"Unfit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met with him, saving the obscure fears concerning the fate of the Countess, which his dying words were calculated to convey, and which induced them to urge their journey with the utmost speed, pressing horses in the Queen's name when those which they rode became unfit for service. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... hand, notwithstanding its great cost, is coming more and more into favor, and has the great recommendations of strength and safety. It is also of such a nature that wheels tired with it run much further before being unfit for further service than those made of cast iron, and consequently renewals are less frequent. The inference would seem to be that a combination of steel and cast iron would effect the desirable safeness with the greatest cheapness; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... to be as full and as truthful as the ample materials at the author's disposal permitted. The reader will conjecture that Lord Lytton could have given many more details, but apart from the fact that they would often have been wholly unfit for publication, it is difficult to see that they would in any degree have altered the balance of the story, or modified our judgment, which is quite sufficiently enlightened by the copious letters on both sides which are now for the first ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... eat their Hearts, and drink their Blood, Were they not Poison, and unfit for Dogs. Here, you Blood-hunter, have you lost your Feeling? You Tygress Bitch! You Breeder up of Serpents! [Slapping HONNYMAN in the face, and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... one of the fresh-water tanks was carried away and, before it was noticed, sea-water had entered to such an extent as to render our supply unfit for drinking. Thus we were, henceforth, on a strictly ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... man unfit for a soldier's life who was not ready to unfurl his country's flag, and let it be known for whom he is fighting. What is the position of those who read this paper? Do you, in your heart, believe that Jesus ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... the cannon, and is apt to make it unfit for war. Our lack of imagination, and our present sense of comfort and well-being, tend to make us fancy that we shall go on for ever in the quiet jog-trot of settled life without any very great calamities or changes. But there was once a village at the bottom of the crater ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the event of the Court, contemplated by Article 8 of the Amendment of the Grondwet of 1877, declaring the State President, or the Supreme Court, contemplated by Article 115 of the Grondwet, declaring the Commandant-General or other members of the Executive unfit to occupy his or their office, the Chairman of the Volksraad, upon the receipt of the decision of such Court, shall convene the members of the Volksraad, who shall be bound to attend, in order to dismiss the official or officials found guilty; and to provide ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... rapidly exhaust the nutrient fluid. They take from it food and oxygen and they put into it their wastes. To prevent its becoming unfit for supplying their needs, food and oxygen must be continually added to this fluid, and waste materials must be continually removed. This is not an easy task. As a matter of fact, the preparation, distribution, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... he had lain prostrate in the wretchedness of his loss. "A girl you could put in your hat—and there you have a strong man prone." He had been a sluggard, weary of himself, unfit to fight, a failure in life and a failure in love. That was ended; he was tired of failing, and it was time to succeed for a while. To accept the worst that Fate can deal, and to wring courage from it instead of despair, that is success; and it was the success that ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... "but it was exactly the physical beauty of the picture that rendered it in my eyes unfit to represent one whose aspect should purify and purge the senses, instead of exciting them. Let all the pictures in the world be destroyed, if they be found to have caused the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the companies composing the Philadelphia regiment, being met, chose me for their colonel; but, conceiving myself unfit, I declin'd that station, and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person, and man of influence, who was accordingly appointed. I then propos'd a lottery to defray the expense of building a battery below the town, and furnishing ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... "Beast!" said he, "unfit art thou to march with these my comrades. Now therefore do I cast thee out. Take thy life and go, and let any follow thee that will—Pentavalon needeth not thy kind. Get thee from among us, empty-handed ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... town is better secured by its strong walls against a first onset, they contented themselves there with sawing holes in the great wooden gates, for the purpose of firing through them. Every thing denoted the determination not to spare the city in the least, however unfit in itself for a point of defence. The only circumstance calculated to tranquillize the timid was the presence of our king, for whom, at any rate, Napoleon could not but have ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... question of Reform, we hear it said by the very same persons, "Would you alter the Representative system in such agitated times as these?" Half the logic of misgovernment lies in this one sophistical dilemma: If the people are turbulent, they are unfit for liberty: if they are quiet, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thy brother and sister dear, They have made them unfit for thee; 10 They have withered the smile and dried the tear Which should have been sacred to me. To a blighting faith and a cause of crime They have bound them slaves in youthly prime, And they will curse my name and thee 15 Because ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... impossible, contradictory, in the present system of society, for the proletariat to secure well-being through education or education through well-being. For, without considering the fact that the proletaire, a human machine, is as unfit for comfort as for education, it is demonstrated, on the one hand, that his wages continually tend to go down rather than up, and, on the other, that the cultivation of his mind, if it were possible, would be useless to him; so that he always ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... before planning her meals for the day, and is particular to use scraps of bread and left-over meat and vegetables as quickly as possible. Especially is this necessary in hot weather. Never use any food unless perfectly sweet and fresh. If otherwise, it is unfit ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... 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 her from parasites. Again the provisions and marketable ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... of overcoming the abuses, until its procrastination had destroyed the object of his wishes. He had courage sufficient, as well as decision, where others were not menaced and the danger was confined to himself; but, where his family or his people were involved, he was utterly unfit to give direction. The want of self-sufficiency in his own faculties have been his, and his throne's, ruin. He consulted those who caused him to swerve from the path his own better reason had dictated, and, in seeking the best course, he often ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... be taken as a governing principle, in all civil relations, that the strong will grow stronger and the feeble more weak, until the first become unfit to rule or the last unable to endure. In this important truth is contained the secret of the downfall of all those states which have crumbled beneath the weight of their own abuses. It teaches the necessity ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... despatched to the passes among the hills. There was a narrow-featured Vermonter in this party, termed, by his comrades, the Hatchet-face, and, in truth, the extreme thinness of his chest and the slenderness of his limbs might as aptly have been called the hatchet-handle. But, so far from being unfit for the hardy pursuits of a hunter, he was gifted with the activity of a greyhound, and the swiftness and bottom of a race-horse. His name was Sneak Punk, which was always abbreviated to merely Sneak, for his general success in creeping up to the unsuspecting ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... light, sandy soils it is best to follow with the roller, otherwise the coarse manure may cause the soil to lie so loose and open that both soil and manure will lose moisture so rapidly that fermentation of the manure will be stopped and the soil will be unfit for planting. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... Monday, so that Tuesday was fixed, much to Eustace's displeasure, for he did not like Harold's condescending to work which labourers would hardly undertake; and besides, he would make his hands, if not himself, absolutely unfit for the entertainment on Thursday. On which Harold asked if there were no such thing as water. Eustace implored him to give it up and send half-a-dozen unemployed men, but to this he answered, "I should ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... disposed while man proposed. God kept out of the mission field, at this juncture, one so utterly unfit for His work that he had not even learned that primary lesson that he who would work with God must first wait on Him and wait for Him, and that all undue haste in such a matter is worse than waste. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... help her off with her coat, but she stopped him, and he didn't insist, guessing that she supposed her blouse to be unfit for publication. ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... You will pardon me, I hope, That so beyond your expectation, (And at a time for visitants so unfit) 250 I (with my noble friend here) visit you: You know that my accesse at any time Hath ever beene admitted; and that friend, That my care will presume to bring with me, Shall have all circumstance of worth in him 255 To merit ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... corps. They believed that their only associates, on terms of equality, should be of their own order, as the clergy or medical profession, representing an educated aristocracy. The masses were illiterate, unpolished and, in the estimation of the lawyers, unfit for companionship with the cultivated classes, whose policy it was to inspire the plain people with profound ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... say to him: 'O Prince of True Believers, my handmaid is worth more than this: do but prove her, and her value will be magnified in thine eyes; for this slave-girl hath not her equal, and she were unfit to any but thou.'" And she added, "Beware, O my lord, of selling me at less than the sum I have named; indeed 'tis but little for the like of me." Now her owner knew not her worth nor that she had no equal in her day; but he carried her to the Caliph and set her in the presence and repeated ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... forms die when their utility is over; in history, peoples succumb when their work in and for the world is complete. Shall, he asks, we recognise Judaism as the solitary exception, as the unique instance of the survival of the unfit and ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... which called it haunted. The green room—I remembered now how fearfully the servants avoided it—how it was mentioned rarely, and in whispers, when we were children, and how we had regarded it as a mysterious region, unfit for mortal habitation. Was It—the dark form with the chain—a creature of this world, or a specter? And again—more dreadful still—could it be that the corpses of wicked men were forced to rise and haunt in the body the places where they had wrought their evil deeds? And was ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... a feeling of fear or depression. Once committed to the undertaking, he spends anxious days and sleepless nights in mental agony, much as a criminal is said to do just prior to his execution. When at last he attempts his "maiden effort," he is almost wholly unfit for his task because of the needless waste of thought and energy ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... scarcely more than a third of the whole number of average mental capacity. It is evident that these people, even if restored to sobriety, would still retain their more or less inborn defectiveness, and would remain equally, unfit to become the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Happily some of our journals will not publish such advertisements, and no editor can excuse himself by saying that he is ignorant of the character of such announcements. It must be known to every man of experience that such advertisements are unfit for the perusal of young men or women, and it is surprising that the heads of families should permit newspapers containing those advertisements to enter their houses. As a well-known English author some-time ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... water it is necessary for parties to carry a supply even when they expect to be in the vicinity of the Cheyenne River and probably ford the South fork, as these waters carry in solution a quantity of alkali that renders them unfit for drinking, although the effects would not be fatal but simply the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... which made a decided improvement on a desert. Doubtless—had that water been pure. But every mouthful of it was a blood poison, and helped promote disease and death. Even before reaching the Stockade it was so polluted by the drainage of the Rebel camps as to be utterly unfit for human use. In our part of the prison we sank several wells—some as deep as forty feet—to procure water. We had no other tools for this than our ever-faithful half canteens, and nothing wherewith ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... do. The woman, worn out with anxiety or abuse, may be unequal to their physical care for the present; or they may be running wild and in danger of becoming delinquent. The mother may be morally an unfit guardian, and the desertion may furnish the long-sought opportunity to interfere for the children's protection. Commitment may have to be planned, and the mother's consent won, to save the children from the return of a brutal father, against whom she ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... Helene, "that was just like the Prince. He was afraid of flattering you and making you unfit for your work. But if he said nothing, depend ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... and he might have found me better lodgings and something to do. But after I came back from the South and was unfit to do clerical work because of my eyes, he only threw me a dollar now and then—like throwing a bone to a ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Governor of all below, If I might dare a lifted eye to thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, And still the tumult of the raging sea; With that controlling power assist even me Those headstrong furious passions to confine, For all unfit I feel my powers to be To rule their torrent in the allowed line; O, aid me ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... 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
... ears are not dull, nor my eyes blind. But too much out of the world lives your father; men who do so grow unfit to live in the world. He dreams dreams impossible to us—impossible to France—and then he says 'Liberty is a dream.' Well, well, Life also ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... have thought it then—but not now. I've had two days to think it over. It all comes down to this: If, knowing how you felt about it, I could not kneel there beside you and take that taste of wine without going under, I'm just what you suspected—weak, unfit." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... this time in a court off the Rue St. Jacques, not far from the church of that name; and the house being remote from the eyes and observation of the street, seemed not unfit for secret and desperate uses. Although we noted lights shining behind several of the barred windows, the wintry night, the darkness of the court, and perhaps the errand on which we came, imparted ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... of late of the possibility that the great lakes cities may suffer a water famine. The rapid increase of population along the borders of these great seas, it has been said, might render the water unfit for use. This fear is based upon the assumption that we shall always continue the present very foolish practice of dumping our sewage into the source of our water supply. The time may come when we shall know better how to protect the public ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... the mind of the reader is one of disappointment. At first blush one is ready to believe that the members of the little colony, in proving the free negro capable of raising cotton to good advantage, had still more completely proved him unfit for freedom. Yet the more one reflects on the story, the more plainly one sees that the discouraging state of things described in the later letters was merely the inevitable result of Emancipation, and would have been the same had any other race been concerned, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... the result was that Miki came up slowly through the mire and spread himself out like an overgrown crustacean while he got the wind back into his lungs. Neewa, sensing the fact that for a few moments his comrade was physically unfit for travel, shook himself, and waited. Miki picked up quickly. Within five minutes he was on his feet shaking himself so furiously that Neewa became the centre of a shower of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... perspiration produce on the air and the clothing?—"It soon makes the air unfit to be breathed, and the ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... hearing this, would have driven me from his presence, saying it was unfit such a wretch should even enjoy the blessings of the air; but Bennaskar would not suffer it, and asked me, "Whether the insincerity of my friends had taught me to be ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... on earth has got to reach heaven on the same terms as the greatest sinner; unworthy, unfit, good-for-nothing; but saved through grace. Do cheer and comfort yourself with these thoughts, my dearest Anna, and your sick-room will be the happiest room in your house, as I constantly pray it may be! Your ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... cause of all the calamities of the country. Monmouth held similar language in the House of Lords. Though First Lord of the Treasury, he paid no attention to financial business, for which he was altogether unfit, and of which he had very soon become weary. His whole heart was in the work of persecuting the Tories. He plainly told the King that nobody who was not a Whig ought to be employed in the public service. William's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for her trysting-place because of its seclusion, and partly, perhaps, for the sake 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 ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... of Austrian birth, and, though a spotless and noble woman, her most trivial actions gave occasion to calumnies founded on the crimes of the last generation. Unfortunately, the king, though an honest and well-intentioned man, was totally unfit to guide a country through a dangerous crisis. His courage was passive, his manners were heavy, dull, and shy, and, though steadily industrious, he was slow of comprehension and unready in action; and reformation was the more difficult because to abolish the useless court offices ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be burdened by the young of man was in no way to his liking. He could see from her evident fright at her position on the branch, and from the terrified glances she cast in his direction that she was hopelessly unfit. By all the ethics of Akut's training and inheritance the unfit should be eliminated; but if The Killer wished this there was nothing to be done about it but to tolerate her. Akut certainly didn't want her—of that he was quite positive. Her skin was ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the state and inadequacy of the transports, which, besides ten ocean steamers, fit and unfit, included six river steamers wholly of the latter class, Weitzel sailed from New Orleans on the evening of the 4th of September. Leaving the Southwest Pass on the morning of the 5th, under convoy of the Arizona, and steering westward, he was joined, early ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... communication not being completed, and roads rendered unfit by heavy rains, delayed the passage of canteen stores, and the rations had perforce to consist chiefly of mutton caught, killed and eaten the same day. Shall we ever forget the taste of it? Of course, we did get goat sometimes as a variation. Xmas Day was on ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... public ships and between the officers of the Army and Navy in the various grades of each; for reorganizing the naval establishment by fixing the number of officers in each grade, and providing for a retired list upon reduced pay of those unfit for active duty; for prescribing and regulating punishments in the Navy; for the appointment of a commission to revise the public statutes of the United States by arranging them in order, supplying deficiencies, correcting incongruities, simplifying their language, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... 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. From their perjured lips it became my mechanical ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... imperar to rule. imperio empire, authority. imperioso imperious. imperterrito intrepid. impio impious. imponente imposing. imponer to impose. importancia importance. importar to import, matter. impropio improper, unfit. improvisar to extemporize. impulsar to impel, push. impunidad f. impunity. inaccion f. inaction. incendiar to kindle, set on fire. incentivo incentive, incitement. incesantemente continually. inclinar to incline, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... conceited, Sir; I may be vain of my little reading; of my writing; as of late I have more than once been told I am. But, Sir, the more unequal the proposed match, if so: the better opinion I have of myself, the worse I must have of him; and the more unfit are we for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... over a gentle fire; the pot should then be put in a heap of hot sand, to give the impurities time to settle, before it cools into a mass. When this has taken place, the bottom part must be broken off and put aside as unfit for making gunpowder, and the top part alone used. Flower of sulphur ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... substance remains the same. Mahanaim is still the name of every place where a man who loves God pitches his tent. We may be wandering, solitary, defenceless, but we are not alone. Our feeble encampment may lie open to assault, and we be all unfit to guard it, but the other camp is there too, and our enemies must force their way through it before they get at us. We are in its centre—as they put the cattle and the sick in the midst of the encampment on the prairies when they fear an assault ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... can do no good at present; my business is to write an opera for Paris; for anything else I am unfit. This object cannot be attained by storm; in the most favourable case I shall achieve the poem in half a year, and the performance in a year and a half. In Paris without a home, or—which is the same—peace of heart, I can do no work; I must find a new place where I am at home and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... physician telling me that a gentleman objected very much to some prescriptions given to his wife, and wanted some quack medicines tried. The doctor opposed him, and on the gentleman calling on him and telling him he was unfit for his profession, there was an open rupture between them, and they cut each other in the street. Not long afterwards the gentleman died, and left him a legacy of L500. The doctor could not help being amused at the bequest under such circumstances, though, had it come equally ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sun. Much of the 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 all ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... raise her face to his, and take the reward he felt his due. Then she said she must return, but Ambrose would bring him all particulars. Ambrose was as anxious as herself and her mistress that the thing should be done, but was unfit by all his habits, and his dainty, scholarly niceness, to render such effectual assistance as the soldier could do. Giles offered to scale the gate by night himself carry off the head, and take it to any place Mrs Roper might appoint, with no assistance save such as Ambrose could ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make none, Sir Edward. I regret that I should have conceived so mad a thought; it is enough to unfit me for longer holding position as you agent, which I beg ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... and oral confession of their faith. Yet these new members may vote, and may determine the attitude of the church in important exigencies. All this is avoided in our mission churches. They perceive the necessity of keeping out the unfit, as clearly as that of admitting the fit. They do not add to their membership by infant baptism, and they make sure that no pecuniary considerations influence professing converts. Our Baptist mission ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision.—Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world![120] How glorious in its action and itself! But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit 40 To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride, Contending with low wants and lofty will, Till our Mortality predominates, And men are—what they name not to themselves, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the time with a sleepy, voluptuous expression, which suggests a lack of intelligence and too great a susceptibility to physical impressions. Women as we find them in contemporary memoirs, and these most often deal with such as are about the court, are not unfit companions for the men. We see not a few the willing victims of coarse intrigues, and some even assisting in the degradation of others of their sex. Many of them swore "good mouth filling oaths," and the scandal they talked would have shocked the taste as well as the principles of Elizabeth's ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... a few days later, M'Splae falls out on a long regimental route-march, and hobbles home, chaperoned by a not ungrateful lance-corporal, in a state of semi-collapse. This time the M.O. reports to the captain that Private M'Splae will be unfit for further duty until he is provided with a proper pair of boots. Are there no boots in ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had been taught by experience, that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was unfit for action, and almost incapable of motion; [80] his archers were directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety of spikes and snares were scattered over the ground on which he might expect an attack. In the neighborhood of Larissa the events ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... soon became evident that he could not live. On his dying bed he designated Peter as his successor, passing over his brother John. The reason for this was that John was so extremely feeble and infirm that he seemed to be wholly unfit to reign over such an empire. Besides various other maladies under which he suffered, he was afflicted with epilepsy, a disease which rendered it wholly unsuitable that he should assume any burdens whatever of responsibility ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... up before the sun, and in the large dark closet which adjoined her sleeping room, she rummaged through band-boxes and on the top shelves until she found and brought to light a straw hat, which was new the fall before, but which her mother had decided unfit to appear again in the city. Jenny had heard the unkind remarks which Mary's odd-looking bonnet elicited, and she now determined to give her this one, though she did not dare to do so without her mother's ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... all unworthy art To fall beneath a prince's noble hand. The hangman's axe should thy accursed head Cleave from thy trunk, unfit for such vile use The royal Duke of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Tragedy of 'Gowry,' with all the action and actors, hath been twice represented by the King's Players, with exceeding concourse of all sorts of people; but whether the matter or manner be not well handled, or that it be thought unfit that Princes should be played on the stage in their lifetime, I hear that some great Councellors are much displeased with it, and so 'tis thought shall be forbidden. And so wishing a merry Christmas ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... that we did not expect him to reach the Glacier Tongue, and that he has now done more than 100 miles from Cape Evans, one really does not know what to expect of these creatures. Certainly Titus thinks, as he has always said, that they are the most unsuitable scrap-heap crowd of unfit creatures that could possibly ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... at a small distance, sternly enquired why he had not put a stop to the inhuman massacre. 'Sir,' said Proctor, 'your Indians cannot be commanded.' 'Begone' retorted Tecumseh, with the greatest disdain, 'you are unfit to command; go and put ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... man,—venerable by his silver beard,—lies wounded and dying near the threshold of his hut. War, suddenly instigated by avarice, has just visited the dwellings which we see. The old have been butchered, because unfit for slavery, and the young have been carried off, except such as have fallen in the conflict, or have escaped ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... gored, Which they were told would be their lot When Cromwell came. So from each cot They bore away what pleased them best, And to the flames consigned the rest. But now Dunbar is reached; yet he Finds himself in extremity; Midst swamps and bogs unfit to tent, By Lammermoor from hillside rent, Leslie in front defiant stands A noble army he commands Of thousands two score seven, or more, Ready on Cromwell shot to pour. Behind the sea cut off retreat; With such great odds can he compete? The mountain sheep may safely tread The Lammermoor, ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... asked, during the eight years of Jose's course in the seminary, did his tutors not mark the forces at work in the boy's soul? And if so, why did they not urge his dismissal as unfit for the calling ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the way of the wicked. He unmasked sin, showing its hideous deformity, how it pollutes the soul, and makes man unfit for fellowship with a holy God. Then he passed on to show the guilt of sin, the awful misery coming to a man when he is face to face with his iniquities. With great skill he pointed out condemnation ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... you—I know you, 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 you so ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... delusion (thought I), that encourages the ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies that are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the possessor—that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for private life—and that, while they expose him to the ridicule of strangers, render him the victim of his wife, and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... less to other sinners than to fornicators: because by other mortal sins, sinners act against the charity of Christ, of which this sacrament is the sign, and all the more according as their sins are graver. But in a measure the sin of fornication makes one more unfit for receiving this sacrament, because thereby especially the spirit becomes enslaved by the flesh, which is a hindrance to the fervor of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Adams, under date of February 29th, 1760, in which he says that few things were "so fruitful of destructive evils" as "licensed houses." They had become, he declares, "the eternal haunts of loose, disorderly people of the town, which renders them offensive and unfit for the entertainment of any traveler of the least delicacy." * * * "Young people are tempted to waste their time and money, and to acquire habits of intemperance and idleness, that we often see reduce many to beggary and vice, and lead some of ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... six weeks of an illness which has rendered me unfit for serious work I long to be transported into the circle of my Paris friends, to find myself again among the men whose devotion to science gives them a clear understanding of its tendency and influence. Therefore I take my way quite naturally to the Rue Cuvier ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... said the monk, signing himself with the cross, "it is the Holy Scripture. But it is rendered into the vulgar tongue, and therefore, by the order of the Holy Catholic Church, unfit to be in the hands ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... it most—given, too, on pretexts which sometimes strike one as inadequate, not to say recondite. So the street-scavengering in a certain village has been entrusted to a one-armed cripple, utterly unfit for the business—why? Because his maternal grand-uncle is serving a long sentence in gaol. The poor family must be helped! A brawny young fellow will be removed from a landing-stage boat, and his place taken by some tottering ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... his dear brethren indiscreet mortifications, which are injurious to the body; representing to them that they either hasten death, or throw the body into such a state of languor and weakness, as makes it unfit for spiritual exercises, or an impediment to the practice of good works. Oh, fortunate and happy times, when it was necessary to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... a failure as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with nothing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... mine,[27] in what moans of bitter lamentation do I dwell, in the songs of a songless strain unfit for the lyre, alas! alas! in funereal griefs for the ills which befall me, bemoaning my brother, what a vision have I seen in the night whose darkness has passed away![28] I am undone, undone. No more is my father's house, ah me! no more is our race. Alas! alas! ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... in his private life. Not only did he at a later period become a great advocate of Gluck against Piocini, but, in spite of his argument that it was impossible to compose music to French words, that the language was quite unfit for it, that the French never had music and never would, he himself had composed a good deal of music to French words and produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... unknown And unsaluted? 'twas not wont to be Thus frozen with the younger companie Of jolly Shepherds; 'twas not then held good, For lusty Grooms to mix their quicker blood With that dull humour, most unfit to be The friend of man, cold and dull Chastitie. Sure I am held not fair, or am too old, Or else not free enough, or from my fold Drive not a flock sufficient great, to gain The greedy eyes of wealth-alluring ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of Princess Charlotte, the nation was particularly sensitive with regard to the health of the heir to the crown. Whispers began to spread abroad, happily without much foundation, of pale cheeks, and a constitution unfit for the burden which was to be ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... from selection, though great numbers were eager for the field.... Where there was no lack of educated men in the dominant party, the appointments consisted generally of swaggerers, dependents, decayed gentlemen, and others "fit for nothing else," which always turned out utterly unfit for any military ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... "[t]en[)a]n[']de uq[|c]a[']ha [|c]a^{n}" or pericardium(?) of the buffalo, which is like sinew. This does not smell unpleasant, even when used for seven or ten days. But at the expiration of that time it is unfit for further service. ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,
... present mood, it was only torture to prolong this interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,—unfit even for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to the purpose that had broken from him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... much time has been lost. Mrs. Watts is of the same opinion; and with this view, "the extravagances of those apocryphal personages—giants, ghosts, and fairies—have been entirely banished from her pages, as tending not only to enervate the infant mind, and unfit it for the reception of more wholesome nutriment, but also to increase the superstitious terrors of childhood,—the editor has not less scrupulously excluded those novel-like stories of exaggerated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... majority of men are sufficiently candid to acknowledge—at least to themselves—that they are unfit for the station of law-giver; but the vanity and jealousy begotten by participation in political power, lead many of them, if not actually to believe, at all events to act upon the faith, that men, no more able than themselves, are the best material for rulers. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... worth the while of children; and it is not an adverse criticism of Louisa M. Alcott to say that they are not worth the while of mature men and women. Similarly, it is not an adverse criticism of certain Continental novelists to say that their characters are decidedly unfit companions for adolescent girls. Our judgment of the characters in a novel should be conditioned always by our sense of the sort of readers to whom the novel is addressed. Henry James, in his later years, wrote usually for ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... 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 ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very different from Navarre, with his powerful profile and broad chest like an eagle in repose, and different from Nungesser, the Nungesser before his wounds had so devastated his body that a medical board wanted to declare him unfit, a decision which he heroically resisted, adding to his thirty victories another triumph over physical disability. Guynemer differed from them mentally, too, possessing neither their instinct nor their ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... wisdom. Here and now, in and around us, there is the heavenly presence of budding life, of widening vision, of "new thoughts urgent as the growth of wings." Let us turn the white forehead of hope to the fair time, and deem no labor great by which we shall become less unfit to do the work ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... talking too much," said the Senora's voice, in the doorway; and as she spoke she looked reproachfully at Ramona. If she had said in words, "See how unfit you are to be trusted with Felipe. No wonder I do not leave the room except when I must!" her meaning could not have been plainer. Ramona felt it keenly, and not without some misgiving that it ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in spite of the bold face he put upon the matter, was quite unfit to walk. The rough treatment he had received when his legs were tied together had completely crippled him, and in addition his head was injured by a kick from ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn |
