"Inapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warmed his spirit, as he sat tuning his sublime theorbo. "To be or not to be. Whether 'tis nobler"—"Beauty retire, thou dost my pity move"—"It is decreed, nor shall thy fate, O Rome;"—open and dignified in the sound, various and majestic in the sentiment, it was no inapt, as it was certainly no timid, spirit that selected such a range of themes. Of "Gaze not on Swans," I know no more than these four words; yet that also seems to promise well. It was, however, not a probable suspicion, the work of his master, Mr. Berkenshaw—as the drawings ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... think, not inapt parallel, might be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern history—Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its vicissitudes ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... who walked in it, his head uncovered, his brow bared. He was in the height of his fever dream. It is not an inapt name for his state of mind. His veins coursed as with fever; his thoughts took all the vague uncertainty of a dream. Little heeded he that the weather had become chilly, or that ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... ship, with studden sails alow and aloft, running before the wind directly for the American coast. Smoothly as she glided on, and rapidly as she ran through the water, in all the pride of symmetrical beauty, she was in a very critical position. As I looked at her I bethought me she presented no inapt simile to a careless youth rushing over the sea of life regardless of all the dangers which surround him, and with the pit of destruction yawning before him. Haul her wind and fight us she dared not, for we should have blown her speedily ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... as we think, not inapt parallel might be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern history,—Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... place alluded to is to become a permanent establishment, it would become an Englishman to have an English name for it. We need not be ashamed of our language, although some folks disdain to use it, if they can find any substitute, however inapt. Why should it not be called the Royal Coffee-house, the King's Coffee-house, the Patrician, the Universal, or in fact any thing, so that ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... then what Uncle Mathew had once told her: "This time next year you'll have forgotten all about this," but when it was a question of facing the immensities of the Last Day that consolation was strangely inapt. It was dusk very early and she longed for Martha to ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... consequently, fretful. His wife was especially solicitous to have us call her husband "master." Is your master at the store?"—"Where is your master?"—"Go and tell your master"—"I will make your master acquainted with your conduct"—she would say; but we were inapt scholars. Especially were I and my sister Eliza inapt in this particular. Aunt Priscilla was less stubborn and defiant in her spirit than Eliza and myself; and, I think, her road ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... that of the born combatant. The class that laughed openly at his first tremblingly bashful, and ludicrously inapt answer at quiz, was indelibly photographed upon ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... has been proposed as the painter, did indeed follow out this particular vein of Giorgione's portraiture, so that "Style of Licinio" is not an altogether inapt attribution; but there is just that difference of quality between the one man's work and the other, which distinguishes any great man from his followers, whether in literature or in art. How near (and yet how far!) Licinio came to his great prototype is best seen in Lady Ashburton's ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... that he was irretrievably lost, she relapsed into her former plaintive mood. But the twain were forthwith by her side with soft speeches and profuse promises, which, however ill she understood them, were not altogether inapt to allay a grief which had in it more of concern for her own hapless self than of sorrow for her lost lover. So, in course of time, the lady beginning visibly to recover heart, they began privily to debate which of them should first take her to bed ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... an inapt phrase for the person whom the maid ushered into the room through this door. He was a small, thin, elderly man, bowed of figure and shuffling in gait. His coat and large, low-crowned hat, though worn almost to shabbiness, conveyed an indefinable ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... appropriate, germane, applicable, felicitous, pertinent, apropos; likely, liable; clever, intelligent, bright, deft. Antonyms: See inapt. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and that now that I'm well up in years and have moreover the fatigue and trouble of my official duties, I've become in literary compositions like these, which require a light heart and gladsome mood, still more inapt. Were I even to succeed in composing any, they will unavoidably be so doltish and forced that they would contrariwise be instrumental in making the flowers, trees, garden and pavilions, through their demerits, lose in beauty, and present instead ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the right word—for just the right word—than did Whitman. He would ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... admit of any satisfactory result from an adequate contemplation of nature.' [69:1] We have a Gillespie setting aside the Design Argument on the ground that the reasonings by which it is supported are 'inapt' to show such attributes as infinity, omnipresence, free agency, omnipotency, eternality, or unity,' belong in any way to God. On this latter attribute he specially enlarges, and after allowing 'the contrivances we observe in nature, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell |
