"Unfit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a milk and vegetable diet is, that it breeds phlegm, and so is unfit for tender persons, of cold constitutions; especially those whose predominant failing is too much phlegm. But this objection has as little foundation as either of the preceding. Phlegm is nothing but superfluous chyle and nourishment, as the taking down more ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... was entitled to an estate in the parish, and it was no doubt a portion of the increase of this property that he devoted to the repairing and beautifying of the House of God, then "lying desolate," and unfit for the celebration of divine service. Good Izaak Walton, writing evidently upon hearsay information, and not of his own personal knowledge, was in error if he supposed, as from his language he appears to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... they were physically unfit; that one was very old and the other very feeble and her heart warmed again to that stern master who saw them fed as abundantly as his most valued men. These, then, were those Christians whom he had taken into his protection because of the Name which had inspired ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... man in Africa who could make his way from Loango to the Simiacine Plateau he spoke no more than the truth. There were only four men in all the world who knew the way, and two of them were isolated on the summit of a lost mountain in the interior. Meredith himself was unfit for the journey. There ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Henry de Wilsen and Goswin Tyasen, who were invested as Clerks, that did devote themselves, for they would not be promoted to holy orders by reason of a stain that did unfit them under the rule. Also there were these following: Brother John of Huesden, Brother Henry Wilde, Brother Werner Keencamp, Brother Bertold ten Hove, Brother John Kempis, and Brother Henry Balveren. ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... days, and half an hour, Judith held the sovereign power, Wondrous beautiful her face; But so weak and small her wit, That she to govern was unfit, And so Susanna ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... and body are alike unfit To trust each other, for some hours, at least; When thou art better, I will be thy ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... my lord," said the Nevile, bluntly, "I see already I had best go back to green Westmoreland, for I am as unfit for his grace the archbishop as I am ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little boy's ears. This last address had disconcerted the young mother sadly, and cost her some tears; for she was as innocent as Geoff, and the idea that there were in the village things to tell her that were unfit for the child's ears threw her into daily terror, not only for him, but for herself. This was one of the things that made it apparent that a new rule was necessary. Her business grew day by day, as she began to understand it better, and the lessons fell more and more ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... equipped with aircraft, and had none available for Naval work. According to our knowledge at the time the United States Navy, in April, 1917, possessed twenty-three large and about twenty-four small destroyers, some of which were unfit to cross the Atlantic; there were about twelve submarines capable of working overseas, but not well suited for anti-submarine work, and only three light cruisers of the "Chester" class. On the other hand about ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... to me and I closely inquired as to the cause of this loss of the wing power. Plume grew more and more familiar in her address and in a long conversation told me of the many conditions that make people unfit to fly. I deduce from our conversation a few ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... also made a statement defending his appointments of Justices of the Supreme Court, and challenged anyone to prove them unfit. He said that, from the foundation of the Government, it had become customary for a President to make such appointments from amongst those whose views were in harmony with his own, that in this case he had selected men of well known integrity, and of profound legal ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... she said, "will support the untarnished honour of his maternal house, and elevate and support that of his father. Poor Lucy is unfit for courts or crowded halls. Some country laird must be her husband, rich enough to supply her with every comfort, without an effort on her own part, so that she may have nothing to shed a tear for but the tender apprehension lest he may break his neck in a foxchase. It was not so, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... murmur, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Thus far is plain sailing, for every one will agree with me; but when I denounced to the priests the pools of clotted blood as offensive, even to coarse men, and wholly unfit as a satisfactory offering to any power to whom we can ascribe the name of God, they retorted by saying this is also part of the Christian system: the God of Abraham demands his sacrifice of blood also. It is in vain to intimate ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Francis Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag Frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majesty's service. You know what manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you; and I dare say you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my assistance on this occasion, though he ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... removed at the special request of the headmaster. A private tutor, heavily paid, took him in hand, but was no more successful with him than the schoolmasters had been. At the age of eighteen he was found unfit to pass any of the examinations which open the way to gentlemanly employment. Various jobs were found for him by his desponding parents, but on every occasion he was returned to them politely. He drifted at last ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... the governor's order for a quantity of cloves. The Dutch and English are contending with each other in the Moluccas; and the former, it is said, are intending to attack the Spanish forts there soon. Gaviria has but few men, and some of these are unfit for duty. He needs a few galleys, as he has "only one rotten galliot"; also troops, money, and clothing. Gaviria thinks that the Dutch are being to some extent supplanted by the English; and that the latter will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... secretary of the club was William Johnstone (Sir William Pulteney), and, as has been frequently told, David Hume was jocularly appointed to a sinecure office created for him, the office of assassin, and lest Hume's good-nature should unfit him for the duties, Andrew Crosbie, advocate (the original of Scott's "Pleydell"), was made his assistant. The club met at first in Tom Nicholson's tavern, the Diversorium, at the Cross, and subsequently removed to more fashionable quarters ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... effectually roused him from his habitual languor. His indolence was, however, so much the effect of ill health, that exertion was sometimes scarcely in his power, especially in hot weather, and by the time his brothers' studies were finished each day, he was unfit for anything but to lie on the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... striking figure, or a bold expression. But most of the poems are deformed by harshness of versification, feebleness of thought, and every species of bad writing. Compounded words, never seen before, and impossible to be pronounced, epithets detailed on service for which they are wholly unfit, figures that illustrate nothing but their own absurdity, and rhymes that any common book would die of, astonish the reader on every page. Had the poet purposely aimed to twist the English language into every ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... custom of the Persians, who never let their wives appear, but drink, dance, and wanton with their whores. This they propose for us to imitate; they permit us to have mimics and music at our feasts, but forbid philosophy; she, forsooth, being very unfit to be wanton with us, and we in a bad condition to be serious. Isocrates the rhetorician, when at a drinking bout some begged him to make a speech, only returned: With those things in which I have skill the time doth ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... followed these words. The alferez stopped and stared not unkindly at the wretch, who, thinking that his words had produced a good effect, went on with more spirit: "Yes, sir, my mother-in-law doesn't give me anything to eat but what is rotten and unfit, so last night when I came by here with my belly aching I saw the yard of the barracks near and I said to myself, 'It's night-time, no one will see me.' I went in—and then many ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... more than any man to mould the thoughts of his nation—and indeed of our English Puritans likewise—was writing a little book on the 'Regiment of Women,' in which he proved woman, on account of her natural inferiority to man, unfit to rule. ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... two and a half miles distant. Accordingly, mounting one horse, with Lewis on the other, they galloped over the plain, and striking the forest at the nearest point, they found it dry, destitute of grass, and totally unfit for a camping ground. Taking a circuit in a southerly direction, where the surface seemed more broken, they found they were on higher ground, and as they rode on, the thick undergrowth all the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... for its introduction into Europe. Under the name of the Median Apple a tree is described first by Theophrastus, and then by Virgil and Palladius, which is supposed by some to be the Orange; but as they all describe it as unfit for food, it is with good reason supposed that the tree referred to is either the Lemon or Citron. Virgil ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... in illness: she neither seeks nor will accept sympathy. To put any questions, to offer any aid, is to annoy; she will not yield a step before pain or sickness till forced; not one of her ordinary avocations will she voluntarily renounce. You must look on and see her do what she is unfit to do, and not dare to say a word—a painful necessity for those to whom her health and existence are as precious as the life in their veins. When she is ill there seems to be no sunshine in the world for me. The tie of sister is near and dear indeed, and I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... part of quiet friendship than for him, partly because her love was a much less tempestuous affair and partly because a woman nearly always plays a part of any kind with more facility than a man does. And Larry Holiday was temperamentally unfit to play any part whatsoever. He was a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... nothing occult in the science of government. The administration in behalf of the people of the organization which they have ordered is nothing foreign to their own knowledge. They have ceased to consider themselves unfit for self-rule: they no longer think of calling in from other worlds a different order of beings to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... have not lost the grace of blushing yet; but you will soon, if you keep up this sort of study and forget to be ashamed. The society of such women will unfit you for that of good ones, and lead you into trouble and sin and shame. Oh, why don't the city fathers stop that evil thing, when they know the harm it does? It made my heart ache to see those boys, who ought to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... so-called States are now but conquered provinces? That North Carolina and other waste territories of the United States are unfit to associate with ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... to sea, take care of themselves, and remain there prepared to attack an enemy wherever he may be found. Invisibility to an enemy may facilitate attack, but it has to be dearly paid for in diminished safety. Further, the life that must be led in such vessels in time of war would very quickly unfit men for their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... Sir Lionel, I thank you; I am dead to the world and am only here to perform a duty; the hearing of names would stir sad memories in my heart and unfit me for my task," and motioning him to bend down towards her, she said in tones only ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... different as possible from all the big commercial departments of to-day. The really good journeyman tailor does not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... statements to the directors, had appealed to some of their most deep-rooted prejudices. Tillie's filial insubordination, her "high-mindedness," her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she refused even to live under her father's roof—all these things made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young children. She would imbue the "rising generation" with her ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... 231ier Regiment d'Infanterie were publicly announced. It was scheduled to entrain on the morrow for the front between Metz and Nancy. Robert le Marchand needed not to go. Pronounced unfit by the regimental doctor, his name had been placed upon the hospital list. Amidst the bustle of preparation for departure he spent the day in quietude, and Marie played ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... from another dog-fight. This time my dog had lost (which was but natural, seeing its very unfit condition, though to be sure it looked well enough at a glance). Alas! the sport is not what it was in my young days, when rogues can so put off a sick dog upon the unsuspecting. Methinks 'tis becoming a very brutal, degrading practice—have determined to have done with dog-fighting once and ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... of day to her, and the time of day meant some obscene remark unfit for women's ears. The young girl wore a simple grey dress, with fine lawn kerchief neatly folded across her bosom, a large hat with flowing ribbons sat above the fairest face that ever gladdened men's eyes ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ways, that it may be considered a failure. The reason for its failure is not so much bad management as lack of foresight on the part of those choosing the site. The site is in no sense suitable for a colony, the soil being unfit for intensive farming. Probably the best work done there has been the reformation of drunkards, a work in which, according to reports, the colony has been ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... made prisoner, and when his wounds were healed, he was, though not perceptibly, disabled for active service. Amongst his brethren in captivity was a Captain Paling, who, when an exchange of prisoners took place, hastened to join his regiment, and gave George, who was deemed unfit for service, a letter to his mother and sisters who resided in Dartmouth. The letter was all that the captain could give him, for he was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... clothing that is received here is new and serviceable, but thousands of pieces are so badly worn that, to use the words of General Axline, of Ohio, who is doing noble service here with the thousands of other self-sacrificing men, "it is unfit to be worn by tramps." Many old shoes with the soles half torn off have been received. Shoes are badly needed at once or ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... technical terms also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of writing, that even with this alphabet it is only ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... captures on the Caucasian Front was "an apomecometer (an instrument for estimating altitudes)." It is understood that the latest Turkish estimate of the "All Highest" was captured with the instrument, but was found to be unfit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... district, who had a very pale daughter. I had the misfortune to tell her that the latter's colour would be restored after wedlock, and then with tears of gratitude she offered me her daughter's hand and the whole of her own fortune—fifty souls, [28] I think. But I replied that I was unfit for such ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... as in fine weather we ought to lay up for winter, so in youth one ought to form good habits and live soberly so as to have a reserve stock of strength for old age. Yet ought we to husband the exertions of the body, so as not to be wearied out by them and rendered unfit for study. For, as Plato says,[23] excessive sleep and fatigue are enemies to learning. But why dwell on this? For I am in a hurry to pass to the most important point. Our lads must be trained for warlike encounters, making themselves efficient in hurling the javelin and darts, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Wallenstein the habit of self-examination has led to an irresolution which we feel at once, in such a man, to be a degrading weakness, and altogether inconsistent with the part he is playing in life. It is an indecision which, in spite of the philosophical tone it assumes, pronounces him to be unfit for the command of men, or to sway the destinies of a people. Artevelde, too, reflects, examines himself, pauses, considers, and his will is the servant of his thought; but reflection with him comes in aid of resolution, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the mothers themselves are too often unfit for the divine duties of motherhood. They are lacking in a knowledge of what makes for the best life. I have seen so much of it that I am going to try to arouse the mothers of Los Angeles at a ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... motionless garden flowers headed by the smooth white river, and her gentle little friend so homely here, the contemplation of herself was like a shriek in music. Worse than discordant, she pronounced herself inferior, unfit mentally as well as bodily for the dreams of companionship with any noble soul who might have the dream of turning her into something better. There are couples in the world, not coupled by priestly circumstance, who are close to the true; union, by reason ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... extremely troublesome business on at the Merchants' Guild—I've just come away from a four hours' meeting; and upon my word I don't think I can stand a—domestic revolution at the same time. It would utterly unfit me ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... native place, and the peculiar circle in which I was brought up, by diverting me from all material pursuits, and by rendering me unfit for anything except the treatment of things of the mind, had made of me an idealist, shut out from everything else. The application of my intellect might have been a different one, but the principle would have remained the same. The true sign of a vocation is the impossibility of getting ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... proper hours, if I want to go to my friend's billiard table and play a quiet game, if I want to make merry over a few hits of backgammon, or give my energy full vent in rolling ten-pins for an hour, I am a heathen and a publican and unfit for ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... (1368-1422) had killed several men during his first fit of insanity. He was for the rest of his life wholly unfit to govern. He declared Henry V of England, the conqueror of Agincourt, his successor, thus disinheriting ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... brought to submit to it, will often produce effects, especially on women, like those one sees produced every day by the clash of two standards of manners. It means simply the recognition that one is unfit to be of certain company, and perhaps there are few moral ferments more penetrating. Probably Letty would have gone to her grave knowing nothing of it, but for the accident which had opened to her the inmost heart of a woman with whom, once ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pleased with their honest method he hastened away to his house to obtain it. The two honest foragers hastily examined the particular pile of pork which the simple-hearted farmer designated as theirs, found it very rank and totally unfit for food, transferred half of it to another pile, from which they took half and added to theirs, and awaited the return of the farmer. On giving them their change, he assured them that they had a bargain. They agreed that they had, tossed good and bad together in a bag, said good-by, and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... compacts can not be obtained from communities like ours, it need not be anticipated elsewhere, and the cause in which there has been so much martyrdom, and from which so much was expected by the friends of liberty, may be abandoned, and the degrading truth that man is unfit for self-government admitted. And this will be the case if expediency be made a rule of construction in interpreting the Constitution. Power in no government could desire a better shield for the insidious advances which it is ever ready to make upon the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... responsibility of the rupture must rest on him, he spoke more sincerely. He owned to Grace that his views had changed; said they were both too young to contract themselves when they did, and that he had made an engagement to marry, at a time when he was unfit to bind himself to so solemn a contract—said something about minors, and concluded by speaking of his poverty and total inability to support a wife, now that Mrs. Bradfort had left me the whole of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... inexhaustible converse came to an end? Had they shared the happiness of ameliorating Count Tristan's melancholy state, and seeing him daily improve? And now it was all over: she must resume her old course of life, her temporarily laid aside labors! To muse too long upon departed happiness would unfit her for those. Even the sad joy of recollection ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... full name was Dr. Pedro Rezio de Aguero, court physician in the island of Barataria. He carried a whalebone rod in his hand, and whenever any dish of food was set before Sancho Panza, the governor, he touched it with his wand, that it might be instantly removed, as unfit for the governor to eat. Partridges were "forbidden by Hippoc'rat[^e]s," olla podridas were "most pernicious," rabbits were "a sharp-haired diet," veal might not be touched, but "a few wafers, and a thin slice or two of quince," ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... of age, none of the family being present. I informed the persons about to set fire to the house of this circumstance, and prevailed on them to wait till Mr. Sellar came. On his arrival I told him of the poor old woman being in a condition unfit for removal. He replied, 'Damn her, the old witch, she has lived too long; let her burn.' Fire was immediately set to the house, and the blankets in which she was carried were in flames before she could be got out. She was placed in a little shed, and it was with great difficulty they ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... good old man's name) had brought out with him his own little hoard, and he said: 'I have five hundred crowns, the thrifty hire I saved under your father, and laid by to be provision for me when my old limbs should become unfit for service; take that, and He that cloth the ravens feed be comfort to my age! Here is the gold; all this I give to you: let me be your servant; though I look old I will do the service of a younger man in all ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... was too apparent that much of it had become deranged, and the parts no longer moved in harmonious action with the whole. The more these difficulties pressed upon him, the deeper did he drink, as a kind of relief, and, in consequence, the more unfit to extricate himself from his troubles did he become. Every struggle, like the efforts of a large animal in a quagmire, only tended to involve him deeper ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... first aimed his flying shaft in war, wont before to frighten beasts of the chase, and struck down a brave Numanian, Remulus by name, but lately allied in bridal to Turnus' younger sister. He advancing before his ranks clamoured things fit and unfit to tell, and strode along lofty and voluble, his heart lifted ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous living. Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine. That man he deemed unfit for this world ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... South, I do not conclude that more than the first step has been taken, exceedingly important as that step is. Many of the schools as yet are in a wretched condition. The buildings in the rural districts are small and rudely built, and many of them are positively unfit to be used as school houses. There are neither maps, nor charts or other appliances for the teacher's use in his work, and in fact everything about these school houses is of the most primitive type. The school year often does not exceed four months, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... elder brother might have done. But young Ralph Newton had early in life taken rooms for himself in London, had then ceased to be a ward, and had latterly,—so Sir Thomas understood,—lived such a life as to make him unfit to be the trusted companion of his two girls. And yet there had been nothing in his mode of living to make it necessary that he should be absolutely banished from the villa. He had spent more money ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Mayor, (Sir Thomas Bludworth, a silly man I think, [As his conduct during the Great Fire fully proved.]) and other places, about getting shipped some men that they have these two last nights pressed in the City out of houses: the persons wholly unfit for sea, and many of them people of very good fashion, which is a shame to think of, and carried to Bridewell they are, yet without being impressed with money legally as they ought to be. But to see how the King's business is done; my Lord Mayor himself ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... of its beauty. She and Dic could be seen only from the opposite side of the river, and she thought no one would be hunting at that time of the year. The pelts of fur-giving animals taken then were unfit for market. Venison was soft, and pheasants and turkeys were sitting. There would be nothing she would wish to conceal in meeting Dic; but the instinct of all animate nature is to do its love-making ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... collar of copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this globe the diver places his head, which he can move about at his ease. To the globe are attached two pipes; one used for carrying off the air ejected from the lungs, and which is unfit for respiration, and the other in communication with a pump worked on the raft, and bringing in the fresh air. When the diver is at work the raft remains immovable above him; when the diver moves about on the bottom of the river the raft follows his movements, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... other points relating to the general management are worthy of attention. Some crops get on fairly well when neglected and crowded with weeds. Not so with Asparagus. The plant appears to have been designed to enjoy life in solitude, being unfit for competition; and if weeds make way in an Asparagus bed, the cultivator will pay a heavy penalty for his neglect of duty. The limitation of the beds to a width of three feet, therefore, is of consequence, because ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... institutions; and lie argued generally that there was much in the situation of that country, and in the state of its society, which distinguished it from England and other nations, and which might render it, in certain cases, an unfit recipient for institutions not essential in themselves to good government, and only valuable as being machinery for that purpose. His motion was seconded by Mr. Lefroy. The bill was defended by Lords John Russell, Morpeth, and Hawick, Mr. O'Connell, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... from its being in the neighbourhood of the only secure anchorage from all winds, and near the best soil he had found after traversing the whole of the island. According to his account it was totally unfit for rearing sheep on a large scale; the bushes and grass being so full of burrs that the wool was completely spoiled. The soil was everywhere very inferior, and a few patches only of clean land was to be found, the principal part being overrun with dense ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... of Kimberley and Ladysmith we imagined that the decisive battles would soon follow. Although my knee was not yet cured, I went to Glencoe, whither our commandos had retreated. I was not five days there when I had to leave, being unfit for active service. Again I went to Warmbad for some weeks with Mr. Burgemeester Potgieter and his family, and on my return to Pretoria remained in my office until the beginning ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... abundance. When the last accounts arrived, three acres of barley were in a very thriving state, and ground was prepared to receive rice and Indian corn. In the wheat there had been a disappointment, the grain that was sown having been so much injured by the weevil, as to be unfit for vegetation. But the people were all at that time in commodious houses; and, according to the declarations of Mr. King himself, in his letters to Governor Phillip, there was not a doubt that this colony would be in a situation to support itself entirely without assistance, in less ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... prevent, in some degree, the circulation of trash which, under the name of a 'Lady author,' might otherwise have found its way into the hands of young persons of both sexes, for whose perusal it was, on the score both of morals and politics, utterly unfit. Such a notice naturally defeated its own object, and France went triumphantly through several editions. The review attracted almost as much attention as the book, and many protests were raised against it. 'What cruel work you ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... 1721.—This day, the junk having become unfit for food, and five of the crew down with scurvy, I ordered that we send two boats ashore at the nor'-western point of Hispaniola, to seek for fresh fruit, and perchance shoot some of the wild oxen ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The owners exchanged cattle and sheep for corn, grain, and garden vegetables; they had no faith that they could grow cereals, and it was too much trouble to procure water for a garden or a fruit orchard. It was the firm belief that most of the rolling mesa land was unfit for cultivation, and that neither forest nor fruit trees would grow without irrigation. Between Los Angeles and Redondo Beach is a ranch of 35,000 acres. Seventeen years ago it was owned by a Scotchman, who used the whole of it as a sheep ranch. ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... the presiding genius of the occasion, and looked like the light-hearted girl that Leonard had wooed more than a dozen years before. She ordered him around, jested with him, and laughed at him in such a piquant way that Burt declared she was proving herself unfit for the duties of chaperon by getting up a flirtation with her husband. Meanwhile, under her supervision, order was evoked from chaos, and appetizing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... spectators who were still open to such natural impressions. This was entirely misunderstood by the learned; with the Academy at their head, they affirmed that this subject (one of the most beautiful that ever fell to the lot of a poet) was unfit for Tragedy; incapable of entering historically into the spirit of another age, they made up improbabilities and improprieties for their censure. [Footnote: Scuderi speaks even of Chimene as a monster, and off-hand dismisses ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... though she had been driven so high up on the rock that it was very evident that we should not be able to get her off again. The boat still lay where Roger Trew and Oliver had hauled her up. We hurried down to examine her. A hole had been torn in her bottom, rendering her unfit for use. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Because she is unfit to rest there," cried the man. He pulled out a knife, and with the blade pried up the rim, and shook free the protective glass and slip of ivory. "Now 't is purged of all wrong," he said, touching the setting to his lips. "I would it were for me to keep, for 't has lain near your ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Dodge, confronting the still kneeling and agonized delinquent, "Wretch! these are the penalties of guilt. You have forged and stolen, acts that meet with my most unqualified disapprobation, and you are unfit for respectable society.—I saw from the very first what you truly were, and permitted myself to associate with you, merely to detect and expose you, in order that you might not bring disgrace on our beloved country. An ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... them only at night, being herded together during the day in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... the city, or in the upper portion of the island, cannot think of walking between their homes and their business. To say nothing of the loss of time they would incur, the fatigue of such a walk would unfit nine out of ten for the duties of the day. In consequence of this, street railways and omnibuses are more necessary, and better patronized in New York than in any ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... please, mother,' said she, the very day before she died, 'but I feel this pain will be the death of me—and I so unfit to die,' she added, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... But as the autumn advanced and his health did not greatly improve, another consultation of his doctors was held, the result of which was that he was pronounced to be suffering from cardiac weakness, and quite unfit for the work of the coming winter. He at once acquiesced in this verdict, and, with unabated cheerfulness, set himself to bring his lectures into a state that would admit of their being easily read to his classes by two friends who had undertaken this duty. This done, he ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... his tired horse for a fresh one, he should have his horse inspected by his company commander, who should certify to the condition of the horse and the necessity of the exchange. If the company commander certified that his horse was unfit for service, the man obtained from his regimental commander permission to obtain a fresh one, which had also, before it was valid, to be approved by the brigade commander. Whenever it was practicable, the exchange was required to be made in the presence of a commissioned officer, and, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... to thee!)[FN148] with rule for the unfit; * Crave thou of Allah pardon for thy foul adultery. Th' unhappy youth to us is come complaining 'mid his groans * And asks for redress for parting-grief and saddened me through thee. An oath have I to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... usual, turn the opposite side of the spyglass on my poor narrative, and reduce, MORE TUO, to the most petty trivialities, the circumstance to which thou accusest me of giving undue consequence. Hang thee, Alan, thou art as unfit a confidant for a youthful gallant with some spice of imagination, as the old taciturn secretary of Facardin of Trebizond. Nevertheless, we must each perform our separate destinies. I am doomed to see, act, and tell; thou, like a Dutchman enclosed in the same diligence with ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... commands, and left you with no choice But just to do the bidding of his voice. His rare, kind smile, low tones, and manly face Lent to his quick imperiousness a grace And winning charm, completely stripping it Of what might otherwise have seemed unfit. Leaving no trace of tyranny, but just That nameless force that seemed to say, "You must." Suiting its pretty title of "The Dawn," (So named, he said, that it might rhyme with "Swan,") Vivian's sail-boat, was carpeted with blue, While all its sails were of a pale ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... not be aliens born, or minors. 2. That they must not be any of the twelve judges, because they sit in the lords' house; nor of the clergy, for they sit in the convocation; nor persons attainted of treason or felony, for they are unfit to sit any where[c]. 3. That sheriffs of counties, and mayors and bailiffs of boroughs, are not eligible in their respective jurisdictions, as being returning officers[d]; but that sheriffs of one ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... was the name given the frigate Constitution. It was proposed by the Secretary of the Navy to dispose of the ship as it had become unfit for service. Popular sentiment did not approve of this. It was said a ship which was the pride of the nation should continue to be the property of the Navy and be rebuilt for service when needed. Holmes wrote this poem at the time of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... no! he only changed him for a worse; Embased your slavery by his own vileness, And loaded you with more ignoble bonds. Then think me not ungrateful, not to share The imperial crown with a presuming traitor. He says, I am a Christian; true, I am, But yet no slave: If Christians can be thought Unfit to govern those of other faith, 'Tis left for you ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... part from you here," he said, "and it may be so; but I fear I shall need your services still further. My mules are unfit to travel at present; they may never be fit to use; surely not within a fortnight. I must find other sumpter mules, wait for those I have to regain their strength, or leave my goods at Metz. My fortune is invested in these silks, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... restrains passion and appetite, and curbs the will. Various conjunctures arise in which the taboos are weakened or the sanctions on them are withdrawn. Faith in the current religion may be lost. Then its mystic sanctions cease to operate. The political institutions may be weak or unfit, and the civil sanctions may fail. There may not be the necessary harmony between economic conditions and political institutions, or the classes which hold the social forces in their hands may misuse them for their selfish interest at the expense of others. The philosophical and ethical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... army in its march from Old Brandenburg. He had been prostrated by fever, and although he shook off the attack it left him so weak and feeble that he was altogether unfit for duty. The army was still lying in its swampy quarters, and the leech who had attended him declared that he could never recover his strength in such an unhealthy air. Nigel Graheme, who had now rejoined the regiment cured of his wound, reported the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... uncultivated plot of ground, in the midst of which arose a black rock. Down its sides rushed with fearful noise a torrent of poisonous water, which, insinuating itself through the soil, penetrated to all the springs of the city, and rendered them unfit for use. After he had been shewn all this, the stranger led him into another large chamber, filled with gold and precious stones, all of which he offered him if he would kneel down and worship him, and consent to smear the doors and houses of Milan with a pestiferous salve which he held out to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... men, and came whole-heartedly to their assistance. He and Wicks and Carthew (so soon as he was recovered) held a hundred councils and prepared a policy for San Francisco. It was he who certified "Goddedaal" unfit to be moved, and smuggled Carthew ashore under cloud of night; it was he who kept Wicks's wound open that he might sign with his left hand; he who took all their Chile silver and (in the course of the first day) got it converted for them into portable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the offspring of degeneracy and disease. A diseased and degenerate population, no matter how favourably circumstanced in other respects, will always produce a plentiful crop of criminals. Stunted and decrepit faculties, whether physical or mental, either vitiate the character, or unfit the combatant for the battle of life. In both cases the result is in general the same, namely, a career ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... was, in a degree, one of the causes of this yielding nature; and he would almost rather have died than offer any one a personal offence, an insulting word or look. There are such characters in the world; none can deny that they are amiable; but, oh, how unfit to ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... conqueror had sedulously guarded), and had reduced them to a state of vassalage. They held the lands of their lord at his will, and paid their rent by military service. When retainers were put down, and rent or knights' service was no longer paid with armed men, their occupation was gone. They were unfit for the mere routine of husbandry, and unprovided with funds for working their farms. The policy of the nobles was changed. It was no longer their object to maintain small farmsteads, each supplying its quota of armed men to the retinue ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... thefts never extend beyond trifles.'[35] The women were well-shaped before they began to have children; both sexes slovenly and dirty in the extreme. An account of their habits in the coarse language of the historian would be unfit for our readers' perusal. There was no regular traffic in them, 'both purchases and sales being conducted in private, and the usual price for one of either sex was from five to six hundred piastres.' ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... during the voyage, which brought me in contact with this boy, and so many occasions to arouse my sympathies in his behalf, (for he was evidently in delicate health, and unfit for laborious work.) that in a short time I became deeply interested concerning him, and I determined as soon as I had recovered from sea-sickness, to watch for an opportunity of inquiring into the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... prudery of the dinner table, a mere difficulty of education and language. We are not taught to think decently on these subjects, and consequently we have no language for them except indecent language. We therefore have to declare them unfit for public discussion, because the only terms in which we can conduct the discussion are unfit for public use. Physiologists, who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal, find no difficulty; and masters of language who think decently can write popular stories like Zola's Fecundity ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... but James went further than they in arguing for divine hereditary right. Providence, James declared, had chosen the principle of heredity in order to fix the succession to the throne. This principle, being divine, lay beyond the power of man to alter. Whether the king was fit or unfit to rule, Parliament might not change the succession, depose a sovereign, or limit his authority in any way. James rather neatly summarized his views in a Latin epigram, a deo rex, a rege lex—"the king is from God and law ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the Levantine waters, following the final expulsion of the Venetians from the Morea in 1718, gave play to the natural aptitude of the Greek islanders for coasting-trade. Then ships, still small and unfit to venture on long voyages, plied between the harbours in the AEgaean and in the Black Sea, and brought profit to their owners in spite of the imposition of burdens from which not only many of the Mussulman subjects of the Sultan, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the length of injury that wears us out! What if something should happen to us? None are so unfit to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... It gladdens us, we confess, to see how goodly a volume of Americanisms Mr. Bartlett has been enabled to gather, for it shows that our language is alive. It is only from the roots that a language can be refreshed; a dialect that is taught grows more and more pedantic, and becomes at last as unfit a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. This is the danger which our literature has to guard against from the universal Schoolmaster, who wars upon home-bred phrases, and enslaves the mind and memory of his victims, as far as may be, to the best models of English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... ordinary tokens of Christian fellowship among abolitionists. If Abraham were on earth, they could not let him, consistently, occupy their pulpits, to tell of the things God has prepared for them that love him. Job himself would be unfit for their communion. Joseph would be placed on a level with pirates. Not a single church planted by the apostles would make a fit home for our abolition brethren, (for they all had masters and slaves.) The ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... language as that of the other record; but whereas the first speaker merely USED the words, the last speaker demolished them. One felt that he had extracted every ounce of power in the language, leaving it weak and flabby, unfit for further use. He threw out his sentences as though done with them; not boldly, not defiantly, least of all, tentatively, he spoke with a certainty and force that came from a knowledge that he could compel, rather than ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... was the experience of the master to intervene in order to divert the dog from a spot where the general aspect of things indicated that no commercial results need be expected, for I was more concerned with the miserable specimens unfit for the market than with the choice specimens, though of course ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... foreign yoke was to be imposed on our literature. Charles, surrounded by the companions of his long exile, returned to govern a nation which ought never to have cast him out or never to have received him back. Every year which he had passed among strangers had rendered him more unfit to rule his countrymen. In France he had seen the refractory magistracy humbled, and royal prerogative, though exercised by a foreign priest in the name of a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle naturally gratified a prince to whose family the opposition of Parliaments had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only in the sense that many devout and religious women have been Christian mystics too. Like Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Teresa, and other holy women, she was specially attracted to the spiritual and devotional aspect of the Catholic Faith. Neither did her devotion to the spiritual element unfit her for the practical side of things: quite the contrary. Like Saint Teresa, side by side with her religious life, she was a remarkably shrewd woman of business. It need scarcely be added that between so- called "spiritualism" ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... the law of conscription obliges the student of theology, as well as the student of philosophy, to march together; and, when once in the ranks, and accustomed to the licentiousness of a military life, they are either unwilling, unfit, or unworthy to return to anything else. The Pope, with all his entreaties, and with all his prayers, was unable to procure an exception from the conscription of young men preparing themselves for priesthood. Bonaparte always ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... our fundamentals. At first it amazed me that such men would pay their own expenses to live in a place like Whitechapel, only to work on drain committees, as delinquent landlord mentors, or just to give special educational chances to promising minds, or physical training to unfit bodies. Yet one saw in their efforts undeniable messages of real love. Personally I could only occasionally run up there to meet friends in residence or attend an art exhibition, but ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... foolish one! alike unfit For healthy joy and salutary pain: Thou knowest the chase useless, and again ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... circumstance of his character; but to have received every impression from those who surrounded him, and whom he loved, for the time, with the most imprudent and most unreserved affection. Without activity or vigor, he was unfit to conduct war; without policy or art, he was ill fitted to maintain peace: his resentments, though hasty and violent, were not dreaded, while he was found to drop them with such facility; his friendships were little valued, because they were neither derived ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... life, especially to enduring hunger and want of sleep. On learning this Philopoemen not only himself avoided wrestling and ridiculed it, but when he was in command of an army took every means in his power to bring every kind of athletic exercise into contempt, as likely to unfit the best men's bodies for the most important struggles ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... which have been raised from pips; [32] a codling is an apple which requires to be "coddled," stewed, or lightly boiled, being yet sour and unfit for eating whilst raw. The John Apple, or Apple John, ripens on St. John's Day, December 27th. It keeps sound for two years, but becomes very shrunken. Sir John Falstaff says (Henry IV., iii. 3) "Withered like an old Apple John." The squab pie, famous in Cornwall, contains ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... from commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... much lighter in weight than myself and his rapier as slender as a child's toy, he had been well taught in fencing, as I learned when meeting him by chance in front of St. Peter's church, he, to my utter surprise, fell upon me crying out that I was a scurvy knave unfit to live. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... done the next day, nor his remaining single-exposure stuff either. When his own reason and Applehead's earnest assurances convinced him that the day after the real blizzard day was going to be unfit for camera work, Luck took Weary, Pink, and the Native Son to Albuquerque, rented a little house he had discovered to be vacant, and set them to work building a drying drum for his prints, according to the specifications he furnished them. He hauled his tanks from ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... Liguori, etc., ever been honest enough, in their works on confession, to say that the Most Holy God could never command or require woman to degrade and pollute herself and the priest in pouring in the ear of a frail and sinful mortal, words unfit even for an angel? No; they were very careful not to say so; for from that very moment, their shameless lies would have been exposed; the stupendous but weak structure of auricular confession would fall to the ground with sad havoc and ruin to its ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... my life, or of such parts of it as are not deemed wholly unfit for publication, is read (and, no doubt, a public which devoured 'Scrawled Black' will stand almost anything), it will be found that I have sometimes acted without prim cautiousness—that I have, in fact, wallowed in crime. Stillicide and Mayhem I ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... the way with a few men, finding out the spots at which an ascent was practicable, and scouting on either side to discover if Boers were hidden; behind him followed Woodgate leading his men. He was in bad health and quite unfit for such a climb, but in spite of remonstrances he had insisted upon going, although he was obliged to be assisted at the more difficult places. The distance was not more than six miles, but it was ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... trifling—there was not the most remote chance of a pardon, but it seemed the poor wretch had been building up his dependence upon that hope and was resting on it; and consequently was altogether indisposed and unfit to give his attention to the subjects that his situation rendered ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... like a blinding revelation, and forth-with it seemed to him that he stepped into a new world. She had tried him too far, had thrown him off his balance. He was unfit for this further and infinitely greater provocation. His senses swam. The touch of her intoxicated him as though he had drunk a potent draught from some goblet of the gods. He heard himself laugh passionately at her ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... worthy humble friend, rather than servant, of the most excellent departed, was the person whom, next to the niece, I most pitied. She was every way to be lamented: unfit for any other service, but unprovided for in this, by the utter and most regretted inability of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... make up one's mind, but some counter-reason that admits of positive statement, as we say, in black and white. It is true that many minds cannot define their grounds of doubt, even when these are real. Such minds are unfit to apply the doctrine of Probabilism to themselves, but must seek its application from others. The opinion against the law, when explicitly drawn out, must be found to possess a solid probability. It may be either an intrinsic argument from reason and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... 'ooman, you turn in," said Adams, when the small hours of morning had advanced a little. "You'll only be unfit for work to-morrow if you sit up bobbin' about on your stool ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... amiss &c. (disagree) 24; embarrass &c. (hinder) 706; put to inconvenience; pay too dear for one's whistle. Adj. inexpedient, undesirable; unadvisable, inadvisable; objectionable; inapt, ineligible, inadmissible, inconvenient; incommodious, discommodious[obs3]; disadvantageous; inappropriate, unfit &c. (inconsonant) 24. ill-contrived, ill-advised; unsatisfactory; unprofitable &c., unsubservient &c. (useless) 645; inopportune &c. (unseasonable) 135; out of place, in the wrong place; improper, unseemly. clumsy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... unfortunately, appears to have been quite unfit for the service demanded of her. Having already been thirty years in service, the sheathing was very much worn, and her keel was not studded with nails, which might have served instead of sheathing to protect ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... which it could have done any damage, and has thrown the quicksilver on the back of a large looking-glass into an alarming state of eruption. The return of "cracked and broken" presents a fearful list of smashage and fracture: the best tea-set is rendered unfit for active service, being minus two saucers, a cup-handle, and a milk-jug; the green and gold dessert-plates have been frightfully reduced in numbers; two fiddle-handle spoons are completely hors de combat, having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... now!" screamed the widow, at the tope of her voice; "and you can no longer deceive me, unworthy son of Neptune as you are! You are unfit to be a lubber, and would be log-booked for an or'nary by every gentleman on board ship. You, a full-jiggered sea-man! No, you are not even half-jiggered, sir; and I tell ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... of young school-teachers have left the schoolroom behind, closed the book and desk and gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of young wives and mothers have left their little children with the grandmother. Many rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for service at the front by reason of age, work all day long in the munition factory. Many a professional man crowds his work in the office that he may reach the factory for at least a few hours' work upon shot ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... and their crews. Most of the vessels are smaller in scantling than the run down (and constantly going down) ten-gun brigs in our own service, built for a light draft of water (as they were originally intended to act against the pirates, which occasionally infest the Indian seas), and unfit to contend with anything like a heavy sea. Many of them are pierced for, and actually carry fourteen or sixteen guns; but, as effective fighting vessels, ought not to have been pierced for more than eight I have no hesitation in asserting that an English ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... constitution and health of body. And therefore discreet and wise physicians ought also to be consulted, before an absolute resolve be made to live the Life of the Learned. For he that has strength enough to buy and bargain, may be of a very unfit habit of body to sit still so much, as, in general, is requisite to a competent degree of Learning. For although reading and thinking break neither legs nor arms; yet, certainly, there is nothing that flags the spirits, disorders ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... consuming passion. They could stop when they liked, but anyone looking on could see that they gloried in the combat. Fighting is like breath to them—they must have it. Nature has implanted in all animals a fighting instinct for the weeding out of the physically unfit, and these dogs have an extra share of ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... between this sphere of survival and that of the animal world. In it the fittest survive, the others are lost; but in society the unfittest are lost, all the others survive. Social selection weeds out the unfit, the murderer, the most unsocial man, and says to him: "You must die"; natural selection seeks out the most fit and says: "You alone are to live." The difference is important, for it marks a prime series of distinctions, when the conceptions drawn from ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... quench their thirst, which a powerful sun had contributed to increase, nor shall I ever forget the looks of terror and disappointment with which they called out to inform me that the water was so salt as to be unfit to drink! This was, indeed, too true; on tasting it, I found it extremely nauseous, and strongly impregnated with salt, being apparently a mixture of sea and fresh water. Whence this arose, whether from local causes, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... mode of living, he said, 'Sir, the servants, instead of doing what they are bid, stand round the table in idle clusters, gaping upon the guests; and seem as unfit to attend a company, as to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... allude to? A. To the manner of heaving over work that the Overseers said was unfit for the Temple; also the manner the keystone was ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... violate any of the grand duties incumbent on us (piety, charity, justice, sobriety), but rather sometimes may yield advantage in those respects; it cannot well absolutely and universally be condemned: and when not used upon improper matter, in an unfit manner, with excessive measure, at undue season, to evil purpose, it may be allowed. It is bad objects, or bad adjuncts, which do spoil its indifference and innocence; it is the abuse thereof, to ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... chairs to see if they recalled any memories, a copper warming pan, a damaged foot stove that she thought she remembered, and a number of housekeeping utensils unfit ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... move towards a condition of repugnance to new ideas—a repugnance that becomes hatred when they are inconsistent with the old theories that have grown to be part of ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas; we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting based on them, but of course cumber the ground and retard progress. In youth, having few theories of our own or that have cost us enough labour in acquirement to seem very precious, we ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... Between the lines on my paper I was ever seeing the old baronial hall that was Tom Temple's home, and the people who had been invited to spend the festive season there. Presently I began to chide myself for my foolishness. Why should the thoughts of a Christmas holiday so unfit me, a staid old bachelor of thirty, for my usual work? Nevertheless it did, so I put on my overcoat, and went away in the direction of Hyde Park in order, if possible, to dispel my fancies. I did dispel them, and shortly afterwards returned to my lodgings, ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... small of stature to undertake wrathful purposes, and all unfit to represent the mighty winds that rend the stubborn oak, and the fierce tempests that scatter yet wilder desolation," said the Teton chief, surveying, almost contemptuously, the diminutive form of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... service was over to engage in private enterprise. Two years of such training would dissipate all the slackness, lack of precision, and laziness which are so often apparent in young men who have never had any strict discipline in their homes, and whom parental weakness has rendered unfit for the hard ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... structural gradation and geological succession. It is true that we do not find the Actiniae in the Reef any more than in the crust of the earth, for the absence of hard parts in their bodies makes them quite unfit to serve as Reef-Builders. Neither do we find the Fungidae, for they, like all low forms, are single, and not confined to one level, having a wider range in depth and extent than other stony Polyps. But the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... since some cavalry horses, deemed "unfit for further service," were sold at Tattersal's. Of one of these a Miller happened to be the purchaser. Subservient now to the ignoble purposes of burthen, the horse one day was led,'with a sack of flour on his back, to the next market- town; there while the Miller entered a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and Somersetshire, but who had not,—so said the constable,—honoured Lavington for the last two years, till this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be clear that he had no broken bones. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Manning was arrested. He was found guilty of cowardice, and his sword was broken in front of the Stadt Huys in the presence of the citizens, and he was declared, on the good authority of King Charles II., unfit ever ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest, rejection of the unfit—force-correlations, molecular machinery, transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates, molA(C)cules organiques, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulA|, with which the average mind ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... quality of any action, and the consequent obligation to desist from it, they reply to you in the very spirit of Shylock, "they cannot find it in the bond." In short, they know Christianity only as a system of restraints. She is despoiled of every liberal and generous principle: she is rendered almost unfit for the social intercourses of life, and is only suited to the gloomy walls of that cloister, in which they would confine her. But true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude. Their's is accordingly ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce |
