"Inability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adding, "For instance, monsieur le duc, how can I sufficiently repay your friendly zeal to supply the king with a new mistress?" "I, madam?" "Yes, sir, you; I am aware of all your kind offices, and only lament my inability to reward them in a suitable manner." "In that case I shall not attempt to deny my share in the business." "You have then sufficient honor to avow your enmity towards me?" "By no means enmity, madam. I merely admit my desire to contribute ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... inability to pay, Madame," Sir Giles rejoined. "I cannot believe you; having some knowledge of your means. Nevertheless, I will acquaint you with a rule of law applicable to the contingency you put. 'Quod non habet in cere, luet in corpore' is a decree of the Star-Chamber; meaning, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... became so nearly converted to her side as the journey grew hotter and heavier, seeing her maintain her pace as well as himself, if not better, that he found himself stumbling every few yards sheerly through his inability to keep his eyes from her. He was bursting to talk; there was yet a problem unsolved in his mind; and when a stretch of level glade gave him back ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... question before us, whether we elect Beaumont or Max, I care, I confess, little. I'm rather an Anti-Jew myself (hissing and cheers), but it strikes me that the Jews are the least of our trouble. To a man who said to me that the cause of all our evil days is the inability of England to feed these few million Jews I'd answer: "I don't know how you can be so silly!" Why, the whole human race, friends, can find room on the Isle of Wight—the earth laughs at the insignificant drawings upon ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... must unavoidably undergo great hardships. Your constitution (if I am not much mistaken) is very delicate, and not formed for the fatigues of the camp. The expedition, I am sensible, is a glorious one, and nothing but a persuasion of my inability to endure the hardships of it would have deterred me from engaging in it. If this excuse was sufficient for me, I am persuaded it is for you, and ought to influence you to abandon all thoughts of undertaking it. I have no friend so dear to me (and I love my friends) but that I am ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... relatives had all shaken hands with him, and laughed, smiled, or smirked their felicitations, they made way for the press of eager acquaintances. His prize library was reverently surveyed, and many were the sportive sallies elicited by the victor's obvious inability to carry away what he had won. Suavely exultant, ready with his reply to every flattering address, Bruno Chilvers exhibited a social tact in advance of his years: it was easy to imagine what he would become when Oxford terms and the seal of ordination ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... recent research has shown that this is due to a peculiar form of parthenogenesis (cf. p. 135), and not to any failure of the characters to separate clearly from one another in the gametes. Mendel, however, could not have known of this, and his inability to discover in Hieracium any indication of the rule which he had found to hold good for both peas and beans must have been a source of considerable disappointment. Whether for this reason, or owing to the utter neglect of his work by the scientific world, Mendel gave up ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... with General Grant's wish, and his confidence in the information as to Longstreet's reinforcement was such that he telegraphed Halleck on the 20th that the siege of Knoxville was about to be renewed. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxii. pt. ii. p. 149.] The chronic inability of Halleck to understand East Tennessee affairs is shown in his insistence on still maintaining the Cumberland Gap line, which was necessarily uncovered whenever the enemy approached Strawberry Plains. Chattanooga had now become our ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... travelling-cap he wore hid it from me. Yet if I had seemed to know the girl's face, I was certain I knew the man's. But as I could see, so I could remember, neither. And there was an absolute torture in this which I can't explain to you,—in this inability, and in my inability to wake them ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... they would have either to accept their new friend's hospitality, or spend the night on the doorstep, it did not take them long to decide on the former alternative. Their only reason for hesitating was their inability to understand what were his motives for asking them to come to his place. Then, as if divining the reason of their uncertainty, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world-enigma? I expressed this view as clearly as I could in the second of these lectures. Certainly the restlessness of the actual theoretic situation, the value for some purposes of each thought- level, and the inability of either to expel the others decisively, suggest this pragmatistic view, which I hope that the next lectures may soon make entirely convincing. May there not after all be a possible ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Scotland were a Catholic Queen, a Catholic Queen Mother, and the Queen of Scotland was marrying the idolatrous Dauphin. It is not worth while to study Knox's general denunciation of government by ladies: he allowed that (as Calvin suggested) miraculous exceptions to their inability might occur, as in the case of Deborah. As a rule, a Queen was an "idol," and that was enough. England deserved an idol, and an idolatrous idol, for Englishmen rejected Kirk discipline; "no man would have his life called in trial" by presbyter or ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... meeting in Berlin the preceding year unanimously endorsed woman suffrage and appointed a standing committee on Citizenship and Equal Rights, with Dr. Shaw as its chairman. She read letters from the Governors of the four equal suffrage States regretting their inability to be present for Woman's Day at the Exposition and giving the strongest possible endorsement of the practical working ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the fault probably lies in a lack of the power of co-ordinating the various activities. The necessary associations between the hearing centres and the motor centres for the control of voice have not been built up. But they can be so built, and then the inability to sing vanishes. A person who can speak has the necessary machinery for song, and to say that one has "no voice" is ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... think."[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 313 (Fr. p. 321).] Intellect is always trying to carve out for itself stable forms because it is primarily fitted for action, and "is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life" and grasp Change.[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 174 (Fr. p. 179).] Our intellect loves the solid and the static, but life itself is not static- -it is dynamic. We might say that the intellect ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... in her eye, but with the deepened flush of uncontrollable emotion overspreading her features. And yet that flush seemed scarcely the token of a heart overpowered with sudden joy, but rather of a mind conscious of being involved in an unexpected dilemma, and puzzled with its inability to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... facts stated in this chapter, viz., that there is no possibility of the present inhabitants of Mexico ever successfully driving back the Apaches and reconquering the northern provinces. Her title to the wild regions of the north, which rests on discovery and colonization, is lost by her utter inability to subdue the Indians and to colonize, after a probation of three hundred years. At this day the whole of the northern provinces lie, like waifs, open to any civilized people to take possession who require an additional territory. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... still result from the opposed powers and idiosyncrasies of the two men. Orcagna was unable to draw the nude—on this inability followed a coldness to the value of flowing lines, and to the power of unity in composition—neither could he indicate motion or buoyancy in flying or floating figures, nor express violence of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... than the other, almost unconsciously, before we knew it we would not perhaps be able to say at once. The other day I became a little alarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness, and inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contest between Labour and Capital; and I tried to think my way sternly through, and decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to the other, and ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... false and venal acclamations, maintained an obstinate silence; and after a short pause, were dismissed to their quarters. The principal officers were entertained by the Caesar, who professed, in the warmest language of friendship, his desire and his inability to reward, according to their deserts, the brave companions of his victories. They retired from the feast, full of grief and perplexity; and lamented the hardship of their fate, which tore them from their beloved general and their native country. The only expedient which could ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... words, phrases, or sentences, that would otherwise appear as loose shreds, or unconnected aphorisms; and thus, by various forms of dependence, to give to discourse such continuity as may fit it to convey a connected train of thought or reasoning. The skill or inability of a writer may as strikingly appear in his management of these little connectives, as in that of the longest and most significant words ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... laws which protect them from the attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of capricious Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. "Reproof," says Dr. Johnson, "should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;" and "the care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors will unalterably act. And, since they have cited the great moralist's maxim as a direction for critics, they, even in this their first step into public view, beg leave to offer a few sentiments from the same high ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... faithful persons?" Thus, his chain of reasoning is, first of all, these remedies work, as attested by direct experience; we are not able to explain why or how they work; we must not, however, fly in the face of experience and deny their effectiveness simply because of our inability to explain the workings. He gives the example of a "leaven," which in minute amounts is able to "turn the greatest lump of dow ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... papa's benevolent disposition, and the amount he used to spend in private charities. Your Uncle Barnes was, if possible, more generous. I have known him to part with his last dollar to relieve another from want or embarrassment, and this was not done through weakness or inability to refuse, but from a genuine impulse of sympathy with ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... consideration that several canine species evince (as will be shown in a future chapter) no strong repugnance or inability to breed under confinement; and the incapacity to breed under confinement is one of the commonest bars to domestication. Lastly, savages set the highest value, as we shall see in the chapter on Selection, on dogs: even half- tamed animals are highly useful to them: the Indians ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... yours. Because you did not go to her, she came to you! And as I had purposed, I meant now to subject her to my will. But in my distracted excitement I could think out no plan; nothing occurred to me but to go aimlessly hither and thither, to turn back, and to stand still. And in this very inability I recognized how fully I was ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... advertisement of their enterprise ready to be fixed up, they felt that the time had come to take their mother formally into their confidence. She had learned of the formation of the cats' home from old Sarah; and several of her neighbors had talked to her about it, and seemed surprised by her inability to give them details about its ultimate scope and purpose, for it had excited the interest of the neighborhood and was a frequent matter of discussion for fully a week. She had explained to them ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... said Judge Carter. "Is it not true that your difficulties in school, your inability to get along with your classmates, and your having to hide while you toiled for your livelihood in secret—these are due to this extensive education brought about through ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Father Gregory's Notion of the Impediments to Conversion in India— Inability of Europeans ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... that a woman's ability to hate is in proportion to her inability to charm. The brute omitted to add that a woman's ability to charm ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... then, from a modern confusion of thought with regard to the realms of the Divine and the Human that the amazing inability arises, on the world's part, to understand the respective principles on which the Catholic Church acts in these two and utterly separate departments. The world considers it reasonable for a country to defend its material possessions by the sword, but intolerant and unreasonable for ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... drawback lay in my weak state of health and physical inability to write more than a few lines. But in these I expressed a hope that in time my poor friend might come to realise that his boy was "as much alive and as near to him ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... are an industrious and harmless people. For centuries they have been slaves to Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, and Crusaders from every land. They have been doomed to serve because of their inability to lead and control. They are content to serve so long as justice reigns. Egypt to-day is better governed, more prosperous, happier than it has ever been in its history. Cromer, Kitchener, the Tommy, the Engineer, and the men of the "Egyptian Civil" have given their noblest efforts ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... desecration here. These little lumps of pulp are simply prayers, pieces of paper on which the priests have traced some mystic characters for the use of the devout, and which, because of their inability to reach the idol to paste the strips on, they shoot through ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Argyllshire, his father, after various changes of fortune, had obtained a company in the 42d Regiment, with which he served during several campaigns in Flanders. From continued indisposition, and consequent inability to undergo the fatigues of military life, he disposed of his commission, and retired, with his wife and two children, to the villa of Rosebank, of which he became the owner. A few years after the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... business line my reception might have been different; if I possessed recommendations, or could have frankly confessed the truth, perhaps I might have been given a chance. But as it was everywhere, suspicion was aroused by my reticence, my inability to explain, and the interview ended in curt dismissal, or ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... Bergson's work now seems to me a mixture of two things that won't mix—metaphysics and natural science. It is full of word-splitting and conjuring with terms, and abounds in natural history facts. The style is wonderful, but the logic is not strong. He enlarges upon the inability of the intellect to understand or grasp Life. The reason is baffled, but sympathy and the emotional nature and ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... on hearing of the riot, rode from Whitehall to quell it; but he arrived too late to save the victim. Every bone in his body was broken, and he was quite dead. Charles was excessively indignant, and fined the city six hundred pounds for its inability to deliver up ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... influence of evil in the world, and so weak is man in resistance thereto, that without the aid of a power above that of humanity no soul would find its way back to God from whom it came. The need of a Redeemer lies in the inability of man to raise himself from the temporal to the spiritual plane, from the lower kingdom to the higher. In this conception we are not without analogies in the natural world. We recognize a fundamental distinction between inanimate and living matter, between the inorganic and the organic, between ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... author had resolved on, from a sense of duty to the world at large, although the promise was rather of prospective loss than of present benefit. The peculiar form under which the theory appears, is, therefore, a result of the circumstances above stated, and of the author's present inability to enter into the minute details of a subject, which embraces in its range the whole ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... investigation. Rozaro flew into a passion, and tried to release the magician as soon as he saw him, affecting intense indignation that I should take the law into my own hands when one of Rumanika's subjects was accused; but only lost his dignity still more on being told he had acknowledged his inability to control his men so often when they had misbehaved, that I scorned to ask his assistance any longer. He took huff at this, and, as he could not help himself, walked away, leaving us to do as we liked. The charge was fully proved. The impudent magician, without ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... consummation of the crime which was for ever to draw him out of obscurity. He went every morning to pay his court to the pacha, whose confidence he doubted; then, one day, feigning illness, he sent excuses for inability to pay his respects to a man whom he was accustomed to regard as his father, and begged him to come for a moment into his apartment. The invitation being accepted, he concealed assassins in one of the cupboards without shelves, so common in the East, which contain by day the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... it has become. This was the way at the beginning in conversion: "dead works" means that in us there does not dwell force or power to lift the great weight of the commandment or righteousness of God; hence they are useless or stupid works. When you find in your heart your inability to fulfil the Divine commandment, and have not the strength and power you want, though all day trying to lift the heavy weight, you come to God and say, "It is plain that, as I am, I cannot live out this righteousness, and I come for a new life to live it out. I must have Thine own strength." ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Oftentimes, confessing the inability of the image to stand alone, these poets make it into a symbol of some mood or emotional thought. Yet the image remains the chief object of the poet's care; it was clearly the first thing in his mind; the interpretation is an afterthought. The poem therefore falls into two parts—a ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... software is (at least for the foreseeable future) incapable of effectively blocking the majority of materials in the categories defined by CIPA without overblocking a substantial amount of materials. Nunberg's analysis was supported by extensive record evidence. As noted above, this inability to prevent both substantial amounts of underblocking and overblocking stems from several sources, including limitations on the technology that software filtering companies use to gather and review Web pages, limitations on resources for human review of Web pages, and the necessary ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... in forcing people to be definite, and Miss Arden invariably fell back on "you understand" whenever she herself did not understand. In fact, in exact proportion to her own inability to make herself clear to herself, did she always insist that she ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... flatter myself that I have, in this way, discovered the cause of—and consequently the mode of removing—all the errors which have hitherto set reason at variance with itself, in the sphere of non-empirical thought. I have not returned an evasive answer to the questions of reason, by alleging the inability and limitation of the faculties of the mind; I have, on the contrary, examined them completely in the light of principles, and, after having discovered the cause of the doubts and contradictions into which reason ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... long before Gervaise dozed off. He was furious with himself for having fallen into the trap; if he had, as he said to himself, lain off the beach in the boat, and questioned the supposed shipwrecked sailors, their inability to reply to him would have at once put him on his guard; as it was, he had walked into the snare as carelessly and confidently as a child might have done. Even more than his own captivity, he regretted the death of his three comrades, which he attributed to ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... from them. He met with marked success before the unprejudiced hearers of Vienna, Prague, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. His visit to Russia especially yielded him a handsome sum, with which he returned to Vienna to await the representation of "Tristan," but owing to the physical inability of Ander, the work finally had to be laid aside. Wagner felt also that intelligence as well as good-will for the cause were lacking; even the Isolde-Dustman did not at heart believe in it. "To speak frankly, I had enough of it and thought no more ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... From sheer inability to stem the traffic, Selwyn stepped into a doorway. On the opposite side of the street a theatrical sign announced that 'Lulu' was 'the biggest, most stupendous, comedy of the season.' He wondered what ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... words the Duke was really a poor man—not poor in the American sense, where poverty comes as a sudden blighting stringency, taking the form of an inability to get hold of a quarter of a million dollars, no matter how badly one needs it, and where it passes like a storm-cloud and is gone, but poor in that permanent and distressing sense known only to the British aristocracy. The ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... In a very few months it became clear that all this compassion was feigned for the purpose of cajoling his Parliament, that he regarded the refugees with mortal hatred, and that he regretted nothing so much as his own inability to do what Lewis ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of life! There never was anything so stupid; I mean the whole thing—our ideas of right and wrong, love and duty, etc. Great Scott! what folly. The strange part of it all is man's inability to understand the folly of living. When I said to that woman to-night that I believed that the only evil is to bring children into the world, she said, 'But then the world would come to an end.' I said, 'Do you ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... it all about? Eleanor might well have shunned it, might well grasp it in desperation with a sudden inability to put it off any longer. Down in her heart, as strong as the keep of an old castle, and as obstinate-looking, was the feeling—"I do not want to marry Mr. Carlisle." Eleanor did not immediately discern its full outline and proportions, in the dim confusion which filled ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... he does not seem to me capable of so great an enterprise." This throws more light upon the limitations of Bishop Burnet than those of Peter the Great, and fairly illustrates the incompetency of contemporary estimates of genius; or, perhaps, the inability of talent to take the full measure of genius at any time. The good Bishop adds that he adores the wise Providence which "has raised up such a furious man to reign over such a part of the world." Louis XIV. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... muddle is largely caused by the inability of many people to free themselves from archaic notions which have really nothing to do with Christianity, although they have been imported into it. The principal of these, in relation to the question of sin, is the doctrine of the Fall. This doctrine has played a mischievous ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... well as to picturesquely lurid verbal illustration. But this was different; the language of these men was crammed with filth for filth's sake, and flat, pointless profanity. I have no doubt that my inability to avoid expressing disgust made them worse than they otherwise ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... spoken the truth, indeed, I should have confessed my inability to support the anti-vaccinationist case, since in my opinion few people who have studied this question with an open and impartial mind can deny that Jenner's discovery is one of the greatest boons—perhaps, after the introduction ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... the Blackwater, for Gen. Martin informs him that the enemy are preparing their expeditions to cut our railroads in North Carolina. Gen. Hill fears if the present line be held we are in danger of a great disaster, from the inability to transport troops from so remote a point, in the event of a sudden emergency. Gen. Lee refuses to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... escalated after both countries attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. By May 1994, when a cease-fire took hold, Armenian forces held not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also a significant portion of Azerbaijan proper. The economies of both sides have been hurt by their inability to make substantial progress toward a ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Woman, fourth edition, 1904, pp. 228-244. With reference to the probable influence of the corset and unsuitable clothing generally during early life in impeding the development of the mammary glands, causing inability to suckle properly, and thus increasing infant mortality, see especially a paper by Professor Bollinger (Correspondenz-blatt ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sharply till he perceives the special characteristics of rights and lefts. He could not describe the difference, to be sure, but he sees it well enough for his purposes. If you ask an older person to describe this difference, and rally him on his inability to do so, he is thus driven to lay them side by side and study out the difference ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... results was such, that naval officers of the greatest experience, confessed themselves unable to take such lunars; whilst other observers, long versed in the use of the transit instrument, avowed their inability to take such transits. Those who were conversant with pendulums, were at a loss how to make, even under more favourable circumstances, similarly concordant observations. The same opinion prevailed on the continent as well as in England. On whatever subject Captain ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... burning, and are very rarely seen without either a fire actually made, or a piece of lighted wood, which they carry with them from place to place, and even in their canoes.* The perpetual fires, which in some countries formed a part of the national religion, had perhaps no other origin than a similar inability to produce it at pleasure; and if we suppose the original flame to have been kindled by lightning, the fiction of its coming down from heaven will be found to deviate very ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... furnished with materials for its various operations; but, unless it acts in conjunction with the senses, the operation is lost, as in that absence which takes place in deep contemplation. It is owing to our inability to determine what share these internal and external conditions take in producing a result that the absolute or actual state of nature is incomprehensible by us. Nevertheless, conceding to our mental infirmity the idea of a real existence of visible nature, we may consider it as offering a succession ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... warr, crewsing up and down about Ostend: at which we are alarmed. My Lord Sandwich is come back into the Downes with only eight sail, which is or may be a prey to the Dutch, if they knew our weakness and inability to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... OF BRAIN—STUNNING.—This may be caused by a blow or a fall.—Symptoms. Cold skin; weak pulse; almost total insensibility; slow, weak breathing; pupil of eye sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, than natural; inability to move; unwillingness to answer when spoken to. These symptoms come on directly after the accident.—Treatment. Place the patient quietly on a warm bed, send for a surgeon, and do nothing else for the first four ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... threatened her lithe figure with her consumption of retes, the Magyar strudel. All these washed down with Szamorodni or a Hungarian Riesling, the despair of a hundred generations of connoisseurs due to its inability to travel. When liqueurs were called for, barack, the highly distilled apricot brandy which was still the national tipple, was her choice, if not Tokay Aszu, the sweet nectar wine, once allowed only to be consumed by nobility so precious ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... had entered into the rest he had so often seen by the eye of faith. 'There remains,' he wrote, less than a year before his death, 'a rest. Somewhere ahead. Not very far at the longest. Perfect, quiet, full, without solitude, isolation, or inability to accomplish; when the days of our youth will be more than restored to us; where, should mysteries remain, there will be no torment in them. And the reunions there! Continuous too, with no feeling that the rest of to-day ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... not from an inability, but from an excessive nicety-a desire to write a prize essay, instead of a good, sociable, familiar letter. To make a letter interesting, the writer must transfer his thoughts from his mind to his paper, as truly as the ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Europe. In these grammar schools violence is forbidden, almost unknown. For a man to fight with his horse would be a disgrace; to abuse or over-ride him—a shame; to lade him with a three-pound bit and a thirty-pound saddle—a confession of inability to control or stay on. In every part of the world where the horse has been developed, it has been in exact ratio with the creed of the riding schools. No one that has seen both classes of riders can have a doubt that the best horsemen in the world are those ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was better. It turned out that all the afternoon and evening she had suffered greatly from neuralgia. She had said nothing about it while I was there, but had behaved with cheerfulness and freedom. Mentally I had accused her of slightness, and inability to talk upon the subjects which interested Mardon and myself; but when I knew she had been in torture all the time, my opinion was altered. I thought how rash I had been in judging her as I continually judged other people, without being aware of everything they had to pass through; and ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... diseases in regard to which excess in alcoholics acts as a powerful predisposing cause, such as gout, gravel, aneurism, paralysis, apoplexy, epilepsy, cystitis, premature incontinence of urine, erysipelas, spreading cellular inflammation, tendency of wounds and sores to gangrene, inability of the constitution to resist the attacks of epidemics. I have had a fearful amount of experience of continued fever in our infirmary during many epidemics, and in all my experience I have only once known an intemperate man of forty and upwards ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... a member of his own noble sex as catechist, but sadly handicapped by inability to employ contentious formulas, gave a detailed account of his visit to The Pigeons. He identified the convict by short lengths of speech, addressed to Mr. Wardle's ear alone, suggestive of higher understandings of the affairs ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... spoiling shall be distributed by his order; and what shall not be thus disposed of shall not be passed over, at the time, to the royal officials. That ordinance is impractical, for, besides the continual occupations of the governor in affairs of greater importance and his inability to personally supervise things so minute, your Majesty had issued the necessary ordinance before the visit, and I have followed it in the preparation of fleets and reeenforcements; and I do not pay any attention ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... Park West there was a circle of astonished listeners, when Doctor William Atwater had closed the conference by reporting his inability to trace a single enemy of the murdered man. Counsellor Stillwell, in a grave reverie, listened and abandoned all present hope of any clue to the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... also cabled his bankers for funds, and the enforced wait of a month, under which both chafed, was due to their inability to charter a vessel for the return to ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on a piano need not prevent you from making yourself familiar with the construction of the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nights a week during a couple of months! As things are, you probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... supposed that St. Cecilia with a cold in her head would be incompetent to "Nix my Dolly;" and this erroneous and popular prejudice is continually made the excuse for vocal inability during the winter months. Now the effect which we have before described upon the articulation of the catarrhed would be, in our opinion, so far from displeasing, that we feel it would amply compensate for any imperfections ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... beside God's deliverances! We have not gone through all the chambers of His storehouse, and 'His ways are far above, out of our sight.' Let us hold fast by the faith that His arm is strong to do whatever His lips are gracious to engage, nor let our inability to see where the river gets through the mountains ever make us doubt that it will reach the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... leaned out, her soul felt old and haggard, and the contact with the youth and freshness of the morning emphasized its inability to be influenced any more by youthful wonders, by the graciousness and inspiration that are the gifts ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... sensations? We should then get a case of insanity in which hallucination would be symptomic. (The dream state is more or less permanent with certain poetical temperaments, and if there is any insanity attaching to it at all, it consists in the inability to react.) Imagination, deep thought and grief are as much anaesthetic as chloroform. But the closing of the external channels of sensation is usually the signal for the opening of the psychic, and from all ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... through the aperture; but her nerves were so much shaken by this unlucky circumstance, that when she had reached the platform, whence a second ladder was to conduct her to the ditch of the fortress, she declared her utter inability to descend it; and she was ultimately folded in a thick cloak, and cautiously lowered down by the joint exertions of her attendants. The Comte de Brienne and M. du Plessis then supported her to the carriage which was in waiting at the bridge; and Marie ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Every kraal here knew perfectly that he was stern and rigid, but absolutely just. If he once says a thing he stands by it, even if he gets into trouble at headquarters, which isn't so very unusual. Someone out of jealousy or pique or utter inability to understand stern justice, will misrepresent his actions and misreport him for doing his duty. It's a heart-breaking business for him sometimes; but he never gives in when it is keeping his word one way or the other with ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... what she saw to be her father's meaning. Once she would have felt as he did and have believed that their god could be propitiated by blood and agony. But now she knew that all such cruel sacrifices were worse than vain; and deeply she regretted her own inability to bring her countrymen, and especially her own beloved father, to a knowledge of the Gospel of mercy and peace; and thus save them from imbruing their hands in the blood of their fellow men, and thinking that they did good service ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... do so from inability to bear the restraints prescribed by a genuine refinement, and they would be greatly improved by being kept under these restraints. But it is not less true that, by adding to the legitimate restraints, which are based on convenience and a regard ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the time, the task which you imposed on me was more than I could accomplish; and you must now be but too well convinced that the apprehension of my inability was not unfounded. It may not, perhaps, be difficult for a man of sound judgment to seize and delineate the general progress of the human mind during a determined period; but to follow successively, through all their details, the ramifications of the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... sister growing in, most frequently in swamps and bogs, the SMALLER PURPLE-FRINGED ORCHIS (H. psycodes) lifts its perfumed lilac spires. Thither go the butterflies and long-lipped bees to feast in July and August. Inasmuch as without their aid the orchid must perish from its inability to set fertile seed, no wonder it woos its benefactors with a showy mass of color, charming fringes, sweet perfume, and copious draughts of nectar, and makes their visits of the utmost value to itself by the ingenious mechanism described above. Here is no waste of pollen; that ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... turret of the Brigadier the British tars were sweating and muttering imprecations at their inability to put a shell ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... indistinct perception of inability to sustain himself erect, and a belief he would feel better in a recumbent attitude, he gropes his way back to the glade, where, staggering about for a while, he at length settles down, dead drunk. In ten seconds he is asleep, in slumber so profound, that ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... more probable reason is that the majority of the reading world does not appreciate or enjoy real nonsense, and this, again, is consequent upon their inability to discriminate between nonsense of ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... vivid picture of Plutarch's idea of the essence of superstition; it was the imagination of the existence of an unseen ever-present Master; the bondage of a rule of life, of a continual responsibility; obligation to attend to little things, the impossibility of escaping from duty, the inability to choose or change one's religion, an interference with the enjoyment of life, a melancholy view of the world, sense of sin, horror at guilt, apprehension of punishment, dread, self-abasement, depression, anxiety, and endeavor to be at peace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... not but grieve at suffering the whole burthen of this clamorous imposition to fall upon the soft-hearted Mr Arnott, whose inability to resist solicitation made him so unequal to sustaining its weight: but when Mrs Harrel was again able to go on with her account, she heard, to her infinite surprise, that all application to her brother had proved ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... on that score, Monsieur Vanel; I shall not blame you for a failure in your word, which evidently may arise from inability on your part." ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mused he after a pause, while Rene still bursting with ungratified curiosity, hung about the further end of the room, "of the terrible anxiety they must be in about you at Pulwick, and of our absolute inability to convey to them the good ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the day succeeding this adventure, to restore to my benefactor the credentials with which be had been pleased to entrust me. Satisfied of the truth of my commission, I could only deplore my inability to execute it faithfully. In spite of what had passed at the cottage-door, the doctrines which I had advocated there lost none of their character and influence upon my own mind. Falling from the lips of others, they dropped with conviction into my own soul. Nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... o'clock he waited, when, in blank despair, he mounted beside Mead again and drove back to Shapley Manor. It was curious that Dorise had not come to meet him, but he attributed it to The Sparrow's inability to convey a message to her. She might have gone out of town with her mother, he thought. Or, perhaps, at the last moment, she had ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... and walked slowly back across the clearing and down the lane. Though he told himself he had expected nothing from the visit, he was nevertheless bitterly disappointed with its result. And worse than his disappointment was his inability to see his next step, or even to think of any scheme which might lead him to ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... she had never felt her poverty till now. Bitterly did she regret her inability to help them. From the abundance that had blessed her youth and middle age a mere pittance had been saved, scarcely enough to maintain herself, and altogether insufficient to enable her to gratify her benevolent feelings by doing for them as she wished. She had removed from her early ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... principle of uninterrupted relation by virtue of which we can call the whole world our extended body and use it accordingly. And in this age of science it is our endeavour fully to establish our claim to our world-self. We know all our poverty and sufferings are owing to our inability to realise this legitimate claim of ours. Really, there is no limit to our powers, for we are not outside the universal power which is the expression of universal law. We are on our way to overcome ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... and the impossibility of his getting a living outside of politics make it certain that he will never break out of the narrow circle where his political employers have confined him; his imperative mandate is the material necessity which obliges him to obey; his imperative mandate is his inability to quarrel with ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... prestige on account of its inability to hold in check its northern rival. Damascus rose in revolt and had to be subdued, and northern Syria was greatly disturbed. Hadrach was visited in the last year ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... Their inability to follow Arizona's train of thought irritated the others. He literally held them in the palm of his hand as ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... friend and aikane, Hope, was the most dreadful object I had ever seen in my life,— his eyes sunken and dead, his cheeks fallen in against his teeth, his hands looking like claws; a dreadful cough, which seemed to rack his whole shattered system, a hollow, whispering voice, and an entire inability to move himself. There he lay, upon a mat, on the ground, which was the only floor of the oven, with no medicine, no comforts, and no one to care for or help him but a few Kanakas, who were willing enough, but could do nothing. The sight of him made me ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... same day. In outward appearance they are strong, healthy men. The same task is assigned them. One of them being adapted to that line of work, and skilled, performs his task with ease; while the other, equally industrious, cannot get through with his. He is reported for shirking. He states his inability to do the amount of work assigned him. The contractor or his foreman makes a different report. The assertions of the convict amount to but little, as against the statements of the rich and influential contractor. He is punished and returned to his ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... all illuminati and professors, all who talk down or cut our meat into morsels, will quickly be counted aunties by the vigorous boys at school. Chairs and pulpits totter to-day with a scholastic dry rot, which is inability to recognize the equality of unsophisticated man to man. There will soon be no more chair or desk; the only eminence will be that of one who can stand with feet on the common level, and still utter over our heads a regenerating word. We shall learn to address ourselves in an audience, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... any right to ask you to marry me. I haven't any money, not a bit, and I'm not prepared to do anything, either. As I wrote you, my folks want me to go to Harvard next year." The mention of his poverty and of his inability to support a wife brought him back to something approaching normal again. "I suppose I'm just a kid, Cynthia," he added more quietly, "but sometimes I feel a thousand years old. I ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... different bodies of Christians. They are the followers of the Reformer, John Calvin, who was born in 1509. The five points, or essential doctrines of Calvinism, are (1) particular election, (2) particular redemption, (3) moral inability in a fallen state, (4) irresistible grace, and (5) the final perseverance of the saints. In other words, a Calvinist holds that before the foundation of the world God elected a certain number to salvation, and reprobated the rest ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... enticing allurements of those who, to use Claudet's words, had "thrown their caps over the wall." How was it that he had not read, in those eyes, pure as the fountain's source, the candor and uprightness of a maiden heart which had nothing to conceal. This cruel evidence of his inability to conduct himself properly in the affairs of life exasperated and humiliated him, and at the same time that he felt his self-love most deeply wounded, he was conscious of being more hopelessly enamored of Reine Vincart. Never had she appeared so beautiful as during the indignant movement ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... had slipped from him. As for Rosedale, she did not, after the first shock, greatly care what conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial conditions it ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... deference which he accorded to his companions. In short each of our travellers congratulated himself not a little on this pleasant acquisition to the party—the only drawback to their satisfaction being their inability to reconcile the existence of such good qualities with ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... occasion Goldsmith was of the company, and the visit after that was brought about through Boswell's inability to keep his promise to entertain Johnson at his own rooms. The little Scotsman had a squabble with his landlord, and was obliged to take his guest to the Mitre. "There is nothing," Johnson said, "in this mighty misfortune; nay, we shall be better at the Mitre." And Boswell ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... and through twenty years of terrible and almost continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of giving Europe that "peace and stability" which they thought that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the mass of the people to rule themselves. They re-arranged the map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise the greatest possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not through any premeditated wickedness on their part. They ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... for nearly a thousand years, and is said to have been known to the Chinese at a yet earlier period. And yet, to-day, if any professor of physical science is asked to explain the magnetic property of the earth, he will acknowledge his inability to do so to his own satisfaction. Happily this does not hinder us from finding out by what law these forces act, and how they enable us to navigate the ocean. I therefore hope the reader will be interested ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... cause seemed absurd. Turn for a moment and see how absurd the separate self appears from the point of view of the conjunct. When our Lord hung upon the cross, the jeering soldiers shouted, "He saved others, himself he cannot save." No, he could not; and his inability seemed to them ridiculous, while it was in reality his glory. His true self he was saving—himself and all ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... superintendent. The mine-owners' conference, from which he had just returned, had been called to protest against the poor service given by the railroad, and knowing his present inability to give better service, he had temporized until it needed but this one more touch of the lash to make ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... go wherever you please, while in Paris," he said. "I regret my inability to reward you properly for the great service you have rendered my country; but you have my sincerest gratitude, and may command me ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... was lost by three voices only. We are told that the speeches were very brilliant, and Sir R. Walpole particularly distinguished himself. He might have been tormented by his enemies, but not by the stone, (the excuse assigned in the letter for his inability to attend the king), for Horace left him at one o'clock in the morning, after the debate had terminated, "at supper all alive and in spirits," and he even boasted that he was younger than his son. The next struggle was on the 28th of Jan., on the Chippenham election, ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... result of the fortnight which elapsed since Cadurcis renewed his acquaintance with his Cherbury friends was, that he had become convinced of his inability of propitiating Lady Annabel, was devotedly attached to Venetia, though he had seldom an opportunity of intimating feelings, which the cordial manner in which she ever conducted herself to him gave him no reason to conclude desperate; at the same time that he had contrived that a day should ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... ministry, knowing how to combine universal sympathy with perfect spirituality. There was no brow-beating in their call to conversion, no new tyranny imposed of sanctioned by their promised deliverance. If they could not rise to a positive conception of natural life, this inability but marks the well-known limitations of Oriental fancy, which has never been able to distinguish steadily that imagination which rests on and expresses material life from that which, in its import, breaks ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... against the brilliant novelist, Thomas Mann. Above all does he condemn the intellectual babble: "The wrong that these privy councillors and professors have done us with their 'Aufklaerungsarbeit' can hardly be measured. They have isolated themselves from humanity by their inability to realise the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... of this passage, as it now stands, if it has any sense, is this: What the inability of duty cannot perform, regardful generosity receives as an act of ability, though not of merit. The contrary is rather true: What dutifulness tries to perform without ability, regardful generosity ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... not like," he asked, "to be in some degree instrumental in banishing wholly from the country, a man whom we all suspect of treason, but are compelled to tolerate from inability to prove his guilt—this same ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the Metropolitan managers offered Katrine an engagement for next season. In a lengthy interview with their extremely courteous representative she explained her inability to accept the very flattering terms by reason of the already signed St. Petersburg contracts. Although there seemed no definite outcome from the interview, the gentleman with whom it was held left her, as all did, charmed ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... straightforwardness of the relation made it an amazing thing to hear, even more amazing than it would have been made by a more imaginative handling. Her obvious inability to cope with the unusual and villainous, combined with her entire willingness to obliterate herself in any manner in her whole-souled tenderness for the one present object of her existence, were things a man could ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... develop so gradually that it progresses below the level of awareness of the person, or times of increased enervation can be experienced as a complaint—as a lack of energy, as tiredness, as difficulties digesting, as a new inability to handle ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... (a)—There is an inability to release a word; in others, (b)—A tendency to repeat a syllable several times before the following syllable can be uttered; in others, (c)—The tendency to substitute an incorrect sound for the correct ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... numbers, in driving away their pugnacious little rivals, and the bell hung silent; for, strange to say, they knew what the sound meant, but I could never teach them to ring it, when they could rise and steal the worm from my hand without. But I am inclined to think it was more laziness than inability to learn, as they afterward picked up readily some much more difficult tricks. I taught them to leap from the water into my hand, and lie as if dead; and having arranged a slide of polished wood upon the bank, by placing worms upon ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... of American civilization? These questions may point with sufficient distinctness to the sources of the evils enumerated; but we are not to assume that mere human governments can furnish an adequate and complete remedy. Yet this admitted inability to do everything is no excuse for neglecting those things which are plainly within their power. Taking upon themselves the parental character, forgetting that they have wrongs to avenge, and seeking reformation through kindness, criminals ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... turned a little aside with down-bent head. His positive blue eyes looked almost feverishly bright; and the lip, on which he had unconsciously bitten hard, now released from pressure, quivered perceptibly; but with the unwillingness or inability of youth to admit the inevitableness of a great ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... race, when standing on that basis before God, so utterly failed that their destruction, by a flood, was necessary: in like manner, by the history of a most favored people in the age preceding the first advent of Christ, man has demonstrated his own inability to do right or to keep the law. In the present age, man proves his separation from his Creator by his spirit of self-sufficiency and positive rejection of God. The present issue between God and man is one of whether man ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... moral faith. AEneas is the reflection of a time out of joint. Everywhere among good men there was the same moral earnestness, the same stern resolve after nobleness and grandeur of life, and everywhere there was the same inability to harmonize this moral life with the experience ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... view entirely from the home front. It contains some fine thinking and some bad writing (the phrase telling of the middle-aged smart woman who "waved her foot impatiently" gives a just idea of the author's occasional inability to say what she means), some quite extraneous incidents and some scenes very well touched in. The people, with a few exceptions, are of the race which inhabits this sort of book, and, as we have long agreed with our novelists that "the county" is just like that, I don't see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... usual in such cases, the news came in through the kitchen, and most officers heard it at the breakfast-table from the lips of their better halves, who could hardly find words to express their sentiments as to the inability of their lords to explain the new phase of the situation. When the first sergeant of Company B came around to Captain Armitage with the sick-book, soon after six in the morning, the captain briefly directed him to transfer Lieutenant ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... to be, in the average German mind, an inability or a disinclination to see a thing as it really is, unless it be a matter of science. It finds its keenest pleasure in divining a profound significance in the most trifling things, and the number of mare's-nests that have been stared into by the German Gelehrter through his spectacles passes ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the anchor or injure the cable. In legal points it is not admitted as either port, creek, road, or roadstead, unless it be statio tutissima nautis. A vessel dropping anchor in known foul ground, or where any danger is incurred by inability to recover the anchor, or by being there detained until driven off by stress of weather, is not ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth |
