"Capability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his knowledge of the man, and his previous attack upon his character, was not, at this moment, free from the fascination; and at the eleventh hour he found it difficult to withdraw entirely his confidence in Mr Bellamy's ultimate desire and capability to deal honorably and justly by him. Much of the Mogul's power was unquestionably derived from his massive physique; but his chief excellence lay in that peculiar off-hand, patronizing, take-it-for-granted air, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... was subjecting the exclusive, established faith, to every kind of investigation. Whence this inconsistency? It did not spring from the Reformer, but only from the unavoidable necessity of his age, in which the capability of judging had not yet penetrated the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... Mr Sedgwick, but he rather doubted our capability of performing the operation. He could not help us, as he was required to attend to our friends, while his man had to look after the plantations and animals, and indeed had ample work. He thought that fresh planks ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... savage life began to wear away, I rambled much about the country, in order to form some judgment of its capability of improvement. I never possessed any practical knowledge of farming, and therefore cannot give a scientific opinion or description of the different soils. In whatever direction I travelled, and at ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... be inferred that all are on the low plane of intelligence I have described. There is here and there an exception. But the exceptions are rare. And in our preaching we aim to speak, as did Paul, 'as to babes.' As to natural capacity, and their capability of attaining to high intelligence in the things of men and God, things human and divine, under the hand of adequate instruction, I regard them as being equal to any people in ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... dancing floor or in the saloons of gaiety, or the establishment of a fashionable tailor, so that when Ethelyn, at twelve, went down to Boston, she found her tall, slender, light-haired cousin of sixteen a perfect dandy, with a capability and a disposition to criticise and laugh at whatever there was of gaucherie in her country manners and country dress. In some things the two were of mutual benefit to each other. Ethelyn, who could ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... in such a case the new-born ego must inevitably be weak also, the disordered lower ego will gain the upper hand, and the person will lose his ability for balanced judgment. Had he developed sufficient capability and firmness in logical thinking, he might have calmly left his ordinary ego to go its ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... nursery, and watched the washing and undressing and hair-curling, and listened to their joyous chatter about the wonderful presents and the wonderful pleasures of that day. Afterwards, when they were safely tucked away, she went down to supper and received the compliments of Morley on her capability in entertaining children. Mrs. Morley also, and in a more genuine way, added ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... one of the wealthiest families in ——, highly educated and accomplished, idolized by her parents and brothers, she had entered the world as one born to command. With much native nobleness and magnanimity of character, with warm and impulsive feelings, and a capability of every thing high or great, she had hitherto lived solely for her own amusement, and looked on the whole brilliant circle by which she was surrounded, with all its various actors, as something got up for her special diversion. The idea of influencing any one, for better ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... restoring our defense capability. But much remains to be done. There must be no wavering by us, nor any doubts by others, that America will meet her responsibilities to remain free, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... conventionalities that go to make up an honest gentleman; doing both right and wrong—like a lion; everything in him leonine. All this was in Ristofalo's reach. It was all beyond Richling's. Which was best, the capability or the incapability? It was a question he would have ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... and suffering in human life are always in proportion to the strength with which a man is endowed. We will not pretend to say that Heaven always apportions to a man's capability of endurance the anguish with which he afflicts him; for that, indeed, would not be true, since Heaven permits the existence of death, which is, sometimes, the only refuge open to those who are too closely pressed—too bitterly afflicted, as far as ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well, my dear sir—but you undervalue my equestrian capability somewhat too, for I do pretend to know that a horse has four legs and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... walked along the beach, following the receding tide, with the hope of collecting any shell-fish which might be left upon the sands; but here again he was disappointed. It was evident, therefore, that to stay on this islet was to starve; his only chance appeared to remain in his capability of reaching the islet next to it, which, as we have before mentioned, was covered with trees. There, at least, he might find some means of sustenance, and be able with the wood to make a raft, if nothing better should ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... strong tendency to love of mystery for its own sake; that is to say, he would employ mystery to serve a purpose, but would first choose his purpose by its capability ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Act, and acts amendatory thereof or supplementary thereto, consent is hereby given to the use by the United States of America of Lake Tahoe, situated partly in the State of California and partly in the State of Nevada, and the waters, bed, shores and capability of use for reservoir purposes thereof, in such manner and to such extent as the United States of America through its lawful agencies shall think proper for such purpose, and as fully as the State of Nevada could use the same, provided, however, that the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... it is the noblest study of man, regardless of vocation. Aye! it is the imperative study of our generation and of those who are to follow us, if we would continue, as we wish to be, the conservators of the good and great, and promoters of advancing capability for great and good deeds ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... originate? Whence does that good volition originate?" (216.) "We certainly admit that in conversion there are many motions of the intellect and will, good and bad. But the dispute among us is not whether in conversion the intellect understands and the will wills; but whence is the capability to think right, and whence is that good willing of the will? Is it of us, as of ourselves, or is this sufficiency of willing and thinking of God alone?" (Planck 4, 711.) The fact that God alone converts man, said Flacius, "does not exclude the presence ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... halter, the secret of his hiding-place. But the courage and fidelity of the negro proved superior to the terrors of death. Thrice was he run up the tree, and choked nearly to strangulation, but in vain. His capability to endure proved superior to the will of the Tories to inflict, and he was at length let down, half dead,—as, in truth, ignorant of the secret which they desired to extort. What were the terrors of Snipes in all this trial? What his feelings of equal gratitude ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the term (antaryamin), there arises a doubt whether it denotes the Self of some deity which presides over the gods and so on, or some Yogin who has acquired extraordinary powers, such as, for instance, the capability of making his body subtle, or the highest Self, or some other being. What ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... point of the capability of the Provinces to defend themselves, about which Elizabeth was most anxious to be informed, was also fully elucidated by the Advocate. "The means should be such, proceeding from the Provinces," said he, "as your Majesty might defend your interest therein with facility ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... you for my wife I had more love than strength, and I have taken advantage of your clemency and virtue. The great sorrow of my life is to feel all my capability in my heart only. This sorrow hastens my death little by little, so that you will soon be free. Wait for my departure from this world. That is the sole request that he makes of you, he who is your master, and who could command you, but who wishes only to be your prime minister and slave. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... wrought with sufficient precision to be useful, the English tool builders Maudslay, Roberts, Clement, Nasmyth, and Whitworth developed machine tools of increasing size and truth. The design of other machinery kept pace with—sometimes just behind, sometimes just ahead of—the capacity and capability of machine tools. In general, there was an increasing sophistication of mechanisms that could only be accounted for by an increase of information with which the ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... differing in the degree, of its operation. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is only temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capability for exertion, far surpassing his former various and fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such exertion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and difficult panting now felt ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... This is so because it contains within itself elements that edge its painfulness. The judges wield not only the power of death, but the power of putting a man to utter shame. The prisoners who stand at such a tribunal may be credited with the capability, given to them by training if not by nature, of feeling shame. And the capability of suffering shame is as distinct a quality as the ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... he said, "that you should permit yourself to be so exercised about a worthless scoundrel who has forfeited his right to live. The proof against him is overwhelming. As to his capability of crime, we will apply your own test. You have been kept in the dark too long, Mr. Delamere,—indeed, we all have,—about others as well as this negro. Listen, sir: last night, at the Clarendon Club, Tom Delamere was caught cheating outrageously ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... among his manuscripts after his death, and is enriched, though short, by some of those golden sentences, which he "scattered from his urn" upon every subject that came before him. [Footnote: In alluding to Mr. Fox's too favorable estimate of the capability of very young persons to choose for themselves, he pays the following tribute to his powers:—"He is led into it by a natural and to him inevitable and real mistake, that the ordinary race of mankind advance as fast towards maturity of judgment and understanding as he has done." His concluding ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... we should discover the perpetrators, hold them answerable, and punish them. Rewards were offered for any information that would lead to a knowledge of the real fate of the shipwrecked crew, and an exaggerated estimate of our strength, and the capability of our firearms, was given by our interpreter, on her own account, and was perfectly intelligible to us from the signs and gesticulations she made, and the scorn with which she pointed to the rude weapons of her country-men; for the intrepid little girl ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... Brigade Major, was one of the most valuable officers of the War of 1812. His cool head, sound judgment, energy, and capability in administration made him a tower of strength to his superiors, all of whom at various times, took an opportunity of testifying to ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... your father shall manage his affairs." If John Moore expressed a little bitterness in addressing the boy, he kept back most of what he felt. He knew the habit of drink that bound his brother-in-law, and how it was weakening his manhood, and he doubted either the interest or the capability of the man to care for the children. He was certain a great deal of responsibility would rest upon Austin, and he feared the father would not always be just with him. But he wisely kept all these doubtful thoughts to himself and helped the boy ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... later the two met, and the relationship was evident at the first glance. They were mother and son. The youth was about seventeen years of age, tall and muscular. He wore the dress of a mechanic, and there was in his appearance a suggestion of capability and of resolute resolve. Strangely handsome he was, and yet no one seemed attracted by him. During his journey from Bodmin a labourer would pass the time of day, but he seemed to take no notice. And once the driver of a farmer's cart offered to give him a lift, but he only shook ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... laudanum three times a week, and I could, at the end of this period, take two drachms (120 drops) at each dose. All this time my appetite, though not actually destroyed, as it now is, was capricious in the extreme, though I did not lose flesh, at least not markedly so. On the other hand, my capability for mental exertion all through this period was something incredible; and let me say here that one of the most fascinating effects of the drug in the case of an intellectual and educated man is the sense it imparts of what ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Canon kanono. Canopy baldakeno. Cant hipokrito. Canteen drinkejo. Canter galopeti. Canticle himno. Canto versaro. Canton kantono. Canvas kanvaso. Canvass subpostuli. Cap cxapo. Cap (military) kepo. Capability kapableco. Capable kapabla. Capacious vasta. Capacity enhavebleco. Cape promontoro. Capital (city) cxefurbo. Capital (money) kapitalo. Capital letter granda litero. Capital (of a column) kapitelo. Capitalist kapitalisto. Capitulate ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that are linked by the common title, "Beyond the Strength." The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate, because the original word means much more than strength; it means talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endowment for some particular purpose. The two pieces bearing this name are quite different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both express the same thought,—the ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... FOLDING CAMERA, is superior to every other form of Camera, for the Photographic Tourist, from its capability of Elongation or Contraction to any Focal Adjustment, its extreme Portability, and its adaptation for taking ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... case be admitted that the investigations undertaken by Krall have shed a flood of light on the problem of the capacity for thought latent in our higher animals, enabling him, as we have seen, to lay down—within certain limits—in how far and in what way the existence of this capability can be proved where the horse is concerned. Up to the commencement of the Great War these investigations were continued, a number of different horses being used for ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... that is secured we must prepare and work out a plan of scientific organization sufficiently complete in its details to serve as a guide in organizing an Association. For my own part, I feel no capability whatever of directing an Association by discipline, by ideas of duty, moral suasion and any other similar means. I want organization; I want a mechanism suited and adapted to human nature, so that human nature can follow its laws and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... devoted to school purposes; that immediately on the arrival of a ship, a Government Inspector should visit the vessel and report; that the Surgeon Superintendent should have a description of each woman's offense, character, and capability, so that her disposal in the colony might be made in a little less hap-hazard fashion than hitherto; that the best behaved should be taken into domestic service by such of the residents of the colony as chose to cooeperate, while the others should remain at the Home, under prison ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... A double capability may be remarked in human nature: one, in respect of the order of natural power, and this is always fulfilled by God, Who apportions to each according to its natural capability; the other in respect to the order of the Divine power, which all creatures implicitly obey; and the capability ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... introduction of a vanilla bean. With this and with a good cigar—for the ladies gave the gentlemen permission to smoke—Don Pedro felt very happy and easy, and complimented Mrs. Jasher warmly on her capability of making ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... of the most picturesque of her many figures. Resourceful, self-reliant, bold; adapting himself with fluidity to diverse circumstances and conditions; meeting with equal cheerfulness of confidence and completeness of capability both unknown dangers and the perils by which he has been educated; seizing the useful in the lives of the beasts and men nearest him, and assimilating it with marvellous rapidity; he presents to the world a picture of complete adequacy which it would ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... have some honest and useful trade, profession, or occupation. A "do-nothing" young man, will assuredly make a "good-for-nothing" husband. No one can justly charge you with sordid motives, for scrutinizing critically his capability to secure to you, and such family as may gather around you, a maintenance that shall insure you against ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... those days not only lacked the transportation facilities and improved agricultural appliances which have assisted the developers of the Northwest, but they did not even understand the nature and capability of the soil. The newcomers in western Missouri looked on the rich prairie land as worthless, and they almost invariably directed their course to the timber, where the soil was more easily broken up, and ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... mine could not appear in any book which contained such rigid rules as to rhyme, as are contained in Watts's letter. I neither follow them, nor agree with them as regards the English language. Every sonnet-writer should show full capability of conforming to them in many instances, but never to deviate from them in English must pinion both thought and diction, and, (mastery once proved) a series gains rather than loses by such varieties as do not lessen the only absolute aim—that ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... "'twas to no purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy," or, if truth were spoken, of any other high matter of doing or making. That was consistent with his sympathetic belief in the capability of mere impetuous youth as such. Even those unexpected traits in ordinary people which seem to hint at larger laws and deeper forces of character, disconcerting any narrow judgment upon them, he welcomed as akin to his own indolent, but suddenly kindling, nature:—the ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the decisions previously cited in the United States vs. Rogers and in the Cherokee Tobacco, assert the complete sovereignty of the United States in strong terms[N]; in the latter, the doctrine being explicitly affirmed, that not only does the capability of making a treaty with the United States, which has been held to reside in an Indian tribe, not exempt that tribe from the legislative power of Congress, but that not even a treaty made and ratified, among the stipulations of which is such an exemption, even were that exemption the ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... place—it would spoil the keeping. Now look on this! A bold and vigorous outline—the work of mind, seizing the attention: soul, not manner; thought, not mechanism; it may be filled up ill, but it may also be filled up well: there is the capability of greatness: there may be faults in the petty details, but the whole will compel admiration, and not weary in the survey. This other makes me yawn. Better choose the bold, the frank, the generous, with all his faults; he may be rash, unthinking, wasting the powers whose force ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... of all this study and this infant authorship the perusal of such masses of poetry could not fail to produce their effect. Of a youth whose mind, like mine at that period, possessed some general capability, without perhaps a single prominent and marked talent, a proneness to imitation is sure to be the besetting sin. I consequently, for a large portion of my earlier life, never read a work which struck my fancy, without ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of every age and of every tongue. It is the test of youth and of the capability of progress. So long as a man can and does love, he is young and there is hope for him. Whoever saw a satisfactory definition of love? No one, simply because the science of physical chemistry is yet young, and it is only when ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... ensnare any silly moth ready to singe its wings at her flame. She had settled the point that if Archie could not earn his living because he was a McPherson, she must do it for him. Five months had sufficed to show her that there was in him no capability or disposition for work, or business, or exertion of any kind. He was a great, good-natured, easy-going, indolent fellow, popular with everybody, and very fond, and very proud of, and very dependent ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... of this sort. He was very much struck with their dread of violence. It did not seem cowardice. It was not loyalty—the English labourer has fallen below the capability of so spiritual a feeling; Lancelot had found out that already. It could not be apathy, for he heard nothing but complaint upon complaint bandied from mouth to mouth the whole evening. They seemed rather sunk too low in body and mind,—too stupefied and spiritless, to follow ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... is not such a companion as he should seek;—nor, if he is sought, should he allow himself to be led away." And then Lady Lufton ceased, and Fanny Robarts kneeling at her feet sobbed, with her face hidden on her friend's knees. She had not a word now to say as to her husband's capability of judging for himself. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... one-sided and inadequate. But they did see, in direct antagonism alike to the popular view and to the natural instinct of the animal man, that what is ordinarily called happiness does not represent the highest capability in humanity, or meet its indefinite aspirations; and that in degree as it is consciously made so, life becomes animalised and degraded. The whole scheme of Judaism, as first promulgated in all the stern simplicity of its awful Theism, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... spittoons—represents Political Influence. Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his "influence" in your behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in Washington. Mere merit, fitness and capability, are useless baggage to you without "influence." The population of Washington consists pretty much entirely of government employee and the people who board them. There are thousands of these employees, and they have gathered there from every corner ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the domain. There is a very large artificial lake (to say the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being compared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those of Westmoreland), which was created by Capability Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just as if Nature had poured these broad waters into one of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a distance, and not less so on its immediate banks; for the water is very pure, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 3 steamer had been packed with much care. The carts had been loaded with the heavy portions that could not be transported by carriers, and we had proved our capability of travelling provided the Baris of Bedden would remain faithful to their promise. Every cart had therefore been dismounted, and the material for the expedition was stowed ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... Vermont towns revealed more fully than before, the capability of New Englanders to become democratic pioneers, under characteristic frontier conditions. Their economic life was simple and self-sufficing. They readily adopted lynch law (the use of the "birch seal" is familiar to readers of Vermont history) to protect their ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... instrumental music. This Russian singing is curiously unique—of a character wholly different from any heard elsewhere. It is weird in the extreme, and, if the expression be permissible, gypsy-like. The deacons' voices are of wonderful capability, the popular belief being that they are specially chosen on account of this peculiar power. At last there came a pause. Not only the priests' and deacons' voices, but those of the chanting men and boys—alike unsurpliced and uncassocked, lacking, therefore, much of the attraction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... whom she came to know, than she could help bewitching them by her charm and beauty. The more sober-minded men of the town were delighted by her conversation, which was sparkling, and by her keen comment on public affairs—comment far beyond the capability of most of her sex and age, while it became the fashion to pay court to vivacious Dorothy, but the moment an adorer attempted to express his sentimental feelings he found himself checkmated by a haughty reserve that commanded admiration, but forced ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Englishman, endowed with a beautiful fancy, and possessing at his fingers' ends the capability of doing beautiful things. He was a quiet, simple, elderly personage, with eyes brown and bright, under a slightly impending brow, and a Grecian profile, such as he might have cut with his own chisel. He had spent his life, for forty years, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was older than your father, had lived carefully, and had saved some money. Also, at that time, he idolized his brother and believed in his shrewdness and capability. He invested this ten thousand on Rodgers Warren's word that the investment was likely to be a good one. That, and to help the latter in business. For a few years the company did nothing; during that time your father and uncle disagreed—concerning another matter, quite unconnected ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of a thriving mutual confidence between the leader and the led, founded on the faith that together they possess a superior quality and capability. The failure of the spirit of any military organization is less frequently due to what men have forgotten than to what they can't forget. No "imperishable record" of past greatness can make men serve with any greater vigor if they are being served badly. Nor can it sustain the fighting ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... clerical housekeeper for her laddie. Margaret Meiklewham—a woman of a severe countenance, and filled with the spirit of the Disruption—who had governed the minister of Pitscowrie till his decease, and had been the terror of callow young probationers, offered herself, and gave instances of her capability. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... an eager companion in his studies and excursions, during several years preceding his death, in Frederick W. Putnam, who was almost the only man in the neighborhood of Boston having either interest or capability (not to speak of opportunity) for such pursuits. A Salem lad, he was one of that group of students whom the elder Agassiz gathered round him when he began teaching at Harvard,—a group comprising Alpheus Hyatt, A. E. Verrill, J. A. Allen, Edward S. Morse, N. S. Shaler, A. S. Packard, Jr., and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... answer to any problem in life. They are said to be unsuccessful and no one knows why. Perhaps they lack that instinctive sense of proportion that some men have—a sense as real as an "ear for music"; or perhaps they lack a willingness or a capability to think about a situation with sufficient intentness to force a clear picture of the situation with all its various features upon ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... differ in their capability as to accuracy in simulation, all grades of its proficiency come up in the experience of those who, as experts, are called upon to make such matters a study. At one extreme will be found to occur signatures written with but little effort to imitate the genuine signature they ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... before Barrie was, as I passed over its present site, in 1831, there was but one building and a little clearance. In 1846, it is fast approaching to be a town, and will be a city, as it is admirably placed at the bottom of an immense inlet of Lake Simcoe, with every capability of opening a communication with the new settlements of Owen Sound and St. Vincent, and the south ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... persons have to a greater or lesser degree musical sympathy and capability, or, to speak generally, capacity for the enjoyment or production, in one way or another, of harmony; and while, too, a goodly number there are who possess what may be called musical aptitude,—it is yet only once in a great while that we find those who are thus endowed in a degree ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... a man blows bubbles no longer—except that of his own conceit. The heart of Maverick was not dead in him; a kiss of Adele wakened a thrilling, delicious sensation there, of which he had forgotten his capability. He followed her graceful step and figure with an eye that looked beyond and haunted the past—vainly, vainly! Her "Papa!"—sweetly uttered—stirred sensibilities in him that amazed himself, and seemed like the phantoms of dreams he dreamed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... my good sir," replied Wilton, who was, in general, not without that capability of putting down intrusion at a word, which, strangely enough, is sometimes a talent of the lowest and meanest order of frivolous intellects, but is almost always found in the firm and decided—"they are, indeed, if I may judge by what you and I ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... and forthwith came into operation. It may be here mentioned that on that day Lord Gladstone signed no fewer than sixteen new Acts of Parliament — some of them being rather voluminous — while three days earlier, His Excellency signed another batch of eight, of which the bulk was beyond the capability of any mortal to read and digest in ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... upon the prospective bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh! If it is in your power to be the parent of beautiful, healthy, moral and talented children instead of diseased and depraved, is it not your imperious duty then, to impart to them that physical power, moral perfection, and intellectual capability, which shall ennoble their lives and make them good people and ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... acquainted with the chief features of the 'Phoenix Park, near Dublin. Irish scenery is now as accessible as Welsh. Let them study the old problem, not in blue books, but in the green and brown ones of our fields and heaths, and mountains. If Ireland be no more than a great capability and a beautiful landscape, faintly visible in the blue haze, even from your own headlands, and separated by hardly four hours of water, and a ten-shilling fare, from your jetties, it is your own shame, not ours, if a nation of bold speculators and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... finer than the sense of identity and harmony resulting from this exquisite organization. We have been told that there is a workman at the Gobelin manufactory who can select twenty-two thousand tints of the material employed in the construction of its famous tapestries. This capability is, of course, almost wholly dependent upon rare physical qualifications; yet it is the basis, the very foundation of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... withal, that he might tell me whether there was any probability of a good picture by him in case one did decide on encountering the weariness. Well: Gambardella returns with a magnanimous report that Laurence's picture far transcends any capability of his; that whoever in America or elsewhere will have a likeness of the said individual must apply to Laurence, not to Gambardella,—which latter artist heroically throws down his brush, and says, Be it far from me! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... spelter, he had also been compelled to make use of an inferior solder for the tubes, and thus the saving of a few hundred dollars frustrated the success of a great object. The consequence to poor Goldsack was utter ruin, though of his capability there could be no question, he having for many years been one of the principal assistants of Sir W. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... greater consequence than the date of sowing. A considerable number of the Cabbages which possess a recognised value for spring sowing are comparatively useless when sown in August. Success depends on the capability of the plant to form a heart when the winter is past instead of starting a seed-stem, and this reduces the choice to very narrow limits. Among the few Cabbages which are specially adapted for August sowing, Sutton's Harbinger, April, Flower of Spring, Favourite, ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... livelier in the south and more complaisant, without on that account being more wanton. In the south there is everywhere more nature, in nature herself as in man, and most of all with the sex. In the north more culture and art, in the south more natural capability, as well as more nature ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... and that Ireland was impoverished to the same extent. He was a man thoroughly disloyal, and at the same time thoroughly ignorant, altogether in the dark as to the truth of things, a man who, whatever might be his fitness for the duties of the priesthood, to which he had been educated, had no capability of perceiving political facts, and no honesty in teaching them. But it would have been unjust to him to say that he was a murderer, or that he countenanced murder. To him it was that young Florian now betook himself, and found him seated alone ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... contribution to the charity. It didn't take more than twenty minutes—the whole thing. She then shut up her book, went to the door with us, thanked us for giving them the order, and hoped we would be satisfied. That business capability and thriftiness runs through almost all Frenchwomen of a certain class, and when I hear, as of course I often do, the frivolous, butterfly, pleasure-loving Frenchwoman spoken of, that energetic, hard-working bourgeoise comes into ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... (2) support efforts to include State, local, and regional fusion centers into efforts to establish an information sharing environment; (3) conduct tabletop and live training exercises to regularly assess the capability of individual and regional networks of State, local, and regional fusion centers to integrate the efforts of such networks with the efforts of the Department; (4) coordinate with other relevant Federal entities engaged in homeland security-related ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives
... is no new-birth of the soul in eternity. The disposition and character which a man takes along with him when he dies remains eternally unchanged. The constitutional wants still continue. The man must love, and must think. But the only object in eternity upon which such capability can be expended is God; and the carnal mind, saith the Scripture, is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... above (A. 5), in order to live righteously a man needs a twofold help of God—first, a habitual gift whereby corrupted human nature is healed, and after being healed is lifted up so as to work deeds meritorious of everlasting life, which exceed the capability of nature. Secondly, man needs the help of grace in order to be moved by God ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... an unusual ability to banish shadows, a splendid power to rout devils both of the spirit and of the flesh; she was a sort of antibody, destroying every noxious or unhealthy thing mental or physical with which she came in contact. This blessed capability was quite distinct from her skill with medicines—it was a gift, and as much a part of her as the healing magic which dwells ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... About her French and music, the two justifying accomplishments of a young lady, she felt no ground for uneasiness; and when to all these qualifications, negative and positive, we add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy persons are born with, so that any subject they turn their attention to impresses them with their own power of forming a correct judgment on it, who can wonder if Gwendolen felt ready to manage her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... domineering mistress in her girlhood's home was great. But at that very instant the tall fine form of Philip Hamlyn passed across a pathway in the distance, and she turned from the temptation for ever. What little capability of loving had been left to her after the advent of Robert Grame was given to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... such works, so profitable to the community, so unprofitable to the projectors, how can we doubt the capability of our country to hold its own in any commercial race? Men make a country, not accidents of soil or climate, mines or forests. For centuries California and Central America have been in the hands of an Iberian race, fallow. A few months of Anglo-Saxon rule, and land and sea are boiling ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... South American cocaine probably destined for the European and South African markets; producer of cannabis (for local consumption) and methaqualone (for export to South Africa); corruption and poor regulatory capability makes the banking system vulnerable to money laundering, but the lack of a well-developed financial infrastructure limits the country's utility as ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... says: "The Podolian is an aboriginal race, descended from the wild urox (Bos primigenius). The race is remarkable for its capability of resisting influences of climate, and its contentedness with poor diet.... The Hungarian oxen are considered by naturalists as the best living representative of the original progenitors of our domestic cattle." Of the buffalo the same writer says: "It was introduced ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... This was all that could be done at that period, and the Church accomplished it, by taking the high hand; and with as much unselfishness as energy and courage, she regulated society, which had been abandoned by the civil power from sheer impotence and want of administrative capability. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... mood of joyous, sad, meditative, or interested delight. The sculptor, the painter, and the musician, have each their special means of producing this final and superlative impression; each is bound by the strictly limited capability in one direction and another of the medium in which he works. In poetry it is because they do not perceive how much more manifold and varied are the means of reaching the end than in the other expressions of art, that people insist each upon some particular ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... had now been diligently employed for several years in the work of self-improvement, and he experienced the usual results in increasing mental strength, capability, and skill. Perhaps the secret of every man's best success is to be found in the alacrity and industry with which he takes advantage of the opportunities which present themselves for well-doing. Our engineman ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... gifted with; by the exercise of such influence they took command over their subjects' sense of sight, and caused them to see whatever they desired that they should see. Sir Walter Scott describes the recognised capability of glamour power ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Courage and wisdom are less objects of envy than good character or wealth, and perhaps, because most men feel that they are not capable of having the one or the other. The notion of envy implies that the person has, or thinks he has, the same capability as another who has something which he has not. A man who is not a painter does not envy a great painter; a man who is a painter may envy a great painter. The mass may admire the honest man who is of higher rank than themselves, even if they have no regard for honesty; but ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... commemoration of the granting of a free Constitution to the nation by Frederik VII., gives the town bands and trade-unions an opportunity to parade the streets and display their capability in playing national music. "Children's Day" is a school holiday, and the children dress in the old picturesque Danish costumes; they then go about the town and market-places begging alms for the sanatoriums in their collecting-boxes. In this way a ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... others I had never met before; and in endeavouring to satisfy myself as to their qualifications and fitness for their several posts, I could not help feeling that they must be equally anxious as to my capability for command, and that the inspection must be of nearly as great moment to them as ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... gladdened with a perception of the affinity that exists between noble souls, in spite of diversity in ideas—in what Carlyle calls "the logical outcome" of the faculties. This "Life of Sterling" is a touching monument of the capability human nature possesses of the highest love, the love of the good and beautiful in character, which is, after all, the essence of piety. The style of the work, too, is for the most part at once pure and rich; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... A good character is all very well, but I do want some capability in my servants as well as character. You do not choose your shoemaker because he is sober and steady, but because ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... William Shakespear of Stratford knew. But if you had been brought up in a Chinese camp, on a worn-out gold-field, your own special acquirements, and corresponding ignorance, might run in grooves similar to Yabby's. Let each of us keep himself behind the spikes on this question of restricted capability. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. One does get a little tired of toujours Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; and crimped skate; and sirloin of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... He that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... attempted, has been carried on to a very limited extent. Of its capability of submitting to culture, there can be little doubt. If the spawn were collected from its natural habitats in June, and planted in beds differently formed, but approximating as nearly as possible to its natural conditions, a proper mode of cultivation would assuredly ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... London quite unconscious of the ceaseless roar of the human sea, casting up mire and dirt. And now, for the first time in my life, the crushing, confusing hubbub had flowed away, and left my brain calm and free. How I felt at that moment a capability of clear, bright meditation, which was as new to me, as I believe it would have been to most Londoners in my position. I cannot help fancying that our unnatural atmosphere of excitement, physical as well as moral, is to blame for very much of the working ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... involvement in direct armed conflict. Our adversaries are encouraged to attempt new adventures while our own ability to monitor events and to influence events short of military action is undermined. Without effective intelligence capability, the United ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... total effect of c would thus be > e, which would be contrary to the supposition c e. Accordingly, since c becomes e, and e becomes f, etc., we must regard these various magnitudes as different forms under which one and the same object makes its appearance. This capability of assuming various forms is the second essential property of all causes. Taking both properties together, we may say, causes an INDESTRUCTIBLE quantitatively, and quantitatively ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... also specially important because it gave to England a new language of greater flexibility and power. The old inflections, genders, formative prefixes, and capability of making self-explaining compounds were for the most part lost. To supply the places of lost words and to express those new ideas which came with the broader experiences of an emancipated, progressive nation, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... that of the tadpole, which is all head, no hands, a much active and frivolous tail. Your girls are brought up not to consider it beneath them to take part in the work of the house; and something of the all round capability of American women which so strikes us is doubtless owing to their not having incurred "this Nemesis of disproportion," and therefore to their combining intellectual culture ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... superstitious. I know that those dreams are bred merely of our brain and of our blood. But I know that they are none the less messages from God. They tell us unmistakeably that we are the same persons that we were twenty years ago. They tell us that there is the same infection of nature, the same capability of sin, in us, that there was of old. That in our flesh dwells no good thing: that by the grace of God alone we are what we are: and that did his grace leave us, we might be once more as utter fools as we were in the ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... individuals composing the nation. Upon broad facts like these we may rest, without resorting to the more technical proof which the laws afford in their manner of dealing with corporations. If, then, a nation have unity of will, have pervading sympathies, have capability of reward and suffering contingent upon its acts, shall we deny its responsibility; its need of a religion to meet that responsibility? . . A nation, then, having a personality, lies under the obligation, like the individuals composing ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mistaken direction which these dogmatic or liturgic shapes imposed upon it. On the contrary, the effect of the false dogmas and enervating liturgies is so much that has to be deducted from the advantages conferred by a sentiment in itself valuable and of priceless capability.[11] ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... much anxiety; the signals thrown out by our leader, "Where do you think the 'Intrepid' is gone?" and on another occasion, "Do you think the 'Intrepid' is to leeward of the pack?" denoting how much he was thinking of the missing steamer. We of the sister screw had little anxiety as to her safety or capability of escaping through any pack; especially when alone and unhampered by having to keep company. A knowledge of the screw, its power, and handiness, gave us a confidence in it, which we had never reason to regret. At first ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Upanishads; or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta; or again as Kanada's Adrishta, "the unseen Force," or divine atom; or as Prakriti, the "eternally existing essence," of Kapila—we find in all these impersonal universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves "six rays" (the evolver being the seventh). The third aphorism of the Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the "root and substance of all things," and no production, but itself a producer ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... at that moment was more free than when superior knowledge of antiquity had created a demand for reproductive art, and when the painters thought less of the meaning of the fable for themselves than of its capability of being used as a machine for ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... States, they form their boundary lines, they are not in any one State, nor the exclusive property of any one, but are common to all. To make waters navigable waters of the United States, some other incident must attach to them besides the territorial and the capability for public use. This term contrasts with domestic waters of the United States, and implies, not simply that the waters are public and within the Union, but that they have attached to them some circumstance that brings them within the scope of the sovereignty of the United States ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... [Footnote 10: "Capability of walking home without help," is the limit quaintly fixed by the poet. To our modern feeling it seems rather wide. Yet, practically, it is the limit professedly observed by our ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... training of the sense organs already begun by the home, thus opening up the life to the beauties of nature, art, and other forms of truth, and so providing for the development of the inner life of each in accordance with inherent leaning and capability; and, third, equip them with the tools of knowledge and give such knowledge facts and develop such points of view as will enable each to become a self-directing, constructive, and contributing member of ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd |
