"Incapacitate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way as to diminish pressure on the sore point, soon produces aching of muscles which are called into unusual action, to see that over-straining of any one of the muscles of the giraffe's hind-quarters might quickly incapacitate the animal when putting out all its powers to escape; and to be a few yards behind others would cause death. Hence if we are debarred from assuming that co-operative parts vary together even when adjacent and closely united—if we are still more debarred from assuming that with ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... endured in seeing her husband so near his end in that miserable place, destitute of the little comforts so needful in sickness. But with heroic determination she repressed her own sorrow, lest it might incapacitate her for assisting him while rallying his expiring energies for one more effort in his Master's cause. The poor worn body, though, was found unequal to the task assigned it by the zealous spirit, and he was forced to admit ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... severe pains in her feet and had been compelled to wear specially made shoes prescribed by a Chicago orthopedist. The shoes, however, did not seem to lessen the pain. After an ordinary day's occupation, she could not even walk across the floor at dinner-time. A walk of two blocks would incapacitate her for many days. She was convinced that her feet could never be cured and came to me only on account of nervous trouble. On the day of her arrival she flung herself down on the couch, saying that she ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... plan was to incapacitate all her children by plunging them "into such licentious pleasure and voluptuous dissipation that they were speedily unfitted for mental activity or exertion." Most unprejudiced historians credit her with the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew; she is said to have boasted about it to Catholic governments ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... experienced in settling with the latter the conditions of acceptance, it was sought, at all events, to delay the election till some decisive blow in Austria or Bohemia should annihilate all the hopes of Ferdinand, and incapacitate him from any competition for this dignity. The members of the Union left no stone unturned to gain over from Ferdinand the Electorate of Saxony, which was bound to Austrian interests; they represented to this court the dangers with which the Protestant religion, and even the constitution of the empire, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... rise too high, and be beyond its just proportion. And by means of this one carried too far, a man throughout his life is subject to much more uneasiness than belongs to his share; and in particular instances, it may be in such a degree as to incapacitate him from assisting the very person who is the object of it. But as there are some who upon principle set up for suppressing this affection itself as weakness, there is also I know not what of fashion on this side; and, by some ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... said the president. "I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... the experiment was tried in the Bristol infirmary, a few weeks afterwards, on a man who had a rheumatic affection in the shoulder, so severe as to incapacitate him from lifting his hand from his knee. The fictitious tractors were brought and applied to the afflicted part, one of the physicians, to add solemnity to the scene, drawing a stop-watch from his pocket to calculate the time exactly, while another, with a pen ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... make use of. This Locusta she now determined to consult. She accordingly went to her, and asked her if she did not know of any poison which would immediately take effect upon the brain and mind, so as to incapacitate the patient at once from all mental action, while yet it should be gradual and slow in its operations on the vital functions of the body. Locusta answered in the affirmative. Such characters were always prepared to furnish any species of medicaments that their customers might ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... completed my education. I saw that I ought to be afraid, but more clearly (this was when a liner hooted down the back of my neck) that any fear which would begin to do justice to the situation would, if yielded to, incapacitate me for the rest of my days. A shadow of spread sails, deeper than the darkening twilight, brooding over us like the wings of Azrael (Pyecroft said she was a Swede), and, miraculously withdrawn, persuaded me that there ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... neither wounds, nor fatigue, nor cruel treatment, could seriously impair. Wounded again and again, she continued to animate the troops by her voice, and was in arms undaunted next day. Her leap of sixty feet from the battlements of Beaurevoir stunned but did not long incapacitate her. Hunger, bonds, and the protracted weariness of months of cross-examination produced an illness but left her intellect as keen, her courage as unabated, her humour as vivacious, her memory as minutely accurate ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... applause followed this observation. "But be careful. Common humanity calls upon us to do as little damage as possible. You know your anatomy sufficiently well to avoid inflicting a wound upon a vital part, and can so arrange that your blows shall incapacitate rather than functionally derange. And now, my friends, put your instrument-boxes and pharmacopoeias in your haversacks, and draw your swords. All ready? Yes! Then, 'Up, Guards, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... than anybody else he knew, and offered me six hundred dollars for my labors in that capacity for the first year of my service. My engagement to him, he said at the same time, did not imply such entire employment as would incapacitate me for the execution of any business which might be intrusted to my hands individually. I was permitted the use of a desk in his office, and was also permitted to hang out my own banner from his window I readily persuaded myself that I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Miserable delusion (thought I), that encourages the ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies that are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the possessor—that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for private life—and that, while they expose him to the ridicule of strangers, render him the victim of his wife, and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sleep, wearied and depressed. If it was resolutely resisted by gentle exercise, it went off in about an hour, as well as the increased frequency of the pulse. This agitation was however such as to incapacitate him during the afternoon for study of any kind. The same effects did not follow a meal of milk and vegetables, but under this diet his strength did not recruit; whereas after the use of animal food it recovered rapidly, notwithstanding the inconvenience already mentioned. For this ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair, which she frequented; and how her views were very much changed by circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a past life spent in worldliness and error might not incapacitate her from more serious thought for the future. She described how in former days she had been indebted to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which she had read with the greatest profit, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Great Britain, whilst, at the same time, his brother and kin were held in chains, compelled to do unrequited labor, to come and go at the bidding of another. Were not these reflections enough to incapacitate the Doctor for the time being, for cool thought as to how he should best guard against the enemy? Indeed, in view of Slavery and its horrid features, the wonder is, not that more was not done, but that any thing was done, that the victims ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... bred up their captive at their capital; they had converted him to their own social habits and ways of life. And the sequel is instructive for those who have yet to learn how completely European education may incapacitate an Asiatic from returning to associate with his own people, how effectually it may obliterate the early influences of race ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... are so good a theologian," he said, "that perhaps you can tell me where a text comes from that has haunted me for the last hour. It speaks of some one who 'loosed the bands of Orion.'" His manner and the sudden address disconcerted Mrs. Danvers so completely as to incapacitate her from reply: she suffered "judgment to go by default;" and left Royston under the impression that she had never read ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... days. On the 12th at daylight, a heavy fire opened from the town, which, he says, "seldom missed our battery;" and at seven o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared his head by a hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye with such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, "I got a little hurt this morning: not much, as you may judge by my writing," and remained absent from duty only the regular twenty-four hours; but, after some fluctuations ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... be wrought amongst the natives, and I regret most deeply the total failure of the school instituted at York, and the partial failure of that at Guilford, both of which at FIRST promised so well. The fickle disposition of these people, in youth as in older years, incapacitate them from any long continued exertions, whether of learning or labour, whilst from the roving lives of the parents in search of food, the children, if received into the schools, must be entirely supported at the public ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... SLIGHT EARACHE.—A slight or moderate earache, which may, however, be very persistent, not sufficient to incapacitate the patient or prevent sleep, is often caused by some obstruction in the Eustachian tube, either by swelling or mucous discharge. This condition gives rise to the train of effects noted in the section on deafness. The air in the middle ear is absorbed to some extent, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... disturbance of the bodily health requiring medical attention, or any obvious departure from a normal state of thought and conduct such as to justify legal interference; neither do these affections always incapacitate the party from engaging in the ordinary business of life . . . . The change may have progressed insidiously and stealthily, having slowly and almost imperceptibly induced important molecular modifications in the delicate vesicular neurine of the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... curtly, and turned away from the stage. Like a schoolboy Alvary now began to sing with all his might, as if bound to incapacitate himself for the next day. But he would have sacrificed a finger rather than his opportunity on the morrow, and the little misses and susceptible matrons got the hero whom they adored for ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Force," the doctrine and concept shaping today's American force structure. The aims of this doctrine are to apply massive or overwhelming force as quickly as possible on an adversary in order to disarm, incapacitate, or render the enemy militarily impotent with as few casualties and losses to ourselves and to non-combatants as possible. The superiority of American forces, technically and operationally, is crucial to ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... was proper or natural to the human mind; we should rather seek it, if such were the alternative, in a civilized child of five years old. Be this as it may, it will not be denied that ignorance, brutality, and many other deteriorating causes, do practically incapacitate thousands for even an approximation, not only to this, but to many of the inferior emotions, the character of which is purely mental. And this, we think, is quite sufficient to neutralize the objection, if not, indeed, to justify the application ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... sometimes affected, and the accident is not attended with the usual pain and disability either at the time or after reduction. The facility and frequency with which dislocation recurs render the limb comparatively useless, and may seriously incapacitate the patient. We have had cases under observation in which dislocation resulted from the hyper-abduction of the arm in swimming, from throwing the arms above the head in dancing and in gymnastic exercises, and even ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... great partiality and injustice, and all sorts of people, even aliens, Jews, servants, common sailors and negroes, were admitted to vote at elections: That, in the said assembly, an act was passed to incapacitate every person from being a member of any General Assembly that should be chosen for the time to come, unless he had taken the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites of the church of England; whereby all Protestant ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... the passages without having regard to the fact that the latter passage demands as its complement that both bodies (which had been spoken of in the former passage) should be understood as referred to, you destroy all syntactical unity and so incapacitate yourselves from arriving at the true meaning of the text. Nor must you think that the second passage occupies itself with the subtle body only, for that reason that the latter is not easily distinguished from the Self, while the gross body is easily so distinguished on account of its readily ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... not prepare a word otherwise than he might do by arranging certain phrases in his memory. There should be nothing written; he had tried that before in old days, and had broken down with the effort. He would load himself with no burden of words in itself so heavy that the carrying of it would incapacitate him for ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... assurance of your safety. Remain on parole until you can send me an officer of equal rank, and I will look to the comfort of your men and have them exchanged at the earliest moment." His manly heart was so affected by this as to incapacitate him from ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... the tuition of our respected townsman, Mr. Woodall the gunsmith, and before the parties met he confided to the officer who acted as his second that he intended to aim at his opponent's trigger-finger and so to incapacitate him from further adventures of the kind. Extraordinary as it may appear, this intention was carried out. Captain M—l not only lost his finger, but the bullet passed up his arm and broke it above the elbow. ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... business? I should know ladies' shoes, whether they were good or bad, and what price they can bring. The ladies should support me." And so they did, and that woman has given a proof that her sex does not incapacitate for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... six "Faithfuls," each of whom still retained his medal for assisting in the "Discovery of the Sources of the Nile," one, poor Mabruki, had met with a sad misfortune, which I feared would incapacitate him from active usefulness. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... up and asked Jack whether his injury was sufficiently serious to incapacitate him for active service. When Jack replied that he was capable of performing any desired service, the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... courtesy, whatever display it may for any reason be our duty to make, precisely that display justice requires us to make. Whatever of any one of these qualities justice does not exact from us, we may, without wronging any one, omit. We must not, indeed, incapacitate ourselves by tippling for our proper work, nor offend the eyes or ears of decenter folk by reeling obstreperously through the streets; but, if we take the precaution of retiring during an interval of leisure ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... to-day, that the remaining eye of the President is failing. Total blindness would incapacitate him for the executive office. A ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... criticism, has already fallen to pieces or will shortly do so, is more than probable. That he will be too unimaginative to attempt to construct a new faith out of the ruins of the old, is practically certain. His lack of faith, in the broader sense of the word, will incapacitate him for high seriousness (which he will regard as "bad form"), and a fortiori for enthusiasm (which he will shun like the plague), and will therefore predispose him to frivolity. Being fully persuaded, owing to his lack of imaginative sympathy, that his own ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the mind requires some relaxation, and cannot always support its bent to care and industry. It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... to attend Mr. Boyle and the wounded Chilean, and he reported now that the chief officer's injury was trifling, but the Chilean's wound might incapacitate him during the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... think your own thoughts, and pray your own prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or who could understand all? Who can tell another's shortcomings, lost opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which incapacitate reason?—what extent of truth and right his neighbour's mind is organised to perceive and to do?—what invisible and forgotten accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have altered ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... seemed as if he must content himself with earning his bread. He had no right to call upon others to bear the burden of his needs. His brother; a steady hard-headed mechanic, who was doing well in the Midlands and had just married, spoke to him with uncompromising common sense; if he chose to incapacitate himself, he must not look to his relatives to support him. Silently Gilbert acquiesced; silently he went back to the factory, and, when he came home of nights, sat with eyes gazing blankly before him. His mother lived with him, she and his sister; the latter went out to work; all were ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... when Sir Geoffrey Kneller's pictures were to be sold, she went to my sister Gower, and very civily asked if she intended to bid for your picture; assuring her that, if she did, she would not offer at purchasing it. You know crimp and quadrille incapacitate that poor soul from ever buying any thing; but she told me this circumstance; and I expected the same civility from Mrs. Murray, having no way provoked her to the contrary. But she not only came to the auction, but with all possible spite bid up the picture, though I told her that, if you pleased ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... o'clock a great bell rang, and the attendants flew, not to arms, but to their trays, to bring up supper, when a second uproar announced that it was ready. The new comers woke at the sound; and I presently discovered that it took a very bad wound to incapacitate the defenders of the faith for the consumption of their rations; the amount that some of them sequestered was amazing; but when I suggested the probability of a famine hereafter, to the matron, that motherly lady cried out: "Bless ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... of the 19th century, an American physician, Beard, described Neurasthenia, a general disturbance of the body and mind, not properly classifiable as a disease, but serious enough to incapacitate or at least greatly limit the sufferer. The neurasthenic is to be recognized by the fact that the most painstaking objective examination of his organs reveals nothing the matter with them. Yet, according to his complaint, everything is the matter with him. He cannot sleep when he lies down, he ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... think—to pull himself together. And he lost his head. . . . Maurice did his best to save the situation. Realizing that for the moment Geoffrey was hardly accountable, he deliberately shot him in the leg, to incapacitate him, and took command himself, trying to rally the men. But they stampeded past him, panic-stricken, and it was while he was storming at them to turn round and put up a fight that—that he was shot in the back." She faltered, meeting the measureless ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... world physical circumstances control the human race. They make the Australian a savage; incapacitate the negro, who can never invent an alphabet or an arithmetic, and whose theology never passes beyond the stage of sorcery. They cause the Tartars to delight in a diet of milk, and the American Indian to abominate it. They make the dwarfish races of Europe instinctive ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... in future to hear no contempt of penmen, unless a depraved use of the pen shall have so cramped them as to incapacitate them for the sword and for the council chamber. If Alexander was the Great, what was Aristoteles who made him so, and taught him every art and science he knew, except three—those of drinking, of blaspheming, and of murdering his bosom friends? Come along: ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to abstain from the substantial dinner of to-day: you are only advised to partake of these coarser viands in such moderation as not to incapacitate you from enjoying the choicer banquet of to-morrow. If, regardless of that counsel, you choose to make a beast of yourself now, and over-eat and over-drink yourself till you turn the good victuals into poison, who is ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... obliged to you for relieving me." Truth is, I have never regarded the employment of literary time as thrown away. The discipline of the mind, induced by composition, is something, and it is surprising what may be done by a person who carefully "redeems" all his time. It does not, in the least, incapacitate him for business. It rather ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the circumstances. But I am rather inclined to think he would hardly do anything more dreadful than play the savage antic just suggested; because, a moment's reflection would show him that to use his horns to a greater length, were to frighten the young runaway out of his wits, and thereby incapacitate him from being made to see and feel the error of his way. Though, I must confess that, for my own part, I should not be willing to trust the savage fellow a single horn's length until I had subjected him to a certain old-fashioned ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... of living ethically enables us to go through life without being tempted to steal or lie or do physical violence. No person's morals can be relied upon who is tempted constantly to do immoral acts; ethical training seeks to incapacitate us for committing unethical deeds and to habituate ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... when it is safe they openly allege, that all who do not share their opinions are bad husbands, bad fathers, bad citizens, and bad men. Thus they cast libellous dust in the eyes of their dupes, and incapacitate them from seeing the real facts of the case for themselves. A notable illustration of this evil principle may be found in a recent speech by the Bishop of Chester. Dr. Jayne presided at a Town Hall meeting of the local branch of the National ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... and disgraceful; the honest triumphs of the poor man who works his way to independence are treated with scorn and contempt. It is asserted that what we are in the habit of regarding as the honorable pursuits of industry incapacitate a nation for civilisation and refinement, and that no institutions can be really free and democratic which do not rest, like those of Athens and of Rome, on a broad substratum of slavery. So far from treating slavery as an exceptional institution, it is regarded ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... do, would be a sketch in Harding's manner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but by the earnest and complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand the one and love the other more and more, whether you can draw ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... condition, some slight permanent papillomas or warty growths may he left from the healed granulating or ulcerated surfaces. Sometimes these little elevations on the valves become inflamed and then adhere together, or adhere to the wall of the heart, and thus incapacitate a valve. Sometimes these excrescences undergo partial fatty degeneration, or may take on calcareous changes and thus ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... have at present no connections to keep me at home; no wife, or unprovided sisters, brothers, etc. I shall take care of you, and when I return I may possibly become a politician. A few years' knowledge of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a fair chance;—it is from experience, not books, we ought to judge of them. There is nothing like inspection, and trusting to our ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero |
