"Aptitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Genoese concluded, he dropped into a palm that was well practised in bribes a sequin of the celebrated republic of which he was a citizen. Baptiste had long cultivated an aptitude to suffer himself to be influenced by gold, and it was with unfeigned reluctance that he admitted the necessity of refusing, in this instance, to profit by his own good dispositions. Still retaining the money, however, for he did ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... duties of his position in a manner satisfactory to himself. As one of his pupils, I failed to discover any lack of knowledge or perspicacity on his part. To the contrary, he impressed the sections of which he had charge as a very clear-headed man with remarkable powers of mind and great aptitude as a disciplinarian and teacher. It is now known, however, that the close attention and mental exertion which his duties required of him gave him such pain as to make it imperative that he should be ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... in our cave a short supply of fruits of all kinds, and it would be well that we should seize this opportunity to steal a few and bring them over.' Drawing a mandatory arrow, he handed it to a small rat, full of aptitude, to go forward on a tour of inspection. The young rat on his return reported that he had already concluded his search and inquiries in every place and corner, and that in the temple at the bottom of the hill alone ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... his youth shown a surprising aptitude for the game, he fought his way up among his comrades, until he became the recognised champion of the district and won the proud title which he still holds. Ambitious of a more than local fame, he secured a patron, and fought his first fight against Jack Barton, of Birmingham, in May ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... influenced by awareness of the actuality of his invisible presence. And this affected her strongly, causing her hours of repulsion and annoyance, and again hours of abounding, if reluctant pity, when the unnatural situation of this man—young as herself, endowed with a fine intelligence, an aptitude for affairs, the craving for amusement common to his age and class—and the pathos inherent in that situation, haunted her imagination. His self-inflicted imprisonment appeared a reflection upon, in a sense a reproach ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... grandfather came to England with a goodly fortune, which he managed to increase as the years went by. He had one son, Isaac, who nearly broke his parents' heart in that he not only showed no aptitude for business, but actually wrote poems wherein commerce was held up to ridicule. The tendency of the artistic nature to speak with disdain of the "mere money-grabber," and the habit of the "money-grabber" to refer patronizingly to the helpless, theoretical ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... saw no reason to dissent; she possibly reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to her aptitude for ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... tumults. There are Church-quakes and State-quakes in the moral and political world, as well as earthquakes, storms, and tempests in the physical. Thus much, however, must be said in favor of the people and of human nature, that it is a general, if not a universal truth, that the aptitude of the people to mutinies, seditions, tumults, and insurrections, is in direct proportion to the despotism of the government. In governments completely despotic,—that is, where the will of one man is the only law, this disposition is most prevalent. In aristocracies next; in mixed monarchies, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... on the strength of which they might rebel. He reduced them into provinces, giving them their Curacas in the order already described. He did not make the son of the deceased a Curaca, but the man who had most ability and aptitude for the service. If the appointment did not please the Inca he, without more ado, dismissed him and appointed another, so that no Curaca, high or low, felt secure in his appointment. To these Curacas were given servants, women and estates, submitting an account of ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... them, but no "local habitation" with a name; for that we are first indebted to the Romans, who, after finding the Briton a foe not unworthy of his steel, ultimately subjugated him and found him not an inapt pupil in Roman arts and civilization. Of the aptitude of the Briton to learn from his conquerors we have evidence in the fact, mentioned by the Roman writer Eumenius, that when the Emperor Constantius wished to rebuild the town Augustodunum (now Antun) in Gaul, about the end of the 3rd century, he employed workmen chiefly from Britain, such ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... highly imaginative poetry. With broad emphasis this aesthetic law is exemplified in the verse of Voltaire, especially in his dramas, and in the verse of one who was deeper and higher than he as thinker and critic, of Lessing. Skillful versifiers, by help of fancy and a certain plastic aptitude and laborious culture, are enabled to give to smooth verse a flavor of poetry and to achieve a temporary reputation. But of such uninspired workmanship the gilding after a while wears off, the externally imparted ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... had not been a burden to her. She had her father's aptitude for study, and took up an original problem in geometry as most girls take up ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... of the Bible, as that of Milton and Shakespeare in a lesser degree—lesser in proportion as they have been less read—has fed in the English race an aptitude, an instinct, for action on a large imperial scale. It is not easy to explain the effect of great literature; but without doubt it molds the race. Now the ethic of the Old Testament, its moral import, is very ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... each other, but intolerable bores at court. In "Hymenaei," "The Masque of Queens," "Love Freed from Ignorance," "Lovers made Men," "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue," and many more will be found Jonson's aptitude, his taste, his poetry and inventiveness in these by-forms of the drama; while in "The Masque of Christmas," and "The Gipsies Metamorphosed" especially, is discoverable that power of broad comedy which, at court ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... to amuse himself, he displayed extraordinary ardor in his games. Whenever there was a contest of any sort between a comrade and himself, it rarely ended without bloodshed. If he were the weaker, he would use his teeth. Active and passive by turns, either lacking in aptitude, or too intelligent, his abnormal temperament caused him to distrust his masters as much as his schoolmates. Instead of learning the elements of the Greek language, he drew a picture of the reverend father ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... important offices which De Thou held, his intimate acquaintance with the purposes of the King and the intrigues of the French Court, the special embassies on which he was engaged, as well as his judicial mind and historical aptitude, his love of truth, his tolerance and respect for justice, his keen penetration and critical faculty, render his memoirs extremely valuable. In 1572 he accompanied the Italian ambassador to Italy; then he was engaged on a special mission to the Netherlands; for twenty-four years he was a member ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... needs for its preservation many other bodies by which it is, as it were, regenerated. The human mind increases its aptitude in proportion to the number of ways in which the body can be disposed. The idea constituting a formal being of the human mind is not simple, but is highly complex. An idea of each component part of the body must ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the Chief-Justice with the requisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime importance, upon which his adequacy must finally be tested; I mean, his relation to the court as its presiding head, his relation to the profession as masters of the reason and debate over which the court is the arbiter, and his relation to the people and ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... first place necessary to insure the aptitude of those to whom education should be confided; but as the systems were various, the best methods and a unity of doctrine were to be determined. It was not enough to interrogate the masters, they were to be formed, new ones were to be created, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... to feel at ease, and acquire a genuine fondness for sea life. My aptitude for languages not only familiarized me with English, but enabled me soon to begin the scientific study of navigation, in which, I am glad to say, that Captain Solomon Towne was always pleased ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... "commercial" school at Edmonton, where the teaching did not aim at much beyond writing and accounts, all that was supposed, at that time, to be needful for a young tradesman. The chief point remembered of his childhood was an aptitude and handiness which caused all little breakages to be kept for John to repair,—a small quality, but one of no small importance in the life of a missionary, who often finds ready resource essential ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of agriculture and stock raising, in the various crafts, and in those professions for which the Negro seems fitted. The South needs labor badly, but she cannot use her millions of Negroes effectively until they are turned into competent and dependable workers. The Negro appears to have little aptitude for mechanical work, or for mill and factory employment. Diversified agriculture on a small scale seems to be the most promising industry for him, and one in which he ought consistently ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... carried to his tomb a dislike for military uniform, caused by his being made the butt of ridicule the first time he ever donned a soldier suit. As a junior lieutenant in the Mexican War, he sensed no particular aptitude in himself. But he had participated in every engagement possible to a member of his regiment, and had executed every small duty to the hilt, with particular attention to conserving the lives of his men. This was the school and the course which later enabled him to march to Richmond, when men's ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... comradeship, and a richer life, achieved results which were precisely the opposite. It developed a greed of cash which we have not yet shaken off, and money was accumulated in the pockets of men who had had neither aptitude nor training in the art of spending it. The workers were reduced to a state not far removed from a salaried slavery, and the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots" was perhaps more acute than at any other time in our history. The causes ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... say of the women-of their instant intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for .organization and cooperation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new luster to the annals of ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... questions of faith and conduct; the works of God and the deeds of man; events past and present; hints and short practical suggestions for ecclesiastical life and office; and apophthegms of worldly wisdom; all enriched with proverbs of every kind and German rhymes, which Luther had a great aptitude in composing. Jocular moods were mingled with deep gravity and even indignation. But in all he said, as in all he did, he was guided constantly by the loftiest principles, by the highest considerations of morality and religious truth, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... her that she was the Swift One, that she had that amazing aptitude for swift flight through the trees. She needed all her wisdom and daring in order to keep out of the clutches of Red-Eye. I could not help her. He was so powerful a monster that he could have torn me limb from limb. As it was, to my death I carried an injured shoulder ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... suppose she had an aptitude for guessing, Inna thought, and asked with rosy cheeks was ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... was not the end of the romance of the Highland clans. Crushed down, scattered, and cruelly treated as these were in the years that followed Culloden, nothing could break their fiery spirit nor kill their native aptitude for war. In the service of that very government which had dealt so harshly with them, they were to play a part in the world's history, wider, nobler, and not less romantic than that of fiercely faithful adherents to a dying ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Novelty, pleasant to most people, is particularly delightful, I think, to me. I am not easily dispirited when I have the means of pursuing my own fancies and occupations; and I believe I have some natural aptitude for accommodating myself to circumstances. But, as yet, I stroll about here, in all the holes and corners of the neighbourhood, in a perpetual state of forlorn surprise; and returning to my villa: the Villa Bagnerello (it sounds romantic, but Signor Bagnerello ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... are the various paths which lead from subjectivism to other types of philosophy, demonstrating the peculiar aptitude of the former for departing from its first principle. Beginning with the relativity of all knowable reality to the individual knower, it undertakes to conceive reality in one or the other of the terms of this relation, as particular state of knowledge or as individual subject of knowledge. But ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the case. Peters had but little natural aptitude for foreign languages; and after working hard, for a time, with the moonshee, he found that he was making so little progress, in comparison with Charlie, that he lost heart; and although he had continued his ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... aptitude for medicine and surgery—so they all said, at least—and he set the broken leg and put splints upon it. Then they put the little creature in one of the calf pens, fed it liberally, and Fred declared that in ten days it would be well enough to ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... (Sisymbrium, or Erisymum) grows by our roadsides, and on waste grounds, where it seems to possess a peculiar aptitude for collecting and retaining dust. The pods are downy, close pressed to the stem, and the leaves hairy with their points turned backwards. It is named by the French "St. Barbara's Hedge Mustard," and the Singer's Plant, "herbe ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... his right hand, and prayed for all possible combinations of Christian men, for all possible cases of spiritual need; and lastly, taking the individuals before him, he would put up a very personal supplication for each, according to his notion of their wants. At first Lois wondered at the aptitude of one or two prayers of this description to the outward circumstances of each case; but when she perceived that her aunt had usually a pretty long confidential conversation with the minister in the early part of his visit, she became aware that he received both his impressions and his ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... very well, could it be possible that he bought the horses for L90 each and charged her L160? Corsairs do do these sort of things. The horses themselves were two sweet dears, with stars on their foreheads, and shining coats, and a delicious aptitude for jumping over everything at a moment's notice. Lord George had not, in truth, made a penny by them, and they were good hunters, worth the money;—but how was Lizzie to know that? But though she doubted, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... table." Endicott had undoubtedly received a good education. His natural force of character had been brought under the influence of the knowledge prevalent in his day, and invigorated by an experience and aptitude in practical affairs. There is some evidence that he had, in early life, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... responsibility by leaning on the shoulders of the instructor who is inclined to keep shifting the burden back to the home. As a result, while the German youngster is early being adapted to a particular future course for which Nature has given him an aptitude, his American competitor is often left to drift through the years without definite ambition, or at least with only a belated or partly ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... twelve years old or more, Cyrus was brought up in the manner we have described, and showed himself to be above all his fellows in his aptitude for learning and in the noble and manly performance of every duty. But about this time, Astyages sent for his daughter and her son, desiring greatly to see him because he had heard how noble and fair ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Victurnien, over and above the privileges of good looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a wonderful aptitude of comprehension, and a good memory. His education, therefore, had been complete. He knew a good deal more than is usually known by young provincial nobles, who develop into highly-distinguished sportsmen, owners of land, and consumers of tobacco; and are apt ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... to call true instinct's bent And woman's very nature, harm), How amiable and innocent Her pleasure in her power to charm; How humbly careful to attract, Though crowned with all the soul desires, Connubial aptitude exact, Diversity ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... His aptitude for managing men was very great; his capacity for affairs incontestable; but it must be always understood as the capacity for the affairs of absolutism. He was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit manager; it remained to be seen whether he had a claim to the character of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... application. Spurred by hunger, by danger, by revenge, he can exert himself energetically for a time; but his energy is spasmodic. Monotonous daily toil is impossible to him. It is otherwise with the more developed man. The stern discipline of social life has gradually increased the aptitude for persistent industry; until, among us, and still more among you, work has become with many a passion. This contrast of nature has another aspect. The savage thinks only of present satisfactions, and leaves future satisfactions uncared ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... paper, I found that, owing to diligent cram and native aptitude for nice sharp quillets of the law, I could floor it upon my caput, being at home with every description of mortgage, and having such things as reversions and contingent remainders at the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... be at Llanfair became acquainted with the boy, and struck with his natural talents, determined that he should have all the benefit which education could bestow. He accordingly, at his own expense sent him to school at Beaumaris, where he displayed a remarkable aptitude for the acquisition of learning. He subsequently sent him to Jesus College, Oxford, and supported him there whilst studying for the church. Whilst at Jesus, Gronwy distinguished himself as a Greek and Latin scholar, and gave such proofs of poetical talent in his native language, that he was looked ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... pass for one good reason for not writing a play, that I cannot form a plot. But the truth is, that the idea adopted by too favourable judges, of my having some aptitude for that department of poetry, has been much founded on those scraps of old plays, which, being taken from a source inaccessible to collectors, they have hastily considered the offspring of my mother-wit. Now, the manner ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Sunday morning: ten of the clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I have fed on bread and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) and I await the morning Church in humble hope. It will begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the country. So you will be able exactly to measure my aptitude and fullness for letter writing by the quantity written now, before I bolt off for hat, gloves, and prayerbook. I always put on my thickest great coat to go to our Church in: as fungi grow in great numbers about the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... had a pronounced aptitude both for drawing teeth and amputating legs, went through a "lightning course" at the hospital and the dental hospital. He clearly showed that much may be learnt in a short time by giving one's mind to it. With surprising rapidity and apparent ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... aptitude for public affairs—an aptitude which approached genius. His mind dwelt upon great projects, and never upon petty schemes, nor upon intrigues as a means of success. His warfare was a bold one, and in the open field. In politics he was deficient ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... Had he any confidence in his ability to use the doughy weapon at his side, he would not have resisted the strong temptation to draw his sword and make an example then and there of the contemners of his power and magnificence. But the culprits has shown such an aptitude in the use of arms as to inspire his wholesome respect, and he was very far from sure that they might not make a display of his broadsword an occasion for heaping fresh ridicule upon him. An opportune remembrance came ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... The majority of these writers has pictured them as being of larger stature than their neighbors; as lighter in color, possessing aquiline features and mongoloid eyes; as being tranquil and pacific in character, and having a great aptitude for agriculture. From these characteristics they have concluded that they are probably descended from early Chinese traders, emigrants, or castaways, or are derived from the remnants of the pirate ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they have no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy can make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies. Usually some calling of clamorous conspicuity ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... endeared themselves to him more by their native originality and frank disregard of ordinary feminine limitations than in any other way. It was generally conceded that Patsy was his favorite because she could advance more odd suggestions than the other girls, and this niece had a practical aptitude for carrying out her whimsical ideas that had long since won her uncle's respect. Not that she could outdo Mr. Merrick in eccentricity: that was admitted to be his special province, in which he had no rival; but the girl was so clever a confederate ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have it thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for business. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... way common to young men who know that their real leader is not Themis but Apollo. Erelong he abandoned the bar and devoted himself with equal enthusiasm to music and poetry, for both of which he had unusual aptitude. Down to 1881 he printed chiefly volumes of verse which gave him a genuine, if not popular reputation. In that year he brought out his first romance, Malombra, and from time to time during the past quarter of a century ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... that its whole agricultural population would not suffice to procure it; while, at present, it is obtained by the labor of forty-five thousand industrial workmen. (Senior.) Moreover, the division of labor increases not only the aptitude of the workman but also his incentive to productive labor, since it guarantees to every one the certainty of being able, by means of exchange, to enjoy the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... such as harvesting and storing grapes and corn. Cassius has this to say on the subject: 'Select for farm hands those who are fitted for heavy labour, who are not less than twenty-two years of age and have some aptitude for agriculture, which can be ascertained by trying them on several tasks and by enquiring as to what they did for their former master.' Slaves should be neither timid nor overconfident. The foreman should have some little education, a good ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... him from outflanking them, and so the little armies stretched and stretched until they were two long mobile skirmishing lines. The actions therefore resolve themselves into the encounters of small bodies and the snapping up of exposed patrols—a game in which the Boer aptitude for guerrilla tactics gave them some advantage, though our own cavalry quickly adapted themselves to the new conditions. On this occasion a patrol of sixteen men from the South Australian Horse and New South Wales Lancers fell ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... social heritage may combine varying elements of both processes. Education, as the etymology of the term suggests, denotes culture of original tendencies; yet the routine of a school system is frequently organized about formal discipline rather than around interest, aptitude, and attention. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... on his side, he was for a while supreme. For law by this time he could have but little reverence, having been partner with Caesar in the so-called Triumvirate for the last eight years. But yet he had no aptitude for throwing the law altogether on one side, and making such a coup-de-main as was now and again within his power. Beyond Pompey there was at this time no power in Rome, except that of the gladiators, and the owners of the gladiators, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... wrote Matthew Arnold in 1865, "is all very well, but the article has Hutton's fault of seeing so very far into a mill-stone." And, two years later, "The Spectator has an article in which Hutton shows his strange aptitude for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick." Both were sound criticisms. When Hutton addressed himself to a deep topic of abstract speculation, he "saw so very far into it" that even his most earnest admirers could not follow the visual ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... without notable incident were devoted to instruction, especially in marching, the only military quality for which Southern troops had no aptitude. Owing to the good traditions left by my predecessor, Walker, and the zeal of officers and men, the brigade made ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... operations, the Little'un developed a wonderful aptitude for the manufacture of gates. Whether he had learnt the whole art of carpentry from his practice upon a certain chair, elsewhere described, I do not know; but his gates are a marvel of ingenuity, and really very capital contrivances. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... that all may advance as rapidly as their abilities permit, the recruits are grouped according to proficiency as instruction progresses. Those who lack aptitude and quickness are separated from the others and ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... tinker and a vagabond Ulysses, he became a person of considerable importance. His name was acclaimed with praise and enthusiasm at Bible meetings from one end of the country to the other. He developed an astonishing aptitude for affairs, a tireless energy, and a diplomatic resourcefulness that aroused silent wonder in those who had hitherto regarded him as a failure. His illegal imprisonment in Madrid nearly brought about a diplomatic rupture between Great Britain and Spain, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... found that Meg Merrilies did require a good deal of riding, went through his day's work with credit. He had been riding since he was a child, as is the custom with all boys in Munster, and had an Irishman's natural aptitude for jumping. When they got back to the Willingford Bull he felt pleased with the day and rather proud of himself. "It wasn't fast, you know," said Chiltern, "and I don't call that a stiff country. Besides, Meg is very handy when you've got her out of the crowd. You shall ride Bonebreaker to-morrow ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... this commanding genius went every morning to be Saint-Simonized at the office of the "Globe," and every afternoon he betook himself to the life-insurance company, where he learned the intricacies of financial diplomacy. His aptitude and his memory were prodigious; so that he was able to start on his peregrinations by the 15th of April, the date at which he usually opened the spring campaign. Two large commercial houses, alarmed at the decline of business, implored the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... family, though—had he any true aptitude for it? or was he forcing himself to go through with it? Wasn't he, moreover, incurring all the labours of parenthood without any of its proper dignity and social esteem? Mrs. Chow down the street, for instance, why did she look so sniffingly upon him when she ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... disgust with the common adventure of life I took up the dropped ends of my college studies, taking them up again with a man's resolution instead of a boy's ambition. From the first I did well at this work. It—was, I think, largely a case of special aptitude, of a peculiar irrelevant vein of faculty running through my mind. It is one of those things men seem to have by chance, that has little or nothing to do with their general merit, and which it is ridiculous to be either ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... strongly Nigritic as are the Afro-Americans." "Greek art is not [Greek: autochthonus]," said Thiersch some fifty years ago, "but we derived from the Pelasgians, who, being blood relations of the Egyptians, undoubtedly brought the knowledge from Egypt." "The aptitude for art among all nations of antiquity," remarked Count de Gobineau a few years later, "was derived from an amalgamation with black races. The Egyptians, Assyrians and Etruscans were nothing but ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... shadow of this tent they were wont to partake of the mid-day meal (usually a cold collation), which they generally finished off with a cup of chocolate or coffee and a cigar, the potables being prepared by a particular one of the women labourers, who speedily developed quite a special aptitude for the task, and who at length fell into the habit of regularly bringing with her, every day, the milk needed for the purpose. The tent being pitched on a spot which commanded a full view of the operations in progress, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... proportion of the least efficient. There are in every army, and certainly in ours, a number of officers who do not violate their duty in any such way as to give reason for a court-martial or dismissal, but who do not show such aptitude and skill and character for high command as to justify their remaining in the active service to be Promoted. Provision should be made by which they may be retired on a certain proportion of their pay, increasing with their length of service at the time ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... He smiled at her derisively. His instinct for effective poses asserting itself, he began showing off his aptitude with the revolver. He twirled it, with elaborate carelessness, on his trigger finger, and with one movement of his wrist, stopped it, at the same time drawing a bead on the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... which were written in reference to other subjects. It {200} would therefore be unreasonable to expect that the style of the Pastoral Epistles should be cast in the same mould as that of the other Epistles of St. Paul. Nevertheless, the objection would have considerable weight, if St. Paul's aptitude for varying his vocabulary could not be shown. But it can be shown; for his other Epistles are marked by an astonishing variation in the Greek. Beneath this diversity there exists a unity. The Pastoral Epistles have many Pauline ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... accuracy of our observing and comparing faculties, so their appropriateness, or rather the chance we have of hitting upon the appropriate conception in any case, mainly depends on the activity of the same faculties. He who by habit, grounded on sufficient natural aptitude, has acquired a readiness in accurately observing and comparing phenomena, will perceive so many more agreements, and will perceive them so much more rapidly than other people, that the chances are much greater of his perceiving, in ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the day when she took down from his bookshelf a French work on mechanics, a subject with which she was evidently acquainted and for which she declared that she had a natural aptitude, it was all over with him. From that day forward, if she were present, he effaced himself both ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... of the barber's vocation. But it must be remembered that the incidental function of removing his whiskers in order to mark him as a well-informed man is also of importance, and demands long practice and great natural aptitude. In the barbers' shops of modern cities shaving has been brought to a high degree of perfection. A good barber is not content to remove the whiskers of his client directly and immediately. He prefers to cook him first. He does this ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... growing doubtful of his fitness for the job of herding other people into the fold. He found himself with a growing disinclination for such a task as his life work. Since that was the only thing he had any aptitude for or training in, when he thought of cutting loose and facing the world at large without the least idea of what he should do or how he should do it, he perceived himself in a good deal of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... students were entertained with lectures of surpassing excellence; but it was seldom that such readers could be found. It seems also that at an early period men became readers, not because they had any especial aptitude for offices of instruction, or because they had some especial fund of information—but simply because it was their turn to read. Routine placed them in the pulpit for a certain number of weeks; and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of an aptitude for kingship seen in Agesilaus, before even he entered upon office, I note these signs. On the death of Agis, king of Lacedaemon, there were rival claimants to the throne. Leotychides claimed the succession as being the son of Agis, and Agesilaus as the son of Archidamus. ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine Cremona. He consents to take as his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of the artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American, and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the longing, the passion and the tragedies of life and its happy phases as ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were William Dean and Henry Ramsdell, and they had worked for some time in Oil City for a civil engineer there. By this means they had learned the oil business, and had shown an especial aptitude for prospecting. There they committed what may or may not have been their first crime, for no one knew where they had lived before they appeared in Oil City. They robbed their employer of nearly two hundred dollars, ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... the unfortunate abbot after, and whether he was much damaged or not one does not know, for the anecdote stops here. Another instance of a family which devoted itself for many years to the production of tarsia and wood-work, displaying hereditary aptitude in the craft and gaining great repute, is given by the Canozii of Lendinara. The first member who took up tarsia, abandoning his craft of painting for that purpose, was Lorenzo Genesino da Lendinara, surnamed Canozio, to give him his full description. ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... supposes to have acquired civilization and the love of art from the Saxons,—a supposition at war with probability as well as fact. If anything distinguished the Norman from the Saxon, it was his aptitude for appreciating beauty as distinguished from use,—an aptitude on which French influence could not have been lost before the Conquest of England. The Normans in Sicily certainly had not had the advantage of Saxon training in aesthetics, and the poetry and architecture of the Normans in England ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... by Providence to administer a final consolation to the evil-doer, he permitted no false ambition to distract his talent. As some men are born for the gallows, so he was born to thump the cushion of a prison pulpit; and his peculiar aptitude was revealed to him before he had time to spend his strength in ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... theories imposed upon his receptive nature through four long years of study in a mechanical-engineering course. The concern manufactured among other things steam-turbines, and this young man, having demonstrated in school his particular aptitude for thermodynamics—the study of heat and its units in its application to engines, and the like—entered the erecting department. Donning overalls, and with ordinary rule in his hip pocket—as against the slide-rule with which he had worked out his theoretical calculations during his college years—he ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... naturalist, with whom he became intimately acquainted; he also formed the friendship of Alexander Lawson, an emigrant engraver, who initiated him in the art of etching, colouring, and engraving. Discovering an aptitude in the accurate delineation of birds, he was led to the study of ornithology; with which he became so much interested, that he projected a work descriptive, with drawings, of all the birds of the Middle States, and even of the Union. About this ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... from English River to New Caledonia, are disposed to adopt our religion as well as our customs, so that the Missionaries' work is half done. Let those of them who manifest a disposition to steady industry be encouraged to cultivate the ground: let such as evince any aptitude for mechanics be taught some handicraft, and congregated in villages, wherever favourable situations can be found—and there is no want of them. Let schools be established and supported by Government—not mere common schools, where reading, writing, arithmetic, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... religious neutrality to control the unruly affections of sinful men. It is now seen that our Western ideas and inventions, moral and material, are being turned against us by some of those to whom we have imparted an elementary aptitude for using them. And thus we have the strange spectacle, in certain parts of India, of a party capable of resorting to methods that are both reactionary and revolutionary, of men who offer prayers and sacrifices to ferocious divinities and denounce the Government by seditious journalism, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... unwholesome appearance. When it has decayed, the shell being thin, the cavity is phenomenally capacious. Large specimens contain a couple of gallons of water, and as the shape is most convenient, and there is neither rust nor moth to corrupt, their aptitude as effective and durable bailers for boats is apparent. Some name them the boxer shell, tracing resemblance to a boxing-glove, others the "boat," and again the melon shell. Blacks use them for a variety of purposes—bailers, buckets, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Interior. I might aspire To military station too, for once I led my party into Pixley's camp, And he paroled me. I defended, too, The State of Oregon against the sharp And bloody tooth of the Australian sheep. But I've an aptitude exceeding neat For bloodless battles of diplomacy. My cobweb treaty of Exclusion once, Through which a hundred thousand coolies sailed, Was much admired, but most by Colonel Bee. Though born a tinker I'm a diplomat From old Missouri, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... nearly the same amount of genius, art, experience, and intelligence in its personation. Hazlitt says that the author has overdone the part, and adds that 'it calls for a great effort of animal spirits and a peculiar aptitude of genius to go through with it;' Mr. Jefferson has so much of the latter that he can—and to a great extent does—dispense with the former requisite. His quiet undercurrent of humor subserves the same purpose in the role of Bob Acres that it does in other ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Her father, Samuel Ward, was a wealthy farmer and stock grower and a skillful horseman. He had determined to give this, his eldest daughter, a liberal education, and have her assist in the instruction of her sisters. She proved so easy to learn, and showed such aptitude and application in study, that he afforded her the best opportunities given young ladies in New England at that day. And in his pride of horsemanship he took much pains to make her a skillful equestrienne, and never ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... prevented their attempting to make use of it. They saw that the whole island was a maritime paradise, with seaports in its very heart as well as round its shores. But they were a race of gallant, industrious landsmen at home, with neither the wish nor the aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They could not have failed to see that there was plenty of timber in some parts of the island, and that the soil was fit to bear good crops of grain in others. A little prospecting ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... depended upon the whole-hearted wish of the aspirant, and his willingness to fit himself to know the truth. The old maxim applies here, that when the pupil is ready the teacher is found waiting, and he passes on to know a truth hitherto hidden because he lacked either the aptitude or the desire. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... to be now treated of is of so varied a nature, requiring so great a knowledge of anatomy, and so much experience and aptitude, that I have deemed it advisable to reserve for a separate chapter the explanations of the processes to be learned, to avoid, at the outset, confusing the learner by asking him to attempt too much. This chapter may therefore be considered ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Sibylla Merian displayed an aptitude for drawing and a special interest in insect life. The latter greatly disturbed her mother, but she could not turn the child's attention from entomology, and was forced to allow that study ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... to an engraver, and had shown remarkable aptitude for that profession, but, being of a roving and restless disposition, he ran away from his employer to ship ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... voices and sound in general is of never-ending joy to the listeners. However, I should wish to introduce a note of grave warning in connection with this subject. This special artifice can only be used by such narrators as have special aptitude and gifts in this direction. There are many people with good imaginative power but who are wholly lacking in the power of mimicry, and their efforts in this direction, however painstaking, remain grotesque ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... performance which, published as it was at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular notice as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon aptitude of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much exercised in combining and comparing them. With the philosophical or religious tenets of the author I have nothing to do; my business is with his poetry. The subject is well chosen, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Constitution, Size, and Aptitude to fatten, he has tried all the Breeds he could obtain in the Colony, and he has found the Spanish surpass them all in every one of these qualities. In the representations that Mr. MacArthur had the honour to make in England ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... too much aptitude for learning not to be encouraged, and I shall do more for her before long. We have pursued a select course of reading this winter. She has read aloud while I painted. We began stumblingly with Alice in Wonderland and are ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... his head and a heavy weight upon his heart. Many a time during the long civil war he had smilingly led charges wherein the chances of death were greater than those of life, but neither then nor since had he ever displayed any great aptitude for quiet endurance and self-control. Now every day was precious, and he felt he could not give himself up to pain and patient waiting until the disease could be conquered in a slow, legitimate way, when by a wound no more than a pin-prick he could obtain ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... expectations; and Monsieur Dessin had, when he assumed the post of instructor, been delighted with the invention, and astonished at the freedom and boldness of the lad's play. It was, then, thanks to these masks, as well as to his teachers' skill and his own aptitude, that Rupert had obtained a certainty, a rapidity, and a freedom of style absolutely impossible in the case of a person, whatever his age, who had been accustomed to fence with the face unguarded, and with ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... her sister bred up at a foreign Court—had first compassionated and then admired her. From her twelfth year upwards her intellectual superiority had been recognised in the convent, alike by the nuns and their pupils. Her aptitude at all learning, and her simple but profound piety, had impressed everybody. At fourteen years of age they had christened her "the little wonder;" but later, seeing that their praises embarrassed and even distressed her, they had desisted from such loving flatteries, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... woman. He meditated much that morning on her singular aptitude for reflection, but he presently began to dream over figure, hair, eyes, hands. A picture in the most vivid colours painted itself before him, and he could not close his eyes to it. He was distressed to find himself the victim of this ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... Chilvers discharged the duty he was conscious of owing to a multitude of kinsfolk, friends, admirers. You would have detected something clerical in the young man's air. It became the son of a popular clergyman, and gave promise of notable aptitude for the sacred career to which Bruno Leathwaite, as was well understood, already had designed himself. In matters sartorial he presented a high ideal to his fellow-students; this seemly attention to externals, and the delicate glow of health discernible ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... or scientific man of our generation. And what is the life-history of the jockey? A tiny boy is bound apprentice, and submitted to the discipline of a training stable; he goes through the long routine of morning gallops, trials, and so forth, and when he begins to show signs of aptitude he is put up to ride for his master in public. If he is a born horseman, like Archer or Robinson, he may make his mark long before his indentures are returned to him, and he is at once surrounded by a horde of flatterers who do their best ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... other body of modern oratory to the oratory of Greece and Rome. And the affinity of spirit in our best public life and greatest public men to those of Rome, has often struck observers, foreign as well as English. Now, not only have the Germans shown no eminent aptitude for rhetoric such as the English have shown,—that was not to be expected, since our public life has done so much to develop an aptitude of this kind, and the public life of the Germans has done so little,—but they seem in a singular degree devoid of any aptitude at all for rhetoric. Take a speech ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... in slow draughts and let him sink deep in. I doubt whether they would have got so wound up if they had not been in love: poor Vereker's secret gave them endless occasion to put their young heads together. None the less it represented the kind of problem for which Corvick had a special aptitude, drew out the particular pointed patience of which, had he lived, he would have given more striking and, it is to be hoped, more fruitful examples. He at least was, in Vereker's words, a little demon of subtlety. ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the following case. It appears that a boy in his House named Montague has by some form of bargaining already deprived three new boys of their pocket-money for the term. "Montague has exhibited such an extraordinary commercial aptitude in this matter," Henderson wrote, "that I propose to flog him. Before doing so however I thought I would ask for your assent, as you might prefer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... fought. Our new acquaintance was a fair player and he played to win. Frances was learning to play and had a natural aptitude for the game. I played better than my usual form and I needed to, for Bayliss played wretchedly. He "dubbed" his approaches and missed easy putts. If he had kept his eye on the ball instead of ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... unfilled out outlines and crude angularities of a girl not done growing. She was very much of a child in many things, and she had Dora's soft clinging nature, yet under it all she was the born scholar of the family, with a simple aptitude and taste for learning which surprised and delighted her father still more than Rose's achievements in pastilles and water-colours pleased him. It was seeing May at her books, when she was a very different May ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Jim's intention to open up a buried subject, and she was not by any means prepared for that. The sketching lessons had been a shameless subterfuge for obtaining privacy, for Jim had about as much aptitude for the arts as a dromedary, and his libels on the lake and the rhododendrons would have made old Merchant Jack and his landscape ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... instead of ascribing his atrocities to the state of barbarism in which he lived—thus indicating their only valid apology—we should degrade both the white and the red men, by attributing to the former all imaginable vices, and, to the latter, a peculiar aptitude in acquiring them. These mistakes are natural and excusable—as the man who kills another in self-defence is justifiable; but the Indian character is not the less misconceived, just as the man slain is not less dead, than if malice had ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... excels in sharp etchings which bring the outline of a character into bold prominence. He is happy in defining isolated traits and in throwing a new light on much used words. "Cleverness," he writes, "is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain things, which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc.... Accomplishments ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... painter and a most worthy man. Do not answer me, I beg you. If I believed you had as much genius and aptitude for great affairs as for the wonders of the brush, I would make you a Counsellor of State on the instant, and a half-hour spent with me and my documents and papers of importance would be sufficient to make you believe ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... cherry-tree is an exact replica, on a smaller scale, of the denizen of the oak. If instinct is the inevitable consequence of the organism, we ought to find in the two insects a strict similarity of habits; if instinct is, on the other hand, a special aptitude favoured by the organs, we must expect variations in the industry exercised. For the second time the alternative is forced upon our attention: do the implements govern the practice of the craft, or does the craft govern the employment of the implements? Is instinct derived from the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... more or less analogous to that of the Jews.[1] The Paganism which, in Phoenicia, had raised a temple and a sacred grove on every hill, all this aspect of great industry and profane riches,[2] interested him but little. Monotheism takes away all aptitude for comprehending the Pagan religion; the Mussulman, thrown into polytheistic countries, seems to have no eyes. Jesus assuredly learned nothing in these journeys. He returned always to his well-beloved shore of Gennesareth. There was the centre of his thoughts; ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... of it lay less in the words than in the expression. The ease and grace with which Octave seated himself, the elegant precision of his manner, the gracious way in which he bent his head toward Clemence, while speaking, showed a great aptitude in this kind of conversation. If the words were those of a freshman, the accent and pose were those ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... not a sage at all till he grew old, and all he knew of woman then was from memory. But then, again, he can have no memory of her, seeing he never knew her. The man who has an aptitude for wisdom busies himself jealously with his little aptitude and nothing else; cultivates and cherishes it; holds it ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... grinning Conscience-Skull to break their rest. A thousand well-meaning, harmless sons of dominating and domineering parents are forced, as was he, into by-roads as hateful to them. To be cast by Fate to enact the Villain, when one has not the temperament, the aptitude, nor the desire for the unsavoury role, falls to more men's lot ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... lord," answered Malcolm, forgetting altogether, in the prospect of being useful and within sight of Lady Florimel, that he had but half finished his own dinner. The butler, who had already had an opportunity of admiring his aptitude, was glad enough to have his help; and after this day used to declare that in a single week he could make him a better servant than any of the men who waited at table. It was indeed remarkable how, with such a limited acquaintance with the many modes of an artificial ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... (seminaristes) whom I saw was most satisfactory. They had an intelligent, cheerful look, greatly superior to that of the Roman Catholic seminarists generally in Europe. The priests bear testimony to their aptitude in learning, their docility and good conduct. They have an organ in the cathedral, the pipes of which are all made of bamboo. It seems to have ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... great liking for the French language, and wrote a very original French grammar, which he had curiously printed in synoptic sheets, at his private expense, though it was never completed or published. I have sometimes thought it possible that my own aptitude and affinity for that language may have been inherited from him, and that his labors may in a manner have overcome many difficulties for me by the wonderful process of transmission. He never lived in France, and I believe he never visited the country, his French conversations ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... scarcely a word of the local dialect. When we left a week later, he could jabber intelligently with any savage he met. On the four weeks' trip from Elizabethville he had picked up enough French to make himself understood. The Central African native has an aptitude for languages that far surpasses that of the average ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... by the blade and strikes at his supposed antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the "bloated aristocracy," whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, shy, sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for learning,—even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, subvirates of an organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their courage is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... middle of the country that sericulture chiefly nourishes. The smallest output of raw silk is from the most northerly prefecture and from the prefecture in the extreme south-west of the mainland. But human aptitude plays its part as well as climate. The Japanese hand is a wonderful piece of mechanism—look at the hands of the next Japanese you meet—and in sericulture its delicate touch is used to the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... had not spoken before she had done something still more to the purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in the young man's spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him much—rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive—to impressions of this order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research and experiment, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... different in its nature, but bound to come into conflict with the Roman because it also was extending. This was the commercial development of Carthage. Carthage, a Phoenician, that is, a Levantine and Semitic, colony, had its city life like all the rest. It had shown neither the aptitude nor the desire that Rome had shown for conquest, for alliances, and in general for a spread of its spirit and for the domination of its laws and modes of thought. The business of Carthage was to ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... aptitude at his lessons that had created in his guardian's mind some ambition for him, and she held him down to his books with rigid assiduity. He was naturally studious, but the feeling that he was being driven made his tasks repellent, although he performed them ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... responsibility he has assumed to that particular client, will be the subsidiary means of important progress in his professional acquisitions. "Let any person," says Mr. Preston, "study one or two heads of the law fully and minutely, and he will have laid the foundation or acquired the aptitude for comprehending other heads of the law."[26] But, besides this, he should pursue the systematic study of his profession upon some well-matured plan. When admitted to the Bar, a young man has but just begun, not finished, his legal education. If he have mastered ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... disappeared and an expression of sadness became habitual on her face. She was surrounded by luxuries of every kind, but they did not give her peace. With an ambition which never flagged she sought self improvement, and attained it to a remarkable degree. Endowed with an inherited aptitude for culture, she read and studied books, observed and imitated elegant manners, and rapidly absorbed the best elements of such higher life as she had access to, until her natural beauty and charm were wonderfully enhanced. Yet she was not happy, for her life with David ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... stronger tongue. You have rolled much; quae regio in terris—what parish in Scotland (to make a homely translation) has not been filled with your wanderings? You have shown, besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes, upon the whole, for behaving well in them. This Mr. Thomson seems to me a gentleman of some choice qualities, though perhaps a trifle bloody-minded. It would please me none the worse, if (with all his merits) he were soused in the North Sea, for ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what has been called "an aptitude for personal publicity." Indeed, up to the present, she has discouraged quite successfully any attempt to stress the personal note. It is practically impossible, however, to do the kind of work she has done—to make genuine contributions to natural ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... built six houses, two stables and a barn, and possess seven head of cattle. Still another had twenty-three houses and one hundred and fifty acres under tillage, raising barley, wheat, potatoes and vegetables, and having thirty-six head of cattle. It is unnecessary to multiply instances, of the aptitude, the Indians are exhibiting, within so recent a period after the completion of the treaties, to avail themselves of obtaining their subsistence from the soil. Their desire to do so, should be cultivated to the fullest extent. They are, of course, ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris |
