"Inefficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Canada furnish a complete field for the study of the party system under our system. In 1896 a party stale in spirit, corrupt and inefficient, went out of office and was replaced by a government which had been bred to virtue by eighteen years of political penury. It entered upon its tasks with vigor, ability and enthusiasm. It had its policies well defined and it set briskly about carrying ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... new, artificial one was at his disposal; get indigestion, and to hand was artificial digestive fluid or bile or pancreatine, as the case might be. Complexions, too, were replaceable, spectacles superseded an inefficient eye-lens, and imperceptible false diaphragms were thrust into the failing ear. So he went over our anatomies, until, at last, he had conjured up a weird thing of shreds and patches, a simulacrum, an artificial ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... number of individuals are contributing to the support of educational institutions in our country. To help an inefficient, ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste. I am told by those who have given most careful study to this problem that it is highly probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational projects to have built up a national system of higher education adequate ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... lovers of good government must rejoice at the redemption of Mississippi." Redemption from what? The reader is led to believe that the "redemption" is from bad to good government, from high to low taxes, from increased to decreased bonded indebtedness, from incompetent, inefficient and dishonest administration to one that was competent, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... "And so inefficient and worthless that I fear he doesn't count," said Paul, "but," raising his eyes to Yerba's, "I fancy that I have already had the pleasure of seeing you, and, I fear, the mortification of having disturbed you and your friends in the parlor of the ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... kerosene oil was discovered or thought of, one might stop overnight at almost any farmer's house in the agricultural districts and get a very good supper, but after supper he might attempt to read in the sitting-room, and would find it impossible with the inefficient light of one candle. The hostess, seeing his dilemma, would say: "It is rather difficult to read here evenings; the proverb says 'you must have a ship at sea in order to be able to burn two candles at once;' we never have an extra candle except on extra occasions." These ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... he was knocking at the door in Welbeck Street. He had tried his latch-key, but had found it inefficient. As he was supposed to be at Liverpool, the door had in fact been locked. At last it was opened by Lady Carbury herself. He had fallen more than once, and was soiled with the gutter. Most of my readers will not probably know how ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... others, may even at that age have been useful. In other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the plan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, I am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to either. I went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and a considerable part of Cornelius Nepos and Caesar's Commentaries, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... life, and I must stand here and see him murdered," the young man replied with intense bitterness. It was all that he could think, all that he could say. He felt inefficient and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... him, he was rather in the wrong. The great loss of hairpins did not proceed so much from the carelessness of women in fastening their hair, as from their 'pennywise and pound-foolish' system of buying cheap hairpins with few and inefficient 'twists.' These cheap hairpins never 'caught' properly in their coiled-up tresses. The women went out, walked rapidly, tossed their heads perchance, and one at least of their hairpins fell to the ground. Supposing one hundred women passed along a certain road or street in the course ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... There is reason to believe that the sterility of these unions has not been specially acquired, but follows as an incidental result from the sexual elements of the two or three forms having been adapted to act on one another in a particular manner, so that any other kind of union is inefficient, like that between distinct species. Another and still more remarkable incidental result is that the seedlings from an illegitimate union are often dwarfed and more or less or completely barren, like hybrids from the union ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... the bulk of the shame lies with the shareholders, who encourage opposition for the sake of increasing their own dividends at the expense of their neighbours, and who insist on economy in directions which render the line inefficient—to the endangering of their own lives as well as those of the public. Economy in the matter of railway servants—in other words, their reduction in numbers—necessitates increase of working hours, which, beyond a certain point, implies inefficiency ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... mismanaged from the first," remarked a sapient-looking man with a gaunt, cadaverous face, addressing two listeners. "The Administration is corrupt; our generals are either incompetent or purposely inefficient. We haven't got an officer that can hold a candle to General Lee. Abraham Lincoln has called for six hundred thousand men. What'll he do with 'em when he gets 'em? Just nothing at all. They'll melt away like snow, and then he'll call for more ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... their precipitation; drifting over the plateau, or crown, with rapidly decreasing bulk. Thus, the great plain, in size the greatest, and in soil the richest part of us, is always labouring under the curse of irregular and inefficient rainfall; and whatever good we may do in the way of water storage and we may do so much-we have always the threat of many years of drought hanging over, during which our treasury of water will be ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... touching, but melancholy illustration of this indisputable truth; in other words, he possessed the weakness or the vice, as the reader may consider it, and found, when too late, that a yielding resolution, or, to use a phrase perhaps better understood, a good intention, was but a feeble and inefficient instrument with which to attempt its subjection. Having made these few preliminary observations, as being suitable, in our opinion, to the character of the incidents which follow, we proceed at once to ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... encouraged the development of the private business sector, but legal and bureaucratic obstacles alongside persistent corruption are hampering its further development. Poland's agricultural sector remains handicapped by surplus labor, inefficient small farms, and lack of investment. Restructuring and privatization of "sensitive sectors" (e.g., coal, steel, railroads, and energy), while recently initiated, have stalled. Reforms in health care, education, the pension system, and state administration have resulted in larger-than-expected ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... favourite expression—but in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that "live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scale was—was—was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mistakes had been avoided. It is easier and cheaper to get performance with lighter and more powerful engines and longer runways than by refining the airplane. Fuel economy of an engine has ceased to be the deciding factor. Higher utilization of a high speed Jet at least in part offsets the inefficient use of fuel. The only time the Diesel had a chance was from the middle 20's perhaps on thru WW-2 for certain things due to gasoline shortage. To sum it up, the thing that licked them worst was the use of a single valve for inlet and exhaust making it impossible ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... ill-governed nation. Although half of GDP is generated through the service sector, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product. Major impediments to growth include frequent cyclones and floods, inefficient state-owned enterprises, inadequate port facilities, a rapidly growing labor force that cannot be absorbed by agriculture, delays in exploiting energy resources (natural gas), insufficient power supplies, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... valuable to the young. Pupils who form the habit of getting to school any time in the morning, though usually late, are generally behind time all the way through life. They make the men and women who are late at meeting, late to meet their business engagements, late everywhere—a tardy, dilatory, inefficient class of persons, wherever they are found. It is good to be obliged to plan and do by car-time. The man who is obliged to keep his watch by railroad time, and then make all things bend to the same, is more ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... or at least have a grudging sort of admiration, but it is not possible to even faintly like or hesitatingly pity a cowardly Robert Herrick, whose self-pity is so strong, and who from first to last is, as his creator intended him to be, a thorough inefficient. Half-hearted in his wickedness, self-saving in his repentance, he somehow fails to interest one; and even his lower-class associates, the horrible Huish and the American captain, are almost less detestable. Huish is quite diabolical, but he, at least, has the courage of his iniquities. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... report. "Here we have some comments upon service in our restaurants, right here in Zagurest, from an evidently widely published American travel reporter. He contends that the fact that there is no tipping leads to our waiters being surly and inefficient." ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... more so, than the plain black or invisible-green cloth coat of this age. The long shoes, pointed toes, and other grotesque fashions of the middle ages, must all of them have been expensive; and it was by inefficient sumptuary laws that it was attempted to put them down. The draperies which we admire on an Etruscan vase were of the coarsest woollen: and the possession of silken stuffs in abundance has not tended to make the Chinese national dress better ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... should be able to point out to him the land which had fallen to his share, in the general lottery of the Government. In many cases this was not done for one or two years after the formation of the colony, in consequence of the lamentably inefficient force placed at the disposal of the able and indefatigable surveyor-general; and even then, the boundaries of the different allotments were not permanently defined. This state of incertitude had the most fatal effect, not only upon the fortunes, but ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... This allowed, in fact, a negative to every legislature, on every measure proposed by Congress; a negative so frequently exercised in practice, as to benumb the action of the Federal government, and to render it inefficient in its general objects, and more especially in pecuniary and foreign concerns. The want, too, of a separation of the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary functions, worked disadvantageously in practice. Yet this state of things afforded ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... been found essential to the progress of improvement? But were the existing system of government essentially conservative in its nature, instead of being virtually destructive, it would still prove inadequate and inefficient. The circumstances and wants of this colony will vary every year, and consequently require either such partial modifications or entire alterations of policy as may be suited to each progressive stage ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... the officers of the peace and the guardians of the public safety? It was incredible, it was monstrous, degrading, nay, intolerable, and a remedy would have to be found either in the reorganisation of an inefficient police force or in the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... through desire to secure a second term; (3) the commercial depression that usually exists during a campaign would thus come less frequently. These arguments may be used in opposition to such a change: (1) in the case of an inefficient President, the short term is to be preferred; (2) the Presidential campaign is of value, in that the attention of Americans generally is for a time fixed on the problems connected with the conduct of our government. It furnishes the opportunity for imparting to our citizens many ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... them in every direction, so as to get it quite firm and smooth before raising the sides. These were added bit by bit, trimmed and beaten with the wings and feet, so as to felt the whole together, projecting fibres being now and then worked in with the bill. By these simple and apparently inefficient means, the inner surface of the nest was rendered almost as smooth and compact as a ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of Prussia the railways pay well and are well managed, but they are clogged to a certain extent by inefficient and unnecessary employees, and were the system spread over the United States the chaos in a dozen years would be almost irreparable, and even here the complaints are many and vigorous. Probably one male over twenty-five years of age out of every four ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... routine in the mountains, many are worth setting down, however trivial they may seem. They mark the difference between the greenhorn and the old-timer; but, more important, they mark also the difference between the right and the wrong, the efficient and the inefficient ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... from the rule of the specialist is the destruction of the AMATEUR. So real a fact is the tyranny of the specialist that the very word "amateur," which means a leisurely lover of fine things, is beginning to be distorted into meaning an inefficient performer. As an instance of its correct and idiomatic use, I often think of the delightful landlord whom Stevenson encountered somewhere, and upon whom he pressed some Burgundy which he had with him. The generous host courteously refused a second glass, saying, "You see I am an amateur ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Board recommended by the Industrial Commission would have proved inefficient because the laws with the administration of which that body would have had to concern itself can be carried out in a better and more efficient way by an official like the State Attorney, who has almost ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... Furioso and his crew disappeared than a body of individuals arrived at the top of the hall, and, placing themselves opposite the Managers, began rating them for their inefficient administration of the island, and expatiated on the inconsistency of their late conduct to the conquering Bombastes. The Managers defended themselves in a manner perfectly in character with their recent behaviour; but their ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... upon donkeys, and there were three or four spare ones, in case any of the others should knock up upon the road. In this particular it is proper to say that we were cheated, for had such an accident occurred, the extra-animals were so weak and inefficient, that they could not have supplied the places of any of those in use. There were eight or ten donkey-men, and a boy; the latter generally contrived to ride, but the others walked by the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... system suffers from improper breathing, inasmuch as the brain, the spinal cord, the nerve centers, and the nerves themselves, when improperly nourished by means of the blood, become poor and inefficient instruments for generating, storing and transmitting the nerve currents. And improperly nourished they will become if sufficient oxygen is not absorbed through the lungs. There is another aspect of the case whereby the ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... in his pocket, and Edward Henry appreciated him more than ever. But towards four o'clock Mr. Marrier annoyed and even somewhat alarmed Edward Henry by a mysterious change of mien. His assured optimism slipped away from him. He grew uneasy, darkly preoccupied, and inefficient. At last, when the clock in the room struck four, and Edward Henry failed to hear it, Mr. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... institution appears, however, to have derived little advantage from Porson's supervision of it, beyond the few criticisms which were found in his handwriting in some of the volumes. Owing to his very irregular habits, the great scholar proved but an inefficient librarian; he was irregular in attendance, and was frequently brought home at midnight drunk. The directors had determined to dismiss him, and said they only knew him as their librarian from seeing his name attached to receipts ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... me, and going transversely across the nine-mile-broad rough Gaboon estuary in an unfinished canoe with an inefficient counterpane sail has none; but I return duty bound to this unpleasant subject. We started very early in the morning. We reached the other side entangled in the trailing garments of the night. I was thankful during that broiling hot day of one thing, and that ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... complain and complain; disappointed and discontented, at having sunk below their powers and their hopes, and are yet without capability of persevering exertion to emerge from their obscurity. Seebright was now become an inefficient being, whom no one could assist to any good purpose. Alfred, after a long, mazy, fruitless conversation, was convinced that the case was hopeless, and, sincerely pitying him, gave it up as irremediable. Just as he had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... to be expected, the inefficient diplomacy displayed in the preparations for the world war brought down severe criticism of our diplomatic abilities, and if the intention at the Ballplatz was to bring about a war, it cannot be denied that the preparations ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... thrifty, gear-getting "faculty" of the dead and gone Grimkies had become thin and diluted and inefficient in this Mrs. Hepzibah, last of the name, the strong wine and iron of the blood of uprightness had come down to ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... present an anxious face; on the contrary, he seemed plumply content as he replied to the ranger's greeting. He represented very well the type of officer which these disorderly communities produce. Brave and tireless when working along the line of his prejudices, he could be most laxly inefficient when his duties cut across his own or his neighbor's interests. Being a cattle-man by training, he was glad of the red herring which the Texas officer had trailed across the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... prevent the inhabitants from taking the oath, and to persuade them that they were still French subjects. Some were noisy, turbulent, and defiant; others were too tranquil to please the officers of the Crown. A missionary at Annapolis is mentioned as old, and therefore inefficient; while the cure at Grand Pre, also an elderly man, was too much inclined to confine himself to his spiritual functions. It is everywhere apparent that those who chose these priests, and sent them as missionaries into a British province, expected them to act as enemies ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... to make the colonies expensive and the home treasury insolvent. The governors as royal favorites regarded their appointments as easy roads to quick wealth, and they plundered not only the inhabitants but their royal master. The inefficient and extravagant management of trade, which was a government monopoly, furnished a lamentable example of the effects of public ownership. And when possible the church interfered to add the burden of bigotry to that of corruption. An amusing example of this occurred when ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... reign of law had not commenced. There had been, indeed, during three or four years, a written Constitution, by which rights were defined and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly violated; and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws which had been framed to secure the distinct authority of the executive magistrates and of the legislative assemblies—the freedom of election—the freedom of debate—the freedom of the press—the personal freedom of citizens—were ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... settlement, found in Adele a strong, joyous, self-relying spirit, able to help them out of their difficulties, who could cheer them when down-hearted, and spur them up when getting discouraged or inefficient. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... many antiseptic washes, lotions and injections upon which the ignorant rely for protection from disease, are inefficient; not because they cannot destroy the germs of disease, but because they do not penetrate the skin and mucous membranes in which these ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... were over, "Truth's Palace might be a not ineligible residence were not the inmates necessitated not merely to know the truth but to speak it, and did not all innocent embellishments of her majestic person become entirely inefficient and absolutely nugatory. For example, the number of my wife's grey hairs speedily confounded me; and how should it be otherwise, when the excellent dye she had brought with her had completely lost its virtues? She on her part found herself continually ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... none but himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient. Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be painted,—they can only be believed. But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, in these cases ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... anywhere in America the morning wakes to anything like the long, rich, sad calls of the Sevillian street hucksters. It is true that you do not get this plaintive music without the accompanying note of the hucksters' donkeys, which, if they were better advised, would not close with the sort of inefficient sifflication which they now use in spoiling an otherwise most noble, most leonine roar. But when were donkeys of any sort ever well advised in all respects? Those of Seville, where donkeys abound, were otherwise of the superior intelligence which throughout Spain ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... training of their mistresses, and the efficiency of the schools. Untested, unguided, they exist and even thrive, and will do so until a sounder public opinion and the proved superiority of well-trained mistresses and well-educated girls gradually exterminates the inefficient schools. But we are, I fear, a long way still from this ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... to march at the command of the recognized government. This, it is unnecessary to say, was the grand basis of that army which was afterward placed upon the field; and thus it was that a secretary of war so palpably inefficient as Mr. Walker was able, with an empty treasury, for many months to surpass the North in the supply of troops, equipped, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... as her first crew were those who had helped to form her model. During succeeding generations inefficient hands were occasionally shipped to take the place of worn-out members of the original crew. Often the vessel was put out of her course to serve the personal ends of this or that sailor, and ere long mutiny broke out among her ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... by some of the European travellers who visited India during Jahangir's reign as being venal and inefficient, and she is accused of cruelty and perfidy. She died on the 18th December (N.S.), 1645, and was buried by the aide of Jahangir in his mausoleum at Lahore. At her death she was in her 72nd year, according to the Muhammadan ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... with an extra prize of a $5 gold piece for anyone picking 600 pounds a day; and these prizes roused such interest and excitement that some of the ambitious ones had to be compelled to leave the field at night, wishing to sleep at the end of their row. The inefficient were gently tolerated; severe punishment was held to be alike cruel and useless; an incompetent servant was carried as a burden from which there was no escape. Such endurance was the way of all good masters and mistresses at the South,—"and I have known very few who ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... present war has brought many proofs that there is no small amount of truth in this indictment, and most unfortunate of all, neutral countries too accept Germany's version that Britain is unorganized, self-interested, inefficient and effete. And to just the same degree they are convinced that Germany is thorough. They love Britain's humanitarian idea, but admire German efficiency—although they fear ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... is that education should embrace the means of discipline, for without discipline the mind will remain inefficient, just as surely as the muscles of the body, without exercise, will be left flaccid. That should seem to be a self-evident truth. Now it may be possible to derive a certain amount of discipline out of any study, but it is a fact, nevertheless, which cannot be gainsaid, that some ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... which had been during a short time braced to a firm tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he was utterly incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgar courage of a foremast man he still retained. But both as Admiral and as First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient. Month after month the fleet which should have been the terror of the seas lay in harbour while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, punning upon his new title, gave him the name of Lord Tarry-in-town. When he came on shipboard he was accompanied by a bevy of courtesans. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... detail of what the well-bred Carters had said. "Interior decoration"—that didn't mean anything to them. All that they understood was that they were fools and failures, in the beginning of their old age; that they belonged to the quite ludicrously inefficient. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... variation in visibility or luminosity of energy of wave-lengths within the range of the visible spectrum. Obviously, no amount of energy incapable of exciting the sensation of light will be visible. The energy of those wave-lengths near the ends of the visible spectrum will be inefficient in producing light. That energy which excites the sensation of yellow-green produces the greatest luminosity per unit of energy and is the most efficient light. The visibility or luminous efficiency of radiant energy may be ranged approximately in this manner ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... the proceedings of the Convention in the earlier days of the French Revolution. On the other hand, the new grand-duke Louis, who had succeeded in 1818, was unpopular, and the administration was in the hands of hide-bound and inefficient bureaucrats. The result was a deadlock; and, even before the promulgation of the Carlsbad decrees in October 1819 the grand-duke had prorogued the chambers, after three months of sterile debate. The reaction that followed was as severe in Baden as elsewhere in Germany, and culminated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Ball, speaking this with a kind of proviso to himself, that the words so spoken were intended to be taken as having any meaning only on the presumption that that document which he had seen in the other room should turn out to be wholly inoperative and inefficient at the present moment. In answer to these side-questions or corollary points as to the deduction or non-deduction of the loan, Mr Slow answered not a word; but when there was silence between them, he did make answer as ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... at Fort Moultrie—that is, the elevation of its parapet by crowning it with barrels of sand—I pointed out to him the impolicy as well as inefficiency of the measure. It seemed to me impolitic to make ostensible preparations for defense, when no attack was threatened; and the means adopted were inefficient, because any ordinary field-piece would knock the barrels off the parapet, and thus to render them only hurtful to the defenders. He inquired whether the expedient had not been successful at Fort Brown, on the Rio Grande, in the beginning of the Mexican war, and was answered ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... chance of a shot, were withdrawn, and only the look-out man left there. There was some idea that the enemy might have gone away, and no one would have been sorry; for the wells inside the zereba were very inefficient, the water being soon exhausted, and a tedious waiting entailed before the wells filled again. Already the men had to be put on an allowance, and in that country, where the throat is always parched, any stint of water is the greatest ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... of 1855 was much more than a confirmation of the Imperial Firman of 1850, nor was it a dead letter. A year afterwards Dr. Jewett, while admitting that it was inefficient in certain respects, declared it to have been in an important sense, a quickening spirit. "Never," he says, "within the same space of time, has there been as much religious discussion with the Mussulmans as since ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... I suppose it may be efficient, and perhaps sufficient, to make slight improvements and repairs in harbors already in use and not much out of repair. But if I have any correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for any general beneficent purposes of improvement. I know very little, or rather nothing at all, of the practical matter of levying and collecting tonnage duties; but I suppose one of its principles must be to lay a duty for the improvement ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... deck and shouted orders to cutlassed seamen, and he was staring at the tumult as if he regarded noise as a mutiny of inferiors against his preference for calm. By his side a short-sighted steward bent interminably over his ticket. "The silly gowk!" fumed Ellen. "Can the woman not read? It looks so inefficient, and I want him to think well of the movement." Presently, with a suave and unimpatient gesture, he took his ticket away from the peering woman and read her the number. "I like him!" said Ellen. "There's many would have snapped at ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... ask anyone to do things for me. If they can't see what's to be done, I'll not tell them." This was her declaration of independence. Needless to say, Mrs. M. had a large domestic help problem. Her domestic helpers were continually going and coming. The inefficient ones she would not keep, and the efficient ones would not stay with her. So the burden of the home fell heavily on her, and, pulling her martyr's crown close down on her head, she worked feverishly. ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... and would have drowned his passenger, said public opinion, if the young hero from London—myself—had not plunged in, and at the risk of his life brought the professor to shore. Consequently, he was despised by all as an inefficient boatman. He became a laughing stock. The local wags made laborious jests when he passed. They offered him fabulous sums to take their worst enemies out for a row with him. They wanted to know when he was going to school to learn ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... following each foreign conquest (such as the Mongol conquest in the Thirteenth Century and the Manchu in the Seventeenth) not only has there never been any absolutism properly so-called in China, but that apart from the most meagre and inefficient tax-collecting and some rough-and-ready policing in and around the cities there has never been any true governing at all save what the people did for themselves or what they demanded of the officials as a protection ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... Guardian's directorate. And Mr. Gunterson, uneasily suspecting that the structure of the German institution might at any moment collapse at some quite unexpected point, and calculating that he might secure the managerial berth for his equally inefficient brother-in-law, and thus keep the salary in the family, cautiously accepted the invitation. So this was the man who, a few days later, faced the full board, who with affable confidence in his own abilities won ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... as when they first stood there as Apprentices; and they do not cultivate Masonry, with a cultivation, determined, resolute, and regular, like their cultivation of their estate, profession, or knowledge. Their Masonry takes its chance in general and inefficient sentiment, mournfully barren of results; in words and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Czar, was too feeble and inefficient to take any part whatever in the management of public affairs. He was melancholy and dejected in spirit, in consequence of his infirmities and sufferings, and he spent most of his time in acts of devotion, according to the rites and usages of the established church of the country, as ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... rats came brazenly and picked up the grains of rice I dropped in my inefficient handling of chopsticks, and in scaring off these hardened, hungry vermin I accidentally upset tea over my bed, whilst at the same moment a clod-hopping coolie came in with an elephant tread, with the result that my European reading-lamp ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... difficult to bear with the small irritations of her day. Perhaps Anna's incapacity, which had always annoyed her, had been physical. She must have had her trouble a longtime. She remembered other women of the Street who had crept through inefficient days, and had at last laid down their burdens and closed their mild eyes, to the lasting astonishment of their families. What did they think about, these women, as they pottered about? Did they resent the impatience that met their lagging ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to get old lady Francis to modify her formula or something. Else we'll never get rich. Slow down the rate of growth, dilute it—ought to be more profitable too.... Have to find out how cheaply the inoculant can be produced—no more inefficient hand methods.... Of course the fastness of growth wouldnt affect the sale to farmers—help it in fact. No doubt she'd had more than I originally thought in that aspect, I conceded generously. We could let them apply it themselves ... mailorder advertising ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... who, though he is really an M.D., because it pays better, devotes his time to this particular branch of his profession, and advertises largely to that effect; while, in nine cases out of ten, if he attended to a legitimate branch of his vocation, he would prove worthless and inefficient. There are many abortionists in New York to-day who live in first-class style, attend to nothing but 'first-class' cases, receive ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... [in the South] are incompatible with a united government even among ourselves. The Union has been prolonged this far by miracles." A personal consideration sharpened his apprehension. He saw old age at hand and was determined "not to hazard the disgrace of continuing in office a mere inefficient pageant," but at the same time he desired some guarantee of the character of the person who was to succeed him. At first he thought of remaining until after the election of 1832; but Jackson's reelection made him relinquish altogether the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... badly handled and go to the bottom, which would be a good thing if only their inefficient captains were drowned; but it's their crews as well. There, good-bye, Belton. Don't come to town again without calling on me. I'll try and serve your boy. One moment—where are you? Oh yes, I see; I have your card. Good-bye, middy. Remember ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... absurd system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages of their violence—in short, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... earthly now—nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... themselves,—or rather when the outsiders, the chiefs, and the subordinates all begin to see the same facts, the same damning facts if you like, the obstruction will diminish. The reformer's opinion that a certain bureau is inefficient is just his opinion, not so good an opinion in the eyes of the bureau, as its own. But let the work of that bureau be analysed and recorded, and then compared with other bureaus and with private corporations, and the argument moves to ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... United States must be free to face European complications. But the Mexican crisis proved definitely the weakness of the military system. Though the regulars who accompanied Pershing proved their worth, the clumsy inefficient mobilization of the National Guard, on the other hand, indicated as plainly as possible the lack of ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... people's approbation, he seemed to claim the crown by an hereditary right, and refused burial to the late king's' body, under pretence of his being an usurper. 2. All the good part of mankind, however, looked upon his accession with detestation and horror: and this act of inefficient cruelty only served to confirm their hatred. 3. Conscious of this, he ordered all such as he suspected to have been attached to Ser'vius, to be put to death; and fearing the natural consequences of his tyranny, he increased the guard round ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... make good farmers out of hopelessly poor ones," Mr. Wombold answered. "I contend that any farmer to-day who has no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that he is an inefficient farmer." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Bresay, marquis of Denonville, succeeded La Barre, who succeeded Frontenac, as governor of Canada in 1689. La Barre, an inefficient leader against the insurgent Iroquois, held the administration for only one year. Denonville was of great courage and ability, but in his campaign against the Indians treated them so cruelly that they were angered, not intimidated. The terrible massacre of the French by the Iroquois at Lachine, ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... either—the Magyar. Serbia becomes conscious of a European destiny, but Hungary avers that a large stretch of Hungarian territory has been torn from Europe and is being Balkanized, despoiled of the old comfort and civilization of the Austro-Hungarian State and made dirty and inefficient by Slavs. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... her habit to speak out her thoughts, even to her husband. Speech seemed an inefficient and blundering medium of communication, and she found it easier to write than to talk. There was a natural taciturnity about her which sealed her lips, even when her children were prattling to her. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... from pervasive government controls, inefficient economic policies, and rural poverty. The junta took steps in the early 1990s to liberalize the economy after decades of failure under the "Burmese Way to Socialism," but those efforts stalled, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... is not the only abuse of home-education. Even when the training is begun at home, the very idea of education is often abused, because inefficient, destitute of true moral elements, and partial both as to the mode and as to the substance of it. The true resources of life are not developed; there is no instruction given in the principles and conditions of temporal and eternal well-being; there is no discipline ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... deceived Unionists of Northern Virginia what they think of Gen. Patterson, and of the success of his campaign? How can we estimate the injury to the cause of the Union inflicted in this way alone by a grossly inefficient Federal general? ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... top-grade men. They couldn't be spared from work that required their total capacity. It's inefficient to waste a man on a job that he can do without half trying where there are more important jobs that ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... conversations they owed much of their enlightenment on this as well as on some other points of radical abolitionism. It was after a talk with him that Angelina describes the Female Anti-Slavery Society of New York as utterly inefficient, "doing literally nothing," and ascribes its inefficiency to the sinful prejudice existing there, which shut out colored women from any share in its management, and gave little encouragement to ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... neat, had a lordly, careless manner of approaching her domestic duties. Or it might even be resting delicately poised on its point by the side of the table-leg, and when picked up show a gaping, inefficient beak which would have discouraged any man of literary instincts. But not me! "Never mind. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... of boats and galleys, displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the harbor of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite of God and the people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the defeat and conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year of his reign, had undertaken an expedition ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... vigilance, energy, and patriotism of Cicero, it is possible this atrocious conspiracy would have succeeded. The state of society was completely demoralized; the disbanded soldiers of the Eastern wars had spent their money and wanted spoils; the Senate was timid and inefficient, and an unscrupulous and able leader, at the head of discontented factions, on the assassination of the consuls and the virtuous men who remained in power, might have bid defiance to any force which could then, in the absence ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of exploitation; and there is not likely, therefore, to be a supply of substantially better seams which can be substituted for the worst of those in actual use. There is likely, on the other hand, to be available a supply of decent business capacity which can be substituted for the most inefficient of existing business men. The marginal concern, in other words, must be conceived as that working under the least advantageous conditions in respect of the assistance it derives from the strictly limited resources of nature, but under average conditions as regards managerial capacity and ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... is that when the officers is inefficient, the crew can take charge peaceably an' bring the ship into port. It's all law an' in the records. There was the Abyssinia, in eighteen ninety-two, when the master'd died of fever and the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... heart. She despised us still. And I would have staked my last dollar, or, better, my hopes of escaping from Farallone, that as man and wife she and the groom would never live together again. I felt terribly sorry for the groom. He had, as had I, been utterly inefficient, helpless, babyish, and cowardly—yet the odds against us had seemed overwhelming. But now as we journeyed down the river, and the distance between us and Farallone grew more, I kept thinking of men whom I had known; men ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... him, is that one revels in the possibility of metempsychosis and pictures him as being born again to some dreary and thankless occupation, a scavenger or a sewer-cleaner, or, better still, penned in the body of some absurd and inefficient animal, a slug or a jelly-fish, where he might learn to be passive ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... turned the hearts of many of the recently converted away from the new prophet; so that when in the summer of 1830, General Von Rosen, who had taken the command of the army after the brief and inefficient career in the Caucasus of Paskievitch, the successor of Jermoloff, marched on Himri to crush the germ of war which was preparing to unfold itself in this part of the mountains, the chief men of the neighboring aouls hastened in great numbers to give in their adhesion ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... vicious habits and no scruples. He seemed to be staying at Sandford with the usual crew of flashy, disreputable people, and to allow Hester to run any risks with regard to him would be simply criminal. Yet with so inefficient a watch-dog as Lady Fox-Wilton, who could guarantee anything? Alice, of course, thought of nothing else than Hester, night and day. But it was part of the pathos of the situation that she had so little influence on the child's ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ships and of their necessary armament should progress as rapidly as is consistent with care and perfection in plans and workmanship. The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers and seamen have many times in our history given to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly beyond that of the naval list. That they will again do so upon occasion I do not doubt; but they ought not, by premeditation or neglect, to be left to the risks and exigencies of an unequal combat. We should encourage the establishment of American steamship lines. The ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... the assertion with each reason, or run the risk of confusion. If under I in the brief on page go, for example, you began with the reason, "In the present system partisan politics determine nominations to office," and then added the result, "Therefore the city government is inefficient," you would have to repeat the result with B and C; and when you came to the third degree of support, the repetition would be intolerably clumsy ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... inadequate to the task. The exercises almost universally employed in the education of the young, had neither been derived from science, nor from experience of their own inherent power; and they would, from the beginning, have been found perfectly inefficient, had they not been aided, as before noticed, by the stimulant of religious persecution.—The state of education, at the time we speak of, is still fresh on the memory of living witnesses who were its victims; and ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... cloud of civil war, had focused its attention on the point of what the events in America portended to British interests and policy. This is the business of governments, and their agents would be condemned as inefficient did they neglect it. But did British governmental policy go beyond this entirely justifiable first thought for immediate British interests to the point of positive hope that England would find an advantage in the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... and accurate account of the whole investigation, contained in the Minutes of the Board, is herewith respectfully submitted for Your Excellency's information; but such, we have to state to Your Excellency, is generally the disorderly and inefficient state of an Institution from which the public looked, and were justly entitled to ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... nation was forbidden by their government, not of the people or for the people, to profit by the colonies, and the viceroys, the captain-generals, and the whole official class were corrupted, and inefficient in all things, except methods of tyranny to procure a harvest of gold and silver not from the mines of the metals alone, but from the industries, whatever they were. The people at large were allowed ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... and the eggs she afterwards laid proved that the second copulation had been more successful than the first and that there are some males more fit for impregnating queens than others. However, it is very rare that the first copulation is inefficient; we have only seen two that required it twice; all the rest were impregnated by ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... cross between Acroceraunian bandits and Samaritans. One may stare at a taxi scooting by and think with no incongruity of Carlyle's "Night of Spurs"—with Louis and his harried Antoinette flying the guillotine. And of other things which our inefficient memory prevents us from jotting down at this moment. But of ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the words were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have said, or ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... measures in such critical times as these. Mr. Seddon has no physique to sustain him. He has intellect, and has read much; but, nevertheless, such great men are sometimes more likely to imitate some predecessor at a critical moment, or to adopt some bold yet inefficient suggestion from another, than to originate an adequate one themselves. He is a scholar, an ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... exhausted. In the political field, feudalism, originally beneficent, had become tyrannous and stifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be, beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the old methods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leading scientists were magicians and witches; in literature, no poet had arisen worthy to strike the lyre that Chaucer tuned to music. As for religion, the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of the monasteries and of the priesthood generally, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... lifetimes of leisure; with these, therefore, our problem has no concern. The larger class, the immense majority, either do their work themselves, or attend personally to its being done by others; "others" signifying that inefficient, untrustworthy, unstable horde who come fresh from their training in peat-bog and meadow, to cook our dinners, take care of our china dishes, and adjust the nice little ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... wearisome for those who are waiting to ascend. Beginning to melt farther south, the ice at the mouth is always last to move. Besides, the arrival was anxiously awaited of Bird, Sinclair and House. By continuous urging of the dull and inefficient workmen to greater effort, Miles Macdonell had succeeded in securing four boats—none too well built—but commodious enough to carry his boat-crews, workmen, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... to the power and resources of the latter. The duchies of Alencon and Berry more than equalled in extent the actual domain of the King of Navarre; for, from the time when Ferdinand the Catholic (in July, 1512) wrested from brave Catharine of Foix and her inefficient husband John[230] all their possessions on the southern slope of the Pyrenees,[231] the authority of the titular monarch was respected only in the mountainous district of which Pau was the capital, and ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... instance, is corrupt exactly in ratio to its attempt to be moral. The more moral issues you import into politics—gambling, prostitution, Sunday closing, censored movies, and the rest—the more corrupt and helpless and inefficient your government will be." And, between them, for the next half-hour, they kept on demonstrating it until the roar of their heavy artillery fairly ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... continually discovering new curves, so in the crests, while we watch them, we are continually discovering new straightnesses; and nothing more distinguishes good mountain-drawing, or mountain-seeing, from careless and inefficient mountain-drawing, than the observance of the marvellous parallelisms which exist among the beds of ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Conservatism blocks the wheels of progress, or radicalism, in its unbalanced enthusiasm, destroys by injudiciousness the good that has been gradually accumulating. The social machinery gets out of gear, or proves inefficient for the new burdens that frequently are imposed upon it. The social order is not ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... should forget that the infant, at birth, has not the power of generating heat, internally, to the extent which it possesses afterward. The lungs have as yet but a feeble, inefficient action. The purification of the blood, through their agency, is not only incomplete, but the heat evolved is as yet inconsiderable. In the absence of internal heat, then, there is an increased demand externally. If 60 be deemed suitable for most other persons, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... denim edged with white braid, which showed off the silver and the set of delft—her great and never-ending joy—to great effect. Then she tied her apron about her, and went into the kitchen to make the mayonnaise dressing for the potato salad, to slice the ham, and to help the cook (a most inefficient Irish person, taken on only for that month during the absence of the family's beloved and venerated Sing Wo) in the matter of preparing the Sunday ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... aspiration, and those adapted to the intercourse of polite life, whence all violent emotion, or, at least, the expression of it, is excluded. This latter highly artificial and polished dialect is accordingly as suitable to the Mock-Heroic (like "The Rape of the Lock") as it is inefficient and even distasteful when employed for the higher and more serious purposes of poetry. It was most fortunate for English poetry that our translation of the Bible and Shakspeare arrested our language, and, as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... succeed in insinuating their adherents into those two councils the only course open to them was, if possible, to render both inefficient, and to transfer their business to the council of state. To carry out this design the Prince of Orange sought to secure the co-operation of the other state counsellors. "They were called, indeed, senators," ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... examination" [he thought,] "was ideally best, but for many reasons impossible." [But the] "conjoint scheme" [recommended in the report appeared to punish the efficient medical authorities for the abuses of the inefficient. Moreover, if the examiners of the Divisional Board did not affiliate themselves to any medical authority, the compensation to be provided would be very heavy; if they did,] "either they will affiliate without further examination, which will give them ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... slight evidence of a disorganised state of society—is an epitome in small type of our Bengal police history. On all sides, and in every instance, we have the same picture—great offences, the police indifferent or inefficient, judicial investigations protracted till the sufferers regret that they did not patiently endure the injury, and somebody punished, but no visible abatement of the crime. The fact is, and it is beginning at last to be acknowledged ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... engaged during the first years of his connection with the stage, we should naturally have expected to find him handling the text of Marlowe with more of reverence and less of freedom than that of meaner men: ready, as in the Contention, to clear away with no timid hand their weaker and more inefficient work, to cancel and supplant it by worthier matter of his own; but when occupied in recasting the verse of Marlowe, not less ready to confine his labour to such slight and skilful strokes of art as that which has led us into this byway of speculation; to the correction of a false note, the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... were in their usual inefficient state,—whole planks had disappeared in places, and were loose in others,—so locomotion became a series of jolts and bumps. The drivers wished to save two miles by crossing a river, and spoke confidently of a bridge, which, on arriving at, proved to be only some pieces of ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... a very busy man, even far too busy. Commodus left the treasury empty and every department of the government inefficient. Pertinax refilled the treasury, but his attempts at reorganization merely disorganized everything and prepared for the general confusion which came about under Julianus. With insufficient funds I must fill the Treasury, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... sin is a reproach to any people." All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay the headlong propensity to vice, to abate the madness of ambition, will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound regard and deference for religion, a constant recognition of our dependence upon God, and of our obligation and accountability to Him; an ever-present, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... there be no habit formed of careful attention to the inflections of sound, the impressions received from what we hear must often be inaccurate. Our speech, too, will be far less agreeable, and be inefficient, even if it be not positively inarticulate. We owe it to others, no less than to ourselves, then, to cultivate the powers of the voice—the common instrument that God has given us for the interchange of thought, sentiment, and feeling, and which, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... continues at its present nominal value, it will be necessary to make very considerable alterations in the laws, or they will be a mere dead letter and become entirely inefficient in restraining ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... succulences the peasants would part with for coin, had lost her brilliant color and the full lines of her beautiful figure. She had rouged to-night and looked as lovely as when Morsigny had captured her, but her magnificent gown had been too hastily taken in by an elderly inefficient maid—her young one having patriotically deserted her for munitions long since, and sagged on her bones as she expressed it. Sibyl, who was in bed with the flu, had offered to lend her one of the new ones she had had the forethought to buy ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... on a vertical axis rising through the floor of the mill, with the vanes surrounded by a rim, the water dropping through the wheel, reacting when reflected from the obliquely set vanes. American engineers and mechanics would pronounce these very crude, primitive and inefficient. A truer view would regard them as examples of a masterful grasp of principle by some, man who long ago saw the unused energy of the stream and succeeded thus in ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... shelf; the long glass tube, that instrument of torture, was in a corner; and among other furniture, the dotor himself was seen seated, unconcernedly enjoying his pipe, and who, having found that human means were inefficient, had had recourse to supernatural, and had prescribed, as a last resource, the talisman, which it was my fate to write. A new dervish excited new hopes, for I saw that I produced much stir as I entered the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... not, in the different states and in the country at large, a sufficiently high standard. The examinations are not sufficiently extensive and intensive to separate the sheep from the goats. The unqualified thus rush in and drive out the qualified, for the efficient cannot compete with the inefficient. The calling is in no sense a "closed" profession, and consequently in the lower ranks it is scarcely a ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... with these crazy dreams, it was because of his secret discontent with the Commune itself. He had lost all confidence in its members, he felt it was inefficient, drawn this way and that by so many conflicting elements, losing its head and becoming purposeless and driveling as it saw the near approach of the peril with which it was menaced. Of the social reforms it had pledged itself ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... that tarnished the fame of Gates and Wilkinson and Burr and Conway? What made their lives, and those of men like them, futile and inefficient compared with other men whose natural gifts were less? It was the taint of dominant selfishness that ran through their careers, now hiding itself, now breaking out in some act of malignity or treachery. Of the common interest they were reckless, provided they might advance their ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... these words. "We will have no share in a traffic, consisting in rapine, blood, and murder." He then took a survey of a system of duties progressively increasing, and showed, that it would be utterly inefficient; and that there was no real remedy for the different evils complained of, but in the immediate prohibition ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... spherical freighters, just as passenger liners of two centuries earlier, with their steam engines, had carried four funnels and used two. A space liner spent so minute a portion of its journey in the atmosphere that it was really inefficient to ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... Prussian monarchy in its ancient greatness. Profiting by the neglect of the Prussians, Napoleon seized upon the great defensive works of the country, which, to his great joy, were readily surrendered into his hands by the old and inefficient generals who commanded them; and French garrisons were almost immediately established in the fortresses of Stettin, Custrin, Glogau, Magdeburg, Spandau, Hameln, Nieubourg, &c. "Spandau," said he in the 19th Bulletin, "is an inestimable acquisition. In ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... and good food, reasonable prices. Not many; perhaps very few. One remembers a fair number of the other kind, however; that kind where the fare is monotonous and badly cooked, the attendance supercilious or inefficient, and where you have to walk across a cold room at night—refinement of torture—in order to turn out the electric light ere going to bed. That infamy is alone enough to condemn these establishments, one and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Company. He was enjoined to act only on the defensive, but to capture or destroy whoever should oppose the construction of the works, or disturb the settlements. The choice of Captain Trent for this service, notwithstanding his late inefficient expedition, was probably owing to his being brother-in-law to George Croghan, who had grown to be quite a personage of consequence on the frontier, where he had an establishment or trading-house, and was supposed to have great ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... whit less inefficient as a moralist. He is a kindly soul, and in his easygoing way he has learnt something of the tricks of the world and something of the hearts of men. He writes as an unsuccessful courtier; and in that capacity ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... writers, Prof. Renwick, when alluding to their treatment of Oliver Evans, writes: "Conflicting national pride comes in aid of individual jealousy, and the writers of one nation often claim for their own vain and inefficient projectors the honors due to the successful enterprise of a foreigner." Many of these writers totally ignore the very existence of Oliver Evans, and all of them attribute to Trevithick and Vivian the authorship of the high ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... that the original making of random sounds, without which speech would never be learnt, is instinctive. I think we may say the same of all the habits and aptitudes that we acquire in all of them there has been present throughout some instinctive activity, prompting at first rather inefficient movements, but supplying the driving force while more and more effective methods are being acquired. A cat which is hungry smells fish, and goes to the larder. This is a thoroughly efficient method when there is fish ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... a great people in Caspak; but they were pitifully inefficient in even the simpler forms of military tactics. I was surprised that even a man of the Stone Age should be so lacking in military perspicacity. Du-seen dropped far below par in my estimation as I saw the slovenly ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in 1909), to a likeness in outward aspect—"a few personal traits, and the two main facts of great learning and a general impatience of fools." If one could imagine Mark Pattison a landowner, he would certainly never have neglected his estates, or tolerated an inefficient agent. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of an athletic team who does not "train" will probably be dropped from the team—he fails to become an athlete. A member of a community, or a citizen, who does not "train" still remains a member, but an inefficient one. He is a handicap to his community and interferes with community team work. The part that a member plays in community life may be more important than he realizes. Even in small things, "the falling short of one may mean disaster to many." Each member ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... housekeepers. A cruel war ravaged the fair fields of a portion of the United States, bringing with it its attendant train of misery. What was the employment of ladies who had graduated in universities in this crisis of their country? Had their knowledge of Latin and Greek made them either inefficient or hard? The weary, wounded soldier in the hospitals would testify that the kind hand of an educated and refined woman bathed his feverish temples, while her gentle voice breathed into his ear the glad tidings ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... water. You are a patriotic American. Have you forgotten that a warship of your country with six hundred of her devoted citizens was sent to the bottom by the treachery of one of this effete race? The war was an inefficient revenge. The country still flourishes. It is for you to avenge America. With money Marsine can establish a republic in Spain within twenty-four hours.' Sirdeller hesitates. He would point out that it had never been proved that the destruction of the Maine was really due to Spanish ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... urging. The problem over which university reformers have been laboring in every country during the past forty years has been, how to rid the universities, properly so called, of the care of the feeble, inefficient, and poorly prepared students, and reserve their teaching for the better-fitted, older, and more matured; or, in other words, how, in the interest both of economy and culture, to reserve the highest teaching power of the community for ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... flat-bottomed transports built for the conveyance of an invading army to England. These demands were perforce complied with. Nevertheless Napoleon was far from satisfied with the State-Government, which he regarded as inefficient ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and the knowledge that his life might terminate at any time, did not seem to make it less sudden—a cloud of depression settled on the Abbey household. Before dinner Morris visited Mr. Fregelius, and told him of what had happened; whereon that pious and kindly, but somewhat inefficient man, bestowed upon him a well-meant lecture of consolation. Appreciating his motives, Morris thanked him sincerely, and was rising to depart, when the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... wars. In trench fighting, for example, it is estimated that four times as many rifles as men are required. The fighting man must have two because one quickly gets hot and becomes unusable; he must have a third so that he may still have two if one is hit by the return fire or otherwise rendered inefficient; he must have the fourth so that at least one of his weapons may be in the arms hospital undergoing repairs if necessary, and be ready for him in case one of his others is demolished. This development of modern warfare means that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... accepted), he surveys it not qua medical establishment but qua missionary utensil. The object is not to find out the medical efficiency of the hospital, but its missionary effectiveness. It may be answered that a medically inefficient hospital cannot be truly effective from a missionary point of view. That may be true; but it is not certainly true. Whether it is true or not, that does not alter the fact that an efficient medical establishment is not necessarily effective ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... amount, namely 24deg.; we could make it a little less or a little more. If we made it less than 20deg. too great a surface would be in contact with the jewel, involving greater friction in unlocking and an inefficient draw, but in the case of an English lever with such an arrangement we could do with less drop, which advantage would be too dearly bought; or if the angle is made over 28deg., the point or locking edge of the tooth would rapidly become worn in case of a brass wheel. ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner
... not pretend to believe that all the wisdom, or all of the patriotism of the country, died with General Taylor. But we know that wisdom and patriotism, in a public office under institutions like ours, are wholly inefficient and worthless, unless they are sustained by the confidence and devotion of the people. And I confess my apprehensions, that in the death of the late President, we have lost a degree of that confidence and devotion which ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... and some acres of pig run; but 'tis a good deal of money regarded simply as money. K. is bosh; I have no use for him; but we must do what we can with the fellow meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest, but inefficient, idle himself, the cause of idleness in others, grumbling, a self-excuser - all the faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty weeks' service - the wretched Paul about half as much. Henry is almost the only one of our employes ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ramparts of the canyon, and he had already seen more difficult and dangerous work accomplished than half a dozen men of his type could do in a whole day. He liked the outlook of his new duty as Withers's assistant, but he felt helplessly inefficient. Still, all he needed was experience. He passed over what he anticipated would be pain and peril—the cost was of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the trivial exercise of high endowments. The finest mind, when thus destitute of a fixed purpose, passes away without leaving permanent traces of its existence; losing its energy by turning aside from its course, it becomes as harmless and inefficient as the lightning, which, of itself irresistible, may yet be rendered powerless by ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... such as were destined to be cropped. But they often found it easier to fabricate false ears than to gain a livelihood away from the arena of their exploits; and this measure, severe and cruel as it was, was found inefficient to rid the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... burden of unduly frequent and unwanted maternity which in the past so often crushed her vitality and destroyed her freshness. But many minor agencies are helpful. To supply heat, light, and motive power even to small households, to replace the wasteful, extravagant, and often inefficient home-cookery by meals cooked outside, as well as to facilitate the growing social habit of taking meals in spacious public restaurants, under more attractive, economical, and wholesome conditions than can usually be secured within ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... education who could not be trusted in a library or a bookseller's back-room; and what sometimes occurs in the higher walks must be occasionally exemplified in the lower also; but, judging from what I have seen, I must hold it as a general rule, that a good intellectual education is a not inefficient protection against the meaner felonies, though not in any degree against the "pleasant vices." The only adequate protection against both, equally, is the sort of education which my friend John Wilson the labourer exemplified—a kind ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... The above is a very inefficient and rather absurd translation of the French. It turns upon the fact that in the French language the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo |
