"Fitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tarry, as more leisurely penmen, to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing. I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of mine. Often enough, in those days, I found a fitness ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Mr. Gallatin of Dallas's probable retirement from the Treasury, and offered him the post if he cared to return to it. He was perfectly aware of his supreme fitness for the direction of the Treasury, and he declined with reluctance, because he was disturbed by the suspension of specie payments. Remembering Madison's weakness in 1812 on the subject of the renewal of the bank charter, which Gallatin considered necessary in the situation ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... placed upon the string of the bow, the archer drawing back the string adds to the elasticity of bow and string his own strength, and the shaft is off to do the archer's will. There is in this story an illustration for all Christian workers. Fitness for service lies first of all in divine endowment. God has given to each one of us special and peculiar qualifications. If we live as we ought to live, exercising the gift that is in us; the painter may paint for His glory; ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... the other hand, rocked more rapidly, and for the first time, in sharp little yelps, voiced her pain. It came to me that their behavior was like that of hungry dogs, and in the fitness of things I should not have been astonished had Zilla suddenly developed a tail and thumped it on the floor in right doggish fashion. Ebbits drooled a little and stopped his rocking very frequently to ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... importance and I am sure you will not estimate that I now propose to you by the mere name which it bears.' He also made an allusion to the admiralty of which I do not retain the exact form. But I rather interposed and said, 'My objection on the score of fitness would certainly apply with even increased force to anything connected with the military and naval services of the country, for of them I know nothing. Nor have I any other object in view; there is no office ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... slow, but deep and comprehensive, stole over the face of Solomon Hyde, surnamed, wholly without fitness, the shiftless one. "It seems to me," he said, "that I've heard o' them four fellers you're talkin' about, an' ef I wuz to hunt all over this planet an' them other planets that Paul tells of, I couldn't find four other fellers that I'd ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... human life, its activities, its ideas and emotions, and those things about which human interest and emotion cluster. It gives breadth of view, supplies high ideals of conduct, cultivates the imagination, trains the taste, and develops an appreciation of beauty of form, fitness of phrase, and music of language. The term Literature as used in this Manual is applied especially to those selections in the Ontario Readers which possess in some degree these characteristics. Such selections ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... added to it, and which has to the Spectators appear'd little less Odd than the first; And though because the Liquor, requisite to make the Trial succeed well, must be on purpose prepar'd anew a while before, because it will not long retain its fitness for this work, I do but seldome annex this Experiment to the other, yet I shall tell you how I devis'd it, and how I make it. If you boyl Crude Antimony in a strong and clear Lixivium, you shall separate a Substance from it, ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is possessed ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... is complete abandonment but very little wreckage in her work. She conserves her energies in fitness, her soul in tenderness, her people in love, and the interests of The Army in loyalty. ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... whereas Ann would fain have helped me, this Aunt Jacoba conceived to be in no way fitting for a young maid; much less then would she grant my earnest desire that I might devote me to the care of Sir Franz; though she had it less in mind to consider its fitness, than to conceive that it would be of small benefit to the wounded man, at the height of his fever, to know that the maid for whose love he had vainly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination; but I could not persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot: but when I came to the place, first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts; secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Cornelia Cochrane, we were consoled for our partial loss by the apparent fitness and brilliancy of the match. If Beekman was a masterful man, Cornelia was certainly what you might call a mistressful woman. She had been the head of her house since she was eighteen years old. She carried her good looks like the family plate; and when she ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... So far as fitness for battle depended on the officers and men of the Navy itself the Grand Fleet was as nearly perfect as anything could be. Sprung from the finest race of seamen in the world, trained for a longer time than any foreigners, and belonging to what everyone for centuries ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... of his crew while he mixed with the men, checking them up, as they assembled again in front of the tavern of Adonia. Old Cap'n Blackbeard would have cheerfully certified to the eminent fitness of many of them for conscienceless deeds of derring-do. The nature of Flagg's wide-flung summons and his provocative method of selection must needs bring into one band most of the toughest nuts of the region, Latisan reflected, and he had ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... honestly criticize a symphony; could a blind man honestly criticize a picture? These are extreme cases, and a line must be drawn somewhere. Still, some day the courts may require the defendant to give evidence of his fitness to act as a critic if his fitness be challenged. To these remarks one obvious matter should be added. All statements of fact in a criticism must be accurate. The line between matters of fact and matters of opinion is sometimes ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... independent as regarded the local scene of operations, and his method of attaining the prescribed end with the force allotted to him, but dependent, technically, upon the distant commanders-in-chief, each of whom in succession, with one accord, recognized his singular fitness. The pithy but characteristic expression said to have been used by Earl St. Vincent, when asked for instructions about the Copenhagen expedition,—"D—n it, Nelson, send them to the devil your own way,"—sums up accurately enough the confidence shown him by his superiors. He could not indeed ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the soul in a pleasing serenity and calm: if reason rules, all is quiet, composed, and benign: if reason rules, all the passions, like a musical concert, are in unison. In short, our passions, when moderate, are accompanied with a sense of fitness and rectitude; but, when excessive, inflame the mind, and hurry us on to action without due distinction ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... ill till she can't help it. Consult with Bradley,' (Lady Cumnor's 'own woman,'—she disliked the new- fangledness of 'lady's-maid,') 'and if I were you, I'd send and ask Gibson to call—you might make any kind of a pretence,'—and then the idea he had had in London of the fitness of a match between the two coming into his head just now, he could not help adding,—'Get him to come and see you, he's a very agreeable man; Lord Hollingford says there's no one like him in these parts: and he might be looking at my lady while he was ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... approached so near the grave? Can I teach them their duty? Can I explain to them that which I so imperfectly understand, that which years of study may have made so plain to them? Has my newly acquired privileges, as one of God's ministers, imparted to me as yet any fitness for the wonderful ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... absent from medieval examinations, and at Oxford, there seems to have been little besides this ceremonial element. A candidate had to prove that he had complied with the regulations about attendance at lectures, etc., and to obtain evidence of fitness from a number of masters. A bachelor had to dispute several times with a master, and these disputations, which were held at the Augustinian Convent, came to be known as "doing Austins." The medieval system, as it lingered at Oxford ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... portraits on the sordid walls were very like the crambo in the minds of ordinary men,—very like the motley pictures of the FAMOUS hung up in your parlour, O my Public! Actors and prize-fighters, poets and statesmen, all without congruity and fitness, all whom you have been to see or to hear for a moment, and whose names have stared out in your ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was attending her unselfish efforts to harmonize her own and her uncle's conceptions of the temporal fitness of things, Miss Lee began to find life at the Pier quite supportable. "There's not much to do here," she declared, with her customary candor, "and the hotels—all ugly and all in a row—make it look like an overgrown charitable institution; and most of the people, I must ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... constant to my purposes; they follow the king's pleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided I ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... garden. St Aubyn's conservatories were famous, and his orchids of great variety and beauty. Austin seemed transported into a world where everything was so arranged as to gratify his craving for harmony and fitness, and he moved almost silently beside his host in a ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... glad to make use of it. His versatile genius found another employment. Besides his affluence in topics, he had the liveliest fancy and most active imagination. But that he wanted the sense of poetic fitness and melody, he might almost be supposed, with his reach and play of thought, to have been capable, as is maintained in some eccentric modern theories, of writing Shakespeare's plays. No man ever had a more imaginative ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... administration of a government pledged to do equal and exact justice to all men there should be no pretext for anxiety touching the protection of the freedmen in their rights or their security in the enjoyment of their privileges under the Constitution and its amendments. All discussion as to their fitness for the place accorded to them as American citizens is idle and unprofitable except as it suggests the necessity for their improvement. The fact that they are citizens entitles them to all the rights due to that relation and charges them with all ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... time later in the same autumn that the Ohio company brought their plans into operation, and despatched an agent to explore the lands upon the Ohio and its branches as low as the Great Falls, take note of their fitness for cultivation, of the passes of the mountains, the courses and bearings of the rivers, and the strength and disposition of the native tribes. The man chosen for the purpose was Christopher Gist, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... the young prince reclined in listless silence on his seat; and on his delicate features was an expression of weariness which augured but ill of his fitness for the stern business to which the lessons of his wise father were intended to educate his mind. His, indeed, was the age, and his the soul, for pleasure; the tumult of the camp was to him but a holiday ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lads already have been of invaluable service. Perhaps I should not again call upon you so soon, although I know your hearts are in the success of the arms of France and England. But you have so often proved your fitness for dangerous missions that ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... exclusive societies—the fitness of social attraction diffused through the whole. The mischiefs of too partial love of our country. Contraction of moral ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... marked extent he could bring out and make visible his inner exaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of an older world. "The spheres and all are set to harmony!" he said. "I would have fitness. Great things throughout! Diamonds and rubies without flaw in the crown.—We will talk no ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... to satisfy Donna Tullia. The latter, indeed, was not easily pleased, and Gouache found it hard to instil into his representation of her the precise amount of poetry she required, without doing violence to his own artistic sense of fitness. But the other picture progressed rapidly. The Cardinal was a restless man, and after the first two or three sittings, desired nothing so much as to be done with them altogether. Anastase amused him, it is true, and ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... was beginning to share a general confidence in his fitness for the mission, when his wife spoke up, "'Deed and 'deed, I can tell you he ain't agoun' to do no such a thing, not if we stay here all night, murricle or no murricle. I ain't agoun' to have him put his head into the Lion of Judah's mouth, and ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... manifestly some reason for this apparently contradictory state of things. We know that reason to be the good of society. It is for the good of society that the suffrage is withheld from those classes of men. A certain fitness for the right use of the suffrage is therefore deemed necessary before granting it. A criminal, an unnaturalized foreigner, a minor, have not that fitness; consequently the suffrage is withheld from them. The worthy use of the vote is, then, ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... greater eulogy can be given to any man, than to display his usefulness to the public, and enumerate the services, which he has performed to mankind and society. What praise, even of an inanimate form, if the regularity and elegance of its parts destroy not its fitness for any useful purpose! And how satisfactory an apology for any disproportion or seeming deformity, if we can show the necessity of that particular construction for the use intended! A ship appears more beautiful to ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... but does not feel that man is superior to woman. Discussions of the differences between man and woman sometimes occur in Occidental countries as was the case in the late disputes in England as to woman's fitness for politics. There was no implication that man was an animal superior to woman. In Occidentalism woman and man are considered equal before the law and in the eyes of God, while in Orientalism women are often little better than slaves and in some eastern religions are not supposed ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... great care, yet with a proper sense of fitness, considering the occasion. She wore a soft, old-fashioned lawn with small bunches of purple flowers scattered over it, and gathered very full about the waist. But, before the swinging mirror of her high bureau, she thought it looked ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... party, from the free State of Pennsylvania. He had neither prominent reputation nor conspicuous ability, though under trying circumstances he afterwards showed diligence, judgment, integrity, and more than ordinary firmness and independence. It is to be presumed that his fitness in a partisan light had been thoroughly scrutinized by both President and Senate. Upon the vital point the investigation was deemed conclusive. "He was appointed," the "Washington Union" naively stated when the matter was first called in question, "under the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... "Atbara Camp." There is no absolute rule for the bestowal of proper names, or at least no practice one need care about in the Soudan, so I prefer to dub the locality by its native title of Dakhala, or Dakhelha. It saves a word in telegraphing, and there is more fitness in calling that dusty, dirty enclosure ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... dismal day in February, 1832, looking over one of these books, my attention was drawn to a tune which attracted me by its simple and natural movement and its fitness for children's choirs. Glancing at the German words at the foot of the page, I saw that they were patriotic, and I was instantly inspired to write a patriotic hymn ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of need, to say to them "Put yourself into physical condition for this service." If it had such a right, by what law under the constitution of the United States could Lucy Stone ask to vote and not expect to have her military fitness inquired into, and be asked to put herself into physical condition ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... money had been inherited; in other cases it had been saved up. That Latin feminine ability to hold an awkward position with impregnable serenity, and, like the yellow Mississippi, to give back no reflection from the overhanging sky, emphasized this superior fitness. That bright, womanly business ability that comes of the same blood added again to their excellence. Not to be home itself, nothing could be more like it than were the apartments let by Madame Cecile, or Madame Sophie, or Madame Athalie, or Madame Polyxene, or whatever ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... miserably home to the mourner all that is lost of happiness, all of lonely unsolaced struggle that remains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it invests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied may regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all such ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now seems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... order, large and lofty, full of wonders in the way of gables, porches, and oriels, carved doors and panels, in preservation that did them honour due, and the furniture betokening that best of taste which perceives the fitness of things. All had the free homely air of plenty and hospitality—the open doors, the numerous well-fed men and maids, the hosts of live creatures—horses, cows, dogs, pigs, poultry, each looking like a prize animal boasting of its own size and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wildly towards the dentist's door, then pause for a moment, stricken by a sudden terror, and anon feebly pull the handle of an inflexible bell. Cabs had been heard to approach that fatal door—generally on wet days; for there seems to be a kind of fitness in the choice of damp and dismal weather for the extraction of teeth. Elderly ladies and gentlemen had been known to come many times to the Fitzgeorgian mansion. There was a legend of an old lady who had been seen to arrive in a brougham, especially ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... with death as Hamlet plays with Yorick's skull, and he reads the morals—strangely stern, often, for such fragrant lodging—which are folded up in the bosoms of roses. He has no pride, and is deficient in a sense of the congruity and fitness of things. He lifts a pebble from the ground, and puts it aside more carefully than any gem; and on a nail in a cottage-door he will hang the mantle of his thought, heavily brocaded with the gold of rhetoric. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... tireless as his body. The operations round Colesberg could only have been undertaken in their complicated entirety by a General who did not know what mental fatigue meant. This physical and mental fitness French has most carefully studied to preserve. At one time, several years ago, he feared a tendency to avoirdupois, and instantly undertook a stern but successful bulk-reducing regimen. Apropos the regimen there is a story. Just before the present war, a bulky package ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... which were not strong from a military standpoint were not to be secured through the policy of the Central Powers. Sympathy for Belgium and the popular aversion to Teutonic methods had left no doubt as to the duty of Siam. The motive of Siam had a curious fitness, though there was a certain quaintness in her expression of a desire to make, "the world ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... a plain man, and there is a melancholy fitness in my unbosoming my sufferings to the "Plain" Dealer. Plain as you may be in your dealings, however, I am convinced you never before had to DEAL with a correspondent so hopelessly plain as I. Yet plain don't half express my looks. Indeed I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... dozen hands under me were to be told off for the express purpose of giving the hull, spars, standing and running rigging, and sails a thorough overhaul, and executing such repairs, etcetera, as might be found necessary to bring the ship to, and maintain her in, a condition of perfect fitness for service at ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... institutions differ from the modern conception as a reproduction of the people on a small scale? One obvious difference at once suggests itself. The representatives were not average members of the communities; they were the most influential; they were selected because of their special fitness for the work to be done; they were leaders of the people, not followers; they did not take inspiration from the people, but brought it to them; and having selected these men the people deferred ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... smartly dressed all the time, but they do not show a great sense of the fitness of things. Only Lady Grenellen and Lady Tilchester are always adorable and attractive in anything ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... Nursery slopes is usually enough for the first two or three days, and if, at the end of the week, the beginner seems to be falling more than when he first began, half or even a whole day off Skis will produce wonderful results in better balance and general fitness. ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... he attended, "to discourse about the fitness of entering of men presently for the manning of the fleet, before one ship is in condition to receive them," the king observed, "'If ever you intend to man the fleet without being cheated by the captains and pursers, you may ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... politics, developed in Christianity, but freed from once cherished national expectations and outward forms, into a purely spiritual knowledge and worship of God. Jesus fathomed the deep meaning of the religion of his people, and its original fitness to become, through higher development, the religion of the world. Jesus devoted himself to the end of forming the human race into one great society (the kingdom of heaven), of which religion should be the soul and life, and, convinced of ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... physical culturists are swinging around to the idea that correct posture alone is the great secret of physical fitness, that if a man sits well, stands erect and walks correctly all the time, he is doing more for his health and longevity than all of the setting-up exercises and sweat baths yet devised. At the same time he is ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... qualities. When Peacock describes a country gentleman's range of ideas as "nearly commensurate with that of the great king Nebuchadnezzar when he was turned out to grass," he affords us a happy illustration of the eternal fitness of humor, for there can hardly come a time when such an apt comparison will fail to point ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... the House" or sit on the Treasury benches. Now, I have very little doubt that we used not to be as liberal as we might in sharing our callings with women. We had got into the habit of underrating their capacities, and disparaging their fitness for labour, which was very illiberal; but let us take care that the reaction does not cany us too far on the other side, and that in our zeal to make a reparation we only make a blunder, and that we encourage them to adopt ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... career. Great inventions, unexpected discoveries, and astounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facility with which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings of science and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of the fitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life, and forcing himself to a readjustment not only of his mental perceptions, but also of his external existence gives proof sufficient of his being not only favored of the gods, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... other places. Shops were closed, and the church-bells tolled dolefully; but whether prayer was offered in sincerity and truth, and in calm devotion, demands a doubt; for when men's passions are inflamed, there can be no fitness for acts of piety. In the mean time the assembly of Massachusets Bay met at Boston, on the 25th of May, for the last time. On that day, General Gage laid before them some common business of the province, and then announced the painful necessity he was under of removing them and all public offices ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... her dress just now, beyond a natural fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But, indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have meant just as little. For there can be hardly anything less connected with a woman's personality than drapery which she has neither designed, manufactured, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... journalistic work, but in his novels and his plays. I refer to those excellences which are the direct result of the acuteness of his observation. These writings gained for him the agnomen of Theophraste moderne, which his sense of fitness and natural dislike of over-praise led him to disclaim in a letter to the Mercure of October, 1717. That same year a Portrait de Climene, ode anacreontique, proves that he had yet to sustain a real defeat in the line of verse before he came to realize that he should confine himself to prose ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... necessary, except in the eyes of the ignorant. If Mr. Bascom is mortified to have me earn my living by manual labor, when he is not ashamed to repudiate a contract, and try to force me out of the parish by a process of slow starvation, his sense of fitness equals his standard ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... trouble to write. Sovereigns and people of high rank, even generals and others of importance, employ a secretary of this kind. It is not possible to make a great King speak with more dignity than did Rose; nor with more fitness to each person, and upon every subject. The King signed all the letters Rose wrote, and the characters were so alike it was impossible to find the smallest difference. Many important things had passed through the hands of Rose: ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had a quiet sleep under the violets and daisies. I see, sir, you doubt whether I am really little Minnie Merle. Do you not recollect that when you asked for the wedding ring none had been provided, and Cuthbert took one from his own hand, which was placed on my finger? Ah! there was a grim fitness in the selection! A death's head peeping out of a cinerary urn. You will readily recognize the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... pair, and already had woven a very pretty romance about Chris and the young man. Christina Shine had only recently been raised to the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged his sense of poetical fitness. He espoused her cause with his whole soul, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... appointment of priests, and we may take it as fairly certain that the same principle held good from the earliest times.[353] After being summoned (so the story ran) from the Sabine city of Cures by the Senate, he consulted the gods about his own fitness. He was then conducted by the augur to the arx on the Capitol, and sat down on a stone facing the south. The augur took his seat on his left hand (the lucky side) with veiled head, holding the lituus[354] of his office ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... judge, and very beautiful it is! This essence of lopped tails represents the average of Leaplow brains, being a compound of all the tails in the country; and, as a daily journal is addressed to the average intellect of the community, there is a singular fitness between the readers and the readees. To complete my stock of information on this head, however, will you just allow me to inquire what is the effect of this system on ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... blind. In its pathological form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... tent were as hard to undo as if they had been made of iron. On these occasions "Tuppence," who had hardly realized the seriousness of war, would wake up and want me instantly to go out, half dressed as I was, and throw stones for his benefit! That dog had no sense of the fitness of things. If I did not comply immediately he sat down, threw his head in the air, and "howled to the moon!" The rest of the camp did not appreciate this pastime; but if they had known my frenzied efforts with the ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... not stand less in need of cultivation: it refines itself by a judicious observation of the beauties and delicacies of nature. These he must incessantly study, in order to transplant into his art such as are capable of producing the most pleasing effect. He must particularly consult the fitness of time, place and manners; otherwise what would please in one dance might displease in another. Propriety is the great rule of this art, as of all others. A discordance in music hurts a nice ear; a false attitude or motion in dancing ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... allegory are to be found in the works of English authors. Spenser's Faerie Queene, Swift's Tale of a Tub, Addison's Vision of Mirza, and, above all, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, are examples that it would be impossible to match in elaboration, beauty and fitness, from the literature of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... A.D. 1712-1721, translated from St. David's, was a man of great munificence, and of the best intentions, of whom it may be said he spent "not wisely but too well." He was entirely devoid of any aesthetic feeling or of architectural fitness, and in the most religious spirit committed acts of wholesale sacrilege. He employed, it is said, in the work of restoration in the palace, the stones of the chapter-house, at that time much injured, but certainly by no means ruined. He built a hideous ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... his masterful way made arrangements, becoming but economical, for the funeral; and when it was over came back to the vicarage with Philip. The will was in his charge, and with a due sense of the fitness of things he read it to Philip over an early cup of tea. It was written on half a sheet of paper and left everything Mr. Carey had to his nephew. There was the furniture, about eighty pounds at the bank, twenty shares in the A. B. C. company, a few in Allsop's ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... ask him about Widow Mole, but he had turned to Edmund to discuss the hunting and the shooting of the neighbourhood. They discovered, partly at this time, and partly from other visitors, that he was the younger son of the squire of Downhill, who had been made to take Holy Orders without any special fitness for it, because there was a living likely soon to be ready for him, and in the meantime he was living at home, an amiable, harmless young man, but bred up so as to have no idea of the duties of his vocation, and sharing freely ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for their political affiliations or their general standing in the community than for their capacity as military commanders; nor were the higher officers, appointed by the chief executive of territory, state, or nation, more likely to be chosen with a view to their military fitness. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the back of the church. In their black rebozos, the poorest class of poor Mexican women were clad with more fitness than she. For Jane, weighted with the gravity of the occasion, had donned an austere black bonnet such as aged ladies wear, and its effect upon her short locks was incongruous in the extreme. No one, however, thought of her as being more queer than usual; for her ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... first—a lodge of occultists of pure and philanthropic aims, which can lead those students whom it finds worthy no inconsiderable distance on the road to knowledge, and confers such psychic powers as are in its gift only after the most searching tests as to the fitness of the candidate. Its teachers do not stand upon the Adept level, yet hundreds have learnt through it how to set their feet upon the Path which has led them to Adeptship in later lives; and though it is not in direct communication with the Brotherhood of the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... own hand, to name the person among them who shall succeed to the command on your decease, and by like instruments to change the nomination, from time to time, as further experience of the characters accompanying you shall point out superior fitness; and all the powers and authorities given to yourself are, in the event of your death, transferred to, and vested in the successor so named, with further power to him and his successors, in like manner to name each his successor, who, on the death of his predecessor, shall be invested with all the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... inhabitants without cost. The typical form of establishing a town was as follows: On application of an approved body of men, desiring to establish a new settlement, the colonial General Court would appoint a committee to view the desired land and report on its fitness; an order for the grant would then issue, in varying areas, not far from the equivalent of six miles square. In the eighteenth century especially, it was common to reserve certain lots of the town for the support ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the hands of Hugh's father during his short lifetime; but Archie's father and grandfather had been born there, and his great-grandfather had spent the greater part of his life on the place; and it quite suited Archie's ideas of the fitness of things that it should again be held by his cousin, who, though he did not bear the name, was yet of the blood of these men, whose memory was still honoured in the countryside. It suited Hugh's ideas, too, but with one difference. He knew ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... sight of that great mosaic, from the Fillmore-street hill, at once creates a nerve-soothing impression most uncommon in international expositions, and for that matter, in any architectural aggregate. One is at once struck with the fitness of the location and of the scheme of architecture. Personally, I am greatly impressed with the architectural scheme and the consistency of its application to the whole. I fear that the two men, Mr. Willis Polk and Mr. Edward Bennett, ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... there stopping short, we seem to have a strong hint that we have been brought to the edge of a new element in which railways have no rights whatever. This is as it should be, and we can congratulate the North-Eastern Company for its discretion and its sense of fitness. Even the station is built of solid stonework, with a strong flavour of medievalism in its design, and its attractiveness is enhanced by the complete absence of other modern buildings. We are thus welcomed to the charms of Richmond ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... reconciled to such a caricature. Now that I can choose for myself, I shall attend less to fashion than to fitness in my dress. But I have seen mankind—let me see nature and heaven. Mesmer, may I ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... sharp pang—the glorious feeling which I have once or twice felt—the sin once sinned and the punishment once over, as one is assured supremely sometimes that it is without doubt—of trustful freedom, and fresh fitness for battling one's self and helping others to battle—a mood that is soon broken, but is an earnest while it lasts of infinite satisfaction. The extraordinary delicacy with which the screw of pain and mental suffering is adjusted, just lifted when we can bear no more (not when we think we can ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... No emigrant will be sent out in response to any application from abroad where the emigrant's expenses are defrayed, without references as to character, industry, and fitness. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... long slope of a low hill and took the decline beyond. The young plainsman had the legs and the wind of a Marathon runner. His was the perfect physical fitness of one who lives a clean, hard life in the dry air of the high lands. The swiftness and the endurance of the fugitive told him that he was in the wake of youth trained ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... you lose a post, my dear sir," said Furlong, who still clung with pertinacity to the fitness of saving a post. "Don't you see that you might weceive your letter at half-past ten; well, then you'll have a full hour to wite you' answer; that's quite enough time, I should think, for you ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... 19th sealed the despairing women's certainty of disaster by the news that the bodies had been washed ashore. Shelley's was identified by a copy of Sophocles in one coat-pocket and the Keats in another. What Trelawny then did was an action of that perfect fitness to which only the rarest natures are prompted: he charged himself with the business of burning the bodies. This required some organisation. There were official formalities to fulfil, and the materials ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... six months. He had given himself right and left, suffered with the suffering, as no human being can and keep balance, till now he was, unknowingly, at the edge of a breakdown. And the distrust of his own fitness, the forgetfulness that, under one's own limitations, is an unlimited reserve which is the only hope of any of us in any real work; this was the form of the retort of his overwrought nerves. ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... Kelcey who broke the hush which followed, by starting from her place to run out into the kitchen and bring on the dinner. From this moment the peculiar fitness of Donald Brown for the duties of host showed itself. That his dinner should be stiff and solemn was not in his intention, if the informality of his own conduct could prevent it. He therefore jumped up from his own place to follow Mrs. Kelcey ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... district in New York, and I was put, as one of the minority members, on the Committee of Cities. It was a coveted position. I did not make any effort to get on, and, as far as I know, was put there merely because it was felt to be in accordance with the fitness of things. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the most democratic thing in the world is a hereditary despotism. I mean a despotism in which there is absolutely no trace whatever of any nonsense about intellect or special fitness for the post. Rational despotism—that is, selective despotism—is always a curse to mankind, because with that you have the ordinary man misunderstood and misgoverned by some prig who has no brotherly respect for him at all. But irrational despotism is always democratic, because ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the plan proceeds. The parties continued in the camp; but there was another remora. To remove a nabob and to create a revolution is not easy: houses are strong who have sons grown up with vigor and fitness for the command of armies. They are not easily overturned by removing the principal, unless the secondary is got rid of: and if this remora could be removed, everything was going on in a happy way in the business. This plan, which now ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... atmosphere. The introduction to the country school a little later does not greatly improve conditions. The teachers are often incompetent and their election often depends upon other things than fitness to teach; upon things, indeed, which are at times far from complimentary to the school trustees. The school year seldom exceeds four months and this may be divided into two terms, two months in the fall and two in ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... She had been the Camerons' guest many times that summer, finding in the luxury and beauty of their surroundings something that entered with a strange aptness into her own nature. It was as if it were hers by right of fitness. And this was the life that might be ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Raleigh would have telegraphed a good deal more than she did had it not been for the great expense from Sardis to Cape Tariff, and Sarah Block was held in restraint, not by pecuniary considerations, but by Sammy's sense of the fitness of things. He nearly always edited her messages, even when he consented to send them. One communication he positively refused to transmit. She came to ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... have broken Stephen's heart; but Stephen was dead. She had seized upon Clarence with never a thought of what she was to give him, with never a prayer as to her fitness to be his wife, nor his fitness to be the father of her children. She had laughed at self-sacrifice, laughed at endurance, laughed at married love— these things were only words to her. And when she had tugged with all her might at the problem before her, and tried, with her pitiable, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... RECIPE FOR A LITTLE HOME COMFORT.—Take of thought for self one part, two parts of thought for family; equal parts of common sense and broad intelligence, a large modicum of the sense of fitness of things, a heaping measure of living above what your neighbors think of you, twice the quantity of keeping within your income, a sprinkling of what tends to refinement and aesthetic beauty, stirred thick with the true brand of Christian principle, and set ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Emerson's find the readers that must listen to them and delight in them, as the "Ancient Mariner" fastened upon the man who must hear him. If any doubter wishes to test his fitness for reading them, and if the poems already mentioned are not enough to settle the question, let him read the paragraph of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... is the so-called argument of modern materialism. Argument, however, it is quite plain it is not. It is a mere dogmatic statement, that can give no logical account of itself, and must trust, for its acceptance, to the world's vague sense of its fitness. The modern world, it is true, has mistaken it for an argument, and has been cowed by it accordingly; but the mistake is a simple one, and can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of denial was formerly a sort of crude rebellion, inconsistent with itself, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the middle of the trunk; the lower portion of it beginning gradually to swell out higher even than the umbilicus; the gradual expansion of the haunches, those expressive characteristics of the female, indicating at once her fitness for the office of generation and that of parturition—expansions which increase till they reach their greatest extent at the superior part of the thighs; the fulness behind their upper part, and on each side of the lower part of the spine, commencing as high as the waist, and ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... from quite elementary work to that for advanced students, the latter being obliged to present evidence of fitness ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... It had been an ambition of his own to enter the Academy; but his being under age, his size—and several other good reasons, including his utter want of fitness in the matter of book learning—had prevented the realization of this fine dream. His failure had rendered him skeptical of the charms of the famous institution, and he now always mentioned it as a place quite ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... 1803, he went to Ely for ordination as a deacon, though still wanting five months of twenty-three. Those were lax days, there was little examination, and a very low standard of fitness was required. Henry Martyn was so much scandalized by the lightness of demeanour of one of his fellow candidates that he spoke to him in strong reproof—with what effect we do not know, but he records that he never ventured to speak in rebuke, "unless he at the same ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... know as the survival of the fittest, the mere's capacity had snuffed out her weaker spouse's incompetency; she had taken her place at the helm, because she belonged there by virtue of natural fitness. There were no tender illusions which would suffer, in seeing the husband allotted to her, probably by her parents and the dot system, relegated to the ignominy of passing his days washing dishes—dishes which she cooked and served—dishes, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... a use was found for his slender medical attainments; it became one of his functions to answer persons who visited the office for information as to the climatic features of this or that new country, and their physical fitness for going out as colonists. Of course, there was demanded of him a radical unscrupulousness, and often enough he proved equal to the occasion; but as time went on, bringing slow development of brain and character, he found these personal interviews anything but agreeable. He had constantly ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... as Will. Theer's a fitness about it, tu; for Will's awn gran'faither prospered at Newtake; an' if he could get a living, another may. Mother do like the thought of Will being ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... over and above this as it were legal contribution, a voluntary "performance" (-munus-), a gladiatorial show at his own expense for the public benefit. The splendour of the games became gradually the standard by which the electors measured the fitness of the candidates for the consulship. The nobility had, in truth, to pay dear for their honours—a gladiatorial show on a respectable scale cost 720,000 sesterces (7200 pounds)—but they paid willingly, since by this means they absolutely precluded ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Then the door closed and his mate was inside with a man, the arch enemy of all wolves. Breed whirled and fled. He ran blindly and at high-pressure speed as if he fled before an actual enemy. All his sense of balance was thrown out of gear, the fitness of things upset, and he felt his reason tottering. For his ear, attuned to receive the meaning of all animal sounds, could detect the least tremor of menace in any animal note; when a range bull bellowed Breed knew whether the tones held invitation to his cows or husked ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... a word on incidental persons in the story, of whom I have seen other so-called confidences alleged which it will be only right to state have really no authority. And first let me say what unquestionable evidence these characters give of the unimpaired freshness, richness, variety, and fitness of Dickens's invention at this time. Glorious Captain Cuttle, laying his head to the wind and fighting through everything; his friend Jack Bunsby,[141] with a head too ponderous to lay-to, and so falling victim to the inveterate MacStinger; ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... been speaking of the peculiar fitness of the four for what they were doing. "And if I'm not mistaken," he went on, "we're going to need all the brains we can pool, when we ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... who shall make or be a party to the making of any false statement or certificate as to the fitness or liability of himself or any other person for service under the provisions of this act, or regulations made by the President thereunder, or otherwise evades or aids another to evade the requirements of this act or of said regulations, ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... have read of, was doomed in his day and generation to be misunderstood, unappreciated, maligned, neglected. As usual in such cases, the result was a total upsetting in the mind of the injured one of all orthodox notions of human nature and the eternal fitness of things. I should hardly express myself so boldly were I not backed by the testimony of some of Grumbo's own contemporaries, by whom I have been informed that, a few weeks after the events I am relating, his dogship ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... and combustion. She loved her gravitas,—which implied great things;—but contemned the Beautiful; and so, when a knowledge of the Beautiful would have gone far to save her, by maintaining in her a sense of proportion and the fitness of things—she lost her morale and became utterly vulgarian. But think of China, taking it as a matter of course that music was an essential part of government; or of France, with her Ministre des Beaux Arts in every cabinet. Perhaps; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... for confessing this clandestine business, but in his paternal wisdom he had not taken them. I was not prepared, therefore, to be very responsive when, from a mere desire to indulge his sense of the fitness of things, poppa endeavoured to probe my sentiments with regard to Mr. Page by moonlight on the Grand Canal. To begin with, I wasn't sure of them—so much depended upon what Arthur had been doing; and besides, I ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Junior Lord, "but you Americans have odd consciences! Do you suppose Rigby was appointed Paymaster of the Forces because of his fitness? Why was North himself made Prime Minister? For his abilities?" And he broke down again. "Ask Jack, here, how he got into the service, and how much seamanship ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the highest training and distinction, at the request of General Grant, shortly after the fiasco of Bermuda Hundred, had been sent by the Washington authorities to make an investigation of General Butler's fitness for command in the field, and had with due deliberation reported that while "General Butler was a man of rare and great ability, he had not had either the training or experience to enable him to direct and control movements in battle." ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... occupant of the brave launch Aurora was a rather chubby specimen of a half grown lad, with a rosy face, and laughing blue eyes. Larry Densmore expected to become a lawyer some fine day, and in evidence of his fitness for the business he was constantly asking questions, and finding debatable points in such ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... labored breath. He recalled a fragment of poetry—something about "morbid . . . faultless shoulder-blades," which he had overheard Bernard Graves quote to Volney Sprague as Mrs. Hilliard passed at the club. Morbid had seemed an inept word then, but he began to spy out a certain fitness. The house was too still by far—dangerously still; the stillness of espionage. With a flash of intuition he lifted his eyes, and in the doorway met Joe Hilliard. Almost at the same instant the woman in her trumpery saw ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... depend in great part upon the peculiar forms of the language in which they are first clothed; and by a strictly literal translation the scope of the thought is narrowed, its finer lines obscured, and that which is of more importance than all else, the fitness of the expression, is altogether lost. The utmost strictness of literal translation is a poor compensation for the resultant poverty of language and dilution of thought; and by as much as the original is more impressive in its rich and fitting garb, by so much the more is it made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... candidates shall not be too bad; on the political side we do not demand even this, since nearly 80 per cent. of our whole teaching force is declared legally unfit to vote or hold office, and is yet employed to train our future citizens. But on the intellectual side we demand positive proof of fitness. Thus it is fair to say that our modern education deals almost ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... render invaluable service. In peace and war its officials have distinguished themselves by a highly efficient, tactful and fearless discharge of their duties. Up to 1913 appointments to the service were determined by the fitness and experience of the appointee rather than by his political antecedents, and the officials appointed possessed unusual qualifications: the first general receiver, Col. George R. Colton, who held until ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... which had been none the less real and constant because so often burlesqued. Afterward considerations presented themselves to alloy my rapture, but for that moment, as I say, it was nothing but rapture. There was no question in it of the lovers' fitness for each other, of their acceptability to their respective families, of their general conduct, or of their especial behaviour toward us. All that I could realise was that it was a great escape for both of us, and a great triumph for me. I had been afraid that I should ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the polariscope and have some knowledge of the theory of its construction and of chemical manipulations. To this end we would suggest that applicants for positions where such work is to be done should be obliged to undergo a competitive examination in order to test their fitness for the work that is to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... puzzle their brain concerning moral fitness, which they have not elevation enough of mind to understand; give ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... indulged to excess, and became a source of evil. But men will have pleasure and ought to have pleasure. The best way of drawing them off from the more dangerous pleasures is to teach them to enjoy the better kinds. Moreover the quieter pleasures of the intellect mean Rest, and a greater fitness for ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various |
