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Fitness   /fˈɪtnəs/   Listen
Fitness

noun
1.
The quality of being suitable.  Synonym: fittingness.
2.
Good physical condition; being in shape or in condition.  Synonym: physical fitness.
3.
Fitness to traverse the seas.  Synonym: seaworthiness.
4.
The quality of being qualified.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fitness" Quotes from Famous Books



... upon Tom's wrist, 'that I had no doubt he would excuse the freedom I took in inquiring who directed him to me; how he came to know of the change which had taken place in my friend's position; and how he came to be acquainted with my friend's peculiar fitness for such an office as he had described; he drily said that he was not at liberty to enter into ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... lads already have been of invaluable service. Perhaps I should not again call upon you so soon, although I know your hearts are in the success of the arms of France and England. But you have so often proved your fitness for dangerous missions that you ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... Sigismund's close affinity with the family of an executioner. She could have better borne it, had Marguerite spoken of her son less familiarly, or with more of that feigned ignorance of each other, which, without stopping to scan its fitness, she had been led to think existed between the young man ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... than a man who superintends other people's capital is paid the reward of capital. The payment for services, in the one case as in the other, depends upon the skill of the manager, just as it does with an ordinary mechanic, rising or falling with his fitness for the peculiar work. Skill as a manager is the cause; the amount of the remuneration is the consequence. If so, then the wages of superintendence have no logical connection, in the economic sense, with capital as the thing which determines the amount of its reward, any more than it affects ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... from sin; yea, he will make you, by precious faith in him, more than conqueror over all your spiritual enemies: therefore venture wholly upon Christ, and see if he will cast you out: indeed, he never will. Trust in him, hope in him, believe in him, and you will never be disappointed. All our fitness is in Christ. Believe in him, and he is yours. In him dwells all fullness. Believe in Christ, and all that Christ has is yours: his blood is yours, his wisdom is yours, his righteousness, his sanctification is yours; yea, Christ Jesus himself is yours—he is yours ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... took away the sting of having to part with her for awhile; and, when he finally closed with the offer, she at once resumed her application for a place in the High School, and was soon accepted, for there were not a few in the town capable of doing justice to her fitness for the office; so that now she had the joy not merely of being able to live with her mother as before, and of contributing to her income, but of knowing at the same time that she lived in a like atmosphere with Hector, where her growth in the knowledge ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald

... boat came out from under the leaves, there, on the path by the river-side opposite, I saw the strange lady mounted on Swiftfoot, her light figure set off by a cloth riding-habit such as I had never seen before, the graceful folds of which struck me even then with a sense of beauty and fitness. I could even distinguish the golden curls again, which fell close on George Hammond's face, as he stood by her side arranging her stirrup, his own horse's bridle over his arm. A backward motion of the oar sent my boat under the branches again, and I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... interested in watching the negro work. They wove in a great deal of their peculiar, wild, mournful music, whenever the character of the labor permitted. They seemed to sing the music for the music's sake alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the accompanying words, as the composer of a modern opera is of his libretto. One middle aged man, with a powerful, mellow baritone, like the round, full notes of a French horn, played by a virtuoso, was the musical leader of the party. He never seemed to bother himself about air, notes or words, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... in the process, from the most decorous of metropolitan clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated himself,—being more than satisfied to know that the outcasts of society can sink ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... great mosaic, from the Fillmore-street hill, at once creates a nerve-soothing impression most uncommon in international expositions, and for that matter, in any architectural aggregate. One is at once struck with the fitness of the location and of the scheme of architecture. Personally, I am greatly impressed with the architectural scheme and the consistency of its application to the whole. I fear that the two men, Mr. Willis Polk and Mr. Edward Bennett, who laid the foundation for the plan, will never receive ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... found that a power which has been recognised by every branch of the government, and at some time or other, by every party that has administered the affairs of the nation, will be found to be correct. We cannot, however, forbear to add one other, because of its peculiar fitness to ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... minimum universal age for Candidates is wholly illegal. At the Reformation, the English Church fixed seven as the age for Confirmation, but our 1662 Prayer Book is more primitive, and, taking a common-sense view, {102} leaves each case of moral fitness to be decided on its own merits. The moral standard must be an individual standard, and must be left, first, to the parent, who presents the child to the Priest to be prepared; then, to the Priest who prepares the child for Confirmation, and presents him to the Bishop; and, lastly, ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes

... despite his many excellences, is throughout- -and for obvious reasons—the victim of a persistent Nemesis. Scott is much interested in his hero; one fancies that if it were only possible he would in the end extend his favour to him, and grant him absolution; but his sense of artistic fitness prevails, and he will abate no jot of the painful ordeal to which he feels bound to submit him. Marmion is a knight with a claim to nothing more than the half of the proverbial qualifications. He is sans peur, but not sans reproche; and ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... "if your fitness speaks, mine is ready. Methinks the very stepping on this same old pavement hath charmed away the gout which threatened me. Sa—sa—I tread ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... CLARKE. The eternal Fitness and Unfitness of Things determine Justice, Equity, Goodness and Truth, and lay corresponding obligations upon reasonable creatures. The sanction of Rewards and Punishments secondary and ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... their ascending Lord a command to await in the City of Jerusalem this "Power from on High," which was to be sent upon them[14]. We can easily see the fitness of this injunction, when we remember that they were about to become the founders of the New Jerusalem, the true "City of God" in which the many "glorious things spoken[15]" by the Old Testament Prophets were to have their performance to a certain extent ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... is what is called the difference of fitness (adhikaribheda). Those who perform the sacrifices are not fit to hear the Upani@sads and those who are fit to hear the Upani@sads have no longer any necessity to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... He was a handsome youth, outwardly cut to as fine a pattern of physical fitness as his sister exemplified, but in his eyes one found none of her dauntlessness of spirit. Hurriedly ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... my table the subject. I pounced upon my opportunity—that is on the first volume of it—and paid scant attention to my friend's explanation of his appeal. What explanation could be more to the point than my obvious fitness for the task? I had written on Hugh Vereker, but never a word in The Middle, where my dealings were mainly with the ladies and the minor poets. This was his new novel, an advance copy, and whatever much or little ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... and Miss Barton certainly found their romantic proclivities came into collision with their preconceived ideas of the fitness of things. Mrs. Marsden, their landlady, was a kind soul who did her best; but she had all her farm work and a large family of children to cope with, so it was small wonder that cobwebs hung in the passages and the dust lay thick and untouched. It is sometimes wiser not to see behind ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... exculpated Dr Jackson from all improper treatment of diseases in the sick,' and the commander-in-chief's gratification, 'that an opportunity has thus been given to that most zealous officer of proving his fitness for the important situation in which he is placed.' The result of this wretched intrigue, however, was that Jackson, disgusted with the whole affair, requested to be placed on half-pay, to which request the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... capacity for social service. Colour, in short, is rapidly losing its vital function. Will it therefore tend to disappear? In the long run, it would seem—perhaps only in the very long run—it will become dissociated from that general fitness to survive under particular climatic conditions of which it was once the innate mark. Be this as it may, race-prejudice, that is so largely founded on sheer considerations of colour, is bound to decay, if and when the races of darker colour succeed in displaying, on the average, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... form, is the so-called argument of modern materialism. Argument, however, it is quite plain it is not. It is a mere dogmatic statement, that can give no logical account of itself, and must trust, for its acceptance, to the world's vague sense of its fitness. The modern world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument, and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the mistake is a simple one, and can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of denial was formerly a sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with itself, and vulnerable in a thousand places. Nature, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... is of such a class, that it can neither astonish by its beauty, nor impress by its sublimity, and when it is likewise placed in a situation so uninteresting as to render something more than mere fitness or propriety necessary, and to compel the eye to expect something from the building itself, a gentle contrast of feeling in that building is exceedingly desirable; and if possible, a sense that something has passed away, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... together, and the business of the day began. How they fenced, how they saw through one another, with what loyalty they pretended not to see through one another, with what gentle dalliance they prolonged the conversation discussing the spiritual fitness of this or that deacon, and the other pros and cons connected with him after his spiritual fitness had been disposed of, all this must be left to the imagination of the reader. Mrs Cowey had been so accustomed ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... or shelving ledges the fisherman often sees the nest of the phoebe-bird, which does not cease to please for the hundredth time, because of its fitness and exquisite artistry. On the newly sawn timbers of your porch or woodshed it is far less pleasing, because the bird's art, born of rocky ledges, only serves in the new environment to make its ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... the time this fine, wise, Spartan Northland had been here, and he had never known. What puzzled him was, that, with such intrinsic fitness, he had never heard the slightest calling whisper, had not himself gone forth to seek. But this, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... tested—by somebody else: but deftly and easily it leads him to think about the essential elements of the home he desires until, almost unconsciously, he finds himself prepared to give such directions to an honest architect as will secure for his home, convenience, safety and that peculiar fitness which is the chief element of beauty in domestic architecture. It is not so much for what is taught as for what is suggested that the book is valuable. What the author has written is perhaps not more remarkable than the peculiar art with ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... writer, besotted with his own fancies; and my presumptuous trespasses into this sacred, though neglected, region of history have met with deserved rebuke from men of soberer minds. It is too late, however, to recall the shaft thus rashly launched. To any one whose sense of fitness it may wound, I ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... canned oyster stew at fifteen dollars. Daylight indulged in no such luxuries. He did not mind treating a bar-room of men to whiskey at fifty cents a drink, but there was somewhere in his own extravagant nature a sense of fitness and arithmetic that revolted against paying fifteen dollars for the contents of an oyster can. On the other hand, he possibly spent more money in relieving hard-luck cases than did the wildest of the new millionaires on insane debauchery. Father Judge, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... beautiful picture of the prophet shall become a reality: "The whole earth," said the seer, "is at rest, and is quiet; they break forth into singing." Till then, paradoxical though it appears, the cause of peace may be pled with most effect by the mouths of cannon. Fitness for war is often the strongest security for peace; and a nation whose wishes and interests both run in the direction of peace, may find no way of warning restless and unprincipled and ambitious neighbours that it is not to be touched with impunity, ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... of the Month of Gathering-in, will be one of Shan Tien's lucky days," continued the maiden, her look acknowledging the fitness of the compliment, but at the same time indicating that the moment was not a suitable one to pursue the detail further. "After holding court the Mandarin will accordingly proceed to hazard his accustomed stake upon the chances ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... of Poetry? He makes no reference to comic poetry at all; apparently he has never heard of the Limerick, and I have the gravest doubts whether he can write one, though that, I admit, is a severe test. I am prepared however to give him a public opportunity of establishing his fitness for his post, and with that end I propose to put to him the following problems, and if his answers are satisfactory I shall most willingly modify my criticisms; but he must write on one side of the paper only and number his pages ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... developed in Christianity, but freed from once cherished national expectations and outward forms, into a purely spiritual knowledge and worship of God. Jesus fathomed the deep meaning of the religion of his people, and its original fitness to become, through higher development, the religion of the world. Jesus devoted himself to the end of forming the human race into one great society (the kingdom of heaven), of which religion should ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten

... which yet, alas! could not be so mitigated; for hard reality brings too miserably home to the mourner all that is lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that remains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it invests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied may regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all such ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now seems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind figures ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley

... philosophy, had to do so with a teacher, who explained those terms to him. The teacher himself had got it from his teacher, and he from his. There was no tendency to popularize philosophy, for the idea then prevalent was that only the chosen few who had otherwise shown their fitness, deserved to become fit students (adhikari) of philosophy, under the direction of a teacher. Only those who had the grit and high moral strength to devote their whole life to the true understanding of philosophy ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... sooner out of his mouth, than Mr. Glascock knew, and remembered, and felt what he had said. There are occasions in which a man sins so deeply against fitness and the circumstances of the hour, that it becomes impossible for him to slur over his sin as though it had not been committed. There are certain little peccadilloes in society which one can manage to throw behind one,—perhaps with some difficulty, and awkwardness; but still ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... libraries; the sign of the cross, the use of red letters on the title page, the illuminations representing saints, or the diagrams and circles of a mathematical nature, were at all times deemed sufficient evidence of their popish origin and fitness for the flames.[13] ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... course, draw from them, in writing, a minute and particular description of his character. This will be of great service to you as a pattern. You will also, by this means, see a peculiar beauty and fitness in Christ for the office he has undertaken, which you would not otherwise have discovered. But, do not stop with going through this course once. Repeat it as often as you can consistently with your plan of a systematic study of the Holy Scriptures. You will always ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... from abroad. He and Mrs. Dingley were to spend the coming Sabbath with Juliet and Anthony—the first occasion on which Juliet's father should be entertained in the house. It was an event of importance, and his daughter meant to show him several things concerning her fitness ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... qualities which had to some slight extent grown slack among the upper classes were to be met with in all their strength as much in the more intelligent portion of the now unrepresented classes, as among those familiarly styled "their betters." With regard to the question of the fitness of the artisans for the franchise, I argued that they had not to decide for themselves between Austria and Prussia in the Holstein question, but had to decide between candidates who would settle the more abstruse questions for them. The ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... but a flesh and blood regard for every body; and that I as truly respect in the Noble Duke the possession of military science, of a straight-forward sincerity, and a valour of which no circumstances or years can diminish the ready firmness, as I doubt the fitness of a man of his education, habits, and political principles, for the guidance of an ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... other places. Shops were closed, and the church-bells tolled dolefully; but whether prayer was offered in sincerity and truth, and in calm devotion, demands a doubt; for when men's passions are inflamed, there can be no fitness for acts of piety. In the mean time the assembly of Massachusets Bay met at Boston, on the 25th of May, for the last time. On that day, General Gage laid before them some common business of the province, and then announced the painful necessity he was under of removing them and all public ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... shaving-cloth; "mysteries of Minerva and the Graces. I get the flower of men's thoughts, because I seize them in the first moment after shaving. (Ah! you wince a little at the lather: it tickles the outlying limits of the nose, I admit.) And that is what makes the peculiar fitness of a barber's shop to become a resort of wit and learning. For, look now at a druggist's shop: there is a dull conclave at the sign of 'The Moor,' that pretends to rival mine; but what sort of inspiration, I beseech you, can be got from the scent of nauseous vegetable ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... prowess, while the other relates only to the mental and moral state. This is shown by the ages fixed by law for these qualifications, that of eighteen years being fixed as the commencement of the term of presumed fitness for military service, and forty-five years as the period of its termination; while the age of presumed fitness for the suffrage, which requires no physical superiority certainly, is set at twenty-one years, when still greater strength of body ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... the reader has doubtless noticed that these forms of cornice result, from considerations of fitness and necessity, far more neatly and decisively than the forms of the base, which we left only very generally determined. The reason is, that there are many ways of building foundations, and many good ways, dependent upon the peculiar accidents of the ground ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin

... from education she was thoughtful and observant; and a wise mother had taught her that in marriage external accomplishments and possessions were nothing, unless united with virtuous principles and well-regulated passions. The brilliant attractions of Eaverson strongly tempted her to take his moral fitness for granted; but wiser counsels prevailed in her mind; and with a vigorous hand laid upon her heart to keep down its errant impulses, she exercised, with coolness and a well-balanced mind, the powers of discrimination which God had given for her ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur

... a tale which extends over many years and travels into many countries. By a peculiar fitness of circumstance the writer began, continued it, and concluded it among distant and diverse scenes. Above all, he was much upon the sea. The character and fortune of the fraternal enemies, the hall and shrubbery of Durrisdeer, the problem of Mackellar's homespun and how to shape it for superior ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a gentleman's hat, and the baldness which had shone against the light was not exactly what you would have called a gentleman's baldness. Clearly, however, the only thing to do was to treat the event as one of entire fitness till it proved itself otherwise, and Louise returned to the parlor with an air of lady-*like inquiry, expressed in her look and movement; if this effect was not wholly unmixed with patronage, it still ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... plantations. These are sneeringly designated by the humble classes as sugar noblemen, and not inappropriately so, as nearly all of these aristocratic gentlemen have purchased their titles outright for money. Not the least consideration is exercised by the Spanish throne as to the fitness of these ambitious individuals for honorary distinction. It is a mere question of money, and if this be forthcoming the title follows as a natural sequence. Twenty-five thousand dollars will purchase any title. Such things are done in other lands, but not quite so openly. And ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... a department of manners," and appeals to the eye with the same force that gracious words and softly keyed voices appeal to the ear. Costliness is not the measure of the beauty of dress. Nay, rather suitability, harmony, becomingness, unobtrusiveness, fitness for the place and person are the qualities ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... of the angels Harut and Marut and the Rabbinical fictions of the loves of Uzziel and Shamchazai are the only sources to which I need refer for the origin of the notion on which this Romance is founded. In addition to the fitness of the subject for poetry, it struck me also as capable of affording an allegorical medium through which might be shadowed out (as I have endeavored to do in the following stories) the fall of the Soul from its original ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... can assure you that no one more heartily desires than the First Consul himself to see you again at your old post, for which it would be difficult to find a successor equal to you, either as regards fidelity or fitness. I do not relinquish the hope ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... to the garden. St Aubyn's conservatories were famous, and his orchids of great variety and beauty. Austin seemed transported into a world where everything was so arranged as to gratify his craving for harmony and fitness, and he moved almost silently beside his host in a ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... remarkable character. It has been truly said, "There can scarcely be any important question, which any man or woman can ever need to ask a physician, to which this book does not contain an answer." The diseases of the generative system, physical and passional, are treated of with great fitness. ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid

... in finding a Bookseller of any fitness, but am waiting for one always. And even had I found such a one, I mean an energetic seller that would sell on other terms than forty percent for his trouble, it were still a question whether one ought to venture on such a speculation: "quitting the old highways," ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... skirmishes, without severing his lines or suffering a mishap. It was in wielding the lance that he had acquired the vigor and agility to handle the javelin with consummate address. Contrasted as are his earlier and later styles, they have some essential qualities in common;—an exquisite fitness of expression; a total exemption from harshness, vulgarity, and all the vices that have grown so common; a method, a sequence, which is at once the closest and the least obtrusive to be found in any prose of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... if he "felt better"; then, looking at his pale face, an idea occurred to her, and after a bit of hesitation, she asked him if he would not stay to dinner. In her mind was the conflict between pity for this poor boy, and doubt as to the fitness of his costume; and Thyrsis, having read her mind in a flash, was divided between his humiliation, and his desire for some food. In the end the baser motive won; he buried his pride, and went to dinner.—And ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... unexpected discoveries, and astounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facility with which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings of science and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of the fitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life, and forcing himself to a readjustment not only of his mental perceptions, but also of his external existence gives proof sufficient of his being not only favored of the gods, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... Her dress had the look of being moulded on her light little figure; her hair was like brown satin, smooth as a mirror and reflecting the light. She did not possess the large grace of abstract beauty. There was nothing statuesque, nothing majestic, about her, but a kind of mild perfection, a fitness and harmony which called forth the approval of the more serious-minded portion of humanity as well as the admiration of the younger and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... a regular portion of blood at every contraction. John Bell, believing in the Harveian theory, said, "It is awful to think of the unfixed position of the heart;" and Dr. Arnott declared that "the heart, the heart alone, is the ragged anomaly in the laws of fitness in mechanics." The heart was now seen to have a right position; for it should swing loose that its moorings be not endangered; and, as whatever impugns the Creator's unerring wisdom must be wrong, so the presumption ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard

... calling to talk to his fellows upon religious themes has no need of any other capital than something worth saying. Given this, without need of any further machinery than the free telephone, he is able to command an audience limited only by the force and fitness of what he has to say. He now does not live by his preaching. His business is not a distinct profession. He does not belong to a class apart from other citizens, either by education or occupation. It is not needful for any purpose that he should do so. The higher education ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... responsibility, attempt so daring an innovation. The second and determining reason for not making the denouement one of the heads of my argument, is that, the play of intrigue being no longer the dominant dramatic form, the image of disentangling has lost some of its special fitness. It is only in a somewhat strained and conventional sense that the term nodus, or knot, can be applied to the sort of crisis with which the modern drama normally deals; and if we do not naturally think ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... growing stock balance. It is irksome this living on stilts, but an unfortunate inability to match our fortune by increasing our bulk leaves us no alternative but to augment our belongings so as to preserve the fitness of things at any cost. There is as yet no Society for the Emancipation of Princes, and the Association for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Children of the Rich has no place in the list of New ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... two years as a tutor in the college, and then was settled successively over parishes in New Bedford, Salem, and Somerville. His experience and skill as an army agent of the Association suggested his fitness for the larger sphere of labor into which he was now inducted. For six most difficult and trying years he successfully conducted the ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... happen to like the color of her eyes, or because there is a curve about her lips that appeals to you. That isn't love, Olaf, as we women understand it. Ah, no, a girl's love for a man doesn't depend altogether upon his fitness to be used as an advertisement ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... of living was weakening the fiber of the governing powers the people of which intermarried and brought into the world children of weak muscular tissue. She doesn't believe in marriage unless both the man and the woman have passed rigid physical tests as to their fitness." ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... private saluted me. No one could make a friendly jest of like kind against the American soldiers. When first they arrived in France no troops were more punctilious in practising the outward and visible evidences of discipline. Fit, with the perfect fitness of the man from 23 to 28, not a weed amongst them, intelligent-looking, splendidly eager to learn, they were much akin in physique and general qualities to our own immortal "First Hundred Thousand." I came across colonels and majors of the New York and Illinois Divisions getting experience ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... Wilfer. 'I make false statements, it appears? So be it. If my daughter flies in my face, surely my husband may. The one thing is not more unnatural than the other. There seems a fitness in the arrangement. By all means!' Assuming, with a shiver of resignation, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... that he was quite jolly, and ready for anything; and, by way of proving his fitness for exertion, began to crawl over the ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... connections, often depend in great part upon the peculiar forms of the language in which they are first clothed; and by a strictly literal translation the scope of the thought is narrowed, its finer lines obscured, and that which is of more importance than all else, the fitness of the expression, is altogether lost. The utmost strictness of literal translation is a poor compensation for the resultant poverty of language and dilution of thought; and by as much as the original is more impressive in its rich and fitting garb, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... have had the V.C.," said Susan, and was very indignant over it. She was not quite sure who was to blame for his not getting it, but if it were General Haig she began for the first time to entertain serious doubts as to his fitness ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... piqued by this remark, and proceeded to compare the fitness of his character to such a character as Lady Julia's. Every moment he showed more curiosity to hear further particulars of her disposition; of the different characters of her governesses, and of all her relations; but Russell refused ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... battle. The ground chosen, flanked by the river Nairn, was spotted with marsh and very irregular; it was called Culloden, and was selected by O'Sullivan. Brigadier Stapleton and Colonel Kerr reported against it as a field of battle; but Charles adopted O'Sullivan's opinion of its fitness for Highland warfare. When the preparations for battle began, "many voices exclaimed, 'We'll give Cumberland another Fontenoy!'" The Jacobites were placed in position by O'Sullivan, "at once their adjutant and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... and perfectly adapted to the Story; with Circumstances interesting to Persons in common Life, as well as to those in exalted Stations. The greatest Regard is every where paid in it to Decency, and to every Duty of Life: There is a constant Fitness of the Style to the Persons and Characters described; Pleasure and Instruction here always go hand in hand: Vice and Virtue are set in constant Opposition, and Religion every-where inculcated in its native Beauty and chearful Amiableness; not dressed up in stiff, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson

... love with you and has had time to find it out; and even if he were not, his mere man's pride must writhe to see himself abandoned. And you, too, have had your lesson, my poor Karen, and have seen that romance is a treacherous sand to build one's life upon. Dignity, fitness, one's rightful place in life have their claims. You are one, as I told you, to work out your destiny in the world, not in the wilderness. What do you say, Karen? I would not write without consulting you. Hein! What ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... study could be undertaken than that, of tracing the progress of the colored teachers of a race so recently emancipated, as they have advanced in literary, mental and moral fitness for a work thrust upon them by the exigencies of ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... direct style of writing. Why does the writer dwell on the physical fitness of Buck? Does the understanding between Buck and his master seem unusual? What glimpses of the character of the miners does the story give you? Show how the element of suspense adds to the dramatic force of the story. What is the most ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... by their company commanders. It is not known whether the selections were made with a view to special fitness or not. They had no notice that the detail was to be anything but a transient character; in fact, one company commander actually detailed the cook of his private mess, and was intensely disgusted when he found that the detail was to be ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield—only his name is Hermiston—has a son who is condemned to death; plainly, there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to hang. But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would—in a sense who must—break prison and attempt his rescue. They were capable, hardy folks, too, who might very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... special interest in doing battle hand in hand with the male portion of the working class, for all the means and institutions that may protect the working woman from physical and moral degeneration, and which promise to secure to her the vitality and fitness necessary for motherhood and for the education of children. Furthermore, as already indicated, it is the part of the working-woman to make common cause with the male members of her class and of her lot in the struggle for a radical transformation ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... enough to be near to accidents, but never so forward as to be in front of them. It has been hinted that this arrangement is professional rather than providential; but the present writer, having given his mind to the investigation of the matter, is inclined to think that it arises from the general fitness of things. All public institutions have, or ought to have, their doctor, but in no institution is the doctor so invariably at hand, just when he is wanted, as in the hunting field. A very skilful young surgeon from Brotherton was on the spot almost as soon as the lady was out ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... of vitality, the alimentary canal, but see to it that it be kept clean and pure. Then will the elixir of life spring from an almost inexhaustible fountain. To recur to our plant analogy. Keep the soil in your own vegetable garden sweet, for intestinal cleanliness corresponds to soil fitness. Purity of the stomach and bowels is more important than quantity or quality of food. That defecation should occur normally two or three times in twenty-four hours is more important than that three ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... be steady and moral, and all that sort of thing: when you do find a chance of getting into mischief, you're worse a great deal than a man like myself, for instance, who, without being bothered with any particular principles of any kind, has what I call a general sense of fitness and propriety, and does his dissipation sensibly and correctly. But to go tearing off like a lunatic after the first petticoat you see fluttering among the bushes in a gentleman's park, and leaving your ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... presenting a concept of beauty in place of a general notion of repellent ugliness. Instead of being regarded as a "Hottentot with clicking palate, whom the meanest of the rest look down upon for all his glimmering language and spirituality," he wished the world to find in him fitness for survival, conformity with civilization's ideal, example of the world philosophy of forbearance, human relationships, symmetry and poise in adaptation to the world's tasks, and moderation in respect of the higher laws, whose harmonies ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... was the leading spirit in the organization. He had a special fitness for the task: he had actually resided in India. In fact, he had spent six weeks there on a stop-over ticket of a round-the-world 635 dollar steamship pilgrimage; and he knew the whole country from Jehumbapore in Bhootal to Jehumbalabad ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... very often mistaken for aptitude or natural fitness, a lyric artist is not always the best judge as to which of the roles in his repertoire are really fitted to display his abilities to the best advantage. The singer combines in himself both instrument and performer; therefore he rarely, if ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... immorally, Paul sometimes thought, to the fascination Mrs. Bogardus's personality had for her. In a keenly susceptible state herself, at that time, there was something calming and strengthening in the older woman's perfected beauty, her physical poise, and the fitness of everything she did and said and wore to the given occasion. As a dark woman she was particularly striking in summer clothing. Her white effects were tremendous. She did not pretend to study these matters herself, but ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... individual hypnotizing by amateurs, should be prohibited by law, and the whole practical application as well as observation of Hypnosis should be left in the hands of physicians or experts who have proved their fitness by an examination and secured a certificate of licence. In Russia a decree (summer, 1893) permits physicians to practise hypnotism for purposes of cure under official certificates. In France public ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... in the back of the church. In their black rebozos, the poorest class of poor Mexican women were clad with more fitness than she. For Jane, weighted with the gravity of the occasion, had donned an austere black bonnet such as aged ladies wear, and its effect upon her short locks was incongruous in the extreme. No one, however, thought of her as ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead

... pronounced her fit to face the heaviest weather and the longest voyage. As she was only a small craft, the pair decided that twenty of the forty Peruvian volunteers would suffice as a crew, and these twenty were selected because of their superior fitness for the work of sailors, as exemplified during the preparation of the little ship ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... profession of a clergyman or to urge any one to enter the Church whom I thought unfitted for the sacred office. But in your case, my good sir, there can be no such misgiving. I entertain no doubt whatever of your fitness—your moral fitness, and I will go so far as to say that with competent aid you might, in no very long time, be prepared for ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... sense of the fitness of things, and she couldn't help thinking that the Van Ness sisters, though good-hearted and good- natured, were of a type apt to be a trifle too conspicuous in a large hotel. The Farringtons were quiet-mannered folk, and Patty had often noticed and admired the dignified yet ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... he walked off what a strange blurring of the focus of life there is when, everything being concentrated on to one particular purpose, whether it be a bazaar, an election, or the giving of a ball, all the human beings one encounters are considered from the point of view of their fitness to one particular end—in the aspect of a buyer or seller, as a voter, as a partner, as the case may be. There was no doubt that at this moment the whole of mankind were expected to fit somehow into Lady Chaloner's ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... should from cowardice have wished him to exclude. I have no doubt, that any one who wins a victory over the fear of opinion, and especially over the opinion of the religious world, strengthens his own moral character, and acquires a greater fitness for ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... writer of marked quality may do well to let his genius develop its spontaneous forces without too assiduous or vigilant repression, trusting to other writers of equal strength in other directions, and to the general fitness of things and operation of time, to redress the balance, still it is the task of criticism in counting up the contributions of one of these strong men to examine the mischiefs no less than the benefits incident ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley

... daughter concerning this proposal, Evelyn had no reason to give for her opposition, except that she did not love him. This point Mrs. Mavick skillfully evaded and minimized. Of course she would love him in time. The happiest marriages were founded on social fitness and the judgment of parents, and not on the inexperienced fancies of young girls. And in this case things had gone too far to retreat. Lord Montague's attentions had been too open and undisguised. He had been treated almost as a son by the house. Society ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and have built a Bierhaus where they may regale both soul and sense in the presence of the cataract. Our travellers might, in another mood and place, have thought it droll to arrive at that sublime spectacle through a Bierhaus, but in this enchanted city it seemed to have a peculiar fitness. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... allurements were placed eagerly at her disposal. Respectful persons, obedient to her most faintly-expressed desire, displayed garments as wonderful as those the New York trunks had revealed. She was besought to consider the fitness of articles whose exquisiteness she was almost afraid to look at. Her thin little body was wonderfully fitted, managed, encouraged to make the most of its ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... scenes, etc., the confusion becomes extreme. And then show, also, how by the very means of these larger circles of complication the clearing up process is brought forward. To whom is the suggestion due that Antipholus the Native has gone mad? What fitness is there in that, especially in its being broached by a minor character? Trace the relation of the Goldsmith, his delays and his debts to the Plot. How does it come about effectively that in this Act the wrong master and ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... Matabeleland. Young men of the most eligible sort are everywhere. Some of them are manifestly youthful, others are well on in the thirties, there is even a sprinkling of men of years; but the mass of the population presents the same aspect of physical fitness, that indefinable something besides, which is perhaps not to be expressed save under the single head of 'race.'" In fact, our authority asserts that nowhere can be found a healthier, shrewder, or friendlier set of men. He believes in them, and in the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... replied the prince, 'that commerce could develop such an oracle; it is a subtle sense of fitness you express. I am ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... in love again. People always do. And at any rate by this time he was in a state of moral fitness ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... convulsively before their mouths, were seen to rush wildly towards the dentist's door, then pause for a moment, stricken by a sudden terror, and anon feebly pull the handle of an inflexible bell. Cabs had been heard to approach that fatal door—generally on wet days; for there seems to be a kind of fitness in the choice of damp and dismal weather for the extraction of teeth. Elderly ladies and gentlemen had been known to come many times to the Fitzgeorgian mansion. There was a legend of an old lady who had been seen to arrive in a brougham, especially weird and nut-crackery ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... accepts it. He is not only causing others to act immorally, but, as no man can be a proper judge of his own competency, he is attempting to thrust himself into an office of trust without any regard to his fitness to fill it. Intimidation, on the part of the man who practises it, is on the same ethical level as bribery, with respect to the two points just mentioned; but, as it appeals to the fears of men instead of their love of gain, and costs nothing to him who ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... our Lord will have, but obedience to the truth, that is, to the Light of the World, truth beheld and known. In my name, if we take all we can find in it, the full meaning which alone will harmonize and make the passage a whole, involves a revelation from resemblance, from fitness to represent and so reveal. He who receives a child, then, in the name of Jesus, does so, perceiving wherein Jesus and the child are one, what is common to them. He must not only see the ideal child in the child he receives—that ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... more, this reasonable election ought strictly to be a choice of things good and useful, and cooperating to the end; for how can it be reasonable to choose things which are neither convenient nor honorable nor at all eligible? For be it, as they say, a reasonable election of things having a fitness for the causing felicity; see then to what a beautiful and solemn conclusion their discourse brings them. For the end is (it seems), according to them, to reason rightly in the choice of things which are useful in causing us to ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... at this, perhaps over a further sense of fitness, but in it Mrs. Pakenham's eyes met Mrs. Wake's in a long interchange. Mrs. Upton, in the event of Imogen "delaying," would not stay; that was what, plainly, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... lies in availing himself of the effect of contrasts, which enable him at one time to produce calm repose, profound contemplation, and even the self-abandoned indifference of exhaustion, or at another, the most tumultuous emotions, the most violent storm of the passions. With respect to theatrical fitness, however, it must not be forgotten that much must always depend on the capacities and humours of the audience, and, consequently, on the national character in general, and the particular degree of mental culture. Of all kinds of poetry ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... he has looked for little else, some other things do frequently force themselves on his attention soon after the knot is tied; and as Caroline Waddington will appear in these pages as wife as well as maid, as a man's companion as well as his plaything, it may be well to say now something as to her fitness for such occupation. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... predominance of the number four again appears in another way. There are four general covenants, of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of Christ. It is therefore an act of audacious folly to increase or diminish the number of the Gospels. As there is fitness and order in all the other works of God, so also we may expect to find it in the case of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... regard it as an evidence, the more remarkable because given under a ceremonial regime, that God did not intend to institute any order of men outside the limits of which there was to be no liberty of prophesying and no fitness for it. Nor is there any exclusively sacred place, be it tabernacle, temple, synagogue, or church, where alone such gifts can be conferred. We believe that outside all sacred places, outside the churches of our own faith and order, and of any other churches, there are men, and women too, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... recovers his activity; or else he feeds on great flat cakes of wheat flour, off which he rends jagged-pieces and lubricates them with some spicy and unctuous gravy. All our ways of life, our meats and drinks, and all our notions of propriety and fitness in connection with the complicated business of appeasing our hunger as becomes our station, all these are a foreign land to him: yet he has made himself altogether at home in them. He has a sound practical knowledge ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... invented the whole idea to get a "story" out of Mark Twain. The item as printed next day invited a good deal of comment, and Collier's Weekly made it a text for an editorial on his mental vigor and general fitness for ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... "Choosing a foreman or clerk, guiding the education of children, settling my judgment of men in public or private life, estimating a wife or husband, and their fitness for each other, or endeavoring to understand myself and to select the right occupation, there is no advice of which I so often feel the need as that of a thoroughly able, scientific, ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... ought now to affect, as some people used to affect at the time, that the question was of secondary importance, and turned mainly on the special fitness of the Thirty-nine Articles to be offered for the proof of a young man's belief. It was a much more critical question. It was really, however disguised, the question, asked then for the first time, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... element in his fitness for the struggle of life lies in the fact that he is unafraid of man. He is wary of man; by which I mean he will quickly fly up from in front of man's feet. It is exceedingly difficult to catch a sparrow in one's hand. It is far easier to lure a pigeon within ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... of January, writing to General Cuninghame, whom he had formerly recommended to the command in Ireland for his "superior fitness," and who had recently applied for it on the resignation of General Burgoyne, he intimates his position ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... now becoming democratic all over the earth. All plants and all capital are to be owned by the State, and all business run as the Post-Office is run, or as the Panama Canal was built. The managers of each industry are to be chosen from the ranks, according to their fitness, for proved efficiency and knowledge of the business. Everybody will be upon a salary, and the opportunity of increasing personal profits by lowering wages, cheating the public, neglecting evil conditions of production, or damaging rivals, will be absent. Thus, instead of trying by an ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... and hearing have been recognized as the preeminently aesthetic senses. These senses provide the basis for all the arts—music and poetry are arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision. And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts and feelings; so do visual sensations—the facial expression or gesture seen communicates ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... standing at the entrance to a paddock stall, lent an unwilling ear to these queries. He was a firm believer in the truth, but more firmly he believed in the fitness of time and place. The whole truth, spoken incautiously in the paddock, has been known to affect closing odds, and it was the old man's habit to wager at post time, if at all. Those who pestered the owner of the "Bible stable" with questions about the fitness of Jeremiah ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... of that objection on your part, Mrs. Peckover; but let me remind you, that I vouch for the uprightness of his character, and his fitness to be trusted with the child, after twenty years' experience of him. You may answer to that, that I am a stranger, too; and I can only ask you, in return, frankly to accept my character and position as the best proofs I can offer you that I am not unworthy of your confidence. If you placed ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... neck to get a satisfactory view of his own back, and stroking the nap of his blue trousers with a fondling touch. They would all see him in it; old Oliver, Dolly, and aunt Charlotte. There would be no question now as to his fitness for taking Dolly out for a walk; he would be dressed well enough to attend upon a princess. This made famous amends for the pair of old boots he had lost the night he broke his leg; a loss he had ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... problem in the arguments on rime is its fitness or unfitness in particular kinds of poetry. No rules or laws can be formulated; men have judged differently at different times; but it has been generally felt that shorter poems, inasmuch as they are in a way the concentrated essence of poetry, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... practice of the Contagious Diseases Act." Referring to the finding of the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease that it would not be possible at present to organize a satisfactory method of certification of fitness for marriage, the National Birth-rate Commission thought this question should now be reconsidered with a view to legislation. "If," says the report, "a certificate of health was to become a legal obligation for persons contemplating marriage, many of the legal, ethical, and professional ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... configuration, or, to be more precise, the strange distortion which all these specimens have undergone. This distortion is so great that one might fail to recognise Australia within the coast line set down, were it not for the general fitness of the terms used as descriptive of this coast line, terms which have been handed down to us in the course of the geographical evolution, and some of which are recorded in the very maps we use ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge

... deed in the face of all the world, no consideration of myself should weigh with me an instant. But I believe that you would find no relief in such a course. What men call justice lies chiefly in outward formalities, and has never the close application and fitness that would be satisfactory to a soul like yours. I cannot be fairly tried and judged before an earthly tribunal; and of this, Hilda, you would perhaps become fatally conscious when it was too late. Roman justice, above all things, is a ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... life by violence, or whether mere distaste of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his epitaph and the consistency of his end, dying, as he had lived, a hater of mankind. And some there were who fancied a conceit in the very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of Attila, under all its manifold variations, is never without a certain natural fitness for consistent ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker



Words linked to "Fitness" :   habitability, soundness, fit, habitableness, making, condition, competence, unfitness, seaworthy, suitableness, fettle, competency, unseaworthy, suitability, shape, qualification



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