs, or unconventional habits, unfitting the victim for society, making her to ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... a man Julian's conduct appeared not only immoral but inadvisable, and unfitting in a young man, especially ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... of satisfying them should be equally within the reach of all. Fit a man's education to his real self, not to what is no part of him. Do you not see that in striving to fit him merely for one station, you are unfitting him for anything else, so that some caprice of Fortune may make your work really harmful to him? What could be more absurd than a nobleman in rags, who carries with him into his poverty the prejudices of his birth? What is more despicable than a rich man fallen into poverty, who recalls the scorn ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... morning service drew near, the drummer took his accustomed stand before the church and began to thunder forth his summons,—a summons not unfitting those stern Puritans whose idea of religion was that of a life-long warfare against the world, the flesh, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... leave to sit by me. I consented, while an incomprehensible feeling crept over me; and when once I had time to recollect myself, I shrunk from him, as a blood stained brute, with whom even in his extremity it was unfitting for me to hold any intercourse. When he noticed my repugnance to remain near him, he addressed me hastily, as if afraid that I would destroy the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... corrupt, that I should consider myself a partaker of your crime, were I to be guided by your opinion"; or, "You are so grossly ignorant, that I, fresh from my hounds, from my plough, my counter, or my loom, am fit to direct you in your own profession." This is an unfitting, it is a dangerous state of things. The spirit of any sort of men is not a fit rule for deciding on the bounds of their jurisdiction: first, because it is different in different men, and even different in the same at different times, and can never become the proper directing line ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... introductive unto popish superstitions, whereas they had been duly and ordinarily practised by the whole church during a great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that though since that time they had by subtle practices begun to fall into disuse, and in place thereof other foreign and unfitting usages by little and little to creep in, yet in the royal chapels and many other churches most of them had been ever constantly used and observed) it was declared that the standing of the communion table sideway under the east window of every chancel was in its ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... disproportionate, disproportionated^; inharmonious, unharmonious^; inconsonant, unconsonant^; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper; unsuited, unsuitable; inapplicable, not to the point; unfit, unfitting, unbefitting; unbecoming; illtimed, unseasonable, mal a propos [Fr.], inadmissible; inapposite &c (irrelevant) 10. uncongenial; ill-assorted, ill-sorted; mismatched, misjoined^, misplaced, misclassified; unaccommodating, irreducible, incommensurable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... answered coolly, "albeit methinks that for one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little clemency were not unfitting." ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... a simple solution of the difficulty and upon its submission to the public meeting called for its consideration, it was felt that the comment of the irrepressible Victor Forsythe was not entirely unfitting: ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... particularly, for the quiet studious life he led, almost lonely, had grown to be very pleasant to him. He read a great deal outside his law, and enjoyed his days as he had never done before. Unconsciously he had fallen into a mode of life and a habit of thought which were unfitting him for a politician's career. He gave very little thought to that, however; his ambition for the time had taken a new form. He wished to be well read; to be a scholar such as he ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... abandoned to women: doubtless, when sitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasant to hear from a lovely mouth—'I put implicit confidence in your honor:' but, though pretty and becoming to such a mouth, it is very unfitting to the mouth of a scholar: and I will be bold to affirm that no man, who had ever acquired a scholar's knowledge of the English language, has used the word in that lax and unmeaning way. The history of the word is this.— Implicit (from the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... that the regulation of industry, the distribution of wealth—these and all other questions derive their importance solely from the manner in which they affect individual men, women and children, fitting or unfitting them for the life that now is and that which is to come. A good deal might be said of {72} the temper which makes fun of the idea of God's "solicitude to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness"; but we may leave that unhappy phrase ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of Aristotle, that to seen ridiculous is a ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... both to the writer and reader, of the attempt which must be made to use vague words so as to convey a precise meaning, is not wholly a matter of regret. It is not unfitting that logical treatises should afford an example of that, to facilitate which is among the most important uses of logic. Philosophical language will for a long time, and popular language still longer, retain so much of vagueness and ambiguity, that logic would be of little value ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... from the Voice Ineffable this word Of twofold mandate uttered by the Lord:— "Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed, Goodly and splendid—whom I crowned the king. For at this hour my servant doth a thing Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight; Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight, Before the palace, where he gazeth now Filling his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... quiet is a relief for the foot, if he has ever a wound in the foot, he lifts it up, and keeps it undisturbed as much as possible. When he is troubled by disturbing humours, he eats grass, with which he vomits up that which was unfitting, and recovers. Since therefore it has been shown that the animal 72 that we fixed the argument upon for the sake of an example, chooses that which is suitable for him, and avoids what is harmful, and that he has ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... of husbandry. During the period of his apprenticeship, his thoughts had been turned to poetical composition, but it was subsequent to the commercial disasters of 1825 that he began earnestly to direct his attention towards the concerns of literature. Successive periods of bad health unfitting him for continued labour in the fields, were improved by extensive reading and composition. Before he had completed his nineteenth year he had produced upwards of twenty poetical compositions, each of considerable length, and the whole replete with power, both of sentiment ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... history, but the original work of an unseen Artist. The variegated colours scattered about are not reflections of outside lights, but belong to the painter himself, and come passion-tinged from his heart; thereby unfitting the record on the canvas for use as evidence in a ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose." There was in Spenser a facility for turning to account all material, original or borrowed, an incontinence of the descriptive faculty, which was ever ready to exercise itself on any object, the most unfitting and loathsome, as on the noblest, the purest, or the most beautiful. There are pictures in him which seem meant to turn our stomach. Worse than that there are pictures which for a time rank the poet of Holiness or Temperance, with the painters who used their great art to ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... of the other woman. "In her heart she is humble and seemly. It is only her speech and her ways that are unfitting." ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... that one of the most cruel results of modern social life is the cutting off of young girls from acquaintanceship with youths of the sturdy, intelligent and hardworking type—and the unfitting of such girls for anything except the ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... but unfitting for it," replied the Scot. "Give me the dress of a slave, noble Ilderim, and I will don it with pleasure; but I cannot brook to wear the habit of the free Eastern warrior with the turban of ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... seems not unfitting to me to take next into our consideration, as it were all in a train, what he has also said against him. But first let us contemplate a little the diligence—together with the manifold and profound knowledge—of this our philosopher, who says, that Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... said she. "It would only do harm. But I wish ministers knew and felt that at the communion table there is a Real Presence that makes many words unfitting. When we are on the mount of Transfiguration, we do not care much for Peter, James or John. And so, dear, I recommend you to do as I do—if the minister must give us a doctrinal disquisition, or a learned argument, or an elaborate arabesque of fancy work, or an impassioned appeal, let ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... retirement, heard of her lover's advancement with pride and fear. She distrusted her worth, and found the hard menial duties of life more irksome than before. Not that she shrank from labor, but she feared its unfitting her for the refinement required by her lover's new social position. She had few examples to teach her the small proprieties of small minds, but a native delicacy helped her more than she was conscious of. She read her Bible a great deal, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons of intelligence were compelled to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley's famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... great difficulty and importance. The discussion has hitherto been limited to the lesser evils attributable to the forcing upon the masses of the people a useless and unsuitable kind of education. But there are far graver possibilities than the mere unfitting of large numbers of individuals for the occupations their natural ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... it mattered much myself who saw them," he said, "when you proposed it. But now it has actually happened I see it's very unfitting for you to do it, very unfitting. However, I don't believe we ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... proud brook that flows southward by Wilton, "where Delia hath her seat." If it may seem in any degree unfitting that Daniel should address language so glowing as is found in the Delia sonnets to a lady who is established as the head of a household with husband and sons about her, attention may be called to the fact that the sonnets, though they are ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... gazed like wight distraught, And hurried here and there with fruitless speed: But when he had recalled the ring to thought, Foiled and astounded, cursed his little heed. And now the vanished lady, whom he sought, Of that ungrateful and discourteous deed Accusing stood, wherewith she had repaid, (Unfitting recompense) his generous aid. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations, which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. So that what either in the words or sense of an author, or in the language and actions of men, is awry or depraved, does strongly stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to laughter. And therefore it was clear that all insolent and obscene speeches, jests ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... were followed presently by the unhappy years of the great Civil Wars. It was perhaps not unfitting that a Grenville—Sir Bevil Grenville—led an army against the Parliamentarian troops in the Battle of Lansdown Hill, though it was an army of Cornishmen he led, and not of Devonshire men, for the Grenvilles were then living at their Cornish home of Stowe. Sir Bevil was killed in battle, but Anthony ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... she took out her list of errands and began to read it absently. But in the back of her mind she was turning over Tony's remarks. She had never allowed herself to dwell on the time when the Webster homestead would actually be her own. It seemed unfitting to plan on acquiring property that could only come to her through the death of another person. Now, however, she suddenly gave her imagination rein and began to consider what changes she would make when the farm was really in ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... priest should be in waiting to wed them so soon as he should have brought her out of the fortress. Upon that detail they were within an ace of quarrelling. Guidobaldo would not at first agree to such hasty nuptials; they were unfitting the dignity and the station of his niece, and if Gian Maria would wed her he must come to Urbino and let the ceremony be performed by a cardinal. Well was it then for Gian Maria that he mastered ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... is a new development in sociology. She has many lessons to learn, but one has hopes of her. It is said that she is unfitting herself to be a wife and mother. If the ideal helpmeet for a man be an animated Dresden china shepherdess—something that looks pretty on the table, something to be shown round to one's friends, something that can be locked up safely in a cupboard, that asks no questions, and, therefore, need be ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... position and realized in any degree the legitimate claims which their country had upon them, their natural efforts to take part in the administration were promptly checked, and they were reminded that it was unbecoming and unfitting for the descendants of the gods to mingle in ordinary earthly affairs. In this way it often fell out that the ablest of the emperors retired from the actual position of reigning emperor in order to free themselves from the restraints of etiquette and from the burden of ennui ...
— Japan • David Murray
... he appeared suddenly as the Indian warrior yet she liked him better in that part than as she now saw him. Then he was majestic, now he was prosaic, and it seemed to her that his present role was unfitting. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... painting been so unerringly though instinctively apprehended, and the essence of what is pictorial in a picture so justly conceived, as by the school of Venice; and the train of thought suggested in what has been now said is, perhaps, a not unfitting introduction to a few pages about Giorgione, who, though much has been taken by recent criticism from what was reputed to be his work, yet, more entirely than any other painter, sums up, in what we know of himself and his art, the spirit of the ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... he said. And then he cried out: "Ah, Persephone, strive to feel kindliness in your heart toward me who carried you off by violence and against your will. I can give to you one of the great kingdoms that the Olympians rule over. And I, who am brother to Zeus, am no unfitting husband for you, ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... men, bent his knee and carried her hand to his lips. So on Birthnights he kissed the late Queen's hand, she standing before the Throne. Then stood very grave. "Madam, I entreat your pardon. I have shown you a side of a man's character very unfitting for your eyes and you but the child you are. Forgive me, and ere we part for ever, answer me one question, in token of your pardon. Had I been but James Hamilton, the lowest of my clan—could you have honoured ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Counsellor. It is also to be noted by whom the Woman was tempted; even by the most ugly and unworthy of all Beasts, into whom the Devil entered and persuaded. Secondly, What was the Motive of her Disobedience? Even a desire to know what was most unfitting her Knowledge; an Affection which has ever since remained in all the Posterity of her Sex. Thirdly, What was it that moved the Man to yield to her Persuasions; even the same Cause which hath moved all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Otway's restless, ill-concealed unhappiness. Even in the old days Anna had disapproved of Major Guthrie, and she had thought it very strange indeed that he came so often to the Trellis House. To her mind such conduct was unfitting. What on earth could a middle-aged man have to say to the mother of ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... for the curing. The meat must be chilled through before salt touches it, but freezing is very detrimental. Frozen meat does not absorb the salt, sugar, etc., essential to proper curing. By time it thaws so absorption becomes possible, there may have been changes such as take place in cold storage, unfitting it for food. If the beef ham is thick it may need to lie a month in salt or in brine. Here as elsewhere, the element ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... I hesitate, for fear that in saying precisely what fits your case I may seem to be uttering words that are unfitting for myself.[14] This I will pass over; and further, by Jupiter, also the affairs of Gabinius, against whom, you prepared accusers and then pled his cause in such a way that he was condemned; and the pamphlets which you compose ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... however. He was a stubborn man, czar in his own domains, a small principality bounded by four inhospitable walls. His guests—having no other place to go—were his subjects, or prisoners, and distress could not find a more unfitting tribunal before which to lay its case. There was something so malevolent in his vigilance, so unfriendly in his scrutiny, that to the players he seemed an emissary of disaster, inseparable ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the mouthpiece of his government. The blame must fall, not on the intelligent servant, but on the feeble masters. Who can wonder if the daring and haughty spirit of Catharine scoffed at the remonstrances, and despised the interests of a country, whose cabinet adopted language so unfitting the dignity and real power of the mighty British empire? The expressions of this dialogue would have been humiliating to the smallest of the "square-league" sovereignties of the Continent. The answer of the empress was precisely what she might have addressed to the envoy of Poland ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... save that continual so doing might lessen them; but when he blasphemes the Spirit—it being so interwoven as to be, in a sense, a part of himself—he involves his own soul, by taking a stand against himself, as it were, thereby unfitting and unqualifying himself to be further affected by the Spirit. He drowns, dissolves, annihilates the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... If we find, as we do in many great works of criticism, objections made to the performance of several characters by actors of high renown merely for their deficiency in personal appearance—if the externals of Mr. Garrick are stated by his warmest panegyrists as unfitting him for characters of dignity or heroism, even to his exclusion from Faulconbridge, Hotspur, &c. and if we find that the greatest admirers of Barry considered the harmony and softness of his features, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... handicap to successful husbandry formed by the habit is easily perceived. Many efforts are being made to break up the custom, but it is up-hill work. Another habit of the Negro which militates against his progress is his prowling about in all sorts of revels by night, thereby unfitting himself for labor the next day. This trait also shows forth the general thoughtlessness of the Negro. His mule works by day, but is expected to carry his owner any number of miles at night. Sunday is seldom a day of rest ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... economic and administrative reconstruction which now awaited him. How this task—at once more congenial and more especially his own—was discharged is a matter that must be left for a second volume. In the meantime the conclusion of the Surrender Agreement is no unfitting stage at which to bring the review of the first period of Lord Milner's administration to ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... trouble! For his joy, He makes you recompense. 'Tis not unfitting For you, Count Piccolomini, to feel So tenderly—my brother it beseems To show himself forever great ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the anticipation of giving up her kingdom into the hands of so unfitting a ruler as Cecil, there lurked a pleasurable consciousness that at last Christopher would recognise her worth, when he found how inferior her successor was to herself. It was strange how this desire to compel the regard which she had voluntarily forfeited, had haunted Elisabeth for so many ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... brought to listen to such a guilty proposal.—But her mind—alas!—is not of the firm texture it once could boast; and your friend knows well how to press on the spring of every passion that can agitate and alarm her. Threats of exposure may extort her consent to this most unfitting match, if they do not indeed drive her to suicide, which I think the most likely termination. I will, therefore, be strong where she is weak.—Your friend, sir, must at least strip his proposals of their fine gilding. I will satisfy Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... old house, with high lichen-stained roof and narrow windows—where but in sunny France could one see its like?—and the little farmsteads and villages, full of indescribable charm. One felt oneself in a land of artists. There was no inharmonious, no unfitting thing anywhere. Man had wedded himself to Nature, and his works seemed to receive her seal and benediction. English landscape was beautiful, and it had a particular charm to be found nowhere else in the world; but in revenge, there was something here that England ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and the others could not declaim French verse, and improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which was fitting for every one else was unfitting for a clergyman; but he would not in this matter overstep the line of decorum as drawn in that part of Wessex, which did not exclude his sanction of the young people's acting charades in his sister-in-law's house—a very different ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... had got many of her notions of the metropolis from the British Essayists, where town is so often represented as the centre of dissipation, corrupting country wives and squires' daughters, and unfitting them for all their duties by the constant whirl of its not always innocent pleasures. London was a sort of moral pitch, which few could touch and not be defiled. Miss Browning had been on the watch for the signs of deterioration in Cynthia's character ever since her return ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... minutes more would have taken horse for Esher, had not Madam Nan claimed his word to ride out hawking with her. And next, she sendeth me a warning by one of her pert maids, that I should be whipped, if I spoke to his Grace of unfitting matters. My flesh could brook no more, and like a born natural, I made answer that Nan Boleyn was no mistress of mine to bid me hold a tongue that had spoken sooth to her betters. Thereupon, what think you, boy? The grooms came and soundly flogged me for uncomely ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mertoun while she was sinning with another! He should have felt that this was incredible, and immediately understood, as Guendolen does, that her lover and Mertoun were the same. Dulness and blindness so improbable are unfitting in a drama, nor does the passion of his overwhelming pride excuse him. The central situation is a protracted irritation. Browning was never a good hand at construction, even in his poems. His construction is at its very ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and unfitting—as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her prettiness, and her art, and her small world—was it fair to her? Is there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position, when, bon gre, mal gre, there is a big part ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... separation of one after another denomination from the Puritan Church, each, in its turn, to be divided into a score of sects, according as circumstances should alter religious views. Were the principles of true religion in themselves progressive, were the teachings, of the gospel inadequate to or unfitting for all possible stages of human progress, or were they capable of development, the world might then have been the gainer. Or, again, were reason infallible, the separation of the churches would be an incalculable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a pupil or minor meits to choose him a curator, by the law of France they are responsible to the pupill if ether the party nominat be unfitting, or behave himself fraudulently and do damnage, and be found to be ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... the crown. The Earl of Derby, lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses, which he had sent with his letter, and which ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the compass and the north wind were named after him. Those who descended to him were oppressed by the darkness of his abode, but were subjected to no other trials; nor were they sent thither as a punishment, but merely from having died of diseases unfitting them for Tlalocan. Mictlanteuctli was said to be the most powerful of the gods. For who is stronger than Death? And who dare defy the Grave? As the skald lets Odin say to Bragi: "Our lot is uncertain; even on the hosts of the gods ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Lucy said. "He shan't be whipped any more, shall he, because Miss Grantly looks like a statue? And, Fanny, don't tell Mark to put me into a lunatic asylum. I also know a hawk from a heron, and that's why I don't like to see such a very unfitting marriage." There was then nothing more said on the subject, and in two minutes they arrived at the house of the Hogglestock clergyman. Mrs. Crawley had brought two children with her when she came from the Cornish curacy to Hogglestock, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... irregularity, and occasionally the excessive duration, of these periods of unemployment too often makes unemployment not a beneficent vacation (comparable to shorter hours), but a period of tragic anxiety, demoralizing and unfitting for return to work. Irregular work is generally recognized to be a greater cause of poverty and of actual pauperism than is a low ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... but laughter (most unfitting the occasion) could be got out of the assembled natives. They now began to return to their homes, and Bludger, crowned with flowers that became him but ill, was carried off, not, as it seemed to me, without even a reverential demeanour on the part ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... of his trouble. The passing recoil from an ardent avowal is no uncommon experience with the finer types of men. But, to Roy, it seemed peculiarly unfitting that the son of his mother should, as it were, stumble into marriage in a headlong impulse of passion, on a superficial six weeks' acquaintance; and the shy, spiritual side of him felt alarmed, restive, even ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... delighted, as if he—as if I had been given a new frock." She altered the "as if he had given me" which was upon her tongue because the proposition, even for purposes of illustration, that a nobleman could ever have offered her a new frock seemed to have in itself something of the scandalous and unfitting. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... ourselves, by God's grace, to go; get what we have fitted ourselves to possess; and be what we have made ourselves. To the Christian man the word comes, 'Thou shalt stand in thy lot.' And the other word that was spoken about one sinner, will be fulfilled in all whose lives have been unfitting them for heaven: 'Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.' He, too, stands in his lot. Now settle which lot ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Worthies planned by the JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA, the first issue of which was devoted to Maimonides. The biography of Rashi is the second of the series. It is not for the author to endorse the order adopted, but he hazards the opinion that the readers will find the portrait of Rashi no unfitting companion-piece even to that of ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... of June (St. Peter's Day) Lord Sanquhar was hung before Westminster Hall. On the ladder he confessed the enormity of his sins, but said that till his trial, blinded by the devil, he could not see he had done anything unfitting a man of his rank and quality, who had been trained up in the wars, and had lived the life of a soldier, standing more on points of honour than religion. He then professed that he died a Roman Catholic, and begged all Roman ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... were forbidden to stay out all night, and were not on any account permitted to enter the bakehouse, brewhouse, and granary, excepting the brother in charge, and he was not to dare to touch the bread and beer, since it was "most unfitting that persons with such a malady, should handle things appointed for the common use of men." A gallows was sometimes erected in front of the houses, on which offenders were summarily despatched from this world, ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... to enter in another place. And therefore, the French Poets are often forced upon absurdities. For if the Act begins in a Chamber, all the persons in the Play must have some business or other to come thither; or else they are not to be shown in that Act: and sometimes their characters are very unfitting to appear there. As, suppose it were the King's Bedchamber; yet the meanest man in the Tragedy, must come and despatch his business there, rather than in the Lobby or Courtyard (which is [were] fitter for him), ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... is one character of Byzantine work which, according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or sculpture. In this ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... his companion's thoughts. There was a vein of stubborn pride in him, and he had, no doubt, decided it was unfitting that Evelyn's future should be linked to that of a ruined man. This was an exaggerated view, because Vane was in reality far from ruined, and even if he had been so, he had in him the ability to recover from his misfortunes. ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Richard Crawshay, the first of the great ironmasters who had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of manufacturing iron invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting commentary on the sad history we have thus briefly described. It shows how, as respects mere money-making, shrewdness is more potent than invention, and business faculty than manufacturing skill. Richard Crawshay was born at Normanton near Leeds, the son of a small ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... that the cabildo of the church and that of the city have written, and are now writing, in regard to the seating of the wives and daughters of the auditors, and what should be conceded to the city officials. It certainly appears unfitting that in the main chapel of the cathedral, which is not very large, the priest, the ministers, and the archbishop or bishop, when they are in the most exalted part of the ministration at the altar, should encounter immediately under their eyes, handsomely dressed women and girls. I ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... they looked it swung immediately over it and there stood for some moments, its tall dust column rising up into the zenith like the smoke of a funeral pyre! Then on they marched and there they left him, sure that by night lions would be roaring him a requiem not unfitting his ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... would bring to his strength. William's reawaking and ready intellect soon seized upon the importance of the object pressed upon him. He interrupted the Lombard, drew pen and parchment towards him, and wrote rapidly. Horses were harnessed, horsemen equipped in haste, and with no unfitting retinue Lanfranc departed on the mission, the most important in its consequences that ever passed from potentate to pontiff. [234] Rebraced to its purpose by Lanfranc's cheering assurances, the resolute, indomitable soul of William now applied itself, night and day, to the difficult ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peace," said the Queen, "this is unfitting language; and, besides, I would speak," said she, recollecting herself, "with the Abbot of Saint Mary's—Nay, Douglas, I will not let you quit my ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... certainly from irreverence, nor (a prelate for half his life) in conscious incredulity, but only in mute surprise, at an administration of divine graces—this administration in which he was a high priest—in itself, to his quite honest thinking, so unfitting, so improbable. And was it that Gaston too was a less independent ruler of his own mental world than he had fancied, that he derived his impressions of things not directly from them, but mediately from other people's impressions about them, and he ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... I fear, that I met Aunt Carola in that unfitting spirit, that volatile mood, which, as I have said already, her remarks often ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... hulled, the armed vessels received no injury unfitting them for instant service, and of their crews lost only 13 wounded. By three o'clock in the morning they were all anchored twelve miles above New Carthage, ready to co-operate with the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... 1. [From the address of the father of Rullus.] Be well assured that penalties most unfitting in such cases, while they destroy the culprits under sentence, who might have been made better, are of no avail in correcting the rest. Human nature refuses to leave its regular course for any threats. Some pressing fear or violence of audacity together ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio |
