"Unfitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-defence, and I turned first to a gentleman's proper weapon, the sword. Here, alas! I was doomed to a bitter disappointment. My father had given me a lesson now and then, but never enough to test me, and when I came into the hands of a Glasgow master my unfitness was soon manifest. Neither with broadsword nor small sword could I acquire any skill. My short arm lacked reach and vigour, and there seemed to be some stiffness in wrist and elbow and shoulder which compelled me to yield to smaller men. Here was a pretty business, for though gentleman born I ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... Troutling, some time since, Endeavoured vainly to convince A hungry fisherman Of his unfitness for the frying-pan. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition By building on a small ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... gradually took from the incompetent hands even the light tasks which she had attempted. She made no protest, regarding all as another proof that Holcroft was beginning to recognize her superiority and unfitness for menial tasks. She would maintain, however, her character as the caretaker and ostentatiously inspected everything; she also tried to make as much noise in fastening up the dwelling at night as if she were barricading a castle. Holcroft would listen grimly, well aware ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... had little trouble in convincing him that the strong inclination which he felt to bestow her on Julian Peveril, provided he could be brought over to his own political opinions, was a blameable compromise with his more severe principles. Late circumstances had taught him the incapacity and unfitness of Dame Debbitch for the sole charge of so dear a pledge; and he readily and thankfully embraced the kind offer of her maternal uncle, Christian, to place Alice under the protection of a lady of rank in London, whilst he himself was to be engaged in the scenes of bustle and blood, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... once talked of passing this winter in Italy; but I hope your plans will be entirely guided by the state of your health and feelings. Your society would undoubtedly be a very great resource to me, but I am so well aware of my own present unfitness for society that I would not have you risk the chance of an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... they may reap the benefit, I have only had the pain. Otherwise, they are to me as if they had never existed; nor should I know that I had ever thought at all, but that I am reminded of it by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfitness for everything else. Look in Coleridge's face while he is talking. His words are such as might 'create a soul under the ribs of death.' His face is a blank. Which are we to consider as the true index of his mind? Pain, languor, shadowy remembrances, are the uneasy inmates ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... defensive battle, against greatly superior numbers, could scarcely be expected to stand well. As for the eighty camel men, they were all Soudanese soldiers, discharged from the army for old age and physical unfitness. They could be relied upon to fight but, small in number as they were, could but have little effect on the issue of a battle. All therefore agreed that, having come thus far, the safest, as well as the most honourable course, would be to endeavour to fight the enemy ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... a part of the way, but all of us suffered alike. They made themselves thoroughly disliked by their foul talk and abuse, and if anything tended more than another to show me that theirs was a moral unfitness for travel, it was the briskness assumed when they knew they were going back to the coast. I felt inclined to force them on, but it would have been acting from revenge, and to pay them out, so I forbore. I gave Mataka forty-eight yards of calico, and to the sepoys eighteen yards, and arranged ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... have brought out," the instructor said. "Billy has just demonstrated his unfitness to be class president. I am therefore removing him from this position and appointing you ...
— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams
... he attempted to get agricultural employment; but the whiteness of his hands and the tone of his voice not merely suggested unfitness for labour, but generated suspicion as to the character of one who had evidently dropped from a rank so much higher, and was seeking admittance within the natural masonic boundaries and secrets and privileges of another. Disheartened somewhat, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... who knows Mr. Wilson, who knows Mr. Lloyd George, who knows Mr. Clemenceau, nothing could be sillier than the chapters of Keynes and Dillon in which they undertake to picture the President's unfitness to cope with the European masters of diplomacy. Mr. Wilson for years had been playing with European masters of diplomacy as a cat plays with a mouse. To assume that Mr. Wilson was ever deceived by the transparent tactics of ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... convinced of it now, Than if heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow, And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many; For somehow the poor old Earth blunders along, Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness, And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong, Gets to port as the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultant darkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... incurred in so playing fast-and-loose with such a man, particularly in a moment of such utter unfitness to resist him, is, notwithstanding the French protection enjoyed by the Signory, amazing in its reckless audacity. It was fortunate for Florence that the Pope's orders tied the duke's hands—and it may be that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... I protested my unfitness for such an amusement, never having seen such an exhibition in my life; but to this my companion would not listen; and we picked our way, as well as we could, through William Street, up Wall, and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... MR. Edmonstone,—It is with a full sense of the unfitness of intruding such a subject upon you in the present state of the family, that I again address you on the same topic as that on which I wrote to you from Italy, at the first moment at which I have felt it possible to ask your attention. I was then too ill to be able to express ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blood-vessel be tied up, so as not to be used, it shrinks, and becomes a useless string; if a muscle be condemned to inaction, it shrinks in size, and diminishes in power; and thus it is also with the bones. Inactivity produces softness, debility, and unfitness for the functions they are designed to perform. This is one of the causes of the curvature of the spine, that common and pernicious defect in the females of America. From inactivity, the bones of the spine become ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... which are implied when you ask, "Ought I to marry?" First, "Have I a right to marry?" Every young person should ask this question. Fitness includes several aspects, among which the first is physical. The most inexcusable unfitness is venereal disease. There is no meaner crime than for a young man to acquire venereal disease by reason of weakness of will, and then pass it on to an innocent girl and perhaps to unborn children. Physicians say that in spite of so-called modern prophylaxis and supposed ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... another's path; but restrained as he will be by his secret pangs of conscience, he can scarcely be an active obstructionist. But a man who, having mistaken the field of his life's labor, yet remains amiably self-satisfied, and unconscious of his unfitness, may do more harm in his serene ignorance than he might have done good if he had chosen his proper sphere. Such a man as the last was the Reverend Harold. A good-natured, broad-shouldered, tactless, self-sufficient person, he had taken up his work with a complacent feeling that no field of ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... apparently, the stream of thought thus started and abandoned may spin on without regaining attention unless it reaches a spot of especially marked intensity which forces the return of attention. An initial rejection, perhaps consciously brought about by the judgment on the ground of incorrectness or unfitness for the actual purpose of the mental act, may therefore account for the fact that a mental process continues until the onset of sleep ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... in France extend to very many persons, and descriptions of persons, in all countries, who think their innoxious indolence their security. This kind of innocence in proprietors may be argued into inutility; and inutility into an unfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused movement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fingers of men cannot open, and which admits of no sudden cutting with the knife. I have likened the slaveholding States to the drunken husband, and in so doing have pronounced judgment against them. As regards the state of the drunken man, his unfitness for partnership with any decent, diligent, well-to-do wife, his ruined condition, and shattered prospects, the simile, I think, holds good. But I refrain from saying that as the fault was originally ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... mere beauty and vigour of thought and language, mere command of dramatic effect, mere depth and subtlety of power to read, interpret, and reproduce the secrets of the heart and spirit. Could any further evidence be required of the unfitness and unworthiness to hold or to utter any opinion on the matter in hand which had consistently been displayed by the poor creatures to whom he had just referred, it would be found, as he felt sure the Founder and all worthy members of their Society would ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... heart, have, perhaps, made me seize too readily on any promise of hope and sympathy. I was certainly fascinated with Mrs. Desmonde, and told her of my feelings, prematurely as it proved, for the more I knew of her, the more convinced I grew of her unfitness, I might almost say for earth, although she still is beautiful to me. But you, Emily, are a woman of strength and will, of a strength that will grow, for your years do not yet number twenty-one; these ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... conduct of business and to the brilliant destinies which I trust are in store for you.' I answered, that I was deeply grateful for his many acts of confidence and kindness; and that I would at once assent to the plan he had proposed, only begging him to observe that I had mentioned my unfitness under a very strong sense of duty and of the facts, and not by any means as a mere matter of ceremony. I then added that I thought I should but ill respond to his confidence if I did not mention to him a subject connected with his policy which might raise ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... asceticism, to which it was the glory, the true felicity of life, to aspire. The thoughtful child had all his mind thus preoccupied ... wherever there was gentleness, modesty, the timidity of young passion, repugnance to vice, an imaginative temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay invitingly open.... It lay through perils, but was made attractive by perpetual wonders. It was awful, but in its awfulness lay its power over the young ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... told you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:—'Signore, la vostra bonta mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... in all probability, before many years should have expired? Perhaps there might be reasons for pulling down James. But what reason could be given for setting up Monmouth? To exclude a prince from the throne on account of unfitness was a course agreeable to Whig principles. But on no principle could it be proper to exclude rightful heirs, who were admitted to be, not only blameless, but eminently qualified for the highest public trust. That Monmouth was legitimate, nay, that he thought himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... steps, yet, as it seemed, rather irresolutely, towards the door of the card-room—and then, to the increased surprise of the company, stopped suddenly, and muttering something about the "unfitness of the time," turned on his heel, and bowing haughtily, as there was way made for him, walked in the opposite direction towards the door which led to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... loved Thyrza even then with more intensity of pure feeling than I had ever before known, and now I love her with a love which lasts a lifetime. You have no right to pronounce so confidently upon her fitness or unfitness to mate with me; your knowledge of her is very slight. I know her as a woman can only be known by the man who loves her. You cannot judge for me in this case; no one could judge for me. I shall act on my conviction; it is poor waste ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... exchange the title he had heretofore borne, and adopt the more time-honoured, but, alas! more obnoxious one, of King. Some of the more rigid sects were busily discoursing in groups, respecting Walton's Polyglott Bible, and the fitness or unfitness of the committee that had been sitting at Whitelock's house at Chelsea, to consider properly the translations and impressions of the Holy Scriptures. Robin received but surly treatment at the palace-gates, for minstrelsy was not the fashion; and he almost began to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that the course of proceeding under Major-General Butler in this Commonwealth seems to have been designed and adapted simply to afford means to persons of bad character to make money unscrupulously, and to encourage men whose unfitness had excluded them from any appointment by me to the volunteer militia service, to hope for such appointment over Massachusetts troops from other authority than that of the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... propriety. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1863, when Henry W. Raymond, the powerful editor of the New York Times, was on a visit to the camp, Burnside took him into his tent and read him an order removing Hooker because of his unfitness "to hold a command in a cause where so much moderation, forbearance, and unselfish patriotism were required." Raymond, aghast, inquired what he would do if Hooker resisted, if he raised his troops in mutiny? "He said he would Swing him before ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... details. Suffice it to say; that I spent only three months of this kind of life, and then relinquished the protection of Mr. and Mrs. Somers, and removed to a second-rate boarding-house, where I attempted to maintain myself by giving lessons in music. Every day, however, convinced me of my unfitness for this task, and, as I soon felt an interest in the sweet little girls who looked up to me for instruction, my position with regard to them became truly embarrassing. One day I had been wearying myself by attempting the impossible task of making clear to another mind, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... very largely the result of artificial training, forcing on the appearance of psychic sexual divergencies long before they would tend spontaneously to appear; as where sports and occupations are interdicted to young children on the ground of their supposed sexual unfitness; as when an infant female is forcibly prevented from climbing or shouting, and the infant male from amusing himself with needle and thread or dolls. Even in the fully adult human, and in spite of differences of training, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... of the Old World; and there are good reasons, also, why this superiority should not much longer continue. Europe is old,—America is young. Land has been cultivated for centuries in Europe, and often by the same family; its capacity tested, its fitness or unfitness for particular crops proved, the local and special effects of different fertilizers well known, and the experience of many generations has been preserved, so as to be equivalent to a like experience, in time and extent, by the present occupants of ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... as one or more of said trustees shall die, or by removal or otherwise shall, according to their judgment become unfit or incapable to serve the interests of said college, do, as soon as may be, after the death, removal, or such unfitness or incapacity of such trustee or trustees, elect and appoint such trustee or trustees as shall supply the place of him or them so dying, or becoming incapable to serve the interests of said college; and every trustee so ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... other hand, if he had risked making a disappointing impression in his new job, he might have taken the first step toward failure. Suppose he had begun the work for which he was unprepared, and then had made serious mistakes due to his unfitness. His record would have been blemished. His ability might have been questioned. He prevented such possibilities by making sure his preparation was adequate before he accepted his ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... for agriculture. It has been found, however, in the irrigated lands beside the Nile that where too much saving is practised in the irrigation, the alkaline coating will appear where it has been unknown before, and with it an unfitness of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... with that exact punctiliousness which in such cases is much better than zeal, but he did not grudge the expenditure of his art on the requirements, and not the strict requirements only, of his craft. The unfitness of poets for business has been often enough proved to be a mere fond thing vainly invented; but it was never better disproved than in this ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... tyranny. In these days of liberty the young people have it more their own way. When parents object to a lover on the mere ground of his poverty, or some personal prejudice, a girl may be excused for making her own choice when she is of age. If she binds herself secretly to a man whose moral unfitness is objected to, she is courting certain misery and ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... there happen to be degrees of unfitness—yours and mine for instance, you blind old bat! Go along now, and enjoy the good you deserve. As for me—I have sinned and must take the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... strength. There is nothing new to look for. There is no need to wait for anything more than we possess. Remember the homely old proverb, 'You never know what you can do till you try,' and though we are conscious of much unfitness, and would sometimes gladly wait till our limbs are stronger, let us brace ourselves for the work, assured that in it strength will be given to us that equals our desire. There is a wonderful power in honest work to develop latent ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... my heartiest congratulations to Mr. S.? He has my admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should have run away from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness. He is more wise and manly. What a good husband he will have to be! And you - what a good wife! Carry your love tenderly. I will never forgive him - or you - it is in both your hands - if the face that once gladdened my heart should ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... worries enough." One of these, visibly, was that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no secret of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; considering moreover ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... selected to bear It, was both young and untried. He was of no particular birth, he possessed no book-learning—such as the Trengganu people love—and was not even skilled in the warrior's lore which is so highly prized by the ruder natives of Pahang. The new To' Kaya was fully sensible of his unfitness for the post, and determined to do all that in him lay to remedy his deficiencies. He probably knew that, as a student, he could never hope to excel; so he set his heart on acquiring the elemu hulubalang or occult ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... presented went to the balls as a matter of course. The position of the minister, it will be seen, was an invidious one. Under the pressure of these circumstances, Sir George Hamilton declared that he would in no case take upon himself to decide on the fitness or unfitness of any person, but would act invariably upon the old recognized rule of etiquette observed at other courts in such matters—i.e., he would present anybody who had been presented at the court of St. James, and none who had not been so presented. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... my love! You felt yourself, or your uncle felt for you, the unfitness of your having charge of such valuables. Ahem! I—no doubt dear John will give me the key, as soon as I mention it. I—I shall not speak of it at once; there is no hurry—except for the danger of moth. An old house like Fernley ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... unfit for the people to drink, but too often the men and women are unfit to drink it. On the other hand, it is their very unfitness that drives them to drink it. Ill-fed, suffering from innutrition and the evil effects of overcrowding and squalor, their constitutions develop a morbid craving for the drink, just as the sickly stomach of the overstrung Manchester factory operative ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Lords as a rule send them there—you have sent three of them yourself—and unfit men in public places, suppose prior unfitness in those who have the places to dispose of. But the government is not interesting. I have something else, father, to ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... sea braced Craven as nothing else could have done. As the ship neared France the perplexities of the charge he was preparing to undertake increased. His utter unfitness filled him with dismay. On receipt of John Locke's amazing letter he had both cabled and written to his aunt in London explaining his dilemma, giving suitable extracts from Locke's appeal, and imploring ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... popularity as signally as Cashel had restored the prize ring. He was anxious to produce the play of "King John," being desirous of appearing as Faulconbridge, a part for which he was physically unfitted. Though he had no suspicion of his unfitness, he was awake to the fact that the favorite London actresses, though admirable in modern comedy, were not mistresses of what he called, after Sir Walter Scott, the "big bow wow" style required for the part of Lady Constance in Shakespeare's history. He knew that he ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to admit, with due humility, his unfitness to embellish his letters with the gorgeous and pyrotechnic lavishness of "fancy writing" which graces the letters of the New York Correspondents, but he is sure that the items which follow are infinitely more truthful than are ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs. Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public demonstration of the unfitness of ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... But his disposition was restless, his mind visionary, and, doubtless, he felt sincerely for the degraded state of his country. Notwithstanding his close relationship to the aristocracy of Ireland, and the glaring unfitness of his character for scenes of daring and of danger, he connected himself with the leading yeomen of that day, and became the intimate associate and co-adjutor of Arthur O'Conner. He continued to labor in the cause of Liberty, until the eyes of Government were turned upon him; the ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... intelligible. My father, by way of curbing my extravagance, tells me I must give up all pretension to the life of a gentleman, and go into an office as a clerk. I refuse. He insists, and tells me, moreover, a number of little pleasant traits of my unfitness to do anything, so that I interrupt him by hinting that I might possibly break stones on the highway. He seizes the project with avidity, and offers to supply me with a hammer for my work. All fact, on my honour! I am neither ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... antiquity burn again," she writes, gave her two Greek epigrams he had recently written. All this time she is reading everything,—Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Wreckers," which Forrest had rejected, "rather for its unfitness to his own personal talent than for its abstract demerit," she concludes; and "Ion," which she finds beautiful morally rather than intellectually, and thinks that, as dramatic poetry, it lacks power, passion, and condensation. Reading Combe's "Phrenology," ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... oilcloth as with blue tiles; the walls were papered; the stainless floor was strewn with home-made hooked and braided rugs; and I felt the place so altogether too good for me that I pleaded to stay there for the transaction of my business, lest a sharper sense of my unfitness should ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his unfitness for the sight of men, but gathering a little courage when he found the dining-room so dark. He descended to the basement and opened the door of the kitchen, looked in, and shut it again. "Yes, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... question irreparably damaged the Government. Dashwood's financial statement had been confused and absurd beyond belief, and had been received by the House with roars of laughter. He had sense enough to be conscious of his unfitness for the high situation which he held, and exclaimed in a comical fit of despair, "What shall I do? The boys will point at me in the street and cry, 'There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.'" George Grenville ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... say except that he was "a blind man who wrote Latin letters." Odder still, perhaps, Richard Baxter, whose history of his own life and times is one of the most informing books in the world, never so much as mentions the one and only man whose name can, without any violent sense of unfitness, be given to the age about which Baxter ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... shall do my best to render his contemplated visit to Canada agreeable to himself, and successful in its objects. I have, more than once, through the press, disclaimed any imputation upon his integrity, motives, or character; but with his recorded declaration of my "utter want of integrity," and my unfitness for social intercourse in private life, I feel that my own conduct towards him should be confined to official acts and official occasions; in which I shall treat him with as much cordiality as I would any other member of the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... am. Sound as a bell. The unfitness is in the soul and it's a taint and a disgrace. There, don't cry, Rilla. I'm not going if that's what you're afraid of. The Piper's music rings in my ears day and night—but I ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Motiers made me think of quitting Switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at length finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in every other place. One thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness for the active life to which I was going to be condemned, and the aversion I had always had to it. My disposition, proper for meditating at leisure and in solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and treating of affairs with men. Nature, which had endowed me with the first talent, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the rabble,—the democracy,—their turbulence, corruption, and degradation, their unfitness to rule, and all that sort of thing, which I regard as irrelevant, so far as the usurpation of Caesar is concerned; since the struggle was not between them and the nobles, but between a fortunate general and the aristocracy who controlled the State. Caesar was not the representative ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Byron were rather a peculiar combination, as the foundation of an infant's library; but I was not aware of any unfitness or incompatibility. To me they were two brother-books, like each other in their refusal to ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... them was forced on the Government. Lincoln knew that in this matter he must move with the utmost caution. When in the early days of the war, Fremont, who had been appointed to military commander in Missouri, where he showed an utter unfitness, both intellectual and moral, for his place, proclaimed on his own responsibility the emancipation of the slaves of "disloyal" owners, his headstrong vanity would probably have thrown both Missouri and Kentucky into ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... been furnished with its present termination ever since the second century of the Christian aera.(24) In default, therefore, of distinct historical evidence or definite documentary proof that at some earlier period than that it terminated abruptly, nothing short of the utter unfitness of the verses which at present conclude S. Mark's Gospel to be regarded as the work of the Evangelist, would warrant us in assuming that they are the spurious accretion of the post-apostolic age: and as such, at the end of eighteen centuries, to be deliberately rejected. We must ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... during the summer just past has been of incalculable benefit to the Army and should under no circumstances be discontinued. If on these practise marches and in these maneuvers elderly officers prove unable to bear the strain, they should be retired at once, for the fact is conclusive as to their unfitness for war; that is, for the only purpose because of which they should be allowed to stay in the service. It is a real misfortune to have scores of small company or regimental posts scattered throughout the country; the Army should be gathered in a few brigade or division posts; and the generals ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in that poor fellow's place, Lena, and see what it is to him to be cast off for such a reason. He did the wrong, I know. He knew he ought not, apart from your resolution, and he did thus prove his weakness and unfitness—" ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall drop it before long in England. I don't see why we should continue to sit merely to register the edicts of the House of Commons, and be told that we're a pack of fools when we hesitate." I told him that it was the unfortunate destiny of a House of Lords to be made to see her own unfitness for legislative work. ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... for ages in two different political bodies not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite interest prevailed: in one the patrician; in the other, the plebian. Many arguments might have been adduced to prove the unfitness of two such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having power to ANNUL or REPEAL the acts of the other. But a man would have been regarded as frantic who should have attempted at Rome to disprove their existence. It will be readily ...
— The Federalist Papers
... kept him for hours every day in the open air; there were times when his work was done and he could take entire rest; and his health is absolutely perfect. But I did not make any excuse for myself at the moment. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my utter unfitness to be a wife and ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... in August, 1766. He soon after demonstrated his entire unfitness for his position by clandestinely engaging in the Indian trade,[A] and by involving the government in unnecessary expenses, which he sought to meet by drafts upon the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, which that officer was obliged to dishonor. To still further curtail his power, a Commissary ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Admire as we may 'Paradise Lost;' try as we may to admire 'Paradise Regained;' acknowledge as we must the splendour of the imagery and the stately march of the verse; there comes upon us irresistibly a sense of the unfitness of the subject for Milton's treatment of it. If the story which he tells us is true, it is too momentous to be played with in poetry. We prefer to hear it in plain prose, with a minimum of ornament and ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... almost a touch of genius in the remark. Its very vacuity told of the man's exceeding unfitness for the role thrust upon him by certain desperadoes ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... bed-chamber who were to carry his Majesty's train, felt about on the ground, as if they were lifting up the ends of the mantle, and pretended to be carrying something; for they would by no means betray anything like simplicity, or unfitness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... fuel. I never in my life saw men so careless of the morrow; hand to mouth is the only word that can describe their way of doing; and what with wasted food and sleeping sentries, though they were bold enough for a brush and be done with it, I could see their entire unfitness for ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ships which wear the pennant. In accordance with the rule, such was the "Rattlesnake"; and to carry out the spirit of the authorities more completely, she was turned out of Portsmouth dockyard in such a disgraceful state of unfitness, that her lower deck was continually ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... scanned from head to foot—nay, looked through and through by black eyes that seemed to pierce like a dart from beneath their shaggy brows, and discover all her ignorance, folly, and unfitness for her position. Colouring and trembling, she was relieved that there was another guest to call off Mrs. Nesbit's attention, and watched the readiness and deference with which Miss Gardner replied to compliments on her ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not always compatible, you say, and, before all, you insist upon good partnership. How will you insure yourself against unfitness? Surely not by a registering and weighing of qualities, not by bargaining and speculating. We do not choose our wives as we do our saddle-horses; we do not plan our marriages as we plan our houses. It may sound paradoxical, but there is a higher compatibility ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... "cub" reporter when veterans were being "laid off" by the dozens. Nor were his services desired as a private secretary, a taxicab driver, an agent to sell real estate or automobiles or stocks. As no one gave him a chance to prove his unfitness for any of these callings, the fact that he knew nothing of any of them did not greatly matter. At these rebuffs Dolly was distinctly pleased. She argued they proved he was intended to pursue his ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... his youthful compatriots—which was what he himself generally called them—the major lingered a moment in heavy thought. He glanced about the cluttered city room, now suddenly grown large and empty. This was the theater where his own little drama of unfitness and failure and private mortification had been staged and acted. It had run nearly a month now, and a month is a long run for a small tragedy in a newspaper office or anywhere else. He shook his head. He shook it as though he were trying to shake it clear ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... he released her and she stood alone. She seemed a dead thing; but the sense of his having done gloriously in mastering himself to give these worldly people of hers a lesson and proof that he could within due measure bow to their laws and customs, dispelled the brief vision of her unfitness to be left. The compressed energy of the man under his conscious display of a great-minded deference to the claims of family ties and duties, intoxicated him. He thought but of the present achievement and its ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unfitness of his theme for epic treatment no more need be added here than was said in the chapter on Virgil. It is, however, difficult to see what subject was open to the epicist after Virgil except to narrate the actual account of what Virgil had painted in ideal ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... that of the actor. And not the least advantage of a dramatic school lies in the fact that some of its pupils may learn to reconsider their determination to go on the stage, become convinced of their own unfitness, recognise in time that they will be wise to abandon a career which must always be hazardous and difficult even to those who are successful, and cruel to those who fail. Let it be something far sterner and stronger than mere ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... I cried passionately. 'Come unto me,' called my Father. 'I will,' my heart panted. Did I stop to ask a single question? Not one. It never occurred to me to ask whether I was good enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find out what I thought of his church, or ... to wait until I should be satisfied. Satisfied! I was satisfied. Had I not found my God and my Father? Did he not love me? Had he not called me? Was there not a Church into which I might enter? ... Since then I ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... goes on. There is no action: there is being. The struggle is rooted in the deep divisions of men's souls, not in unwonted crime or plotting. And Anna Mahr, the free woman of a freer world, parts from Johannes because she recognises their human unfitness to take up the burden of tragic sorrow which any union between them must create. The time for such things has not come, and may never come. Thus Johannes is left desolate, powerless to face the unendurable emptiness and decay that lie before him, destroyed by the conflicting loyalties ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... female are even worse than those upon the male; for, in addition to the exhaustion of nervous energy, she is compelled to endure the burdens and pains of child-bearing when utterly unprepared for such a task, to say nothing of her unfitness for the other duties of a mother. With so many girl-mothers in the land, is it any wonder that there are so many thousands of unfortunate individuals who never seem to get beyond childhood in their development? Many ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... work arising under the act. It has extensive powers of control over the appointment of trustees, and conducts an audit of their accounts; and it may, subject to appeal to the court, remove them from office for misconduct, neglect or unfitness. A report upon the proceedings under the act is annually presented to parliament by the Board of Trade, and although the department is practically self-supporting, a nominal vote is each year placed upon the public ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... indeed distress me, to hear her say that. She was so young and so lonely—and she bore it so well! The impulse to help her got the better of any sense of my own unfitness which I might have felt under the circumstances; and I stated such ideas on the subject as occurred to me on the spur of the moment, to the best of my ability. I have advised a prodigious number of clients, and have dealt with some exceedingly awkward difficulties, in my time. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... gave brilliance to her tawny hair. Perhaps she was over-richly dressed, for, like many girls who as a rule are not very interested in clothes, she was too interested in them at times, and inexperienced taste was apt to mislead her into an unfitness. Also her figure was too stiff and sturdy to favour elegance. But on this occasion the general effect of her was notably picturesque, and her face and hair, and the expression of her pose, atoned in ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that progress is only the restlessness of weak-minded persons, if they regard all suggestions of betterment as a personal slap, then they are taking the part which proves more than anything else could their unfitness ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... to prevent Mark from returning to the old life, because he had observed his unfitness for it; he himself, however, in spite of his diatribes against boys and scholastic life, was far fonder of both than he would have confessed, and would miss them as a few who knew him best would miss him when the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... believe," are words which admit neither of qualification nor misunderstanding; and it is far less arrogant in any man to look for such Divine attestation of his authority as a teacher, than to claim, without it, any authority to teach. And assuredly it is no proof of any unfitness or unwisdom in such expectations, that, for the last thousand years, miraculous powers seem to have been withdrawn from, or at least indemonstrably possessed, by a Church which, having been again and again warned ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... body to push forward their cause. Mrs. Humphry Ward and the Anti-Suffragists may be trusted to continue tireless and ever-inventive. Mrs. Ward's League to promote the return of women as town and county councilors is her latest device to prove the unfitness of women for public affairs, and since the Vegetarian League for combating the carnivorous instincts of the tigress by feeding her on blood, there has been no quite so happy adaptation of means to end. If anything could add to the educative ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... were stripping the patch from the fuze; both projectiles exploded, killing 2 and wounding 11 of the gun's crew, besides injuring the gun. The Chillicothe was then withdrawn, after receiving another shot, which killed one of her ship's company, and showing her unfitness for action through scamped work put upon her. The stream was so narrow that two vessels could with difficulty act, and therefore a 30-pound rifled gun was landed from the Rattler on the 13th and an VIII-inch from the De Kalb ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... father's house on a visit. When the time fixed for rejoining her husband arrived, she showed no disposition to do so, upon which he began to aim at a divorce, and to advocate in the works above mentioned "unfitness and contrariety of mind" as a valid ground for it, views which incurred for him much notoriety and unpopularity. A reconciliation, however, followed in 1645, and three dau. were born of the marriage. In 1649 the reputation of M. as a Latinist ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... depart from any of these received canons of etiquette is to commit a decided solecism and to discover an utter unfitness for the desired social rank. Fortunately, there is no need, even for those not to the manor born, of displaying any ignorance in this matter when the simple consultation of a standard work on social etiquette ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... you think I'm a brute for speaking of Arthur in connection with the devil, but it wasn't the old-fashioned devil I meant. I meant the devil of unfitness. Arthur wasn't fit. He had every chance. We can't get away from what life is. Life shoves people to the wall every day. I've had to fight hard myself. I admit things aren't fair all round, but Arthur had his chance, two or three chances, and ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... Bastile, and the visit of Louis to Paris, had been a series of damaging blows to the Government; and as each successive exploit gave encouragement to the movement party, events proceeded with extreme rapidity. Necker, who returned to Versailles on the 27th of July, showed more clearly than ever his unfitness for the chief post in the administration at such a crisis, by devoting himself solely to financial arrangements, and omitting to take, on the part of the crown, the initiative in any one of the reforms which ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... solicitation of his brethren, in whose words he heard the call of God, that Miller consented to present his views in public. He was now fifty years of age, unaccustomed to public speaking, and burdened with a sense of unfitness for the work before him. But from the first his labors were blessed in a remarkable manner to the salvation of souls. His first lecture was followed by a religious awakening in which thirteen entire families, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Simply a friendship for him, or his measures, without other and requisite qualifications, would not ensure from Mr. Adams an appointment to office. Neither did an opposition to his administration alone, except there was a marked practical unfitness for office, ever induce him to remove an individual from ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... this chance in favour of any work which has once achieved success, that what has pleased one generation may please another, because it may be based upon a truth or beauty which cannot die; and there is this chance against any work which has once failed, that its unfitness may be owing to some falsehood or imperfection which ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... woman with whom I was ever intimately acquainted, and my father always entertained and expressed the highest admiration for her mental gifts, to which he attributed whatever talents his children might have possessed. The unfitness of her environment to her constitution is the saddest memory of my childhood. More I do not trust myself to say to the public, nor will the reader expect ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... general use of this line and a cessation of its perversion to sentimental purposes, not to say an application of it as the scourge for which it was wrought; just as it is hopeless to think of changing by any demonstration of unfitness and unmeaningness a phrase in general use—the reason being that the mass of the users are utterly thoughtless and careless of the right or the wrong, the fitness or the unfitness, of the words that come from their ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... "You must excuse the unfitness of my dress to come aboard a strange ship, but really I left my own in such a hurry that I had no time to stay for a change." He had been blown out of ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Indian Tribes, published by Government under his editorship, includes the substance of most of his previous writings. It is a singularly crude and illiterate production, stuffed with blunders and contradictions, giving evidence on every page of a striking unfitness either for historical or philosophical inquiry, and taxing to the utmost the patience of those who would extract what is valuable in it from its ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... repeated. The emotional fitness or unfitness of an individual for his occupation is of the utmost importance as a causative factor, and overwork alone, without any emotional cause and without any errors in mode of life, will never act to produce such a collapse. It is therefore not astonishing that this class ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... claims of being "the highest conception," etc. We think that the strongest point against the dogmas may be found in the claims of their advocates. That the Church is now growing away from them only proves their unfitness as "the highest conception." And Reincarnationists hold that as the Church grows in favor of the Immaterial Immortal Soul, so will it find itself inclining toward the companion-doctrine of Pre-existence and Re-birth, in some of its varied forms, probably that of the Early Fathers of the Church, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... was upon the subject of good-breeding; but I think it rather set before you the unfitness and disadvantages of ill-breeding, than the utility and necessity of good; it was rather negative than positive. This, therefore, should go further, and explain to you the necessity, which you, of all people living, lie under, not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... saint. If Shakespeare's instinctive taste revealed the absurdity of the bombastic exaggeration of such tendencies, his characters are equally unbending. His villains die, like Macbeth and Iago, with their teeth set, and scorn even a deathbed repentance. Hamlet exhibits the unfitness for a world of action of the man who is foolish enough to see two sides to every question. So again, Chapman, the writer who in fulness and fire of thought approaches most nearly to Shakespeare, is an ardent worshipper of pure energy of character. His Bussy d'Ambois cannot be turned ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... moment, when she grudged herself even a new pair of gloves out of the money remaining to her, while she was still looking forward to a future life passed as a nurse in a hospital, she felt that there would be an absolute unfitness in ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... fearful consequences of their sin are felt at once. They are changed so that they are conscious of guilt and endeavor to hide themselves from Jehovah. Thus they acknowledge their unfitness for fellowship with Him. Their soul having lost communion with God, they become corrupt. This is spiritual death. They were banished from the garden and forced to struggle for food. Their bodies became subject to ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... ordination Butzbach was appointed master of the novices, to superintend their education—which included learning the Psalter by heart—until the time of their profession. He protested his unfitness, but the Abbot held him to it nevertheless. The standard of his pupils was low: many of them, though they came as Bachelors and Masters of Arts from the universities, he judged not so good as boys in the sixth form at Deventer. But he found lecturing in Latin difficult; ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... winding in and out of an enormous trail rope a thousand feet long, designed by Mr. Green to meet the special emergencies of the voyage. At the bottom of the car was spread a large cushion to serve the purposes of rest. When all was in readiness unfitness of weather baulked the travellers for some days, but Monday, the 7th of November, was judged a favourable day, so that the inflation was rapidly proceeded with, and at 1.30 p.m. the "Monstre Balloon," as it was entitled in the "Ingoldsby Legends," left the earth ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... contributed during the last year or two, as occasion arose, to the Nation and other periodicals, I have included some descriptions of the causes likely to incite people to rebellion of this kind. Such causes, I mean, as the inequality that comes from poverty alone—the physical unfitness or lack of mental opportunity that is due only to poverty. Those things make happiness impossible, for they frustrate the active exercise of vital powers, and give life no scope. During a generation or so, people have looked to the Government ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... uniform, and a military cap;" now did he wear a green uniform? They are at issue upon the dress then worn by him; if he had not this dress on, what other had he? And if he had the green one on, what true or probable reason existed for the change of that? the unfitness of appearing in it before his commanding officer, Lord Yarmouth, is negatived by Lord Yarmouth himself; supposing him to have appeared in any disguise, it is the conduct of an accomplice, to assist him in getting rid of his ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, the regular features, the raven ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... judgment of the object's beauty or its serviceability, according as the valuer's bias or interest inclines him to apprehend the object in the one or the other of these aspects. It follows not infrequently that the marks of cheapness or commonness are accepted as definitive marks of artistic unfitness, and a code or schedule of aesthetic proprieties on the one hand, and of aesthetic abominations on the other, is constructed on this basis for guidance in questions ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... they had been futile and unfit. She shut the lid down on them gently, and it was as if she buried them gently out of her sight. She could afford to forgive them, for she knew that there was no futility nor unfitness in her. Deep down in her heart ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... she felt they were asking, "and get off a lot of this college stuff to us?" What right indeed? She was convinced, in short, that she had been embarked upon a hopeless piece of snobbery, and, finding the whole business distasteful, it had not been difficult to discover her unfitness. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... conscientiousness; in short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which we look at with a painful admiration. It will be found that most of these children are the subjects of some constitutional unfitness for living, the most frequent of which I need not mention. They are like the beautiful, blushing, half-grown fruit that falls before its time because its core is gnawed out. They have their meaning,—they do not-live in ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... my own hourly struggle against educational routine and tradition, and against the prevailing notions of discipline for the young; so when I was asked to speak to you to-night about him, although I realized my unfitness in many respects for such a function, I could not refuse the opportunity to point out how many of the sober, practical undertakings of to-day had been anticipated in all their principles by this solitary, shrewd, independent thinker, who, in an inconsecutive ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... belongs to me by title of my good fortune. And I am of such a composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any operation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world my unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it, and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of life that ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... as soon as he could, he cowered back to his wigwam, where, wrapping himself in his blanket, he long remained. He trembled at the thought of having been in such apparent contact with the spirit land, while his unhappy soul chided him with a sense of his unfitness ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... and Straw, who wished to abolish servitude at a blow, failed of its object, we find that there were a great many instances of emancipation by individuals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when death or sickness overtook them, in which they declared the moral unfitness of slavery. (Wycliffe: "When Adam dalve and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?") Elizabeth liberated the last serfs of the crown. Compare 12 Charles II, ch. 24, 1660. Emancipation in the lowlands ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... surprise. The complete victory of the Island Nation in that struggle was, I know, to a certain extent discounted in some quarters by the stories that were published as to the wretched condition of both the Chinese Army and Navy, their utter unfitness and unpreparedness for war, the incompetence and corruption of the officers, and so on. There were many otherwise well informed persons who felt confident that though Japan had experienced little or no difficulty in mastering China, the case ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... die before their sad decrepitude. Trees of beauty are trees of paradise, and therefore not subject to decay by their original nature, though they have lost that precious birthright by being transplanted to an earthly soil. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a time-stricken and grandfatherly lilac-bush. The analogy holds good in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental —who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hair ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Council of Trent by Cardinal Pacheco, in justification of the practice of the Church of Rome in his day; but another cardinal, Madrucci, arguing against him, replied with cutting calmness that "Paul, of popes the second," or any other pope, might be easily deceived in judging of the fitness or unfitness of a law, but not so Paul the Apostle, who taught that God's word should never depart from the mouth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... word to the commander, and McDowell very reluctantly obeyed orders and started with his army in that direction,—not, however, with any real hope of reaching this nominal objective; for he was an intelligent man and a good soldier, and was perfectly aware of the unfitness of his army. But when, protesting, he suggested that his troops were "green," he was told to remember that the Southern troops were of the same tint; for, in a word, the North was bound to have a fight, and would by no means ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the way clearer," he said, smiling, and with encouragement in his voice. "It may seem a strange thing to you, but a sense of unfitness is sometimes one of the very best qualifications for such work. If it is strong enough to drive us to the blessed Friend who has promised to make perfect our weakness in this as in all other efforts, and if we go out armed in His strength we are sure to conquer. Try it. Take this for your motto: ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... dismission, her master was left at liberty, either to return directly to England, or to make the best of his way to any port where he thought he could take in such a cargo as might serve the interest of his owners. But, sensible of the bad condition of his ship, and her unfitness for any such voyage, the master wrote next day to the commodore, stating, that he had reason to apprehend the bottom of the Anna to be very much decayed, from the great quantity of water she had let in on her passage round Cape Horn, and ever since, in the tempestuous weather she had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Haworth, wen I see before me so many smilin' faces an' so many distingwisht citizens, I awn I felt a pang as to my unfitness for appearin' afore yo on this occashun; but yor cummittee wor so urgent in thair appeal to me that I wur certainly induced to akcept th' honor o diggin' th' first sod o'th' Grand Trunk Railway, which will be th' gratest blessin' 'at iver will be i' ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... eclecticism,—entire forgetfulness of the requirements of the poor brother,—strange disregard for Catholic Tradition and the claims of immemorial antiquity;—these Commissioners, (evidently unconscious of their own unfitness for their self-imposed task,) have given us a Lectionary which will recommend itself to none but the lovers of novelty,—the impatient,—and the enemies of ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... directly attributable to the policy of Jefferson and Madison; for had proper attention and development been given to the army between 1801 and 1812, it could scarcely have failed that some indication of men's fitness or unfitness would have preceded and obviated the lamentable experience of the first two years, when every opportunity was favorable, only to be thrown away from lack of leadership. That even the defects of preparation, extreme and culpable as these ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... again to bring forward a man who had dared to insult him, a man who had shown an independent spirit, a man who had dishonored the Council and insulted his masters, a man of doubtful integrity and convicted unfitness for office. But, my Lords, in the face of all this, he afterwards sends this very man, with undivided authority, into the country as sole Resident. And now your Lordships shall hear in what manner he accounts for this appointment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... architecture in the city. It resembles that of Covent-Garden, but seems to be nobler and greater; and yet I am not sure if, in point of dimensions, it is larger, or so large as that of Covent-Garden. The only objection to it—and my objection is stronger against the London theatre—is the unfitness. In both cases, the style and order are of the gravest Templar character, more appropriate to the tribunals of criminal justice, than to the haunts of Cytherea and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... of the unwritten rules of the Lunch Club that, within her own province, each member's habits of thought should be respected. The meeting therefore closed with an increased sense, on the part of the other ladies, of Mrs. Roby's hopeless unfitness to be ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... Committee. Both parties confident of success on the second reading, but the country will have it; there is a determination on the subject, and a unanimity perfectly marvellous, and no demonstration of the unfitness of any of its parts will be of any avail; some of its details may be corrected and amended, but substantially it must pass pretty much ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... cavemen! Thirty days' repose, practically alone amid one of nature's greatest solitudes, awed by her silences, uplifted by the majesty of her mighty forces, with naught to do but humble oneself before the consciousness of his own littleness and unfitness, and study how to right ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... very well remember how the offence happened. I had written that it wanted nothing to render it altogether delightful but a saner religious feeling. This would have been the proper word if any other person had written the book. Feeling its extreme unfitness as soon as it was written, I altered it immediately for the first word which came into my head, intending to remodel the sentence when it should come to me in the proof; and that proof never came. There can be no objection ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... result: his good thought, words and deeds will bear their fruits, his evil ones, theirs. To boast of Lay Chelaship or make a parade of it, is the surest way to reduce the relationship with the Guru to a mere empty name, for it would be prima facie evidence of vanity and unfitness for farther progress. And for years we have been teaching everywhere the maxim "First deserve, then desire" intimacy with ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... start. It was a train possessing a certain consideration. For the benefit of a public easily gulled and enamored of grandiloquent terms, it was advertised as the "Denver Fast Express"; sometimes, with strange unfitness, as the "Lightning Express"; "elegant" and "palatial" cars were declared to be included therein; and its departure was one of the great events of the twenty-four hours in the country round about. A local poet ...
— The Denver Express - From "Belgravia" for January, 1884 • A. A. Hayes
... that a walking suit in which one could not walk, and a winter suit which exposes the throat, head, and feet to cold and damp, was rather a failure, Clara, especially as it has no beauty to reconcile one to its utter unfitness," said Dr. Alec, as he helped Rose undo her veil, adding, in a low tone, "Nice thing for the eyes; you'll soon see spots when it's off as well as when it's on, and, by and by, be a case for ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... women were disembarked, and the provisions and stores landed, it was found that twenty casks of flour (from the unfitness of the ship to perform such a voyage, being old and far from tight) were totally destroyed. This was a serious loss to us, when only four pounds of flour constituted the allowance of that article for ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... utterly uninhabitable into one fitted for man;—of its having been, when first inhabitable, more beautiful than it is now; and of its gradually tending to still greater inferiority of aspect, and unfitness for abode. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... believe that Bertram was one of these; but it was fearful to think that any one should so call him. Caroline, perhaps, would not so much have minded this flaw in her future husband's faith if it had not been proof of his unsteadiness, of his unfitness for the world's battle. She remembered what he had said to her two years since on the Mount of Olives; and then thought of what he was saying now. Everything with him was impulse and enthusiasm. All judgment was wanting. How should such as he get on in the world? And had ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... was born with the most violent propension to pleasure, and at the same time was master of so much good sense, as to be able to discern the extreme folly of licentious courses, their moral unfitness, and the many calamities they naturally produce. He maintained a perpetual struggle between reason and appetite. He frequently fell into indulgencies, which cost him many a pang of remorse, and under the conviction of the danger of a vicious ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... disappoint her father's wishes, to which habit and custom had given nearly the force of law with maidens of her condition, though her reason and judgment no less than her affections were both strongly enlisted on the other side. Indeed, with the single exception of the general unfitness of a union between two of unequal stations, there was nothing to discredit her choice, if that may be termed choice which, after all, was more the result of spontaneous feeling and secret sympathy than of any other cause, unless ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... all apparently hard work to be on an equality of unfitness for women. Country work is generally healthful; though hard work it is restful to the nerves. Every kind of nerve-racking work as in factories, heavy weight-lifting, long standing, and the tending of machinery without ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get employment and earn a livelihood. The case is different with the girls. They can only go to service, and are invariably rejected by families of respectability on account of their origin, and for the better reason of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest situations in a well-ordered English household. Their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious lives, and finally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... his Electors that he intends to abide by them, and has the same Interest with theirs in the publick Taxes, Gains and Losses. I have heard and weigh'd the Arguments of those who, in Opposition to this, urged the Unfitness of such, whose Lands were engaged in Debts and Mortgages, to serve in Parliament, in comparison with the mony'd Man who had no Land: But ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... since the Cynic continues to live after having rejected the proper instruments and forms of life, he must make a living out of the charitable curiosity excited by his very unfitness. {94} And asceticism of this prudential type tends always to be both empty and monstrous; empty because it denies life, and monstrous because life is not really denied, but only perverted ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Frankfort, Kentucky, but the grand-jury refused to find a bill. Henry Clay defended him in these proceedings, and in reference to his connection with the case, Mr. Parton makes a characteristic display of the spirit in which his book is written, and of his unfitness for the ambitious task he has undertaken. He quotes the following passage from Collins's "Historical Sketches of Kentucky":—"Before Mr. Clay took any active part as the counsel of Burr, he required of him an explicit disavowal, [avowal,] upon his honor, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to Sir Rupert Langley's. He had taken much interest in Helena Langley. She had an influence over him which he told himself was only the influence of a clever child—told himself of this again and again. Yet there was a curious feeling of unfitness or dissatisfaction with the part he was going to play. Of course, he would do his very best for Hamilton. There was no man in the world for whom he cared half so much as he did for Hamilton. No—that is not putting it strongly enough—there was now ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... great and clear a proof of unfitness for greater and nobler actions, than a mind which is seriously occupied ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... forty-ninth year, was distinguished by those who have the rewards of knowledge in their hands, and called out to display his acquisitions for the honour of his country, and add dignity by his presence to philosophical assemblies. As he did not suspect his unfitness for common affairs, he fell no reluctance to obey the invitation, and what he did not feel he had yet too much honesty to feign. He entered into the world as a larger and more populous college, where his performances would ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Whilst it is but too easy for scribes or those who have a love of criticism to omit words and passages under all circumstances, or even to vary the order, or to use another word or form instead of the right one, to insert anything into the sacred Text which does not proclaim too glaringly its own unfitness—in a word, to invent happily—is plainly a matter of much greater difficulty. Therefore to increase the Class of Insertions or Additions or Interpolations, so that it should exceed the Class of Omissions, is to go counter to the natural action of human forces. There ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... sensation in Chinik. The "bloomin' Commissioner" is about to be deposed from office, for unfitness, neglect of duty, and dissipation; and a petition is being handed around the camp by the Marshal, praying the Nome authorities that he be retained. The honest storekeeper refused to sign it, as have many of the Swedes. The Commissioner ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Majesty! I urged you not to appoint me, and now indeed you see my unfitness. Take my life, I beg you, as a ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... according to the morning Courier-Herald, despite that Democratic paper's colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women's Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al |
