"Unfitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose." There was in Spenser a facility for turning to account all material, original or borrowed, an incontinence of the descriptive faculty, which was ever ready to exercise itself on any object, the most unfitting and loathsome, as on the noblest, the purest, or the most beautiful. There are pictures in him which seem meant to turn our stomach. Worse than that there are pictures which for a time rank the poet of Holiness or Temperance, with the painters who used their ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... popular education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... fairest and most exalted of the maidens, "we have counsel for thee." "What may it be?" she inquired. "Go to the youth that is in the upper chamber, and offer to become his wife, or the lady of his love, if it seem well to him." "That were indeed unfitting," said she. "Hitherto I have not been the lady-love of any knight, and to make him such an offer before I am wooed by him, that, truly, can I not do." "By our confession to Heaven, unless thou actest thus, we will leave thee here to thy enemies, to do as they will ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... should write a few words of preface to this collection of poems must be my excuse for obtruding myself upon the reader. Having frequently had the pleasure as editor of The Canadian Monthly, of introducing many of Mrs. MacLean's poems to lovers of verse in the Dominion it was thought not unfitting that I should act as foster father to the collection of them here made and to bespeak for the volume at the hands at least of all Canadians the appreciative and kindly ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... naval art and the military art are both in a state of transition; the last discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic discovery to-morrow. Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go on side by side: one says, "We have not ships enough, no 'relief' ships, no NAVY, to tell the truth"; the other cry says, "We have all the wrong ships, all the wrong ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... singing, the more general and simple should be the emotion and that the universally fitting themes are those of simple praise, prayer, or faith: and we might inquire whether one fault of our modern hymn-books may not be their attempt to supply congregational music to unfitting themes. ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... then let them have their way. After all, a guest's women helped the woman of the house, and as there was no woman in Keeper's House, it was not unfitting ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. That we should all be made to talk like books is the danger with which we are threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... story. I then discovered, as I opened the door, that Life's memories are not Life's history, but the original work of an unseen Artist. The variegated colours scattered about are not reflections of outside lights, but belong to the painter himself, and come passion-tinged from his heart; thereby unfitting the record on the canvas for use as evidence ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... economists hold that higher education is unfitting numbers of young men from following the humbler pursuits, while at the same time it is not making them as efficient as are their ambitions; and such men are recognized as the most potent chemical in making the milk of human ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... the first of the great ironmasters who had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of manufacturing iron invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting commentary on the sad history we have thus briefly described. It shows how, as respects mere money-making, shrewdness is more potent than invention, and business faculty than manufacturing skill. Richard Crawshay ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... "It seems unfitting," she said quietly. "He is almost like your uncle. Of course, one may marry one's uncle—but he is too old for you, dear. And, after all, with your ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... unfitting to me to take next into our consideration, as it were all in a train, what he has also said against him. But first let us contemplate a little the diligence—together with the manifold and profound knowledge—of this our philosopher, who says, that Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus, and all ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... would know when his work was finished, or to what extent he should pass judgment on thoughts presented, for her questions and other tests would insure proper thoroughness, and her presence would check unfitting boldness in judging. It has hardly seemed necessary to consider how far he should proceed in the mastery of a topic, or how he should avoid being dogmatic, for she would let him know when the endpoint was reached—if he did not stop too soon of his own accord—and she would reprove ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... which the Saviour came not to destroy but to complete (for what he completed was not alien to Him, but yet it was not perfect); secondly, the part comprising evil and unrighteous things, which the Saviour did away with as something unfitting His nature; and thirdly, the part which is for types and symbols, which is given as a law, as images of things spiritual and excellent which, from being evident and manifest to the senses, the Saviour ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... Warner to be some attainted Lancastrian, compelled to hide in secret till his pardon was obtained; and no scandal was attached to the noble's visits, nor any surprise evinced at his attentive care for all that could lend a grace to a temporary refuge unfitting the quality ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... see him cast among strangers and mercenaries, without either nurse or friend;—the self-collectedness of woman being, as we shall find, wanting for the former office, and the youth and inexperience of Count Gamba unfitting him wholly for the other. The very firmness with which a position so lone and disheartening was sustained, serves, by interesting us more deeply in the man, to increase our sympathy, till we almost forget admiration in pity, and half regret ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... excess in those things which have to do with the Divine worship; not indeed as regards quantity, but in certain other circumstances, as, for example, when Divine worship is offered to whom it should not, or at times when it should not, or in other unfitting circumstances. ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... penetrates the guileless candour of the relation she assumes to him, the entireness of his trust in the spotless purity of her whole nature. And in him we have presented all those essential and fundamental elements of nature which give assurance that, Dorothea by his side, he shall be no unfitting helpmeet to her, no drag or hindrance on her higher life; that he shall rise to the elevation and purity of her self-consecration, and shall stand by her side sustaining, guiding, expanding that life ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... confession of faith, which is contained in the symbol, concerns all the faithful. Now the faithful are not all competent to believe in God, but only those who have living faith. Therefore it is unfitting for the symbol of faith to be expressed in the words: "I ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... improvements in arts and sciences advance, and as education extends to the lower classes, so as to supply sources of mental enjoyment and exercise, it will be almost altogether extirpated from society. Let this and other vices be held as positively dishonourable, because unfitting for professional duty, and inconsistent with professional dignity—let them be visited by certain punishment—give free scope to the emulation of intellect and to the cultivation of proper self- interest—and vindicate to popular ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Persephone, strive to feel kindliness in your heart toward me who carried you off by violence and against your will. I can give to you one of the great kingdoms that the Olympians rule over. And I, who am brother to Zeus, am no unfitting husband ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... as it was, was wholly unexpected. I was surprised and disconcerted. In my previous reasonings I had certainly considered her sex as utterly unfitting her for those scenes and pursuits to which I had destined myself. Not a doubt of the validity of my conclusion had insinuated itself; but now my belief was shaken, though it was not subverted. I could not deny that human ignorance was curable by the same ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... is a new development in sociology. She has many lessons to learn, but one has hopes of her. It is said that she is unfitting herself to be a wife and mother. If the ideal helpmeet for a man be an animated Dresden china shepherdess—something that looks pretty on the table, something to be shown round to one's friends, something that can ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... mother could never again be what it had been. Supposing, indeed, her story was all true! But in the case of a character like Lady Tressady's, there are for long, recurrent, involuntary scepticisms on the part of the bystander. It seems impossible, unfitting, to grant to such persons le beau role they claim. It outrages a certain ideal instinct, even, to be asked to believe that they too can yield, in their measure, precisely the same tragic stuff as the hero ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The Duke, the haughtiest and coldest of men, bent his knee and carried her hand to his lips. So on Birthnights he kissed the late Queen's hand, she standing before the Throne. Then stood very grave. "Madam, I entreat your pardon. I have shown you a side of a man's character very unfitting for your eyes and you but the child you are. Forgive me, and ere we part for ever, answer me one question, in token of your pardon. Had I been but James Hamilton, the lowest of my clan—could you have honoured me ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... might be remedied. As to a love of the drama going out of the human heart, that is all nonsense. Put it at the lowest, what a great pleasure it is to hear a good play read. And again, as to serious pursuits unfitting men for dramatic entertainments, it is quite the contrary. A man, wearied with care and business, would find more change of ideas with less fatigue, in seeing a good play, than in almost any other ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... for morning service drew near, the drummer took his accustomed stand before the church and began to thunder forth his summons,—a summons not unfitting those stern Puritans whose idea of religion was that of a life-long warfare against the world, the flesh, and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... wife. And Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom. Yet, goddess, cease your loud lament and keep not vain anger unrelentingly: Aidoneus, the Ruler of Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: also, for honour, he has that third share which he received when division was made at the first, and is appointed lord of those among ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... unaffected, save that continual so doing might lessen them; but when he blasphemes the Spirit—it being so interwoven as to be, in a sense, a part of himself—he involves his own soul, by taking a stand against himself, as it were, thereby unfitting and unqualifying himself to be further affected by the Spirit. He drowns, dissolves, annihilates the inner ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... circling the grave; and even as they looked it swung immediately over it and there stood for some moments, its tall dust column rising up into the zenith like the smoke of a funeral pyre! Then on they marched and there they left him, sure that by night lions would be roaring him a requiem not unfitting ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... administrative reconstruction which now awaited him. How this task—at once more congenial and more especially his own—was discharged is a matter that must be left for a second volume. In the meantime the conclusion of the Surrender Agreement is no unfitting stage at which to bring the review of the first period of Lord Milner's administration to ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... criminality, of discovering the secrets of their hearts. It was fitting that the Christ, before whom all these blind instruments of a mighty design stood patent and naked to their deepest depths, should say, 'They know not what they do.' It would have been unfitting that the servant, who knew no more of his fellows' heart than could be guessed from their actions, should have offered such a plea in his prayer for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... that it was unfitting for a democratic poet to be hampered by the verse forms of the Old World. He discarded rhyme almost entirely, but he did employ rhythm, which is determined by the tone of the ideas, not by the number of syllables. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... For this purpose, the Marine Committee have already ordered some vessels to France, under your direction as to their future operations, and more, we expect, will be sent. But our frigates are not capable of carrying much bulky commodity for commercial purposes, without unfitting them for war; besides, there is the consideration of our being obliged to get them away, how, and when we can, or endanger their being taken, which prevents our sending them to those staple Colonies, where the commodities wanted are to be obtained. The reciprocal ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... told by the maid that I would find you here. I followed, as you see. We have had many meetings in church edifices, in organ lofts. It seems natural to find you in such a place, but I fear it will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what I came to say. Shall we return ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... on this subject. If she has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons of intelligence were compelled to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley's famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... with tears and well nigh closed up that shee had a desire unto pleasure and specially because shee embraced and kissed me sweetly. And when she was somewhat restored unto joy shee desired me that shee might first shut the chamber doore, least by the untemperance of her tongue, in uttering any unfitting words, there might grow further inconvenience. Wherewithall shee barred and propped the doore, and came to me againe, and embracing me lovingly about the neck with both her armes, spake with a soft voice and said, I doe greatly feare to discover the privities of this house, and to utter the secret ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... the figure. But apart from all these diseases and malformations, the limbs of the operatives suffer in still another way. The work between the machinery gives rise to multitudes of accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for the operative the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single joint of a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger, half or a whole hand, an arm, etc., in the machinery. Lockjaw very often follows, even ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... answered coolly, "albeit methinks that for one who has shed his blood for France as freely as I have done, a little clemency were not unfitting." ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the Gates of Gold, Heard from the Voice Ineffable this word Of twofold mandate uttered by the Lord:— "Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed, Goodly and splendid—whom I crowned the king. For at this hour my servant doth a thing Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight; Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight, Before the palace, where he gazeth now Filling ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... said the Queen, "this is unfitting language; and, besides, I would speak," said she, recollecting herself, "with the Abbot of Saint Mary's—Nay, Douglas, I will not let you quit my rein ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... chatter, Mr. Ferrers, and listen to me with whatever little power of concentration you may possess. Your conduct, sir, has been wholly unfitting an officer and a gentleman. If I did my full duty I'd order you in arrest at once, and have you brought to trial before a general court-martial. You have visited upon yourself a disgrace that you can't ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... insults him, calling him an illusion. But this time he will bear it, and opens his mouth to speak. It is too late; the cock is awake, and he must go. Then alas for the buried majesty of Denmark! with upheaved halberts they strike at the shadow, and would stop it if they might—usage so grossly unfitting that they are instantly ashamed of it themselves, recognizing the offence in the majesty of the offended. But he is already gone. The proud, angry king has found himself but a thing of nothing to his body-guard—for he has lost the body ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... melancholy man, these youthful reminiscences may appear unnatural, even unworthy. I must own that there breaks out now and then in his journal something which shows that he himself was not satisfied with many of these juvenile memoranda, as if they showed unfitting occupation and education of a young clergyman. But that was not their real nature. Those small studies and accomplishments took the place in his early training which the cricket-match or the boat-race now take in the school time of Young England. The Dean speaks somewhat contemptuously—"Here ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the inefficient. Such an organization of our County Council system would operate also to break up sectarian cliques. The feeling of organized classes, farmers, or industrialists, concerned about their own well-being, would oppose itself to sectarian sentiment where its application was unfitting. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... if I had been given a new frock." She altered the "as if he had given me" which was upon her tongue because the proposition, even for purposes of illustration, that a nobleman could ever have offered her a new frock seemed to have in itself something of the scandalous and unfitting. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the proud brook that flows southward by Wilton, "where Delia hath her seat." If it may seem in any degree unfitting that Daniel should address language so glowing as is found in the Delia sonnets to a lady who is established as the head of a household with husband and sons about her, attention may be called to the ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... Richard's son. Fond man! ah, whither art thou carried? How are thy thoughts ywrapt in honour's heaven? Forgetful what thou art, and whence thou camest. Thy father's land cannot maintain these thoughts; These thoughts are far unfitting Fauconbridge: And well they may; for why, this mounting mind Doth soar too high to stoop ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... had recalled the ring to thought, Foiled and astounded, cursed his little heed. And now the vanished lady, whom he sought, Of that ungrateful and discourteous deed Accusing stood, wherewith she had repaid, (Unfitting recompense) his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... more practical in the present than in the past century, are still far from having freed themselves from the unjust, unfitting, and inconvenient situation into which they have fallen as time ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... It would be unfitting here to tell how mythology has claimed the story of Tristrem and Ysonde and has attempted to show in what manner the circumstances of their lives and adventures have been adapted to the old world-wide myth of the progress of the sun from dawn to darkness.[59] The evidence seems very ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... sent to him in a friendly way to have him come to me and deliberate in my company about present conditions, and he neither came nor promised that he would appear. And yet what did I do that was unfair or unfitting or arrogant in summoning him as a friend and ally? What insolence and wantonness rather, has he omitted in refusing to come? Is it not inevitable that he did this from one of two reasons, either that he suspected he should suffer some harm or that he felt contempt for me? Well, if he had ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... seen that some of our earliest humorists were ecclesiastics, and it would be unfitting that we should here overlook three eminent men, Donne, Hall, and Fuller. Pleasantry was with them little more than a vehicle of instruction; the object was not to entertain, but to enforce and illustrate their moral sentiments. Hence their sober quaintness never raises a laugh, much less does ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... evil genii or sprites in the Arabian tales, it can reach from afar the object of its malignity, striking him down unawares in the most unaccountable manner; making him a victim to all manner of ills, sufferings, and tribulations; unfitting him for marriage or the cares of business; making him miserable and an object of continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with all kinds of physical distortions and ailments, nocturnal pollutions, and other ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of a certain pride taken in the austere morality of her own life, she who was now a widow anxious to devote her life solely to God, had persuaded the man to this sin, in order that her successor as Countess of Scroope might not be, in her opinion, unfitting for nobility! The young lord had promised her that he would be guilty of this sin, so damnable, so devilish, telling her as he did so, that as a consequence of his promise he must continue to live a life of wickedness! In the agony of her spirit she threw herself upon ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... the writer and reader, of the attempt which must be made to use vague words so as to convey a precise meaning, is not wholly a matter of regret. It is not unfitting that logical treatises should afford an example of that, to facilitate which is among the most important uses of logic. Philosophical language will for a long time, and popular language still longer, retain so much of vagueness and ambiguity, that logic would be of little value ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... But there is one character of Byzantine work which, according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... to belong to the body politic in any active sense. Not that he is no longer a member of society nor unamenable to its general laws, but that he has become a respectable declasse, as it were. He has entered, so to speak, the social nirvana, a not unfitting first step, as he regards it, toward entering the eventual nirvana beyond. Such abdication now takes place without particular cause. After a certain time of life, and long before a man grows old, it is the fashion thus to ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... not impertinent, question, 'Was he a poet?' And the method had its merits, for the question once asked, it was easy for the lecturer, like an incendiary who has just fired a haystack, to steal away amidst the cracklings of a familiar controversy. It was not unfitting that so quarrelsome a man as Pope should have been the occasion of so much quarrelsomeness in others. For long the battle waged as fiercely over Pope's poetry as erst it did in his own Homer over the body of the slain Patroclus. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... November, he should have the sense of "something hanging over him like a hideous nightmare." He felt that he could not complete the Barnaby Rudge novel by the November of that year, as promised, and that the engagement he would have to break was unfitting him for engagements he might otherwise fulfill. He had undertaken what, in truth, was impossible. The labor of at once editing the Miscellany and supplying it with monthly portions of Oliver more ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Hippocratic advice exceedingly well, for since quiet is a relief for the foot, if he has ever a wound in the foot, he lifts it up, and keeps it undisturbed as much as possible. When he is troubled by disturbing humours, he eats grass, with which he vomits up that which was unfitting, and recovers. Since therefore it has been shown that the animal 72 that we fixed the argument upon for the sake of an example, chooses that which is suitable for him, and avoids what is harmful, and that he has an art ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... grandsons laid beneath the sod in this very city of Pretoria. Nor is it with absolutely unqualified regret we call to mind that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name he died in the service of his queen—and ours; and perchance the Queen herself rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus called in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own people, whom recent ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... hotel. A man, standing on the front steps, saw the commotion and asked what it meant. On being told, he said, "Take him to my room." It was thus that the greatest man of the age died in a small room of a common hotel. But this was not unfitting; he was of the plain people, he always loved them, and among them he closed his earthly record. He lingered unconscious through the night, and at twenty minutes after seven o'clock, on the morning of April ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... to be that the discourse has come down to us in a mutilated form. This MAY be due to the "Tale" having remained unfinished at the time of Chaucer's death: in which case it would form last words of no unfitting kind. As for the actual last words of the "Canterbury Tales"—the so-called "Prayer of Chaucer"—it would be unbearable to have to accept them as genuine. For in these the poet, while praying for the forgiveness of sins, is made specially to entreat the Divine pardon for his "translations ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility, and unfitting them for the chase." Similarly some of the Brazilian Indians would eat no beast, bird, or fish that ran, flew, or swam slowly, lest by partaking of its flesh they should lose their ability and be unable to escape from their enemies. The Caribs abstained from ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and the handicap to successful husbandry formed by the habit is easily perceived. Many efforts are being made to break up the custom, but it is up-hill work. Another habit of the Negro which militates against his progress is his prowling about in all sorts of revels by night, thereby unfitting himself for labor the next day. This trait also shows forth the general thoughtlessness of the Negro. His mule works by day, but is expected to carry his owner any number of miles at night. Sunday is seldom a day of rest for the work animals. It is a curious ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... "No," said she. "It would only do harm. But I wish ministers knew and felt that at the communion table there is a Real Presence that makes many words unfitting. When we are on the mount of Transfiguration, we do not care much for Peter, James or John. And so, dear, I recommend you to do as I do—if the minister must give us a doctrinal disquisition, or a learned argument, or an elaborate arabesque of fancy work, or an impassioned ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... Macey," said poor Tookey, serious amidst the general laughter, "I undertook to partially fill up the office of parish-clerk by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirmities should make you unfitting; and it's one of the rights thereof to sing in the choir—else why have ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Yet perhaps, on a moment's reflection, the rose-leaves scattered on the floor, and the air filled with odor of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a religious brotherhood—or if this should not be conceded, at all events it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of the cloister; nor will the institution be regarded ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
