"Unfitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desired promise very cheerfully; for he had completely wrought himself up into the belief that the man he so much esteemed himself must be acceptable to his daughter. He had married a woman much younger than himself, and he saw no unfitness in the respective years of the intended couple. Mabel was educated so much above him, too, that he was not aware of the difference which actually existed between the parent and child in this respect. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the Navy service of the United States shall be discharged therefrom prior to the completion of his term of enlistment, except for one of the following causes: Undesirability, inaptitude, physical or mental disability, or unfitness. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs. Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public demonstration of the unfitness of women for ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... he attempted to get agricultural employment; but the whiteness of his hands and the tone of his voice not merely suggested unfitness for labour, but generated suspicion as to the character of one who had evidently dropped from a rank so much higher, and was seeking admittance within the natural masonic boundaries and secrets and privileges of another. Disheartened somewhat, but hopeful, he journeyed on. I say ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... is because their minds and bodies are not fitted for them. Therefore she accepts this, in the same way as she accepts physical inferiority, as a fact against which it is useless and silly to declaim, knowing that it is not men who keep her out, but her own unfitness. Moreover, she knows that it is made good to her in other ways, and thus the balance is redressed. You see, she knows her own strength and her own weakness. Can there be a more valuable ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... so different, yet alike in generous feeling and honourable principle—should both evidently disapprove of such a union: was I myself, then, so blinded by ideas of the worldly advantages it held forth, that I was unable to perceive its unfitness? Would Lawless really prize her, as Tennyson has so well expressed it ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the present Becky on the concert-stage flashed through Betty's usually hopeful mind. She felt a heartache, as she thought of her friend's unfitness and inevitable disappointment. Becky—plain, ungainly, honest Becky—felt it in her to do great things, yet she hardly knew what great things were. Persons of Betty's age never count upon having years of time in which to make themselves better. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... past and for the existing superiority of the Old World; and there are good reasons, also, why this superiority should not much longer continue. Europe is old,—America is young. Land has been cultivated for centuries in Europe, and often by the same family; its capacity tested, its fitness or unfitness for particular crops proved, the local and special effects of different fertilizers well known, and the experience of many generations has been preserved, so as to be equivalent to a like experience, in time and extent, by the present occupants ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... to modern poets, with one exception, for sustained work. Browning wrote his Fifine at the Fair (1872) in this measure; and while he succeeded in relieving it of some of its monotony, he only demonstrated again its unfitness, in English, for continuous use. A peculiar musical effect is obtained from it, however, by Mr. Siegfried Sassoon in ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... far: Let me still take away the harms I fear, Not fear still to be taken: I know his heart. What he hath utter'd I have writ my sister: If she sustain him and his hundred knights, When I have show'd th' unfitness,— ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the Lunch Club that, within her own province, each member's habits of thought should be respected. The meeting therefore closed with an increased sense, on the part of the other ladies, of Mrs. Roby's hopeless unfitness to be ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... poor ME up—I assure you I've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no secret of her husband's unfitness for real responsibilities. The day came indeed when her breathless auditors learnt from her in bewilderment that what ailed him was that he was, alas, simply not serious. Maisie wept on Mrs. Wix's bosom after hearing that Sir Claude was a butterfly; ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... green uniform? They are at issue upon the dress then worn by him; if he had not this dress on, what other had he? And if he had the green one on, what true or probable reason existed for the change of that? the unfitness of appearing in it before his commanding officer, Lord Yarmouth, is negatived by Lord Yarmouth himself; supposing him to have appeared in any disguise, it is the conduct of an accomplice, to assist him in getting ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... middle, and the end, the result of all murderous acts, insolence, insanity, arrogance, pride, patience, policy, impolicy, powerlessness and power, respect, disrespect, decay and stability, humility, charity, fitness of time and unfitness of time, falsehood, wisdom, truth, belief, disbelief, impotence, trade, profit, loss, success, defeat, fierceness, mildness, death, acquisition and non-acquisition, agreement and disagreement, that which should be done and that which should not be done, strength and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... young woman, could only break down and weep. Why, oh why, had she consented to bring herself and her misery into her father's house? She could at any rate have prevented that by explaining to her father the unfitness of such ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of their President, have issued to me a commission certifying that I am worthy to wear the shoulder-straps of an army officer. The shoulder-straps stand for the strictest sense of honor in all things. If I depart, ever so little, from the laws of honor, I prove my unfitness to wear shoulder-straps. Have ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... at the dancing until I could endure it no longer. Overcome by a sense of isolation and unfitness, I slipped out of the room, avoiding the teacher's eye, and went home ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... ardent tones of generous youth. He played with the ears of his hound; fingered his own rustic garment, and opened and shut the pan of his rifle, with hands that trembled in a manner that would have implied their total unfitness to wield the weapon. When the other ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... one would fancy the skirt alone to have been charged for. Since Miss Arrowpoint was generally liked for the amiable unpretending way in which she wore her fortunes, and made a softening screen for the oddities of her mother, there seemed to be some unfitness in Gwendolen's looking so much more like a person of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and the good soul enjoyed that far more than her dinner, for she meant to ask Mr. Power to help her find the right sort of home for the stranger whose unfitness for her present place was every day made more apparent to the mind of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Philadelphus, grow up everything that he could wish him to be; and, moved alike by his love for the mother and by the good qualities of the son, he chose him as his successor on the throne, instead of his eldest son, Ptolemy Ceraunus, who had shown, by every act in his life, his unfitness for ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... everything except to know how to live and how to make himself happy. Finally, when this enslaved child, this little tyrant, full of learning and devoid of sense, enfeebled alike in mind and body, is cast upon the world, he there by his unfitness, by his pride, and by all his vices, makes us deplore human wretchedness and perversity. We deceive ourselves; this is the man our whims have created. Nature makes men by a ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... and Lord Byron were rather a peculiar combination, as the foundation of an infant's library; but I was not aware of any unfitness or incompatibility. To me they were two brother-books, like each other in their ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... to us?" What right indeed? She was convinced, in short, that she had been embarked upon a hopeless piece of snobbery, and, finding the whole business distasteful, it had not been difficult to discover her unfitness. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... congratulations to Mr. S.? He has my admiration; he is a brave man; when I was young, I should have run away from the sight of you, pierced with the sense of my unfitness. He is more wise and manly. What a good husband he will have to be! And you - what a good wife! Carry your love tenderly. I will never forgive him - or you - it is in both your hands - if the face that once gladdened my heart should be changed into ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opening of the second part the character of Werther is further revealed in a new set of circumstances. Against his own inclinations he accepts an official appointment under an ambassador at a petty German Court, and his helpless unfitness in this situation for the ordinary business of life may be regarded as a commentary on Goethe's own invincible distaste for the practice of his profession. Werther finds the ambassador intolerable; and a public insult ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Comitia for re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution and to make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have contemplated such a position for himself as possible is of itself a proof of his unfitness for it. The election-day came. The noble lords and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain for demagogues, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... Englishman willing to help him in all his schemes, in the person of Tostig, Harold's brother, who had been outlawed at the demand of the nation, owing to his unfitness to rule his province as Earl of Northumberland. He had sunk from bad to worse. Harold had done all he could for his fallen brother, but to restore him was impossible. Tostig was at the Norman court, urging William to the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Richard Baxter, whose history of his own life and times is one of the most informing books in the world, never so much as mentions the one and only man whose name can, without any violent sense of unfitness, be given to the age about which Baxter was ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... divorce is "indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to hinder, the main benefits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace." Without the "deep and serious verity" of mutual love, wedlock is "nothing but the empty husks of a mere outside matrimony," ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... as if such things, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... admit, with due humility, his unfitness to embellish his letters with the gorgeous and pyrotechnic lavishness of "fancy writing" which graces the letters of the New York Correspondents, but he is sure that the items which follow are infinitely ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... A clear luminous perception of the nature and characteristics of that invisible world which is soon to receive them, would make them thoughtful and anxious for their souls; for they would become aware of their utter unfitness, their entire lack of preparation, to see God face to face. Still, live and act as sinful men may, eternity is over and around them all, even as the firmament is bent over the globe. If theirs were a penitent and a believing eye, they would look up with adoration into its serene depths, ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... degrades another. In respectability she could not earn what was barest necessity for her—what she was now getting at Lange's—decent shelter, passable food. Ejected from her own class that shelters its women and brings them up in unfitness for the unsheltered life, she was dropping as all such women must and do drop—was going down, down, down—striking on this ledge and that, and rebounding to resume her ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... little trouble in convincing him that the strong inclination which he felt to bestow her on Julian Peveril, provided he could be brought over to his own political opinions, was a blameable compromise with his more severe principles. Late circumstances had taught him the incapacity and unfitness of Dame Debbitch for the sole charge of so dear a pledge; and he readily and thankfully embraced the kind offer of her maternal uncle, Christian, to place Alice under the protection of a lady of rank in London, whilst he himself was to be engaged in the scenes of bustle and blood, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... with a certain timidity—a timidity that lured me back to my normally overbearing frame of mind. In such matters I was used to hearing my own voice. I could talk a man down, and, with a feeling of the unfitness of things, I talked Churchill down. The position, even then, struck me as gently humorous. It was as if some infinitely small animal were bullying some colossus among the beasts. I was of no account in the world, he had his say among the Olympians. And I talked recklessly, like any ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... the Government. Dashwood's financial statement had been confused and absurd beyond belief, and had been received by the House with roars of laughter. He had sense enough to be conscious of his unfitness for the high situation which he held, and exclaimed in a comical fit of despair, "What shall I do? The boys will point at me in the street and cry, 'There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.'" George Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Estate, as a Pledge to his Electors that he intends to abide by them, and has the same Interest with theirs in the publick Taxes, Gains and Losses. I have heard and weigh'd the Arguments of those who, in Opposition to this, urged the Unfitness of such, whose Lands were engaged in Debts and Mortgages, to serve in Parliament, in comparison with the mony'd Man who had no Land: But those ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... supposed unfitness of our institutions for those hostile emergencies which no country can always avoid their friends found a fruitful source of apprehension, their enemies of hope. While they foresaw less promptness of action than in governments differently formed, they overlooked the far more important ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... this much. It was petty spite which prompted the deed." Grace's lips curved in faint scorn. Stanley Forde was truly a person of small soul and less honor. Such despicable retaliation against a woman was the last touch needed to prove his unfitness to protect the welfare of loyal ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... of genius in the remark. Its very vacuity told of the man's exceeding unfitness for the role thrust upon him by certain desperadoes ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... agriculture. It has been found, however, in the irrigated lands beside the Nile that where too much saving is practised in the irrigation, the alkaline coating will appear where it has been unknown before, and with it an unfitness of ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... because the work was not well arranged. We rode over here, and went directly to the house of the person who had constructed it, who was a Quaker, where we dismounted, and willingly dismissed our horses. The house was very small, and from the incivility of the inmates and the unfitness of the place, we expected poor lodgings. As it was still daylight, and we had heard so much of the falls of the South River, or, at least, we ourselves had imagined it, we went back to the river, in order to look at them; but we discovered we had deceived ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... full, while the white regiments have with difficulty been maintained at peace strength. To question the valor of the colored soldier is to betray ignorance of history. This is the first opportunity in his history to prove on an adequate scale his fitness or unfitness for command and leadership. At Fort Des Moines, Iowa, on June 16, 1917, there assembled the largest body of educated Negroes ever brought together for a single purpose. The candidates who survive are men of marked intelligence and ability. Let any man who doubts the colored men's patriotism go to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... was ever intimately acquainted, and my father always entertained and expressed the highest admiration for her mental gifts, to which he attributed whatever talents his children might have possessed. The unfitness of her environment to her constitution is the saddest memory of my childhood. More I do not trust myself to say to the public, nor will the reader expect more ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... accustomed to free labor. I once had an argument with a Georgia planter who vociferously insisted that one of his negro laborers who had objected to a whipping had thereby furnished the most conclusive proof of his unfitness for freedom. And such statements were constantly reinforced by further assertion that they, the Southern whites, understood the negro and knew how to treat him, and that we of the North did not and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... led up a gentle slope, then down to the bed of Nome River, where they kept on the ice for several miles. It was here that Jemima's unfitness for work with experts began to manifest itself; as well as the unusual tenacity of purpose that seemed either perseverance or perversity—depending upon whether you looked at the matter from Baldy's standpoint ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... Sending my baggage from Daet to Cabusao in a schooner, I proceeded on foot, by the road to that place, to the coast on the west side of the Bay of San Miguel. We crossed the mouth of the river in a boat, which the horses swam after; but they were soon abandoned from unfitness. At the mouth of the next river, Sacavin, the water was so high that the bearers stripped themselves naked and carried the baggage over on their heads. In simple jacket and cotton hose, I found this precaution needless; indeed, according to my experience, it is both refreshing and salutary ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... there was nodding and laughing, and the people put their heads together, and I knew they whispered of the loaves and fishes. I went on hastily. 'So I was made aware of my foolishness and of Moosu's wisdom; of my own unfitness and of Moosu's fitness. And because of this, being no longer mad, I make acknowledgment and rectify evil. I did cast unrighteous eyes upon Kluktu, and lo, she was sealed to Moosu. Yet is she mine, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... must not be interpreted too narrowly. A child may be "unfit" to survive in its environment, merely because its parents are ignorant and careless. Such unfitness makes more probable an inheritance of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... that such an indictment destroys itself. It recoils upon its framers, and proves nothing but their intense hatred of their victims and their total unfitness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... tolerate the Protestant religion?" Mr. Dunning next insisted, that the civil law, as well as the criminal law of England, should be preserved, and that the institution of juries, however unpalatable it might prove to the Canadians, ought not to be dispensed with. He concluded by showing the unfitness of this political state to the habits and character of English settlers, and that there was an insurmountable difficulty in reconciling the feelings and habits of the small minority with the great French majority. The bill ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... thought fit, and those so presented went to the balls as a matter of course. The position of the minister, it will be seen, was an invidious one. Under the pressure of these circumstances, Sir George Hamilton declared that he would in no case take upon himself to decide on the fitness or unfitness of any person, but would act invariably upon the old recognized rule of etiquette observed at other courts in such matters—i.e., he would present anybody who had been presented at the court of St. James, and none who had not been so presented. The result was soon apparent in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Trade, a general supervision over all the administrative work arising under the act. It has extensive powers of control over the appointment of trustees, and conducts an audit of their accounts; and it may, subject to appeal to the court, remove them from office for misconduct, neglect or unfitness. A report upon the proceedings under the act is annually presented to parliament by the Board of Trade, and although the department is practically self-supporting, a nominal vote is each year placed upon the public estimates, thus bringing the administration under direct parliamentary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... little ornaments that I could buy. But it was a hopeless attempt. The walls were so high and so dingy, the little pictures were lost upon them; and the vases on the great black mantel-shelf looked so insignificant, I felt ashamed of them, and owned the unfitness of decorating such a room. No flowers would grow in those cold north windows—no bird would sing in sight of such a street. I gave it up with a sigh; and there was one good ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... questions which are implied when you ask, "Ought I to marry?" First, "Have I a right to marry?" Every young person should ask this question. Fitness includes several aspects, among which the first is physical. The most inexcusable unfitness is venereal disease. There is no meaner crime than for a young man to acquire venereal disease by reason of weakness of will, and then pass it on to an innocent girl and perhaps to unborn children. Physicians say that in spite of so-called modern prophylaxis and supposed ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... try' are the very words Dr. Pusey used to me. I ventured to say that in such a matter effort itself was a stigma of unfitness. For all my moods of revulsion, I knew that my place was in ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... sapparized. So no more at this writing from Poor MR. DICKENS." But again the tables are turned, and he is tempter in the last; written on that Shakespeare day (23rd of April) which we kept always as a festival, and signed in character expressive of his then present unfitness for any of the practical affairs of life, including the very pressing business which at the moment ought to have occupied him, namely, attention to the long deferred nuptials of Miss Charity Pecksniff. "November blasts! Why it's the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Lausanne; and it was in one of these that I formed an intimate and lasting connection with Mr. Deyverdun, a young man of an amiable temper and excellent understanding. In the arts of fencing and dancing, small indeed was my proficiency; and some months were idly wasted in the riding-school. My unfitness to bodily exercise reconciled me to a sedentary life, and the horse, the favourite of my countrymen, never contributed to ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Frederic, Elector Palatine. Frederic was married to the bright and fascinating Princess Elizabeth of England, the darling of Protestant hearts; other qualifications for that crown of peril he had none. But in an evil hour he accepted the offer. Soon his unfitness appeared. A foreigner, he could not rein the restive and hard mouthed Czech nobility, a Calvinist and a pupil of the Huguenots, he unwisely let loose Calvinist iconoclasm among a people who clung to their ancient images though ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... long as they fulfil the conditions laid down in the Instrument of Transfer; that (2) the succession should devolve on the Maharajah's lineal descendant, whether by blood or adoption, except in the case of disqualification through manifest unfitness to rule; and that (3) the Maharajah and his successors shall at all times remain faithful in allegiance and subordination to the British Crown, and perform all the duties which, in virtue of such ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... persecutions of Motiers made me think of quitting Switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at length finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in every other place. One thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness for the active life to which I was going to be condemned, and the aversion I had always had to it. My disposition, proper for meditating at leisure and in solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and treating of affairs with men. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... very reluctantly obeyed orders and started with his army in that direction,—not, however, with any real hope of reaching this nominal objective; for he was an intelligent man and a good soldier, and was perfectly aware of the unfitness of his army. But when, protesting, he suggested that his troops were "green," he was told to remember that the Southern troops were of the same tint; for, in a word, the North was bound to have a fight, and would by no means ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... to trusting our Wynnie with Percivale, he seems to be as good as she is. I should for my part have more apprehension in giving her to one who would be called a thoroughly religious man; for not only would the unfitness be greater, but such a man would be more likely to confirm her in doubt, if the phrase be permissible. She wants what some would call homoeopathic treatment. And how should they be able to love one another, if they are not fit to be married to each other? ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... greater; and yet I am not sure if, in point of dimensions, it is larger, or so large as that of Covent-Garden. The only objection to it—and my objection is stronger against the London theatre—is the unfitness. In both cases, the style and order are of the gravest Templar character, more appropriate to the tribunals of criminal justice, than to the haunts of Cytherea and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... time since,[12] Endeavour'd vainly to convince A hungry fisherman Of his unfitness for the frying-pan. That controversy made it plain That letting go a good secure, In hope of future gain, Is but imprudence pure. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my present purpose thrives, I'll prop my former proposition ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... their tendency to weak-mindedness, their inborn laziness, lack of vitality, and unfitness for organized activity, contain the people who complain that they are starving for want of work, though they will never perform any work that is given them. Feeble-mindedness is an absolute dead-weight ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... is being. The struggle is rooted in the deep divisions of men's souls, not in unwonted crime or plotting. And Anna Mahr, the free woman of a freer world, parts from Johannes because she recognises their human unfitness to take up the burden of tragic sorrow which any union between them must create. The time for such things has not come, and may never come. Thus Johannes is left desolate, powerless to face the unendurable ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... that progress is only the restlessness of weak-minded persons, if they regard all suggestions of betterment as a personal slap, then they are taking the part which proves more than anything else could their unfitness to ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... the South African War, South Africa was a huge military camp, yet the unarmed Natives, many of whom were then in the enemy's service, suffered nothing but kindness at the hands of Imperial troops, and there never was any conflict between the military and native civilians. And it but reveals the unfitness for self-government of the dominant race out there that the Natives, who sympathize with the Government, should be exposed to violence immediately the loyal Burghers are armed. That is the condition of life under true ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... he will be by his secret pangs of conscience, he can scarcely be an active obstructionist. But a man who, having mistaken the field of his life's labor, yet remains amiably self-satisfied, and unconscious of his unfitness, may do more harm in his serene ignorance than he might have done good if he had chosen his proper sphere. Such a man as the last was the Reverend Harold. A good-natured, broad-shouldered, tactless, self-sufficient person, he had taken up ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... been brought from a state in which it was utterly uninhabitable into one fitted for man;—of its having been, when first inhabitable, more beautiful than it is now; and of its gradually tending to still greater inferiority of aspect, and unfitness ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and clear a proof of unfitness for greater and nobler actions, than a mind which is seriously occupied ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Durant saw a faint hope of release in his own stupidity, his obvious unfitness for the game. By a studied carelessness, an artful exaggeration of his deficiencies, he courted humiliation, ejection in favor of the dummy. But, as it happened, either his evil destiny had endowed him with her own ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... of a Herd of six, and that the Herd was not very far away; that they were unguarded because of the loss of their Leader through the Death Flower, even as she had said. Willingly Shag went with her, making many protestations as to his disreputable appearance, and the unfitness of his well-worn stub-horns to battle for them; but ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... The fearful consequences of their sin are felt at once. They are changed so that they are conscious of guilt and endeavor to hide themselves from Jehovah. Thus they acknowledge their unfitness for fellowship with Him. Their soul having lost communion with God, they become corrupt. This is spiritual death. They were banished from the garden and forced to struggle for food. Their bodies became subject to pain and death by separation from the animating spirit. ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... to be treated of, shall be the ways of Apothecaries creeping into practice, and their unfitness thereunto. As to the first, heretofore when they were Members of the Company of Grocers, and dispersed in place, as well as in counsel, they then were wholy subordinate to the Physicians, only keeping in their Shops, and faithfully making the prescriptions they received from the Physicians, ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... incongruity and unfitness, the thing beside them was a dark bedstead, with carved posts and low wooden tester, richly carved!—This in the middle of a chapel!—But there was no speculation in them; they could only see, not think. Donal took the candle. From the tester hung large pieces of stuff that had once made ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... making his way towards the offices of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, oppressed with an unacknowledged but none the less real sense of unfitness, and haunted by a depressing sense of the deficiency of his own training, and of the training afforded the young men of his class at home. As he started along he battled with his depression. True enough, he had no skill in the various accomplishments ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... bodies not as branches of the same legislature, but as distinct and independent legislatures, in each of which an opposite interest prevailed: in one the patrician; in the other, the plebian. Many arguments might have been adduced to prove the unfitness of two such seemingly contradictory authorities, each having power to ANNUL or REPEAL the acts of the other. But a man would have been regarded as frantic who should have attempted at Rome to disprove their existence. ...
— The Federalist Papers
... held at home. I imagine it is the pennies of the poor that mainly fill its war chest. I imagine, too, that sometimes its finances are an uncertain quantity. Incidentally, I am assured that not one of its male workers here is of draft age unless he holds exemption papers to prove his physical unfitness for military service. The Salvationists are taking care to purge themselves of any suspicion that potential slackers have joined their ranks in order to avoid the possibility of having to ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... William Temple was disposed to be kind, but found it difficult to converse with him on account of his moroseness and other peculiarities. At Shene he met King William III., who talked with him, and offered him a captaincy in the army. This Swift declined, knowing his unfitness for the post, and doubtless feeling the promptings of a higher ambition. It was also at Shene that he met a young girl, whose history was thenceforth to be mingled with his in sadness and sorrow, during their lives. This was Esther ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... (what are called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that in both cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... as a Judge on the Bench bestowed upon Mr. Booth, is he a person for whom I can properly vote? And, if I find, when I go to the meeting of the policy-holders, that most of them know nothing of this and other evidences of what, by the mildest judgment, must be termed Mr. A.'s unfitness for administrative [289] responsibilities, am I to let them remain in their ignorance? I leave the answer and its application to men of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... more, he had lived so much in his study and felt life so little except in contemplation, and with so small an admixture of practical experience of human nature, that he looked at the young thing before him and was conscious of his unreadiness, and in some sort of his unfitness, to minister to her. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... weights and divers measures," with their false standards. The day will come when the public will insist that the "weaker brother's" output be measured to determine just how weak he is, and whether it is weakness, unfitness for that particular job, or laziness that is the cause of his output being low. When he reaches a certain degree of weakness, he will be assisted with a definite measured quantity of assistance. Thus the "weaker brother" may be readily distinguished ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... marriage, I mean the unfitness of the persons marrying to enter into this state, and that both with respect to age and the constitution of their bodies; and, therefore, those who design to enter into that condition ought to observe their ability and not run themselves into inconveniences; for those that marry ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... all, he instituted divorce proceedings against her. This was the price he paid to regain the fair Cyrene's favour, but I am convinced that Benjamin Vajdar is at the bottom of it all. The prince bases his suit for a separation on his wife's alleged epileptic attacks and consequent unfitness for the wedded state. Of course that is all nonsense. I am not an epileptic, nor wont to bite or scratch people; but I can't approach this Cagliari without experiencing a sort of foaming at the mouth and a twitching of the muscles, as if I must pitch into the man, tooth and nail. My view ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... object is at every moment under the control of the intelligent will of the Supreme Being, or of some finite being, and is by that will maintained either in or out of its place, purpose, uses, or relations, and thus in a state of fitness or unfitness with regard to other objects. Every intelligent being, by virtue of his existence, bears certain definite relations to outward objects, to his fellow-beings, and to his Creator. At every moment, each intelligent being is either faithful or unfaithful ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... is with a full sense of the unfitness of intruding such a subject upon you in the present state of the family, that I again address you on the same topic as that on which I wrote to you from Italy, at the first moment at which I have felt it possible ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only do it with his consent. The co-operation required was not given, and the office was held in profound contempt of the President. If the rejection of these nominations had been placed upon the ground of unfitness, other names could have been sent to the Senate, but there was no charge of that kind, while specific and definite charges were made against the incumbents. Other names were mentioned to the President, and suggestions ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... she stood alone. She seemed a dead thing; but the sense of his having done gloriously in mastering himself to give these worldly people of hers a lesson and proof that he could within due measure bow to their laws and customs, dispelled the brief vision of her unfitness to be left. The compressed energy of the man under his conscious display of a great-minded deference to the claims of family ties and duties, intoxicated him. He thought but of the present achievement ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my old friends were present. It was wonderful how many had escaped active service, either because they were necessary to central administration, or because they were neutrals, or because they were too old, or because they had been declined on account of physical unfitness, reformes. One or two who might have come failed to do ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... We ain't the sort o' characters to presoom on our rep'tations—they're bad. If they have the Band at the Depot we don't go, and no error there. If they take the Band we may get cast for medical unfitness. Are you medical fit, Piggy?" said Jakin, digging Lew in ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... shall do my best to render his contemplated visit to Canada agreeable to himself, and successful in its objects. I have, more than once, through the press, disclaimed any imputation upon his integrity, motives, or character; but with his recorded declaration of my "utter want of integrity," and my unfitness for social intercourse in private life, I feel that my own conduct towards him should be confined to official acts and official occasions; in which I shall treat him with as much cordiality as I would any other member of the English Conference. Had it not ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... her. Landor, "in whose hands the ashes of antiquity burn again," she writes, gave her two Greek epigrams he had recently written. All this time she is reading everything,—Sheridan Knowles's play of "The Wreckers," which Forrest had rejected, "rather for its unfitness to his own personal talent than for its abstract demerit," she concludes; and "Ion," which she finds beautiful morally rather than intellectually, and thinks that, as dramatic poetry, it lacks power, passion, and condensation. ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... of making a movement towards gaining an extension of his tutelage beyond the ordinary legal period, on the ground of unfitness in his ward for the management of his property; but Gibbie's character and scholarship, and the opinion of the world which would follow failure, had deterred him from the attempt. In the month of May, therefore, when, according to the registry of his birth in the parish ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... lawyers, clothed though they be in the garb of judicial procedure, is in the least likely to impress the lay mind with that sense of 'impartiality' or 'indifference' which is supposed to be an attribute of justice, or, indeed, with anything save the unfitness of the machinery of an action at law for the determination of any matter which invokes the canons of criticism and demands the arbitrament of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... custom in R——, and is now to quite an extent elsewhere, to elect as school committee those especially noted for their ignorance and unfitness for the duties, perhaps to keep them out of the almshouse, or to educate them by the absorption process while hearing pupils recite. These men were paid two dollars for each call they made at schools, consequently they "called" early and often, especially when the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... attention unless it reaches a spot of especially marked intensity which forces the return of attention. An initial rejection, perhaps consciously brought about by the judgment on the ground of incorrectness or unfitness for the actual purpose of the mental act, may therefore account for the fact that a mental process continues until the onset of sleep ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... and the most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so frightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise would be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be due nothing but reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for his unfitness for his position. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... oilcloth as with blue tiles; the walls were papered; the stainless floor was strewn with home-made hooked and braided rugs; and I felt the place so altogether too good for me that I pleaded to stay there for the transaction of my business, lest a sharper sense of my unfitness should ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... revolutionary war, together with much fortitude, integrity, and public spirit, showed without doubt a good deal of levity, self-seeking, vindictiveness, and incompetence; and whoever chooses to amass, magnify, and isolate evidences of their guilt can demonstrate their unfitness for self-government just as well as he can demonstrate the same proposition in the case of Ireland. Mr. J.W. Fortescue, the learned and entertaining historian of the British Army, has done the former task as well as it can be done. He ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... humble if we sit in high places and hold the fate of others in our hands; for no clear-sighted man can fail to be sensible of unfitness ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... not the predominant one. That rapturous winged spirit which he calls Love Triumphant might just as easily be called Music or Song, and another allegory be attached to it without our feeling any more special fitness or unfitness in the explanation. I see a beautiful exultant figure, but I do not feel love as the fundamental mood in the painter, as I feel the religious mood is fundamental in the Angelus of Millet. I do not need to look for a title to that or for the painting of ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Doubt, but all impartial Men must believe the latter. But then he understood Mankind very well; his very Enemies, that were his Contemporaries, allow'd him to be a Man of great Parts. If he had had the the same Opinion of Christianity, which you have, and the Unfitness of it to make Men quarrel and fight with Obstinacy, he would never have made Use ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... possession of the field before the process was understood, has been adopted merely because displacing it by another word seemed impracticable. And this adoption of it has been joined with a caution against misunderstandings arising from its unfitness. Here is a part of the caution:—"Evolution has other meanings, some of which are incongruous with, and some even directly opposed to, the meaning here given to it.... The antithetical word, Involution, would much more truly express the nature ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented—the masses all over the earth—with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness—the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certain matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we of the popular party were agitating for reforms—when your waking came. Came! If it had ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... difficult to fulfil the second condition, requisite to justify this system. According to the principles of those who maintain an abstract rational difference betwixt moral good and evil, and a natural fitness and unfitness of things, it is not only supposed, that these relations, being eternal and immutable, are the same, when considered by every rational creature, but their effects are also supposed to be necessarily the same; and it is concluded ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... probability, before many years should have expired? Perhaps there might be reasons for pulling down James. But what reason could be given for setting up Monmouth? To exclude a prince from the throne on account of unfitness was a course agreeable to Whig principles. But on no principle could it be proper to exclude rightful heirs, who were admitted to be, not only blameless, but eminently qualified for the highest public trust. That Monmouth was legitimate, nay, that he thought himself ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who knows Mr. Wilson, who knows Mr. Lloyd George, who knows Mr. Clemenceau, nothing could be sillier than the chapters of Keynes and Dillon in which they undertake to picture the President's unfitness to cope with the European masters of diplomacy. Mr. Wilson for years had been playing with European masters of diplomacy as a cat plays with a mouse. To assume that Mr. Wilson was ever deceived by the transparent tactics of Mr. Lloyd George and ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... Hans' unfitness for holding his own among the rough men of the plains made them sorry for him, and they discussed various plans, without arriving at any conclusion, till ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... sufficient, he borrowed enough to pay his passage back to England, where, doubtless, he will swell the number of those whose lack of success in the colonies, and vituperations against them, are only equalled by their unfitness ever to ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... yesterday had revived in Klesmer and hurried him into speech a little aloof from his immediate friendly purpose. He had wished as delicately as possible to rouse in Gwendolen a sense of her unfitness for a perilous, difficult course; but it was his wont to be angry with the pretensions of incompetence, and he was in danger of getting chafed. Conscious of this, he paused suddenly. But Gwendolen's chief impression was that he had not yet denied her the power of doing what would be ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... her. She went out from school with the uncomfortable sense of being a square peg, which fitted into none of the round holes of her world; the wisdom she had got, the experience she was richer by, had, in the process of equipping her for life, merely seemed to disclose her unfitness. She could not then know that, even for the squarest peg, the right hole may ultimately be found; seeming unfitness prove to be only another aspect of a peculiar and special fitness. But, of the after years, and what they brought her, it is not the ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... thoughts yesterday in reading that solemn tract, "The Inconvenient Season." In visiting I met with another affecting illustration of the unfitness of old age for beginning religion, in the senseless self-righteousness of poor old Mary N. She says every night and morning the prayers she learned when a child, which she evidently thinks an abundant supply of religion,—saying, "if people ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... southern bird had its northern nest lined with tenderness, and caresses, and pretty things. A loving sensitive nature was too likely, under such nurture, to have its susceptibility heightened into unfitness for an encounter with any harder experience; all the more, because there were gleams of fierce resistance to any discipline that had a harsh or unloving aspect. For the only thing in which Caterina showed any precocity was a certain ingenuity in vindictiveness. When ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... was a like difficulty in getting his balance. But this was not for long. His innate self-reliance steadied him rapidly. His long-established habit of superiority helped him to avoid betraying his first sense of ignorance and unfitness. His receptiveness led him to assimilate swiftly the innumerable and novel facts of life with which he came all at once in contact; and he soon realized that the stirring, capable crowd, whose ready handling ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... seems to mean good dressing, yet their clothes jar, cry out, even "scream out their unfitness and unwholesomeness, and betray their dishonesty, shame and sacrifice." Clothes show silliness, conceit, and selfishness more than any other thing, and often they shame a home, so a colored girl should study her individuality ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... bench to serve as table, and also as a stage for the winding in and out of an enormous trail rope a thousand feet long, designed by Mr. Green to meet the special emergencies of the voyage. At the bottom of the car was spread a large cushion to serve the purposes of rest. When all was in readiness unfitness of weather baulked the travellers for some days, but Monday, the 7th of November, was judged a favourable day, so that the inflation was rapidly proceeded with, and at 1.30 p.m. the "Monstre Balloon," ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Continent; but, still, there is often to be found a crowd of people ready to eat if only the wherewithal were there. We are often told in our newspapers that England is disgraced by this and by that; by the unreadiness of our army, by the unfitness of our navy, by the irrationality of our laws, by the immobility of our prejudices, and what not; but the real disgrace of England is the railway sandwich,—that whited sepulchre, fair enough outside, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... civilized, when after all it is only one short year out of my allotted span of life that I have promised to Mission work? Your steamer letter, with its Machiavellian arguments for returning immediately and directly from St. John's, was duly received. Of my unfitness for the work there is no possible doubt, no shadow of doubt whatever, and therein you and I are at one. But you will do me the justice to admit that I put very forcibly before those in charge of the Mission the delusion under which they were labouring; ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... be related; it would not well bear recital: enough that the person flogged was a middle-aged man of the Waist—a forlorn, broken-down, miserable object, truly; one of those wretched landsmen sometimes driven into the Navy by their unfitness for all things else, even as others are driven into the workhouse. He was flogged at the complaint of a midshipman; and hereby hangs the drift of the thing. For though this waister was so ignoble a mortal, yet his being scourged on this one occasion indirectly proceeded ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Holmes, Russell Lowell, Henry James, and W. D. Howells be appointed a jury of "literary arbitrament" to sit in judgment on the liturgical language of The Book Annexed; and this out of respect to our proper national pride. Doubtless it would add perceptibly to the amused sense of the unfitness of things with which these eminent liberals must have seen themselves thus named, if permission could be given to the jury, when empanelled, to "co-opt" into its number Mr. Samuel Clemens and ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... destroyed in war are nearly all males, thus disturbing the sex equilibrium of the population; they are in the prime of life, at the age of greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized—30 millimetres below the normal height. War combined with religious celibacy to ruin Spain. 'Castile makes men and wastes them,' said a Spanish ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... suspected that she had not only fifteen past admirers but a current one. Still, he might be mistaken. Stimulated now by ancient memories and present tenderness to use every effort to make her his wife, despite her conventional unfitness, he strung himself up to sift this mystery. If he could only win her—and how could a country girl refuse such an opportunity?—he could pack her off to school for two or three years, marry her, enlarge her mind by a little travel, and take his chance of the rest. As to her want of ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... for objecting to the proposition is the absolute unfitness of the negroes, as a class, for any such responsibility. They can neither read nor write. They have no knowledge whatever of law or government. They do not even know the meaning of the freedom that has been given them, and are much astonished when informed that it ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... he walked several steps, yet, as it seemed, rather irresolutely, towards the door of the card-room—and then, to the increased surprise of the company, stopped suddenly, and muttering something about the "unfitness of the time," turned on his heel, and bowing haughtily, as there was way made for him, walked in the opposite direction towards the door which led ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the possessions back to Spain, who in a four hundred years' experiment had demonstrated her unfitness to govern them; another was to give the islands their independence, which would have meant merely an indefinite continuance of anarchy. It is one of the greatest triumphs of American statesmanship that it discovered a more satisfactory ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the settlement under such circumstances, were willing to admit their failure was the result of their own want of exertion, or their unfitness for the enterprise in which they had embarked; accordingly, wherever they went, and in their letters home, the blame was laid on the country. Thus many of the evil reports respecting it, which were current at home and in the neighbouring colonies, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... and commodious fashion, and that it should comport, so far as those requirements in it will admit, with the approved modes of the day. But we are free to say, that in these times the extreme of absurdity, and unfitness for use, is more the fashion than anything else. What so useless as the modern French chairs, standing on legs like pipe-stems, garote-ing your back like a rheumatism, and frail as the legs of a spider beneath you, as you sit in it; and a tribe of equally ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... dinner that evening, on the plea of mailing a letter, had slipped from the house on one of her melancholy, soul-searching walks which she had become so fond of taking. Convinced that she was an utter failure, imbued with a daily growing sense of her own unfitness to be the friend of a girl like Marjorie Dean, Mary was plunged into the depths of humiliation and unhappiness. This alone had been the cause of the marked change in her that Marjorie had innocently attributed to Mignon's defection. In her sad little soul ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... father's wishes, to which habit and custom had given nearly the force of law with maidens of her condition, though her reason and judgment no less than her affections were both strongly enlisted on the other side. Indeed, with the single exception of the general unfitness of a union between two of unequal stations, there was nothing to discredit her choice, if that may be termed choice which, after all, was more the result of spontaneous feeling and secret sympathy than of any other cause, unless it were a certain equivocal reserve, and a ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... long and patiently evolved and highly trained faculty that the race is still developing towards perfection with constant strain and effort—although the planet is far advanced in its decadence and within measurable distance of its unfitness for life of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... is only a corollary of twelve; two o'clock protests against it audibly, and every quarter-chime endorses its claim to be to-morrow; three o'clock makes short work of an imposture only a depraved effrontery can endeavour to foist upon it. Rosalind was aware of her unfitness to sit up all night—all this next night—but nursed the pretext that it had not come, and that it was still to-day, until a sense of the morning chill, and something in the way the sound of each ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... typewriters with such kindly faces and fine posies, Mamie so demure, and Jim—how shall I describe that poor, transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the far end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe he was protesting his unfitness; for he wept as he said it: and the old minister, himself genuinely moved, was heard to console and encourage him, and at one time to use this expression: "I assure you, Mr. Pinkerton, there are not many who can say so much"—from which I gathered that my friend had tempered his ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... though he be genuine, what there is of him. But the trouble is, the sensitive persons who belong to the lower grades of the poetical hierarchy do not—know their own poetical limitations, while they do feel a natural unfitness and disinclination for many pursuits which young persons of the average balance of faculties take to pleasantly enough. What is forgotten is this, that every real poet, even of the humblest grade, is an artist. Now I venture ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... same way, and divide them into just such parts, both for nature and Number, as the Fire dissipates them into. For since, as I noted before, the Bulk and shape of the small Parts of bodies, together with their Fitness and Unfitness to be easily put into Motion, may make the liquors or other substances such Corpuscles compose, as much to differ from each other as do some of the Chymical principles: Why may not something happen in this ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... some cause or other these arms have been found out to be faulty and unworthy of trust. Some of them are brittle, and break, others are soft, and bend, so there are a large number of those in use which will have to be discarded on account of unfitness. Where the blame lies we don't know, but doubtless some one has been unfaithful to their trust, or the thing could not ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... to frolic on the part of the Negro gave rise to grave concern among his friends, and was promptly accepted as conclusive proof of his unfitness for the duties of a freeman by his enemies. But he soon dispelled the fears of his friends and disarmed the prejudices ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... this beer unfit for the people to drink, but too often the men and women are unfit to drink it. On the other hand, it is their very unfitness that drives them to drink it. Ill-fed, suffering from innutrition and the evil effects of overcrowding and squalor, their constitutions develop a morbid craving for the drink, just as the sickly stomach of the overstrung Manchester factory operative hankers ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... with such kindly faces and fine posies, Madame so demure, and Jim—how shall I describe that poor, transfigured Jim? He began by taking the minister aside to the far end of the office. I knew not what he said, but I have reason to believe he was protesting his unfitness, for he wept as he said it; and the old minister, himself genuinely moved, was heard to console and encourage him, and at one time to use this expression: "I assure you, Mr. Pinkerton, that there are not many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our present strength. There is nothing new to look for. There is no need to wait for anything more than we possess. Remember the homely old proverb, 'You never know what you can do till you try,' and though we are conscious of much unfitness, and would sometimes gladly wait till our limbs are stronger, let us brace ourselves for the work, assured that in it strength will be given to us that equals our desire. There is a wonderful power in honest work to develop latent energies ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... happiness in the present depends, v.77, etc. IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more Perfection, the cause of Man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of His dispensations, v.109, etc. V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the Creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, v.131, etc. VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... to lead the party on its dangerous errand. While he was as modest as a woman and with a voice as gentle and persuasive, he could not be ignorant of his own capacities, and he assumed charge without any pretense of unfitness. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... to a far deeper level than it had dropped with the base desertion of Butler. Filled with remorse, he ran upstairs without taking off his hat or overcoat. The feeling of resentment toward Butler was lost in this new, overpowering sense of dread; the discovery of his own lamentable unfitness for "high life" expeditions faded into nothingness in the face of this possible catastrophe. What if Phoebe were to die? He would be to blame. He remembered feeling that he should not have left her that evening. It had been a premonition, ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the morrow; hand to mouth is the only word that can describe their way of doing; and what with wasted food and sleeping sentries, though they were bold enough for a brush and be done with it, I could see their entire unfitness for ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... post of honour God is offering us. With regard to the school of intercession, I am confident that the result of the first month's course will be to awake the feeling of how little we know how to intercede. And a second and a third month may only deepen the sense of ignorance and unfitness. This will be an unspeakable blessing. The confession, "We know not how to pray as we ought," is the introduction to the experience, "The Spirit maketh intercession for us"—our sense of ignorance will lead us to depend upon the Spirit praying in us, to ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... occasion arose, to the Nation and other periodicals, I have included some descriptions of the causes likely to incite people to rebellion of this kind. Such causes, I mean, as the inequality that comes from poverty alone—the physical unfitness or lack of mental opportunity that is due only to poverty. Those things make happiness impossible, for they frustrate the active exercise of vital powers, and give life no scope. During a generation or so, people have looked to the Government to mitigate the oppression ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... play the game!" cries the practical politician. There is loud talk of the defilement, the "dirty pool" and its resultant darkening of fair reputations, the total unfitness of lovely woman to take part in "the rough and tumble ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... talk of his own present feelings in this manner; but glancing at the face of his father with a sense of his unfitness to hear such a lofty utterance, I saw at once that it was for his sake that he had thus spoken. The old man had thrown himself back too, and was gazing into the sky, puzzling himself, I could see, to comprehend what his son could ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... And had not that test been applied in every age, and asserted to succeed? What more rational, more philosophic action than to try herself those methods and ceremonies which she was assured on every hand had never failed but through the ignorance or unfitness of the neophyte?.... Abamnon must be right.... She dared not think him wrong; for if this last hope failed, what was there left but to eat and drink, for ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... be given without a certificate of both mental and physical fitness, to be handed to the officer before registry of the application, in order that there may be no public refusal on such grounds of unfitness after it is known that a license to marry has been sought. This would be far better than, as has been proposed by some persons, for clergymen to take the initiative in requiring such physical and mental ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... in the saltness of the sea is the consequent unfitness of its water for drinking. Many and harrowing are the accounts of instances in which sailors have been reduced to the most terrible extremities for want of fresh water; and many a time, since navigation began, have men been brought to ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Sound as a bell. The unfitness is in the soul and it's a taint and a disgrace. There, don't cry, Rilla. I'm not going if that's what you're afraid of. The Piper's music rings in my ears day ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... three thousand might almost as well have gone to no school as to the squalid hovels in which men who ought themselves to have been learners pretended to teach. In general these men had only one qualification for their employment; and that was their utter unfitness for every other employment. They were disabled miners, or broken hucksters. In their schools all was stench, and noise, and confusion. Now and then the clamour of the boys was silenced for two minutes by the furious menaces of the master; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... walking suit in which one could not walk, and a winter suit which exposes the throat, head, and feet to cold and damp, was rather a failure, Clara, especially as it has no beauty to reconcile one to its utter unfitness," said Dr. Alec, as he helped Rose undo her veil, adding, in a low tone, "Nice thing for the eyes; you'll soon see spots when it's off as well as when it's on, and, by and by, be ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Alberto was careful to observe, for King Amadeo was soon convinced of the unfitness of his people for even a constitutional monarchy, told them so, resigned his throne, and bade them farewell. Then came a republic marked by excesses such as even the worst monarch had not committed; among them the dreadful massacre of the members of the ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... sign of supereminent self-abasement, leaving themselves naked to the cuticle, that they might prove, by ocular evidence, what a poor ungainly set of wretches they really were, carnally considered; or perhaps they went on all-fours to heaven, in sign of their unfitness to enter into the presence of the pure of mind in an attitude more erect and confident. Well, these fancies of mine only went to prove how erroneous and false are the conclusions of one whose capacity has not been amplified and concatenated by the ingenuities ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thoroughly for his variable though severe criticisms, and stated, with some emotion, that the Board should be enlightened as to his unfitness, through his captious temper, for the delicate task of nourishing the tender sensibilities ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... felicity of life, to aspire. The thoughtful child had all his mind thus preoccupied ... wherever there was gentleness, modesty, the timidity of young passion, repugnance to vice, an imaginative temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay invitingly open.... It lay through perils, but was made attractive by perpetual wonders. It was awful, but in its awfulness lay its power over the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... act of attention, in which the fitness or unfitness of elements of past experience, or their adaptability to ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... moral Ideas to be thought incapable of Demonstration: their unfitness for sensible representation, and ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... multitude of moral considerations assure us of the existence of evil in the world, and since it is not possible for so holy a thing as the spirit of man to be exposed thereto without undergoing contamination, it comes to pass that an unfitness may be contracted for its rejoining the infinitely pure essence from which it was derived, and hence arises the necessity of its undergoing a course of purification. And as the life of man is often too short to afford the needful opportunity, and, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... evil and the consequents of evil,—with inward prostration of will, mind, and affections I adore thy infinite majesty; I aspire to love thy transcendent goodness!—In a deep sense of my unworthiness, and my unfitness to present myself before thee, of eyes too pure to behold iniquity, and whose light, the beautitude of spirits conformed to thy will, is a consuming fire to all vanity and corruption;—but in the name of the Lord Jesus, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... assured, although unsuited to my character. The unfitness of the triumph covered me with confusion. Shame brought the blood to my cheeks. I must have turned as red as scarlet, or redder, when I saw that Pepita was applauding and saluting me graciously, while she smiled and clapped her ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera |
