"Unfitted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three weeks, and Westervelt was both sad and furious. Her joyous companionship with Douglass, her work on his sane and wholesome drama, their discussions of what the stage should be and do unfitted her for the factitious parts ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... she wrote to Delia, "that to some people life is a continuous expiation—an expiation of submerged hereditary sins, as well as of conscious ones? A great deal of the time life seems to me a hopeless puzzle; I am so utterly unfitted for the roles I labor to play. Is it that I am too low for my environment? Or can it be that I am too high? Surely there must some day be other things that women can do in the world besides training children. I try to love my task, but I have no talent ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... that he quarrelled with the French commandant, who thereupon closed the fort against him. He then repaired to his friends and relatives in the woods, but only to encounter a rebuff from a young squaw to whom he made his addresses. On this, he turned his steps towards the mission-house, and, being unfitted by his French education for supporting himself by hunting, begged food and shelter from the priests. Le Jeune gratefully accepted him as a gift vouchsafed by Heaven to his prayers, persuaded a lackey at the fort to give him a cast-off suit of clothes, promised him maintenance, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... women of France have so large a share in the laborious out-of-door work on the farms, they are not unfitted for domestic duties. In the long winter evenings they devote themselves to more distinctly woman's tasks, knitting and sewing, sometimes even spinning and weaving. Their housekeeping is very simple, for they live frugally, but they know how to make the home comfortable. Many modern ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... unhealthy places, will pour injurious humors into the body. Neither must it front the south; for when the sun fills the concavity, the inclosed air, unable to escape or circulate, is heated, and then extracts and dries up the juices of the body. It is also to be carefully observed that the place be not unfitted to transmit sound, but one in which the voice may ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... their lips. For this the Kshatriya order has been exterminated and the fame of thy foes enhanced. Thou hadst occupied the position of an umpire, but thou didst not utter one word of salutary advise. Unfitted as thou wert for the task, thou didst not hold the scales evenly. Every person should, at the outset, adopt such a beneficial line of action that he may not have, in the end, to repent for something already done by him. Through affection for thy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... been unable to gratify eager expectation, and pleasure that any individual should have been considerate enough to foresee my situation and to make allowance for it. The nature of my occupations during the last two months and a half has been such as would have entirely unfitted me for correspondence, had I been aware that it was necessary, which, on my sacred word, I was not. Now, and only now, when by the blessing of God I have surmounted all my troubles and difficulties, I will tell, and were I not a Christian I should be proud to tell, what ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... exercised an influence, through certain peculiarities of his style, which has extended even to us. As a philosopher he is to be classed among the Platonists, yet with a predominance of the prevailing Orientalism. His mental peculiarities seem to have unfitted him for an acceptance of the national faith, and his works commend themselves rather by the pleasant manner in which he deals with the topic on which he treats than by a deep philosophy. In some respects an analogy may be discerned ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... operations. No one appreciated his qualities more than the President, unless it was General Scott himself, who with great self-esteem was nevertheless not unconscious that his age and infirmities had impaired his physical energies, and in some respects unfitted him to be the active military commander. It was his misfortune that he prided himself more if possible on his civil and political knowledge and his administrative ability than on his military skill and capacity. As a politician his opinions were ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... democratic theories; and there are those who would a thousand times rather see these shattered into hopeless fragments than any other result which could possibly transpire in the national affairs of all Christendom. Let our democracy prove shallow, weak, inefficient, unfitted for emergencies, and incapable of sustaining itself under the test of determined opposition, to them it is enough. Our great national axiom, is, per se, the eternal foe of all monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, of all possible ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Negro gained his freedom Of body and of soul, He caught the wheels of progress, Gave them another roll. He was held near three long centuries In slavery's dismal cave, But now he is educated And unfitted for a slave. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... where these Union men are found, where they have come forth with the greatest enthusiasm, and then say that he believes they are friends to slavery. Let him bear in mind the hundreds of thousands of acres, the vast tracts, equal in extent to whole Northern States, in the South, which are unfitted for slave labor, and reflect whether the inhabitants of these cool, temperate regions are not as conscious of their inadaptability to slave labor as he is himself; and whether they are so much attached to the institution which fosters the Satanic pride, panders to the passions, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sanity. Though he was fearless in thought, he was a prey to his diseased nerves; with his ardent soul in his rickety body, he was driven on to the fight and was unfitted for it. The animosity of certain opinions ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... carefully hoarded wages. The difficulty was with the cooking. Clearly Paulina could not be expected to attend to this, for although her skill with certain soups and stews was undoubted, for the finer achievements of the culinary art Paulina was totally unfitted. To overcome this difficulty, Anka hit upon the simple but very effective expedient of entrusting to her neighbours, who would later be her guests, the preparing of certain dishes according to their various abilities and inclinations, keeping ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... individuality. She feared the power of her aunt over her, and through her aunt the power of the man whom she hated; and she feared the now provoked authority of Herr Molk, who had been with her weak as a child is weak, counselling her to submit herself to a suitor unfitted for her, because another man who loved her was also unfit. And, moreover, Linda, though she was now willing in her desperation to cast aside all religious scruples of her own, still feared those ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... got to work. Flossie, awaked by the shock of war to the surprising fact that, after twenty-two years of vain, idle and inglorious life, she was now of the most complete unimportance to her country, had (for the first time) a sudden longing to "do something." And so, being unfitted for needlework, nursing or the kitchen, she adopted eagerly the suggestion of some stupid and unimaginative old gentleman, and constituted herself (under God) Supreme Arbiter of Men's Consciences for the South-West Suburbs of London. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... very time he was superseded in the command, he was conscious that the army must soon evacuate Philadelphia. For the last seven months he had, indeed, been living a life of pleasure, which wholly unfitted both him and his army for active service. Hence, it is no wonder that before his departure both officers and men, expressed their warmest affection for him. On the 18th of May a grand fete was given to him as a proper leave-taking, which was celebrated in such bad taste that it reflected disgrace ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... necessity of so doing; but on the other, a fearful disinclination to resume that awful duplicity—that dreadful self-sacrifice, an apprehension lest the enjoyment of the faculties of hearing and speech for so long a period should have unfitted her for the successful revival and efficient maintenance of the deceit; these were the arguments on the negative side. But Nisida's was not a mind to shrink from any peril or revolt from any sacrifice which her interests or her aims might ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... achievements afterwards, like the mathematical law in the Greek column. The stiffness rather than firmness of mind, the surrender of all spontaneous action in the strait-waistcoat of a preconceived plan, to which we have before alluded, unfitted him for that rapid change of combinations on the great chess-board of battle which enabled General Rosecrans at Murfreesboro to turn defeat into victory, an achievement without parallel in the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... from the ring, and kept guard over himself, lest perchance Alcina should guess what was passing within him. To gain possession of his armour, long laid aside, he feigned a wish to prove if his life of idleness had unfitted him to bear the weight of it, or if his chest had grown too broad for the clasps of his breast-plate to meet. Then, laughing still, he strolled carelessly to the stables, calling back as he went that perhaps ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... for me, I am but what I am. Behold me" he cried, stretching wide his arms, "I am but Beltane the Smith; who is there to love such as I? See, my hands be hard and rough, and would but bruise where they should caress, these arms be unfitted for soft embracements. O lady, who is there to love ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... in my life. I was happy in my soldiering; above all, happy in the company of my brother officers. I was asked to go off into the enemy's lands on a quest for which I believed I was manifestly unfitted—a business of lonely days and nights, of nerve-racking strain, of deadly peril shrouding me like a garment. Looking out on the bleak weather I shivered. It was too grim a business, too inhuman for flesh and blood. But Sir Walter had ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely from the extraordinary eloquence ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by the Word of God, but by his own will, his grounds of confidence for salvation unfitted him for Christian fellowship, unless he happened to fall in with a man who had imbibed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his tongue, and by this audacity had rendered himself redoubtable. He was a scurrilous wretch, a great drunkard, and a debauchee; not at all cowardly, and with a face hideous as that of an ugly satyr. He was not insensible to this; and so, unfitted for intrigues himself, he assisted others in them, and, by this honest trade, had acquired many friends amongst the flower of the courtiers of both sexes—above all with the ladies. By way of contrast to his wickedness, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and hardy warriors. The spirit of poetry, or the pampered indulgence of certain faculties to the prejudice of others, produced in a whole people what it never fails to produce in the individual: it unfitted them just as they grew up into a manhood exposed to severer struggles than their youth had undergone—for the stern and practical demands of life; and suffered the love of the beautiful to subjugate or soften away the common knowledge of the useful. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... time for the writing of another book, the death of Hawthorne's sister Louisa would doubtless have unfitted him for a while from undertaking it. This was the most painful episode connected with his life; Louisa was a passenger on a Hudson River steamboat which was burned. She was a gentle, rather fragile woman, with a playful humor ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... its capital. This was a critical moment for the peninsula. Was Italy, like Gaul, to be united under a single German people and to develop, as France has done, a characteristic civilization? The Lombards had progressed so far that they were not unfitted to organize a state that should grow into a nation. But the head of the Church could not consent to endanger his independence by becoming the subject of an Italian king. It was therefore the pope who prevented ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... to draw a distinction between Nature and the forces of education. It is a great problem why Nature sets so many young people in the world who are apparently unfitted for the battle of life, and certainly have no power to excel in any direction. The subjective religion which Caius had been taught had nourished within him great store of noble sentiment and high desire, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... art come from afar, if thou enquirest about this land. It is not utterly unknown; many know it who dwell in the East and in the West. It is rough and unfitted for steeds, yet it is not a sorry isle, though narrow. It hath plenteous store of corn and the vine groweth herein. It hath alway rain and glistening dew. It nourisheth goats and cattle and all kinds of woods and ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... maintain life, is not expected to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or to excel as a performer on wind-instruments. We impute to him no fault for this sort of incompetence. We should rather charge him with consummate folly, if he undertook a line of exercises for which he is so clearly unfitted. We do not wonder, in fact, when this unfortunate pulmonary constitution sends its possessor to an early grave. Why not apply the same philosophy to the brain, which may partake of all the defects incident to organized matter? Why expect of one among whose progenitors insanity, idiocy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... had been willing to admit. It was the first thing he had done for a long, long time that was romantic and unconsidered and actual. And it appeared that, after all, he wasn't needed. Concentration on the nuances of minor fifteenth-century poets had unfitted him for being swept on, as these had been, by the world-currents. They had married each other, pushed by the mating instinct in the air—the world's insistence on marriage to balance the death that had swept it. Now they were struggling to find their balance against each other, ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... anything, to impose any privations on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex, the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage. Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The laborer is so poor, miserable and debased ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... at once began to lay plans to carry out their cherished purpose of placing a Legitimist king upon the throne, this honor being offered to the Count de Chambord, grandson of Charles X. He, an old man, unfitted for the thorny seat offered him, and out of all accord with the spirit of the times, put a sudden end to the hopes of his partisans by his medieval conservatism. Their purpose was to establish a ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... so awakened the enthusiasm of the poet. Strange peculiarities of being,—singular habits, curious instincts, the history of a race from the period when the all-producing Word had spoken the first individuals into being, until, in circumstances unfitted for their longer existence, or in some great annihilating catastrophe, the last individuals perished,—were all associated with this piece of sculptured stone; but, like some ancient inscription of the desert, written in an unknown ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the destruction of the Roman Empire all Europe was in a state of anarchy. The long domination of Rome, and the general acceptance of the Roman idea that "the state is everything and the individual man nothing," had unfitted the people for self-government. While Rome fell, the system of Rome, leading to absolute monarchy, persisted, and out of it grew the present governments of Europe. The conquering Goths brought in a modifying condition which changed ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... calls themselves the guides of the popular mind does it! I'm no ignoramus. I read the newspapers, and knows what's what." "You read them to some purpose," said I. "Well, if you are lamed for life, and unfitted for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly qualified, and this day's adventure may be the foundation of your fortune," thereupon I turned round and rode off. The fellow followed me with ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... be needful to pause for a brief space in our narrative, whilst we give some account of this goodly spark who had so unexpectedly, as it might seem, unfitted the lady for the due exercise of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... use the scientific toilers as patient, humble, and serviceable people, much as the Dorian conquerors of Sparta used the Helots, and encourage them to perform the necessary and faithful work of investigation for which the idealists were unfitted. The mistake which men of scientific temper made, Hugh thought, was to concern themselves only or mainly, with material phenomena. The idealistic and imaginative tendencies of man were just as much realities, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wanting to be a musician. Of course that is utterly out of the question. If, as he says, he has sent in his resignation, he will just have to beg them to cancel it. Michael seems not to have the slightest idea of the duties which his birth and position entail on him. Unfitted for the life he now leads . . . waste of time. . . . Instead he proposes to go to Baireuth in August, and then to settle down in ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... a courageous result, though capable of following to the death the master who should do it for him. His was the true artist nature, as unfit to deal with rough human forces as a bird that flies through the air is unfitted to a hand-to-hand grapple with the armed forces of the lower world. There is strength in these artist natures. Curious computations have been made of the immense muscular power that is brought into exercise when a swallow skims ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... times; sat on the platform at temperance and other public meetings 47 times; had the headache Sabbath mornings, and so was compelled to appear in a condition of physical pain, nervous prostration and bodily distress that utterly unfitted him for public preaching, 104 times; picnics attended, 10; dinners, 37; suffered from attacks of malignant dyspepsia, 37 times; read 748 hymns; instructed the choir in regard to the selection of tunes, 1 time; had severe cold, 104 times; sore throat, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... still in France, he was surprised to learn of the arrival of De Monts with very unsatisfactory accounts of the state of affairs in the infant colony. The adventurers had very soon found St. Croix entirely unfitted for a permanent settlement, and after a most wretched winter had removed to the sunny banks of the Annapolis, which was then known as the Equille,[2] and subsequently as the Dauphin. Poutrincourt and De Monts went energetically ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... resistance, driven or led by the accidents and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted or which holds little future ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... standpoint, are utterly at a loss to account for the power which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in the councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament which in our modern days has been called the mediistic, and which with us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern climates, and gives that objectiveness to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... a love "that hopes and endures and is patient." The metrical form, dactylic hexameter, is one that few of our poets have successfully used, and many have thought it wholly unfitted to English verse. Longfellow has certainly disproved their theory, for his success with this meter is pronounced. The long, flowing lines seem to be exactly adapted to give the scenes the proper atmosphere ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... a romance in which the "Faun" of Praxiteles should come to life, and play a characteristic part in the modern world; the catastrophe naturally resulting from his coming into conflict with a social organization for which he was unfitted. This portion of Hawthorne's diary is intensely interesting to those who have ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... are preserved by being distasteful to insectivorous birds, so very many of the forest trees are protected from the ravages of the ants by their leaves either being distasteful to them, or unfitted for the purpose for which they are required, whilst some have special means of defence against their attacks. None of the indigenous trees appear so suitable for them as the introduced ones. Through long ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... Hence the people of France, certainly, and perhaps of the whole south of Europe, are now prepared for the temperate enjoyment of liberty, under the administration of a regular government, for which they were totally unfitted in 1789. ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... crowded with women and children going North with their men for the summer fishing on the Labrador shore, that I have had to crawl on my knees to get at a patient, after climbing down through the main hatch. These craft are quite unfitted for a rough night at sea, especially as there always are icebergs or big pans about, which if touched would each spell another "vessel missing." So the craft all creep North and South in the spring and fall along the land, darting into harbours before dark, and leaving before dawn if the night proves ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... men, unfitted them for work for a week at least, knocked two more into a cocked hat, and would have killed 'em if the whole crew hadn't seized you and took you below here and ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the thirteenth century the opening out of Gothic art was extended to the laity, and was really the sign of a great social revolution. Gothic art had till then only served the Church, and had been by circumstances closed to the people, who were yet unfitted, by their want of education, for ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... have been at this time more or less under Theban influence, but was immediately dominated by the tyrants of Pherae, though the several cities seem each to have possessed a nominally independent government. The Greek peoples were disunited in fact and unfitted for union by temperament. The twofold desire, felt by almost all the more advanced Greek peoples, for independence on the one hand, and for 'hegemony' or leadership among other peoples, on the other, rendered ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... which produced the Odyssey was not a great literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper, whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the Iliad is not unfitted for the quieter ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... not prevail on the Imperial Government to convert Kingston into the provincial capital, that the seat of government should not be at the London of General Simcoe. He was not favorable to York. A muddy, marshy, unhealthy spot, it was unfitted for a city. Lord Dorchester, peevish from age, was, to some extent, under the influence of the Kingston merchants, and was inclined, by a feeling of gratitude, to grant the wishes of Commodore Bouchette, who resided at Kingston, with ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... over my plans. In the morning I would gather some provisions in the dingey, and after setting fire to the pyre before me, push out into the desolation of the high sea once more. I felt that for Montgomery there was no help; that he was, in truth, half akin to these Beast Folk, unfitted ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... (aside) Act as my daughter's confessor! I am utterly unfitted for such a task! She might rather act as confessor to me. (Aloud) Pauline, come here. (He takes her on his knee) Now, do you really think, my pet, that an old trooper like me doesn't understand ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... said, smiling at the man's scared face; "my Indian habits have unfitted me for any exertion. The walk in the broiling afternoon sun has knocked me up: or perhaps the wine I drank at Southampton may have had something to do with it," he ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... new basis for education? Does the foundation upon which education rests really change? Is the educational system of one age necessarily unfitted to provide for the educational needs of the next? These, and a multitude of the similar questions which people interested in educational progress are asking themselves, arise out of the process of transition that is seemingly one of the fundamental propositions of ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... she read, "you must come back to us. We want you. Theo says nothing, but I can see how he misses you, and surely it is but natural? And petite mere and I want you. Surely you have had enough of the South? It is unfitted for you, my beautiful one. You are too strong to like warm air in the winter. Come back and go out into the fog with me, and let the chill rain dampen your hair. Come back to your lover who sighs for you, to your old adoring Beau-papa who longs to see ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... The man who might have answered the question sauntered into the room. A wonderfully well-preserved man was Sir Charles Darryll, with a boyish smile and an air of perennial youth unspotted by the world, a man who was totally unfitted to cope with the hard grip and sordid side of life. There were some who said that he was a grasping, greedy, selfish old rascal, who under the guise of youthful integrity concealed a nature that was harsh ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... right," observed Gascoigne; "it is better that we part, Jack. You have half unfitted me for the service already; I have a disgust of the midshipmen's berth; the very smell of pitch and tar has become odious to me. This is all wrong; I must forget you and all our pleasant cruises on shore, and once ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the recruits it furnished, it cannot be denied that they were in the aggregate a desperately poor lot, unfitted both physically and morally for the tremendous task of protecting an island people from the attacks of powerful sea-going rivals. How bad they were, the epithets spontaneously applied to them by the outraged commanders ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... He felt particularly unfitted for writing at that moment. The morning is not the time for inventive work. An article may be polished then, or a half-finished story completed, but 11 A.M. is not the ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... in trade, or an unexpected storm in the spring, having bereft them of all, and left them overwhelmed in debt, with neglected and ruined lands, with broken constitutions, (for the lumberer's life is most trying to the health,) and often too with broken hearts, and minds all unfitted for the task of renovating their fortune. Their life afterwards is a bitter struggle to get above water; that tyrant monster, their heavy debt, still chaining them downwards, devouring with insatiate greed their whole means, for interest or bond, until it be discharged; ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... They made a clearance, and all that was left was prudently invested in the three per cents at seventy-five. Godefroid, the sometime gay and careless bachelor who had lived without taking thought all his life long, found himself saddled with a little goose of a wife totally unfitted to bear adversity (indeed, before six months were over, he had witnessed the anserine transformation of his beloved) to say nothing of a mother-in-law whose mind ran on pretty dresses while she had not bread to eat. The two families must live together to live at all. It was only by stirring ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... put the belt around my life— I heard the buckle snap." "Unfitted by an instant's grace For the contented beggar's face I ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... he chose for his sign "The Bible and Dial," which were displayed over his shop in Fleet-street. The satire of Pope's Dunciad seems fairly to have been earned, as we may judge from the class of books still seen in the libraries of curious collectors, and which are certainly unfitted for more general circulation. For these publications he was fined by the Court of King's Bench, and on one occasion stood in the pillory as a punishment. Yet himself and Lintot were the chief booksellers of the era, until ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... thousands by winning the mile and the half mile two years in succession against Cambridge at Queen's Club. But owing to the pressure of other engagements he unfortunately omitted to do any studying, and when the hour of parting arrived he was peculiarly unfitted for any of the learned professions. Having, however, managed to obtain a sort of degree, enough to enable him to call himself a Bachelor of Arts, and realizing that you can fool some of the people some of the time, he applied for and secured ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... mental diplomatic note of the fact that the severe discipline of the editor of "The Sun," one of America's profoundest scholars, while acting from patriotic motives, as the second mate of an American "bottom," had unfitted him for diplomatic ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... black mare was turned out to graze, partly from sentiment, and partly because she, too, was unfitted for any practical purposes; and Peter had outgrown his pony before he went away, though he had ridden it to hounds many times, unknown to his father. Lady Mary thought it would be a pleasure to see her boy well mounted and the ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... STOUGHTON) how shockingly bad the little god's shooting became towards the end of last century. She proves it by the frustrated hopes of Jane, her heroine, who in utter ignorance of life marries a man whose pedestrian attitude of mind is quite unfitted to keep pace with her own passionate and eager hurry of idealism. She becomes household drudge to a master who cannot even talk the language which she speaks naturally, and discovers in a man she has known all her life the lover she should have married, only to lose him in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... ever prevented his father from carrying through his plans, once he had determined upon them; and Sheridan was incapable of believing that any plan of his would not work out according to his calculations. His nature unfitted him to accept failure. He had the gift of terrible persistence, and with unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would hold to that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who understood very well, in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... childhood irresponsible power over human beings, and in the language of President Jefferson, "giving loose to the worst of passions" in the treatment of their slaves, become in a great measure unfitted for self control in their intercourse with each other. Tempers accustomed to riot with loose reins, spurn restraints, and passions inflamed by indulgence, take fire on the least friction. We repeat it, the state of society in the slave states, the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... am about to achieve, if I may so call it, while I fear that victory is to me defeat. What can I do? My dearest hopes appear to be near their fulfilment. The ex-queen gives me Idris; Adrian is totally unfitted to succeed to the earldom, and that earldom in my hands becomes a kingdom. By the reigning God it is true; the paltry earldom of Windsor shall no longer content him, who will inherit the rights which must for ever appertain to the person who possesses it. The Countess can never forget ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... delicate fellow, quite unfitted for the hardships and toil he was subjected to, but he was a high-spirited, brave youngster, and his spirit carried him through, while many a man better fitted physically to endure the toil gave in and died, or became utterly broken down, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... officials themselves, who are the victims of the stupid system which has placed them in the position they occupy. The education they have received has, in the first case, unfitted them for the performance of any but mechanical and routine work; and the strain of a competitive examination, involving the most unintellectual and brain-paralyzing process of cram, has probably destroyed the faculty ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Calvary, where certainly Jesus suffered more than at Golgotha, his days passed away in disputation and bitterness, in the midst of tedious controversies respecting canonical law and exegesis, for which his great moral elevation, instead of giving him the advantage, positively unfitted him. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... very different boy. His merit was a ceaseless diligence, in which it was doubtful whether ambition or conscientiousness had the greatest share. Reserved and thoughtful, unfitted for or indifferent to most games, he was anything but a favourite with the rest, and Eric rather respected than liked him. When he first came he had been one of the most natural butts for Barker's craving ill-nature, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... however, been a favourite fallacy with dunces in all times, that men of genius are unfitted for business, as well as that business occupations unfit men for the pursuits of genius. The unhappy youth who committed suicide a few years since because he had been "born to be a man and condemned to be a grocer," proved by the act that his soul was ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... on entering the University, to surrender myself in imitation of my brother, I underwent a complete disillusionment that winter. Woloda danced a great deal, and Papa also went to balls with his young wife, but I appeared to be thought either too young or unfitted for such delights, and no one invited me to the houses where balls were being given. Yet, in spite of my vow of frankness with Dimitri, I never told him (nor any one else) how much I should have liked to go ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... man need not feel that the lack of a college education will stand in any respect whatever in the way of his success in the business world. No college on earth ever made a business man. The knowledge acquired in college has fitted thousands of men for professional success, but it has also unfitted other thousands for a practical business career. A college training is never wasted, although I have seen again and again five-thousand-dollar educations spent on five-hundred-dollar men. Where a young man can bring a college education to the requirements of a practical business knowledge, ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... in the public schools is in the exactly opposite direction. If boys and girls are trained merely in literary accomplishments, to the total exclusion of industrial, manual, and technical training, the tendency is to unfit them for industrial work and to make them reluctant to go into it, or unfitted to do well if they do go into it. This is a tendency which should be strenuously combated. Our industrial development depends largely upon technical education, including in this term all industrial education, from that which fits a man to be a good mechanic, a good ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... all looked at their faces, trying to read there what their decision was. It seemed almost grotesque that these twelve, commonplace, unimaginative men, with no ability out of the common order, with little or no knowledge of the law, with minds unfitted to grasp the inwardness of the evidence which had been given, should have to pronounce the verdict of life or death upon the young man who stood in the dock. Under ordinary circumstances Paul's voice, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Miss Davis finds it possible to steer many a boy who is obviously unfitted for the career of lawyer, bank clerk, or, vaguely, "business man." And she is able to place others in the coveted office jobs, with their time-honored requirement: "only the neat, honest, intelligent boy ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... be done. Whatever may be our own individual feelings, or even our present judgment on the subject,—as to which neither of us can perhaps say that his mind is not so made up that it may not soon be altered,—we know that the present union cannot remain. It is unfitted for that condition of humanity to which we are coming, and if so, the change must be for good. Why should not he do it as well as another? Or rather would not he do it better than another, if he can do it with less ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... weeping bitterly. Not far from the house, he met La Biondella and the dog on their way back. The little girl stopped to report to him the safe delivery of her dinner-mats; but he passed on quickly with a nod and a smile. His interview with Nanina had left some influence behind it, which unfitted him just then for the occupation of talking to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... naught. Each stood aloof, jealously independent. At rare intervals, under the pressure of an emergency, some of them would try to act in concert; and, except in New England, the results had been most discouraging. Nor was it this segregation only that unfitted them for war. They were all subject to popular legislatures, through whom alone money and men could be raised; and these elective bodies were sometimes factious and selfish, and not always either far-sighted or reasonable. Moreover, they were in a state of ceaseless friction with their ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... he is unfitted for further service, he is discharged, given a pension, or committed to a Soldiers' Home for the rest of his life,—and still the expense piles up. When you realize that all the ambulances, trains, and ships, not to mention ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... precious lives were spared, And the young parents were, afresh, prepared To grapple with their duties—growing large— Conscious of weakness in their full discharge. The babe proved cross and fretful; and, for years, Frequent convulsive fits filled them with fears; And quite unfitted her, in after life, For bearing a just share of toil and strife. This proved an exercise for faith and prayer, Until the fully felt that God's kind care Would be extended o'er their suffering child; And this thought made their souls more reconciled, To ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... strait amongst the hills would have the effect of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit 25 of at least 500 miles extra; besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to the Torgau at a point unfitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The defile in the hills, therefore, it was resolved to gain; and yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of light 30 cavalry, there was little chance but it would be found preoccupied by the Cossacks. They, it is true, ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... found himself in a state of mental collapse. Now to appreciate the beauties of fine music or the work of a great writer certainly demands that the mind should be fresh and unjaded, whereas, at the only times Darwin had for relaxation, he was quite unfitted for these higher delights. We are not surprised then to learn that he sought and found relief in listening to his wife's reading of some pleasant novel or in the nightly game of backgammon, as the only means of resting ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... found herself standing alone, whilst the Kangaroo hopped forward to the front of a big boulder, as if to meet the dog. Here the poor hunted creature took her stand, with her back close to the rock. Gentle and timid as she was, and unfitted by nature to fight for her life against fierce odds, it was brave indeed of the poor Kangaroo to face her enemies, prepared to do battle for the lives ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... not possible of attainment through private instruction in the home. The child who is kept at home and given private instruction too often grows up to be timid, self-distrustful, and unfitted to cope with the difficulties and oppositions of the world. He falls an easy prey to temptation and is quickly discouraged by obstacles. Very often he is selfish, narrow, and overbearing. Not having those about him of his own age and with the same desires, he has become accustomed ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... ourselves, But ministers are modest, truthful men; they would not knowingly pass themselves off as competent on a subject with which they were unfitted to deal. They are no less candid and self-distrustful, for instance, than lawyers and doctors, and a lawyer or doctor who ventured to tackle a professed scientist on a scientific subject to which he had given no systematic study would be laughed at ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... What must May Dacre think? On the course the whole day, and I the steward, and not conscious of the presence of the first family in the Riding! Fool, fool! Why, why did I accept an office for which I was totally unfitted? Why, why must I flirt away a whole morning with that silly Sophy Wrekin? An agreeable predicament, truly, this! What would I give now once more to be in St. James's Street! Confound my Yorkshire estates! How they must dislike, how they must despise me! And now, truly, I ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... collected and his words based on deliberate reason, was the extreme of the other who carried his arguments in a flood of impetuous eloquence. "Otis was a flame of fire," says Sewall. But although Otis was once almost the ideal of the people, his erratic tendencies at last unfitted him ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... return to the scriptural periods or ages of the world, conventionally called 'days,' long before the appearance of man when the unfinished world was as yet unfitted for his support. {I return to the biblical epochs of the creation, well in advance of the birth of man, when the incomplete earth was not yet ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... could now be safe under their own vine and fig-tree, Alfred returned to the United States, where he became first a clerk, and afterward a prosperous merchant. His natural organization unfitted him for conflict, and though his peculiar experiences had imbued him with a thorough abhorrence of slavery, he stood aloof from the ever-increasing agitation on that subject; but every New Year's day, one of the Vigilance Committees for the relief of fugitive slaves received one hundred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Forbes, strange little creatures, very unlike their Spanish progenitors. Further south, in the Falkland Islands, the offspring of the horses imported in 1764 have already so much deteriorated in size[117] and strength that they are unfitted for catching wild cattle with the lasso; so that fresh horses have to be brought for this purpose from La Plata at a great expense. The reduced size of the horses bred on both southern and northern islands, and on several mountain-chains, can hardly have been caused by the cold, as ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... and feeble President, Mr. Buchanan, unfitted for troublous times, was driven to and fro by ambitious leaders of his own party, as was the last weak Hapsburg who reigned in Spain by the rival factions ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... supposed he read now to me—which he certainly never did—as he always told me he hated reading aloud. They talked politics, of course, but their opinions were the classic Faubourg St. Germain opinions: "A Republic totally unfitted for France and the French"—"none of the gentlemen in France really Republican at heart" (with evidently a few exceptions)—W.'s English blood and education having, of course, ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... think I was compelled to make a sacrifice, which, after all, is very little of a sacrifice to me. Years since I decided to trouble him as little as possible with matters of business. It could do no good, and, by making him anxious, unfitted ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... overcrowded—with capable writers; nor is it likely to be. With incapable amateurs it undoubtedly is. Every walk of life has contributed its share to the thousands who are trying to write photoplays. Hundreds fail because they are both illiterate and totally unfitted for the work. Hundreds more struggle on without a sufficient knowledge of dramatic values and plot building, not knowing precisely what can and what can not be presented successfully in the silent drama. Lacking this knowledge, it is impossible to succeed. But the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... talk to Ron in private, and try to instil into him some of her own energy and enterprise. He was a dear, wonderful fellow, but absolutely wanting in initiative. Poets, she supposed, were always dreamy, impracticable creatures, unfitted to attend to practical interests, and dependent upon the good offices of some adoring woman working ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... made for it. When all England was importuning him to accept the primacy, he shrank back from it with a reluctance which was wholly genuine, and an obstinacy which belonged also to his nature. He felt himself unfitted for the place, and he foresaw the result. He likened his future relation with the king to that of a weak old sheep yoked with an untamed bull. In all this he was perfectly right. That harmony which had existed between Lanfranc and the Conqueror, because each understood the other's position and rights ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... own wilfulness,—if through your own wilfulness, you have only yourself to blame—if through the fault of others, you may know that it was a destined and pre-ordained removal of yourself from a sphere for which you are judged to be unfitted. Barring such accident, your life need know no end, even on this earth. Your Spirit, called the Soul, is a Creature of Light—and it can supply revivifying rays to every atom and cell in your body without stint ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... induced Lord Cornwallis to make this treaty, when Seringapatam lay at his mercy, have ever been a mystery. Tippoo had proved himself a monster unfitted to live, much less to rule, and the crimes he had committed against the English should have been punished by the public trial and execution of their author. To conclude peace with him, now, was to enable him to make fresh preparations for war, and to necessitate another expedition ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... clothing natives is nearly as bad as introducing spirits among them. Wherever clothing has been introduced, the natives are disappearing before various diseases, especially consumption, and I am fully convinced that the same will happen in New Guinea. Our civilization, whatever it is, is unfitted for them in their present state, and no attempt should be made to ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... of a nobler day wherever it pushed out its pernicious grip. Surrendered were the sterner principles which instructed and enacted that the man who sought office or preferment from a British Minister unfitted himself as a standard-bearer or even a raw recruit in the ranks of Irish Nationality. The Irish birth-right was bartered for a mess of pottage and, worst of all, the fine instincts of Ireland's glorious youth were being corrupted and perverted. The cry of "Up the Mollies!" became the watchword ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, though he did not deem it right to refuse the kingly authority. He soon had occasion to exert his power, for the Caliph of Cairo had by this time collected a large army, and was on his march to Jerusalem. The Crusaders, though unfitted for a fresh campaign, prepared to defend their conquest, and, at the head of his troops, Godfrey advanced toward Ascalon, where the enemy was stationed. A battle took place on the adjoining plains, in which the Moslem force was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... right to marry, because they have become so corrupt of character that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman. Society will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so that it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is unfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his purity. What right have you, O masculine beast! whose life has been loose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in the sanctity of ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... color-blind man was selling stamps in a post office. Since two denominations of stamps are distinguished by red and green colors, this man made frequent mistakes. He was doing one of the things for which he was specially unfitted. It is easy to detect color blindness by ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... besetting sin of undisciplined minds is to seek refuge from inexplicable realities in the dangerous stimulant of angry partisanship or the indolent narcotick of vague and hopeful vaticination: fortunamque suo temperat arbitrio. Both by reason of my age and my natural temperament, I am unfitted for either. Unable to penetrate the inscrutable judgments of God, I am more than ever thankful that my life has been prolonged till I could in some small measure comprehend His mercy. As there is no man who does not at some time render himself amenable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and The Three Guardsmen with magnified pleasure. I lived between my music and books, on the whole a rather unwholesome life for a boy to lead. I dwelt in a world of imagination, of dreams and air castles—the kind of atmosphere that sometimes nourishes a genius, more often men unfitted for the practical struggles of life. I never played a game of ball, never went fishing or learned to swim; in fact, the only outdoor exercise in which I took any interest was skating. Nevertheless, though slender, I grew well formed and in perfect health. After ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... make of use in the battle of life. He resembles the miser who fills his coffers with gold and keeps it out of circulation. Beyond the selfish joy of possession, his wealth is worthless, and its acquisition has unfitted him for the struggle. The educated man, to continue the illustration, may not be rich, but he knows how to use every cent he owns, and he places it where, under his energy, it ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... her proud seclusion. Accustomed to remote plantation life, she knew little of the ways of the modern world, and much less of the methods by which a woman could obtain a livelihood from it. To the very degree that she had lived in the memories and traditions of the past, she had unfitted herself to understand the conditions of present life or to cope with its requirements. Now she was practically helpless. "We can't go and reveal our situation to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Faioum, and in the broad region of the Delta, that cultivation is possible. Even in the Delta itself there are large spaces which are arid, and others which are permanent marshes, so that considerable portions of its surface are unfitted for husbandry. But if the quantity of cultivable land is thus limited in Egypt, the quality is so excellent, in consequence of the alluvial character of the soil, that the country was always in ancient times a sort of granary of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... her husband's health to be certainly and rapidly progressing, Mrs. Wilmer dwelt in her own mind with painful solicitude upon the probable means of support for them all, when his strength should so entirely give way, as to render him altogether unfitted for business. The only child of over-fond parents, rich in this world's goods, she had received a thorough, fashionable education, which fitted her for doing no one thing by which she could earn any money. Her music had been confined to a few fashionable ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... after English prototypes, by a native convert. In fact, the Latin language was almost as important to the new departure as the Latin models. While the old English literary form, restricted entirely to poetry, was unfitted for any serious narrative or any reflective work, the old English tongue, suited only to the practical needs of a rude warrior race, was unfitted for the expression of any but the simplest and most material ideas. ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... was now eighteen years of age, was at once stronger and more active than the slave, whose easy life in the household of the priest had unfitted him for such a struggle. Springing back to avoid the grasp of his assailant, Amuba struck him with all his strength in the face, and as he reeled backward repeated the blow, and the man fell heavily to the ground. But several other people attracted by the conflict and the shouts of the slave, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... promise you: Heidi shall never have to go and earn her living among strangers; I will make provision against this both during my life and after. But now I have something else to say. Independent of her circumstances, the child is totally unfitted to live a life away from home; we found out that when she was with us. But she has made friends, and among them I know one who is at this moment in Frankfurt; he is winding up his affairs there, that he may be free to go where he likes and take his ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... have several times come under my notice may be mentioned cremation furnaces, but I have not yet met, with, or been able to devise, any burner for ordinary coal gas which has worked satisfactorily. This fuel is apparently unfitted for the work, and the best arrangement I know is a number of pipes delivering ordinary "producer" gas from the Wilson or Dowson generators, in exactly the same way as is at present used for firing horizontal steam boilers. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... less unfitted for representative government by the contrary fault to that last specified—by extreme passiveness, and ready submission to tyranny. If a people thus prostrated by character and circumstances could obtain representative institutions, they would inevitably choose their ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... continual petty feuds and raids, and the third is that general continuity of effort, and that treasuring up of proved experience, to which a barbaric time, succeeding upon the decline of a civilization, is particularly unfitted. For the surmounting of all these difficulties the monks of Western Europe were suited in a high degree. Fixed wealth could be accumulated in the hands of communities whose whole temptation was to gather, and who had no opportunity for spending ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... out upon your view over the bay while we have been staring at puppets half asleep. Most costly games, but I should say—judging of you by myself—that they would have been quite revolting to you. Poor AEsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. Why should I tell you of it all? The very costliness of the affair took away all the pleasure. Six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of Clytemnestra, or three thousand golden goblets ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... how the ruling thoughts and inner life of this pair of friends unfitted them for carrying on the business of a printing house. So far from making fifteen to twenty thousand francs, like Cointet Brothers, printers and publishers to the diocese, and proprietors of the Charente ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... attractions, and she would have made a wife good enough for a king—too good, far too good. For the lack of those qualities she was not to blame, since they spring from heredity or environment. Sukey's parents were good, honest folk, but wholly unfitted to bring up a daughter. Sukey at fourteen was quite mature, and gave evidence of beauty so marked as to attract men twice her age, who "kept company" with her, as the phrase went, sat with her till late in the night, took her out to social gatherings, and—God ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... them. But the vast majority are injured. They either become less active and industrious, or more parsimonious and miserly; and not a few become prodigals or bankrupts at once. In any of these events, they are of course unfitted for the essential purposes of human existence. It is not given to humanity to bear a sudden acquisition of wealth. The best of men are endangered by it. As in knowledge, so in the present case, what is gained by hard digging ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... more than himself and his purpose; I saw him as Homer's people saw their eagles. Just as he hung aloft so hung the sun, intent upon the life of our cowering ball. Not elsewhere in England have I seen so shadeless a place, or one so unfitted for human intercourse, so lacking in the comfort, which human sensibilities need. We live in nature as hunted things, beasts of chase. Every eye is upon us in fear or dislike; but in our turn, cursed as well as blessed by imagination, we ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... weary, and dejected, and looked so frail and unfitted to cope with so terrifying a situation that a feeling of immense tenderness and an instinctive desire to protect her filled Dermot as he watched her. Then passionate anger welled up in him as he turned his eyes again to her captors; ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... further, I will introduce to the reader, a citizen of Norton, who filled a position for which he was utterly unfitted. This man was Joe Tucker, in charge of ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... I find my declining the situation at Washington has given you chagrin. The fact is, that situation would have given me barely a genteel subsistence. It would have led to no higher situations, for I am quite unfitted for political life. My talents are merely literary, and all my habits of thinking, reading, etc., have been in a different direction from that required by the active politician. It is a mistake also to suppose I would fill an office there, and devote myself at the ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... well mated, then they must accept the inevitable and endure to the end, "for better or for worse;" for only in this way can they find consolation for having found out, when too late, that they were unfitted for a life-long companionship. A journalist has said: "No lessons learned by experience, however sharply taught and sadly earned, can enlighten the numbed senses which love has sent to sleep by its magic fascination; ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... together for longer than I care to remember, and I personally am anxious for a change. Our present existence is very expensive. I feel the need of a home and the companionship of just such a woman as yourself. Although a bachelor, I think I am not unfitted for the domestic hearth. My age is forty." That's a mistake of ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... wanting to render him equally successful as a writer. The Author of Waverley was so persuaded of the truth of this, that he warmly pressed his brother to make such an experiment, and willingly undertook all the trouble of correcting and superintending the press." Ill health, however, unfitted Mr. Scott for the task, though "the author believes his brother would have made himself distinguished in that striking field, in which, since that period, Mr. Cooper ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... the General, desirous of riding pleasantly, procured from the North two horses of a breed for bearing the saddle. They were well to look at, and pleasantly gaited under the saddle, but also scary, and therefore unfitted for the service of one who liked to ride quietly on his farm, occasionally dismounting and walking in his fields to inspect improvements. From one of these horses the General sustained a fall—probably ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... my next point, and by a natural transition. If I am so clearly unfitted for my post," the Prince asked: "if my friends admit it, if my subjects clamour for my downfall, if revolution is preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet the inevitable? should I not save these horrors and be done with these absurdities? in a word, should I not abdicate? O, believe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a great and immediate influence on the extension of Australian settlement. Within a few years after the chief surveyor had characterised the western interior, beyond a certain limit, as unfitted for human habitation, and had expressed his opinion that the monotonous flats across which he vainly looked for any elevation extended to the sea-coast, snowy mountains, feeding the head tributaries of perennial rivers had been discovered to the southward ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... you might be directing your steps, but the simple fact (to which I was myself witness) of your leaving my house in the low disguise of a carter's smock-frock, affords in itself sufficient proof that your associates must belong to a class of persons utterly unfitted for the companionship of a gentleman. Let me hope this hint may be enough, and that conduct so thoroughly disgraceful in one brought up as you have been may not occur again. I presume I need scarcely say that, in the event of your 52disregarding ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... become a religious, and turned his attention to the Society of Jesus, giving him the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier to read, and, doubtless, answered his inquiries about that order. "But," he said in after years, "I had no vocation to teach young boys and felt unfitted for a student's life"; added to this was the certainty of the postponement of any public activity on his part for many years ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... accentuates the range of the dragnet of war. This intellectual, quiet, introspective, slightly ironical temperament would seem almost ideally unfitted for the trenches. Yet, although no soldier by instinct, and having a family dependent upon his writings for support, he gave himself freely to the Great Cause. He never speaks in his verses of his own sacrifice, and indeed says little about the war; but the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... dear, this is a most unfortunate affair." He paused for a reply; but Lady Frances felt that the assertion was one to which at the present moment she could make no reply. "It is, you know, quite out of the question that you should marry a young man so altogether unfitted for you in point of ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the bulk of the revenue is virtually denied all benefit of State aid in education. There has been a deliberate attempt to Hollanderise the Republic, and to kill the English language. Thousands of children are growing up in this land in ignorance, unfitted to run the race of life, and there is the possibility that a large number of them will develop into criminals. We have had to tax ourselves privately to guard against these dangers, and the iniquity of denying education to the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... could see me, and I had something else to think of; and I used to keep looking at them during church; so that I lost a good deal of the sermon. In a word, they were a beautiful pair of boots. But all this only unfitted them the more for sea-service; as I soon discovered. They had very high heels, which were all the time tripping me in the rigging, and several times came near pitching me overboard; and the salt water made them shrink in such a manner, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... 1860, when he was sent as ambassador to Paris, for the special purpose of averting the much-dreaded intervention of France in the affairs of Syria. But Ahmed Vefik's abrupt frankness, irascibility and abhorrence of compromise unfitted him for European diplomacy. He offended the French government; his mission failed, and he was recalled in January, 1861. None the less his integrity of purpose was fully understood and appreciated in Paris. On his return he was appointed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... been more unfitted to teach things to so shy a boy as Philip. He had come to the school with fewer terrors than he had when first he went to Mr. Watson's. He knew a good many boys who had been with him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinctively realised that among the larger numbers his ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... co-operating with his colleagues, he exaggerated his malady as a pretext for the inaction that was forced upon him by circumstances. But there is no sufficient reason to doubt that he was really, as his friends represented, in a state that utterly unfitted him for business. He seems to have been freed for a time from the pangs of gout only to be afflicted with a species of mental alienation bordering on insanity. This is the most satisfactory, as it is the most obvious, explanation of his utter indifference in presence of one of the most ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... to. The true margin for safety is not the difference between the working-strain and the breaking-strain, but between the working-strain and that strain which will in any way unfit the material for use. Now, any material is unfitted for use when it is so far distorted by overstraining that it cannot recover, or, technically speaking, when its elastic limit has been exceeded. The elastic limit of the best grades of iron is just about half the breaking-weight, ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... Burton spent many hours examining her husband's papers, and in the autumn of 1902 she commenced in earnest to write his life—a work that occupied her about eight months. That she was absolutely unfitted for the task must be clear to all who have any knowledge of Burton. Indeed, she was quite incapable of doing literary work of any kind properly. The spirit in which she wrote may be gauged both from the ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... looking upon me as an ideal woman—a kind of madonna, mother of little children, you understand, and all that—and I'm not. Something must be wrong with me. I don't even long to be—yet. Oh, you see how unfitted I am for a man to weave idealistic pictures about—like that. It seemed to hurt Bob when I told him the truth about myself, hurt him terribly, as if I'd tumbled over and broken his image of me—at the cradle, you know. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... part of his jaw shot off, and several useful portions of his epiglottis carried away. Totally unfitted for his business as auctioneer, he died some years after of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... your best skill, your closest attention. Do you think it is quite honest either to use a part of that time in reading foolish, useless, or hurtful books, or to come to your work so exhausted and preoccupied by them as to be unfitted for performing your part ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... the King's kindliness and simplicity, his desire for peace, and his passion for sport, solitude, and the open air, which, amidst the worries of power, must often have made him dream of a life of freedom far from the imperious duties of royalty for which he seemed unfitted.* But the Queen was yet more tenderly loved. So naturally and serenely virtuous that she alone remained ignorant of the scandals of Rome, she was also a woman of great culture and great refinement, conversant with every field of literature, and very happy in being so intelligent, so superior ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... spirit. He now became the proprietor of the Chronique de Paris, but aside from the literary friendships involved, notably that of Theophile Gautier, he derived nothing but additional worries from an undertaking he was unfitted to carry out. An even greater anxiety was the famous lawsuit with Buloz, which was finally decided in his favor, but which proved a costly victory, since it ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... fever rose to a fearful height in 1847. And, say the Commissioners of Health, "the state of the medical institutions of Ireland was, unfortunately, such as peculiarly unfitted them to afford the required medical aid, on the breaking out of the epidemic. The county infirmaries had not provision for the accommodation of fever patients. The county fever hospitals were destitute of sufficient funds; and dispensaries, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... and glorious in the soul's aspirations. They had will and passion, sagacity and the power to rule, by which they became aggrandized; but they were wanting in those elements and virtues which endear their memory to mankind. They were both tyrants and sensualists; fitted to make conquests, unfitted to enjoy them. In an important sense, they were great civilizers, but their civilization pertained to material life. They worshiped the god of the sense, rather than the god of the reason; and, compared with the Greeks, bequeathed but ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of the syllogism, and the virtue of entities and quiddities. They could have taught Europe earlier than the Church allowed it to learn that the sun does not go round the earth, and that it is the earth which goes round the sun. But they were wholly unfitted to deal with the prodigious difficulties of moral and social direction. This function, so immeasurably more important than the mere discovery of any number of physical relations, it was the glory of the Church to have discharged for some centuries with as much success ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... sketched with force and expression. In short, the Author believes his brother would have made himself distinguished in that striking field in which, since that period, Mr. Cooper has achieved so many triumphs. But Mr. T. Scott was already affected by bad health, which wholly unfitted him for literary labour, even if he could have reconciled his patience to the task. He never, I believe, wrote a single line of the projected work; and I only have the melancholy pleasure of preserving in the Appendix [Footnote: ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... up against it day by day, My ignorance is distressing; The things I don't know on the way I'm busily confessing. Time was I used to think I knew Some useful bits of knowledge And could be sure of one or two Real facts I'd gleaned in college. But I'm unfitted for the task Of answering things my boy ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... hated solitude, Where gloomy thoughts arise, where grievous cares intrude. Known but in drink,—he found an easy friend, Well pleased his worth and honour to commend: And thus inform'd, the guardian of the trust Heard the applause, and said the claim was just, A worthy soul! unfitted for the strife, Care, and contention of a busy life; - Worthy, and why?—that o'er the midnight bowl He made his friend the partner of his soul, And any man his friend: —then thus in glee, "I speak my mind, I love the truth," quoth he; Till 'twas his fate that useful truth ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... go out, and warn my men that we shall sail in half an hour, and then I can get any garments that you desire; for, doubtless, you do not wish to attract comment by the purchase of clothes that would seem unfitted to your ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... into full working order, it should, at least, have seen that he was replaced by a capable official. This was not done. His successor did not arrive for two years, and meanwhile the Vice-regal office devolved upon Colonel Wynyard, a good-natured soldier, unfitted for the position. The first Parliament of New Zealand was summoned, and met at Auckland on the Queen's birthday in 1854. Many, perhaps most, of its members were well-educated men of character and capacity. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... The service was one upon the prompt carrying out of which victory depended, and Horn, though a brave and capable commander, was slow and cautious, and particularly unfitted for executing a service which had to be performed in a dark night across a country with which he was not familiar. Taking with him four thousand chosen musketeers and pikemen and twelve guns he set out at nine o'clock, but the rough road, the dikes, and ditches which intercepted the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty |
