"Inaptitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... half my life—at all events, the better half—at a public school and the University, preparatory to a profession, my antipathy for which was exactly proportioned by my inaptitude for it, the sole result is, that I can now answer to the definition of a real gentleman, "one who has no visible ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... on the ground with much difficulty. Its movements are so slow that it is thought that it cannot walk more than fifty steps in a day. It is also known that the structure of this animal is in direct relation with its feeble state or its inaptitude for walking; and that should it desire to make any other movements than those which it is seen to make, it ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... have made any excuses about the letter: I never said but that you might, could, should, or would have reason. I merely described my own state of inaptitude to listen to it at that time, and in those circumstances. Besides, you did not speak from your own authority—but from what you said you had heard. Now my blood boils to hear an Italian speaking ill of another Italian, because, though they lie in particular, they speak truth in general ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... been Torpedo's characteristics in days gone by, at this advanced period in his history he possessed none so striking as a stoical inaptitude for being moved. Another of his distinguishing traits was a propensity for grazing which he was prone to indulge at inopportune moments. Such points taken in conjunction with a gait closely resembling that of the camel in the desert, might give much cause to wonder at Therese's motive in ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... singing, dancing, and carousing; but his irresponsible gaiety and heedlessness of consequences balanced by a fatalistic courage and endurance in the face of suffering and danger. Capable, besides, of high flights of idealism, which result in epics, but rarely in actions, owing to the Slavonic inaptitude for sustained and organised effort. The Englishman by contrast appears cold and calculating, incapable of rising above questions of practical utility; neither interested in other men's antecedents and experiences nor willing to retail his own. The catechism ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for the present manners in our state. I could easily console myself for this corruption in regard to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his greetings for the old man. Mr Harding had ever mixed something of fear with his warm affection for his elder son-in-law, and now in these closing hours of his life he could not avoid a certain amount of shrinking from that loud voice,—a certain inaptitude to be quite at ease in that commanding presence. The dean, his second son-in-law, had been a modern friend in comparison with the archdeacon; but the dean was more gentle with him; and then the dean's wife had ever been the dearest to him of human beings. It may be a doubt ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope |
