"Incapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are, fifteen months later, with Balaclava and Inkerman behind us, and the world ringing with the story of our valour; and something here and there being said about the staring incapacity of our commanders and the crass dishonesty and stupidity of our contractors. The army which left home in such bright array is transformed to a crowd of ragged vagabonds, and all the services are mixed together in the trenches and the camps before Sevastopol. Here are men of the Horse ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... religion, its dignity and independence? Why do so, if thereby you lower and degrade the most Italian sovereignty of the whole peninsula? Why, more especially, do so now, in presence of all these unchained evil passions, and thereby give against the Holy See a sentence of incapacity, and thus, in the eyes of Christendom, insult that unarmed and oppressed Majesty? You say he will only lose the Romagna and the Legations. But allow me to ask you by what right you take them? And why not ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... situation in the calm of my room, I had no qualms as to either the elopement or the suicide, hut I felt a revulsion of feeling towards Peter. His lack of moral indignation and purpose, his intractability in all that was serious and his incapacity to improve had been cutting a deep though unconscious division between us for years; and I determined at whatever cost, after this, that I would ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... with pride the valor and the victories in the Crimea, let her remember it was the manhood in the ranks which achieved it. When all was over, war had slain its thousands,—but official incapacity its tens of thousands! ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... singularly unfavourable to their success in conciliating the goodwill of Ireland. It will always remain a paradox that the nation which has built up the British Empire (with vast help, it may be added, from Ireland) has combined extraordinary talent for legislation with a singular incapacity for consolidating subject races or nations into one State. The explanation of the paradox lies in the aristocratic sentiment which has moulded the institutions of England. An aristocracy respects the rights of individuals, but an aristocracy identifies right with privilege, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... anti-priestly freethought of the masses, his mind used the pious formula from the superficial force of habit, but with a deep-seated sincerity. The popular mind is incapable of scepticism; and that incapacity delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead. But would God consent to receive her soul? She had died without confession or absolution, because he had not been willing to spare ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... telegram to you are among those who introduced and obtained the adoption of the Leavenworth resolution, and who are endeavoring to organize a force for the purpose of general retaliation upon Missouri. Those who so deplore my 'imbecility' and 'incapacity' are the very men who are endeavoring to bring about a collision between the people of Kansas and the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... are, first, that it should be known; secondly, that it should be fixed, and not occasional. First, this power cannot be according to the first property of law; because no man does or can know it, nor do you yourselves know upon what grounds you will vote the incapacity of any man. No man in Westminster Hall, or in any court upon earth, will say that is law, upon which, if a man going to his counsel should say to him, "What is my tenure in law of this estate?" he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... damage.[117] This notice is a condition precedent to the right to maintain an action for such injury or damage, and cannot be waived by the city or town.[118] Nothing will excuse such notice except the physical or mental incapacity of the person injured, in which case he may give the notice within ten days after such incapacity is removed, and in case of his death it may be given by his executors or administrators.[119] Formerly ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... I would merely mention, as a familiar example of such errors, that an enlightened student of phrenology called upon me yesterday, to whom phrenologists had given the character of avaricious selfishness and an incapacity for friendship, which indeed was the correct application of the old system, but was the reverse of his true character. The old system did not explain friendship correctly, and entirely mislocated the organ of avarice by placing it in the temples. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... have been enough—he has carried the face of his niggling little buttresses flush with the massive walls of the great towers. I wished I could have had M. Viollet-le-Duc there by both his ears and knocked his head against the abomination he has created. He had a splendid opportunity, and through incapacity he ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... Indian point of view. It admitted frankly that "Indians were alive to the grievance of being excluded from a larger share in the executive government," and proceeded to state that in its opinion ample evidence had been given to show "that such exclusion is not warranted on the score of their own incapacity for business or the want of application or trustworthiness." Accordingly, when the Charter was renewed, Parliament laid it down that "no native of the said Indian territories, nor any natural British-born subject of His Majesty resident therein, shall by reason ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... commentators, and travellers, Catholic and Protestant, ever since. In thus throwing the responsibility of the myth upon the Arabs Dr. Geikie appears to show both the "perfervid genius" of his countrymen and their incapacity to recognise a joke. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and I hope age, which renders us less gallant, and more envious of the joys and liberties of youth, will never reduce me to so dull and thoughtless a Member of State) yet I have so small and single a portion of their power, that I am ashamed of my incapacity of serving you in this great affair. I bear the honour and the name, it is true, of glorious sway; but I can boast but of the worst and most impotent part of it, the title only; but the busy, absolute, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... germs, were among the solid particles strained off. Secondly, he proved that these germs were competent to give rise to living forms by simply sowing them in a solution fitted for their development. And, thirdly, he showed that the incapacity of air strained through cotton- wool to give rise to life, was not due to any occult change effected in the constituents of the air by the wool, by proving that the cotton-wool might be dispensed with altogether, and perfectly free ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... can't help it. You are universally lovable, and the best of it is that you don't know it. You don't know it now. Even as I tell it to you, you don't realize it, you won't realize it—and that very incapacity to realize it is one of the reasons why you are so loved. You are incredulous now, and you shake your head; but I know, who am your slave, as all people know, for they likewise ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Christopher) of a part of the punishment of one Ratcliffe, who had incurred the vengeance of the law, and also of the indulgence shown to Philip Joy. At the head of these malcontents was the Assistant Spikeman—one who, by his evil propensities and incapacity to appreciate the noble sentiments of Winthrop, stood to him in a certain relation of hostility. For there is no law more prevailing than that evil hates good, compelled thereto by the very constitution of its nature. Indeed, it is evil by reason ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... can and does believe all the preceeding facts, if he still 'can't believe' as to the cruelties of slaveholders, it would be barbarous to tantalize his incapacity either with evidence or argument. Let him have the benefit of the act in such ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... necessary for the third stage. If the first stage only be reached, the sensation is not pleasurable in reality, or would not be but for its association. If produced, as I have sometimes found it to be, by a sense of mental incapacity, it is distinctly disagreeable, especially if one feels that the energy which might have been used in coping with the difficulty is being thus dissipated. If it be produced, as it may be, as the result ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the whole incident was this incapacity of action, and the more I reasoned about it the more I was mystified by the utter failure of nerve force. Indeed, while the mind was actively at work on this problem the physical torpor continued, a languor not unlike the incipient drowsiness ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... want of it. A spirit of finance affects every department of the state; it reigns triumphant at Court; all have become venal; and all distinction of rank is broken up. Your Ministers are without genius and capacity since the dismissal of MM. d'Argenson and de Machault. You alone cannot judge of their incapacity, because they lay before you what has been prepared by skilful clerks, but which they pass as their own. They provide only for the necessity of the day, but there is no spirit of government in their ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the privilege which you have assumed of talking nonsense with impunity. But there is, you say, a transition of images flowing on in great crowds in such a way that out of many some one at least must be perceived! I should be ashamed of my incapacity to understand this if you, who assert it, could comprehend it yourselves; for how do you prove that these images are continued in uninterrupted motion? Or, if uninterrupted, still how do you prove them to be eternal? There is a constant supply, you say, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... preceding series. The microscope is able to show only clearly marked stages and the most characteristic types, for evolution runs through its initial stages with a rapidity defying the closest physical observation. If only Nature would slacken her pace in order to humour our incapacity, we should see in an even more striking fashion that she preserves everything she has attained and develops the power of reconstruction ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... said, "After what I have heard and observed, sir, it will be to no purpose for me to think of curing the princess, since I have no remedies proper for her malady; for which reason I humbly submit my life to your majesty's pleasure." The king, enraged at his incapacity, and the trouble he had given him, caused ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... there would be something cruel—indeed there is something cruel—in Emerson's incapacity to deal with Margaret Fuller. He wrote to her on October 24, 1840: "My dear Margaret, I have your frank and noble and affecting letter, and yet I think I could wish it unwritten. I ought never to have suffered you to lead me into any conversation or writing on our relation, a topic from ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... mistakes of conduct which at five-and-twenty prove the strength of the mind, that, ten or fifteen years after, would demonstrate its weakness, its incapacity to acquire a sane judgment. The youths who are satisfied with the ordinary pleasures of life, and do not sigh after ideal phantoms of love and friendship, will never arrive at great maturity of understanding; but if these reveries are cherished, as is too frequently the case with ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and Mr Fisker, and two speeches were of course made by them. Mr Melmotte may have been held to have clearly proved the genuineness of that English birth which he claimed by the awkwardness and incapacity which he showed on the occasion. He stood with his hands on the table and with his face turned to his plate blurted out his assurance that the floating of this railway company would be one of the greatest and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... sentiments of the Mt. Alban bachelor manager. It was enough to make one think. Evan did think, and he began to open his mind to a wider criticism of the business. He began to wonder if he had been cut out for a bankclerk. Why had Robb repeatedly made anti-banking suggestions to him? Had he seen incapacity for clerical work in the Mt. Alban swipe? Did Jones discern a similar inaptitude for bank service and hint things for the teller's benefit? Was there a chance that he (Evan) possessed faculties that must die in the business of his mother's ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... of gravity,' that were agitating then this secret Chamber of Peers, a distinct demand on the part of this ancient leadership,—the leadership of 'the honoured number,' the honourable and right honourable few, that this mass of ignorance, and stupidity, and blind custom, and incapacity for rule,—this combination of mere instinctive force, which the physical majority in unlearned times constitutes, which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and passivity, and in its passionate admiration of heroism ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... autonomous city was accepted as the indispensable basis of political speculation; thirdly, because this incurable subdivision proved finally the cause of their ruin, in spite of pronounced intellectual superiority over their conquerors; and lastly, because incapacity of political coalescence did not preclude a powerful and extensive sympathy between the inhabitants of all the separate cities, with a constant tendency to fraternize for numerous purposes, social, religious, recreative, intellectual, and aesthetical. For these reasons, the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... short-sighted policy against which we might declaim: for, setting aside the absence of punishment to a black, where confinement is accompanied with ease and regular dietary; to which he has not hitherto been accustomed (to say nothing of his incapacity to understand the nature of his crime, or the cause of his incarceration); the contamination he receives during his sojourn in those fearful sinks of infamy, complete his immoral training; and when he again breathes the fresh air of freedom, he is ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... and he was able, before his own marriage, to get her an appointment as head-waiting-woman to Madame Mere, the Emperor's mother. But in spite of that powerful protection Clapart was never promoted; his incapacity was too apparent. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the news being so very grave," replied the advocate, "made me wish for time to consider. If Cocoleu pretends to be imbecile, or, at least, exaggerates his incapacity, then we have a confirmation of what M. de Boiscoran last night told Miss Dionysia. It would be the proof of an odious trap of a long-premeditated vengeance. Here is the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... refuses to listen to the heathen rhetorician Aristides or the apostate Emperor Julian on matters of fact because they are both highly superstitious—the one paying a childish deference to dreams, the other showing himself a profound believer in magic? In short, Irenaeus betrays no incapacity which affects his competency as a witness to a broad and comprehensive fact, such as that with which ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... disbanded at two simple questions put by the Director,—"Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not manly to push a falling man." The scientific incapacity of the professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... a part; others, again, such as a great portion of day-labourers with large families, and who cannot even supply their children with necessary food and clothing, pay nothing: it is merely necessary for these to be furnished with a certificate of their incapacity to pay for the education of their children, and the state takes the whole charge of their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... saw what appeared to him of the [mock] physician's incapacity, he turned to his disciples and pupils and bade them fetch the other, with all his gear and drugs. So they brought him into his presence on the speediest wise, and when Galen saw him before him, he said to him, 'Knowest thou me?' ' No,' answered the other, 'nor did I ever ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the decline of this singular art its defects became more apparent. The race had degenerated; the inexperienced actor became loquacious; long monologues were contrived by a barren genius to hide his incapacity for spirited dialogue; and a wearisome repetition of trivial jests, coarse humour, and vulgar buffoonery, damned the Commedia a soggetto, and sunk it to a Bartholomew-fair play. But the miracle which genius produced it may repeat, whenever the same happy combination ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... "burke Sir Walter." We are still very Radical in the Forest, and you were taken away from many evils to come. How would the cheek of Walter Scott, or of Leyden, have blushed at the names of Majuba, The Soudan, Maiwand, and many others that recall political cowardice or military incapacity! On the other hand, who but you could have sung the dirge of Gordon, or wedded with immortal verse the names of Hamilton (who fell with Cavagnari), of the two Stewarts, of many another clansman, brave among the bravest! ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... the earth appears to be wasting away in a slow fever. This weather, I think, affects the spirits very unfavorably. There is an irksomeness, a restlessness, a pervading dissatisfaction, together with an absolute incapacity to bend the mind to any serious effort. With me, as regards literary production, the summer has been unprofitable; and I only hope that my forces are recruiting themselves for the autumn and winter. For the future, I ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... action. He ran no risk. He shot without the slightest opposition and without warning. This is not an 'error of judgement.' It is paralysis of it in the face of fancied danger. It is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness. But the fury that has been spent upon General Dyer is, I am sure, largely misdirected. No doubt the shooting was 'frightful,' the loss of innocent life deplorable. But the slow torture, degradation and emasculation that ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... the trouble came about. Here our kings, or at least the ministers they appointed, have always governed; often unwisely I admit, but is it likely that the mob would govern better? That is the question. At present they seem bent on showing their incapacity to govern ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... too well aware of the average woman's distorted notion of abstract justice to accept her statement at its face value. Woman by her very nature is incapable of appreciating or applying impartial justice, and her incapacity grows in proportion to her immediate interest in the matter involved. This latter might apply with equal force to the average man; but man, less governed by emotions, will permit his sense of justice to prevail when not blinded by personal interest. Abstract justice will frequently appeal to ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... so the American man, in point of progress, seems to stand in the rear of the Old World races. Both the geology and zoology of the continent were arrested in their development. Vegetable life alone has been favored. "The aboriginal American (wrote Von Martius) is at once in the incapacity of infancy and unpliancy of old age; he unites the opposite ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... 361. Julian the Apostate succeeded peacefully to the empire whereto he was about to assert his right by force of arms; and Sapor found that the war which he had provoked with Rome, in reliance upon his adversary's weakness and incapacity, had to be carried on with a prince of far greater natural powers and of much ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... learnt that to refuse payment was impossible, and that all I could hope was that each note changed would give me a clue as to the whereabouts of the thief. Each forward step in the matter showed me more plainly the difficulties of the task I had undertaken, and my own incapacity for such work. Nothing is so good for a man's vanity as contact ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... hole in the paper barrier, just as they would have pierced their natural clay ceiling. When the moment comes to free themselves, the nature of the impediment does not stop them, provided that it be not beyond their strength; and henceforth the argument of incapacity cannot be raised when a mere paper ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... direction of the war been intrusted to Clive, it would probably have been brought to a speedy close. But the timidity and incapacity which appeared in all the movements of the English, except where he was personally present, protracted the struggle. The Mahrattas muttered that his soldiers were of a different race from the British ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... question. It has been urged, as against this, that the Japanese possess the defect not uncommon among people of any race, viz., that the capacity for rapidly assimilating knowledge is to some extent counteracted or rendered abortive by an incapacity to practically apply that knowledge. I may say for myself that though I have often heard this objection urged I have not seen any indications of this lack of ability to practically apply knowledge on the part of the Japanese. I should have thought ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... is limited not by indifference—how could the character of its members be matter of indifference to the community?—but by its own incapacity to achieve its ends. The spirit cannot be forced. Nor, conversely, can it prevail by force. It may require social expression. It may build up an association, a church for example, to carry out the common objects and maintain the common life of all who are like-minded. But the association ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... what would happen in the ranks of the syndicalists if the business idea of labor's intellectual and emotional incapacity for functioning, gave way before a community's confidence in the capacity of labor—we have in the case of the migratory workers in the harvesting of our western crops. The harvesters who follow the crops with the seasons from the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... himself to with extreme facility. So remarkable a change was not, in that age, to be accounted for but by a miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat, almost despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he had not made a better choice. She, however, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... object was not altogether so attainable as he imagined. In no place does favouritism flourish with much more rank luxuriance than in that city—in no place do personal prepossessions more frequently operate to the overthrow of judgment, to the exclusion of merit, and to the fostering of incapacity. The multitude had their favourites whose merit touched the highest standard of their conceptions—any thing beyond that was hid in an intellectual mist. The taste of the many was formed upon the kind of merit which they so much admired in their favourites, and little did it relish that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... why he was playing with soldiers, nor with what passionate sorrow he was recalling every fleeting expression on his mother's face, every slight intonation of her voice when she was able to share in his game; he hated his uncle and aunt so profoundly that he revelled in their incapacity to understand him, and he would have accounted it a desecration of her memory to share his ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Landells and Dr. Beckler, and acted to the best of his judgment under the circumstances, with the means at his disposal. His confidence, too hastily bestowed, was repaid by ingratitude and contumely. Wright never spoke of his commander without using terms of disparagement, and dwelling on his incapacity. "He was gone to destruction," he said, "and would lose all who were with him." He repeated these words to me, and others even stronger, both in Melbourne and in Adelaide. McDonough, in his evidence before the Royal Commission, was asked, "What did you say as to Mr. Wright's desponding?" ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... state and head of government note : in an unusual, out of cycle change in executive power, Congress on 11 February 1997 elected then Congress President ALARCON to be Interim President until August 1998 after ousting former President BUCARAM because of "mental incapacity;" ARTEAGA remained vice president cabinet : Cabinet appointed by the president elections: president and vice president elected on the same ticket by popular vote for four-year terms; election last held 19 ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... have given that appearance of disdain to her courtesy to which the girl alluded. When, however, her boy in service was brought home ill, she had sent to ask for what she now required, on the very ground that it had been offered to her before. The misunderstanding had arisen from the total incapacity of Mrs Oldcastle to enter sympathetically into the feelings of one as superior to herself in character as she was inferior in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... and distrusted womanhood; the sentiment is all but universal in low-born girls. Advancing in civilisation, she retained this instinct, and confirmed the habit of mind by results of her experience; having always sought for meanness and incapacity in the female world, she naturally had found a great deal of it. By another way, Constance Bride had arrived at very much the same results; she made no friends among women, and desired none. Lady Ogram and she agreed in their disdain for all "woman" movements; what ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... concluding upon some national reflection, Josephus, pathetically enough, disfigures the end of his work with a final revelation of personal vanity and materialistic views of a Providence intervening on his behalf. Egoism and incapacity to attain to the noble and sublime either in action or thought were the two defects that lowered Josephus as a man, and which mar him as an historian. In the last paragraph of the work he insists that he has aimed alone at ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... God's reward for what I have done, I can hardly appreciate it; it is more like punishment for misdeeds (of which I've done many) than grace for good ones (if I've done any). Homelessness is the actor's fate; physical incapacity to attain what is most required and desired by such a spirit as I am a slave to. If there be rewards, I am certainly well paid, but hard schooling in life's thankless lessons has made we somewhat of a philosopher, and I've learned to take the buffets and rewards of fortune with ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the more pitiable in that it had got into his head with his promotions, and was less presumption than stupidity, and still less vanity, of which he had none. The joke is, that the mainspring of the king's great affection for him was this very incapacity. He confessed it to the king at every step, and the king was delighted to direct and instruct him; in such sort that he grew jealous for his success as if it were his own, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... drinking and eating. Therefore, O king, I shall not take thy decrepitude. This is, indeed, my determination. White hair on the head, cheerlessness and relaxation of the nerves, wrinkles all over the body, deformities, weakness of the limbs, emaciation, incapacity to work, defeat at the hands of friends and companions—these are the consequences of decrepitude. Therefore, O king, I desire not to take it. O king, thou hast many sons some of whom are dearer to thee. Thou art acquainted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... you, you combination of cheek and incapacity, or I'll run you down with the whole battery. Oh! Waring, some gentlemen in a carriage have just stopped at your quarters, all in black, too. ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... assail another's responsibilities and avocations when her own were embarrassing her sufficiently. Her household web had got warped and entangled in her careless, inexperienced hands, and vexed and mortified her with a sense of incapacity and failure—an oppression which she could not own to Hector Garret, because there was no common ground, and no mutual understanding between them. When Leslie came to Otter she found the housekeeping in the hands of an Irish follower of the Garrets—themselves of Irish origin; and Hector ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... elsewhere lamented the absence from society of a machinery for facilitating the descent of incapacity. "Administrative Nihilism." Collected Essays, vol. i. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the animal behaviour prattle of the learned head-master, it reveals, on the one hand, only the academic fondness for seizing upon high-sounding but empty phrases and using them to alarm the populace, and on the other hand, only the academic incapacity for observing facts correctly and reporting them honestly. The truth is, of course, that the behaviour of such men as Cowperwood and Witla and of such women as Carrie and Jennie, as Dreiser describes it, is no more merely animal than the behaviour of such acknowledged and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... conscious harmony with this Divine order of the world, a sense, that is to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make one's ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... An incapacity of relying on oneself and a faith in others are precisely the conditions that compel brutes to congregate and live in herds; and, again, it is essential to their safety in a country infested by large carnivora, that they should keep closely ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... superbly beautiful and would have shed lustre on any part which involved the minimum of words and the maximum of clothes: but in the pivotal role of a serious play, her very physical attributes only served to emphasize and point her hopeless incapacity. Sally remembered Mr. Faucitt's story of the lady who got the bird at Wigan. She did not see how history could fail to repeat itself. The theatrical public of America will endure much from youth and beauty, but ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... kettle and the teapot. Owing to these encumbrances, perhaps, she lost the thread of her discourse, and concluded, rather wistfully, "It's all so SIMPLE." She referred to a matter that was a perpetual source of bewilderment to her—the extraordinary incapacity of the human race, in a world where the good is so unmistakably divided from the bad, of distinguishing one from the other, and embodying what ought to be done in a few large, simple Acts of Parliament, which would, in a very short time, completely ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... preference. Thus, to relieve the indigent and distressed, to single out the unhappy, from whom can be expected no returns either of present entertainment or future service, for the objects of our favours; to esteem a man's being friendless as a recommendation; dejection, and incapacity of struggling through the world, as a motive for assisting him; in a word, to consider these circumstances of disadvantage, which are usually thought a sufficient reason for neglect and overlooking a person, as a motive for ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... the world, other than ours, where an officer guilty of such conduct, whether it came from incapacity or cowardice, would not have been promptly cashiered and probably shot. This would have been true, as in the case of Admiral Keppel, if his fault had been merely a failure to attack. But Butler's fault was an ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... railroad engine," remarked Sally, laughing, and I realised by the strained look in their faces, that this absorption in larger matters—this unchangeable habit of thought that I could not shake off even in a drawing-room—puzzled them, because of their inherent incapacity to understand how it could be. My mind, which responded so promptly to the need for greater exertions, was reduced to mere leaden weight by this restless movement of little things. And this leaden weight, this strained effort to become something other than I was by nature, was reflected ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... experience, but it is the simplest sort of police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, just as the public garbage man relieves you from the burden of taking out the ashes yourself, because he is paid for it, not on account of your own incapacity or his superiority. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... incapacity plain. The execution of the King had filled them with alarm, and with hatred against the ruder and more robust party who had forced that startling act of vengeance upon them. Puny social disgusts prevented them from co-operating ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... struggle was unequal and the bank fell. The course of Mr. Madison can hardly be excused. Political history records few examples of a more cruel desertion of a cabinet minister by his chief. Mr. Gallatin felt it deeply and tendered his resignation. The administration was going to pieces by sheer incapacity. The leaders took alarm and the cabinet was reconstructed, Monroe being called to the Department of State. But the enemies of Mr. Gallatin still clung to his skirts, determined to drag him to the dust. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... long ruminated on these matters, before it occurred to his memory that he had a brother who was under no such unhappy incapacity. This brother he made no doubt would succeed; for he discerned, as he thought, an inclination to marriage in the lady; and the reader perhaps, when he hears the brother's qualifications, will not blame the confidence which he entertained ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... mucous lining and bore into it, presumably for the purpose of making a nest in which later to lay their eggs. The burrowing parasite causes a great loss of blood, and it is on account of the resulting anaemia that the poor whites show always such incapacity, indifference, and apparent laziness. That this disease is of importance in considering the hygienic condition of the country is apparent when it is pointed out that in the southern part of the United States, chiefly ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... The incapacity of the King, the venality of the Princes, the arrogance of the hierarchy, the insubordination of the nobles, the licentiousness of the Court, the despotism of the Government; all the errors and all the vices of their rulers, were jealously noted and bitterly registered by an oppressed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Indian does, or according to received application of heartless laws, as the modern European does, and there is but one word for you—Death:—death of every healthy faculty, and of every noble intelligence, incapacity of understanding one great work that man has ever done, or of doing anything that it shall be helpful for him to behold. You have cut yourselves off voluntarily, presumptuously, insolently, from the whole teaching of your Maker in His Universe; ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... This was wonderful. Usually, a long and painful struggle precedes feminine acquiescence, on such occasions. Repeated refusals, declarations of incapacity, partial consent vouchsafed and then waywardly withdrawn, poutings, head-tossings, feebler murmurs of disinclination, and final reluctant yielding form the fashionable order of proceeding. The charm of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... state that General Fremont has published an answer to the charges preferred against him. That answer refers chiefly to matters of military capacity or incapacity, as to which I have expressed no opinion. General Fremont does allude to the accusations made against him regarding the building of the forts; but in doing so he seem to me rather to admit than to deny the acts ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... declared at her trial that her voices told her to remain at St. Denis, but that the lords made her attack Paris. On the 8th September the assault was made, but it was foiled by the king's apathy, the incapacity and bitter jealousy of his counsellors, and the action of double-faced Burgundy. In the afternoon Jeanne, while sounding the depth of the fosse with her lance,[94] was wounded by an arrow in the thigh. She remained till late evening, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... sail from Boston harbour on the 30th of July, 1711, fore-doomed, through the incapacity of its leader, to the most ignominious failure yet befalling any expedition against Quebec. By reason of his former mission to Canada, Colonel Vetch had been commanded to accompany the fleet, and his Journal ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... priest's. His grace, having sent for the offender, reasoned with him, and solicited the priest to question him on any learned subject. This the man, overcome by the bishop's good nature, and knowing his own glaring incapacity, declined, and entreated his forgiveness, which was immediately granted, with a charge to employ his time better when he returned to his parish. Cromwell was much vexed at the lenity displayed, but the bishop was ever more ready to receive ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... scorned this theory; if Olivia had confessed the broken engagement she would have thought her shallow and untrustworthy. She was confident, with inexperience's sublime incapacity for self-doubt, that in all the wide world there was only one man whom she could have loved ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... overwrought when young: so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of parents. No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... fresh discontent among the Irish. Their cause had already been well-nigh ruined by the interference and incapacity of the French generals, and, on the retirement of Lauzun, they had confidently expected that Sarsfield would be appointed commander-in-chief, and that henceforth there would be unity of design in their operations. Saint Ruth was accompanied ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... of employment had proved how difficult it was for an inexperienced girl to escape becoming the prey of fraudulent advertisements, and it was humiliating to reflect on her own incapacity. What could she do that a thousand other girls could not accomplish equally well? She could play fairly well, sing fairly well, paint fairly well, trim a hat so that it did not look obviously home-made, make a trifle or creams, though she was densely ignorant about boiling ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... were the king's wives and concubines. It was not agreeable to her age and gravity to dissipate at night; but tidings of the consternation in the banquet hall were brought to her, so that she came and entreated him not to be discouraged by the incapacity of the wise men to solve the riddle; for there was a man in his kingdom who had more than once helped his father in emergencies and would no doubt advise him. She could not read the writing herself; but she said, let the Prophet Daniel be called. The ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... management.] The Compania suffered great losses through its erroneous system of operation, and the incapacity of its officials (it paid, for example, $13.50 for a picul of pepper which cost from three to four dollars ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... at Kenilworth, while his wife, who had successfully intrigued with Roger Mortimer, leader of the Barons, observed the Christmas festivities with her son at Wallingford, glad at the downfall of her husband. Edward was an irresolute and weak-minded king. He displayed singular incapacity for government, wasting almost all his time in frivolous amusements. The chief characteristics of his reign were defeat and disgrace abroad, and misrule ending in misery at home. Instead of following the example of his noble father, Edward ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of all this?' Anna Vassilyevna was thinking. (She could not guess that the preceding evening at the English club a discussion had arisen in a corner of the smoking-room as to the incapacity of Russians to make speeches. 'Which of us can speak? Mention any one!' one of the disputants had exclaimed. 'Well, Stahov, for instance,' had answered the other, pointing to Nikolai Artemyevitch, who stood up on the spot almost ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... and a dispassionate observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in favour of a man who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to answer them by argument, proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of their promulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose infliction ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... mere trampling pressure and electric friction of town life, become to the sufferers peculiarly mysterious in their undeservedness, and frightful in their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over them for evil; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the pollution, and of their own wills to oppose the weight, of the staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the pledge of this falseness in Pope lay in a disease of his mind, which he (like the Roman poet Horace) mistook for a feature of preternatural strength; and this disease was the incapacity of self-determination towards any paramount or abiding principles. Horace, in a well-known passage, had congratulated himself upon this disease as upon ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... loose with Thompson and Cooper, was a whaler. Not owing to any inherent incapacity, for he had taken his B.A. at an English university, and was, notwithstanding his rags and dirt, a remarkably fine-looking man; bearing a striking resemblance to Dixon, even in features. But as the wives of Napoleon's generals could ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... shires men were making ready for revolt; in the unsubdued lands they were making ready for more active defence. Many went beyond sea to ask for foreign help, specially in the kindred lands of Denmark and Northern Germany. Against this threatening movement William's strength lay in the incapacity of his enemies for combined action. The whole land never rose at once, and Danish help did not come at the times or in the shape when it could have done ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... careful study of the things a man, black or white, fails to do, whether for good or evil, usually gives you a truer knowledge of the man than the things he succeeds in doing. When you fully realise this acuteness on one hand and this mechanical incapacity on the other which exist in the people you are studying, you can go ahead. Only, I beseech you, go ahead carefully. When you have found the easy key that opens the reason underlying a series of facts, as for example, these: a Benga spits on your hand as ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... dignities had been welcomed by public opinion. Four months later he was a convicted criminal, sentenced for judicial corruption to imprisonment at the King's pleasure, to a fine of L40,000, and to perpetual incapacity for any public employment. Vicissitudes of fortune are commonplaces of history. Many a man once seemingly pinnacled on the top of greatness has "shot from the zenith like a falling star," and become a proverb of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... corps of Queen's Rangers, under the regime of Governor Simcoe, both horsemen fell into a brief silence, broken by sorrowful inquiries from the younger man regarding the subject which lay so close to the heart of each. "Dying!" he exclaimed in deep sadness, and with the utter incapacity of young and ardent life to conceive the reality of death. "And my own mother. It seems natural enough for other mothers to die—but mine! Heaven help us! We never know the meaning of grief until it comes to our ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... the Bruckner cult is a striking symptom of a certain decadence in German music; an incapacity to tell the sincere quality of feeling in the dense, brilliant growth of technical virtuosity. In the worship at the Bayreuth shrine, somehow reinforced by a modern national self-importance, has been lost a heed for all but a certain vein of exotic romanticism, long ago ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... this kind," says Theseus of actors, "are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them." To which Hippolyta, less tolerant than Theseus of the incapacity of the players to whom she is listening, tartly retorts: "It must be your imagination (i.e., the spectator's), then, and not ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... you. He may reform, you'll say: but he may not. Habit is not soon or easily shaken off. Libertines, who are libertines in defiance of talents, of superior lights, of conviction, hardly ever reform but by miracle, or by incapacity. Well do I know mine own sex. Well am I able to judge of the probability of the reformation of a licentious young man, who has not been fastened upon by sickness, by affliction, by calamity: who has a prosperous run of fortune before him: his spirits high: his will uncontroulable: ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... questioned his ability to teach Greek. In his own line, and not an inch beyond, the Governors were assured that Rutford was a success. In due time he accepted a Small House, so small that its autocrat's incapacity as an administrator escaped notice. Rutford waited patiently for a big morsel. He wrote a couple of text-books; he married a wife with money and influence; he entertained handsomely. It is true he became popular neither with masters ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... old story or clearly develop anything of the kind, whether it involved an effort of memory or of the imagination, and here he required aid. I have never in my life met with any man whose mind combined so much simplicity, cunning, and grotesque fancy, with such an entire incapacity to appreciate either humour or "poetry" as expressed in the ordinary language of culture. The metre and rhyme of the simplest ballad made it unintelligible to him, and I was obliged to repeat such poetry ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... quarters, and it has been many times repeated, that Louis was lacking in virility. Certainly he had no interest in the society of women and was wholly continent. But this charge of physical incapacity seems to have had no real foundation. It had been made against some of his predecessors. It was afterward hurled at Napoleon the Great, and also Napoleon the Little. In France, unless a royal personage was openly licentious, he was almost ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... case. The vessel they were overhauling was a small tramp steamer, which had evidently found courage, through the general incapacity of the Spanish navy and the fancied security of neutral waters, to flaunt the Stars and Stripes. It was therefore most disconcerting to find herself suddenly pursued in the English Channel by a craft which had every appearance ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... and ungrateful routine of the business. His father had been to the manner born, and things had prospered with him, but Alan by himself would not have been able to achieve a like success. He knew this, and was proud of his incapacity; and he took the first opportunity of handing over the establishment to a successor. The money which he received for the transfer, added to that which his father had left, secured him an income on which it was possible to live, and to travel, and to print a volume of poems. For a short time, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... levies of militia, against the Indians who had been disturbing the western frontier. The expedition was a succession of blunders and failures which were due more to the rude and undisciplined character of the material that Harmar had to work with than to his personal incapacity. Harmar did succeed in destroying five Indian villages with their stores of corn, but their inhabitants had warning enough to escape and were able to take prompt vengeance. A detachment of troops was ambushed and badly cut up. ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... when the glory and the lust of life should have been strong upon them I have watched the Irish lad with the down upon his brave boyish face pass with the last deep-drawn quivering sob over the border line of life, into the shadows of the unsearchable beyond, a wasted sacrifice upon the grim altar of incapacity. I have seen the kilted Scottish laddie lie, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, waiting for the whisper of the wings of the Angel of Death. I have seen the death damp gather on his unlined brow, and watched the grey pallor creep upwards ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... pointed to the discovery which I had so incomprehensibly failed to make. I had suffered a letter, which might contain written proof of her guilt, to be taken, from under my own eyes, to Margaret Sherwin! How had my perceptions become thus strangely blinded? The confusion of my memory, the listless incapacity of all my faculties, answered the question but ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... be selfish, unfeeling; but the fundamental incapacity for gratitude in girls of Polly's class will probably surprise and pain their mistresses until the end of the world. After all, Polly was right. An attempt to clear Raoul by telling the superficial truth must involve terrible risks, and might at any turn enforce a choice between full confession ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Baltimore, Secessionists at Fort Sumter; Massachusetts troops mobbed in; Jackson's plan to occupy Baltimore and Ohio Railway, Jackson destroys workshop Banks, General N. P., supersedes General Butler; on the Mississippi (1862); (1863); commands in Shenandoah Valley; in Shenandoah campaign; incapacity; commands Red River Expedition Barrancas Barracks Bartow, General F. S., Bull Run; killed Baton Rouge, Union Arsenal at; Farragut captures; Confederate attack; Union Navy wins way to "Battle above the Clouds," Lookout Mountain Baylor, Captain J. R., proclaims himself ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... the immediate tyranny of John. However, after the death of my grandfather, when our band degraded itself to exploits of a different nature, I fell back under his odious sway. I was by no means fitted for lying and fraud. I displayed not only aversion but also incapacity for this new industry. Consequently my uncle looked upon me as useless, and began to maltreat me again. They would have driven me away had they not been afraid that I might make my peace with society, and become a dangerous enemy to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... owing to the incapacity—apparent or real—of the British military or naval designers to produce a satisfactory rigid airship that the 'N.S.' airship was evolved. The first of this type was produced in 1916, and on her trials she was voted an unqualified success, in consequence ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of acting—not designed for real war on behalf of the colony, {98} but to assist the governor's private interests as a trader. From whatever side the incident is viewed it illustrates a complete incapacity. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... popular support given to the Unionist candidates. This recovery was due also to the forcible-feeble character of the Radical campaign against the House of Lords, the unpopularity of the Licensing Bill, the failure of the government to arrive at an education settlement, the incapacity of its Irish administration, its apparent domination by the "little navy" section, and its dallying with Socialism in the budget of 1909. The rejection of this budget in December by the House of Lords led to a desperate struggle at the polls in January ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... imagination almost, in spite of his self-advertised respect and sympathy for the honest, sober working man." In the same article we read: "Total abstainers are capable of viler actions than those of certain drunkards, while the profoundest depth of ignorance and incapacity to think are attributes of millions of total abstainers."[869] When Mr. John Burns advised the workmen to help themselves by abstaining from drink and gambling, the whole Socialist press raged, and he was called a traitor to the cause and ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... without afterthought, if said in conversation would probably be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... open their houses, modestly confessing, it may be presumed, their own incapacity, mainly trust to wax candles and upholstery. Gentlemen seem to rely on their white waistcoats. To these are added, for the delight of the more sensual, champagne and such good things of the table as fashion allows ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... preached by a wandering priest, John Ball, and the injustice of the claims of the property-holding classes was a very natural inference from much of the teachings of Wycliffe and his "poor priests." Again, the corruption of the court, the incapacity of the ministers, and the failure of the war in France were all reasons for popular anger, if the masses of the people can be supposed to have had any ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... our vanished friend must know with what realization of shamed incapacity one lays down the tributary pen. He was so strong, so full of laughter and grace, so truly a man, his long vacation still seems a dream, and we feel that somewhere on the well-beloved campus we shall meet him and feel that friendly hand. In thinking of him I am always reminded ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Father Eustace hinted at the duty of dedicating to the service of the Church, talents which seemed fitted to defend and adorn it, the dame endeavoured always to shift the subject; and when pressed farther, enlarged on her own incapacity, as a lone woman, to manage the feu; on the advantage which her neighbours of the township were often taking of her unprotected state, and on the wish she had that Edward might fill his father's place, remain in the tower, and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... and hopes for the establishment of a really free and independent Poland, and not a Poland under the rule or protection of either Austria or Germany. It will be a great experiment, because in the past the great state of Poland, one of the greatest in Europe, was broken because of the incapacity of the Poles to rule themselves. Their armies showed great bravery, the Polish cavalry, winged like angels, terrified enemy cavalry horses and charged often to victory; but the Polish aristocrats, camped with thousands of retainers ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... itself be respected, or even be treated with common decency, at home.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 479. On the 30th of this month of April—four days after the conversation in the text—John Home recorded:—'Mr. Hume cannot give any reason for the incapacity and want of genius, civil and military, which marks this ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... reign. Two of his brothers competed for the vacant throne; and notwithstanding the efforts of a famous king-making vizier, Futteh Khan, the prize fell for a time to the lot of him who is so well known to English readers by the name and style of Shah Soojah. But his incapacity was soon manifest. Sometimes a king, sometimes a bandit, and sometimes a fugitive subsisting by the sale of his jewels, his cause at length became altogether hopeless; and after being robbed of his last treasure, the Koh-i-Noor—as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... incapacity for sound observation, which is like a faulty ear in music. We see this in many persons who know a good deal about books, but who are not sharp-sighted enough to buy a horse or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... policy of vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect, though it was a violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand, they were not aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either carelessness or incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity, and by their act they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet there is a pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the cold, inanimate form of the dead monarch. He ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... expressing ideas, in a purely scientific manner. Literary craftsmen have turned rather to verse, and here the wonder grows, because one or two specimens of Shorthouse's verse are given, which reveal an absolute incapacity for the process, without apparently the smallest instinct for rhyme, metre, or melody,—the very lowest sort of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shall go about very shabby for at least a day before and a day after the transition. It is a kind of sacrifice, I suppose, to a venerable ideal; and I would never be the first to omit it. In others I observe that this vacant and ceremonious zeal is in proportion to an incapacity to do anything that happens really to be required; and I believe that the truly sage person would devote moving-day to paying visits of ceremony in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... that Miss Jessup had any agency in this affair,—a volatile, giddy, thoughtless character, who betrayed her purposes on all occasions, from a natural incapacity to keep a secret. And yet had not this person succeeded in keeping her attachment to Mr. Talbot from the knowledge, and even the suspicion, of his wife? Their intercourse had been very frequent since her marriage, and all her sentiments appeared to be expressed with a rash and fearless confidence. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... practice, result from the failures in assessment. The assessment of taxes has to be intrusted to men with fallible judgment, imperfect knowledge, and selfish interests. The assessor is as near a despot as any agent of popular government to-day. Not infrequently men of proved incapacity in every private business they have attempted are, for partizan or corrupt reasons, selected as assessors, and are given the power of passing judgment on the value of millions of dollars' worth of property. Under the circumstances, evils are to be expected, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... confusion in the New England camp,—the consequence of March's incapacity for a large command, and the greenness and ignorance of both himself and his subordinates. There were conflicting opinions, wranglings, and disputes. The men, losing all confidence in their officers, became unmanageable. "The devil was at work among us," writes one of those present. The ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... neat workmanship of Pope, and still less the delight in all natural and artistic beauty which we generally take to be essential to poetic excellence. His contempt for 'Lycidas' is sufficiently significant upon that head. Still more characteristic is the incapacity to understand Spenser, which comes out incidentally in his remarks upon some of those imitations, which even in the middle of the eighteenth century showed that sensibility to the purest form of poetry was not by any means extinct amongst us. But there ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... having too much distrust of her own feelings to give way to them completely. And Thyme, that healthy product of them both, at once younger for her age, and older, than they had ever been, with her incapacity for nonsense, her love for open air and facts—that fresh, rising plant, so elastic and so sane—she had never given them a single ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of reason, she could not cool the ebullition of passion; and her selfish policy was justly repaid by the contempt and ingratitude of the headstrong youth. At the age of eighteen, he rejected her authority, without feeling his own incapacity to govern the empire and himself. With Theodora, all gravity and wisdom retired from the court; their place was supplied by the alternate dominion of vice and folly; and it was impossible, without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... from his pen: "There is something unspeakably pitiable and alarming," he writes in the Philanthropist, "in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary, for self-preservation, to seal up the mind and debase the intellect of man to brutal incapacity.... Truly the alternatives of oppression are terrible. But this state of things cannot always last, nor ignorance alone shield us from destruction." His interest in the question was clearly growing. But it was still ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... questions involved in its action; but he was, also, the first lawyer at the bar of the Supreme Court and was known as a ripe and cultivated scholar. So the people who shook their heads at him—and they were neither few nor far between—did it on other grounds than that of incapacity. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... had learned the fixedness of her ideas, the rigidity of her type of mind, the relentlessness of her will; and that independence on my part survived was due to sturdy stubbornness, to a refusal to be dominated, and an incapacity for subjection. But this, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... continued, "yes, I resigned power, and I got no praise for my moderation, but contempt for my folly; no human being would believe that I could have relinquished that treasure through a disregard for its possession which others would only have relinquished through an incapacity to retain it; and that which, had they seen it recorded in an ancient history, men would have regarded as the height of philosophy, they despised when acted under their eyes, as the extremest abasement of imbecility. Yet I compare my lot with that of the great man whom I was expected ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... when I was at last to get a clear idea of how weak I had really become; with what incapacity my dull brain acted. Namely, on this day my landlady came up to me with a reckoning which she asked me to look over. There must be something wrong in this reckoning, she said; it didn't agree with her own book; but she had not been able ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... She suffered the heaviest of blows in the death of her husband, after forty-five years of unbroken married happiness, and of her eldest son. On both occasions she recovered her serenity and even cheerfulness with marked rapidity, not certainly from any want of feeling, but from her constitutional incapacity for dwelling uselessly upon painful emotions. She had indeed practised cheerfulness as a duty in order to soothe her husband's anxieties, and it had become part of her character. The moral equilibrium of her nature ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Others—such as the Duke of Sussex, Lord Minto, Lord Lansdowne and Lord Grey—would fain have acted in a like manner; but they suffered themselves to be influenced by his enemies, among whom more than one was animated by personal rancor because the young lord had laughed at them and shown up their incapacity. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... incapacity are unable to comprehend or appreciate music, are prone to wax facetious over it—the feeble joke is the last resort of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... them an ultimate maintenance, the mayors in towns and the magistrates in the country had authority to take possession of such children, and apprentice them as they saw fit, that when they grew up "they might not be driven" by want or incapacity ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... conditions from an early period suggests the fact that their life is not intimately bound up with the life of those about them. They are compelled, so to speak, to have physical gifts because they are lacking in social gifts. Human infants, on the other hand, can get along with physical incapacity just because of their social capacity. We sometimes talk and think as if they simply happened to be physically in a social environment; as if social forces exclusively existed in the adults who take care of them, they being passive recipients. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... half true. By dint of soliciting Barras and Doulcet de Pontecoulant, another well-wisher, both men of influence, and by importuning Freron, then at the height of his power, but soon to display a ruinous incapacity, Buonaparte had actually been made a member of the commission of four which directed the armies, and Dutot had been sent in his stead to the west. Moreover, there was likewise a chance for realizing ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... consideration, that we sometimes find as remarkable a deficiency of the speculative faculty coupled with great strength of will and consequent success in active life as we do a want of voluntary power and total incapacity for business frequently joined to the highest mental qualifications. In some cases it will happen that 'to be wise is to be obstinate.' If you are deaf to reason but stick to your own purposes, you will tire others out, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of truth. A modified form of scepticism has been developed in these later days under the influence of natural science, and is called agnosticism or positivism. It accepts the Protagorean doctrine only in the sense of attributing to human knowledge as a whole an incapacity for exceeding the range of perception. Beyond this realm of natural science, where theories can be sensibly verified, lies the unknowable realm, more real, but ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... had won for a moment at Fort Donelson, large circles were ready to speak of him simply as an "incompetent and disagreeable man." The crowning work of his life was accomplished with terrible bloodshed which was often attributed to callousness and incapacity on his part. The eight years of his Presidency afterwards, which cannot properly be discussed here, added at the best no lustre to his memory. Later still, when he visited Europe as a celebrity the general impression which he created seems ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... not considered right for a man not to drink, although drink was a dangerous thing. On the contrary, not to drink would have been thought a mark of cowardice and of incapacity for self-control. A man was expected even to get drunk if necessary, and to keep his tongue and his temper no matter how much he drank. The strong character would only become more cautious and more silent under the influence of drink; the weak man would immediately show his weakness. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... at length arrived, she was quite glad to get away from that kind, unobtrusive scrutiny of which she alone was aware. She went to her room, and sitting wearily on the bed she realised for the first time in her life the incapacity to think. It is a realisation which usually comes but once or twice in a lifetime, and we are therefore unable to get accustomed to it. She was conscious of intense pressure within her brain, of a hopeless weight upon her heart, but she could define neither. She rose at ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... had not lost heart, and went off to a clever lawyer,—a worthy and respectable man, whom he knew well. This old gentleman informed him that the thing was perfectly feasible if he could get hold of competent witnesses as to Muishkin's mental incapacity. Then, with the assistance of a few influential persons, he would soon see ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... slightly drawn upon or exercised; she is not so much wasted as not used. Having by fortune and tradition nothing to do, she remains passive till events and time make her incapable of doing, while the world glitters past in its various activity, throwing her incapacity into ever stronger relief, till her time is over and the general muddle is given a kind of sacredness, even of beauty, by ceasing. She has done nothing but live and been nothing but alive, both to ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... the world, but a force constantly active to undo the work of pacific statesmen and to find fresh occasion for war. There were occasional outbreaks of blind ferocity, and at all times there was the incapacity of an uncivilised race to understand the character and the interest of alien subjects more cultivated than themselves. But there was not at first the sense of unmitigated tyranny that arose later; and there was not so great a contrast with life as it was under Italian despots as to make ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... service, for each offence; bishops were to be appointed only by the queen, and consecrated at her bidding. All officers and ministers, ecclesiastical or lay, were bound to take the oath of supremacy, under pain of forfeiture or incapacity; and any one who maintained the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was to forfeit, for his first offence, all his estates, real and personal, or be imprisoned for one year, if not worth twenty pounds; for the second offence, to be liable to praemunire; and for ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... was the bromide, perhaps it was his nervous and bodily exhaustion; the most frightening part of this latest illness was the attendant utter incapacity to make up his mind. When Barbara left him for Crawleigh Abbey, he had resigned from his department and withdrawn the resignation, accepted an invitation to lecture in America—and cancelled the acceptance; every night he led Gaisford through the same argumentative maze; complete rest, partial ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... had everything to do with it!" cried the Duchess. "The Princess's accident may have the most unfortunate results for you and for me. People will not fail to attribute it to the incapacity of the Ministers, and possibly to their malevolence. Can one tell how far calumny may reach? You are already accused of niggardliness. According to what is being said, you refused, on my advice, to pay for warders for the young and unfortunate Princess. Worse than that, there are rumours ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... Grose—as I did there, over and over, in the small hours—that with their voices in the air, their pressure on one's heart, and their fragrant faces against one's cheek, everything fell to the ground but their incapacity and their beauty. It was a pity that, somehow, to settle this once for all, I had equally to re-enumerate the signs of subtlety that, in the afternoon, by the lake had made a miracle of my show of self-possession. It was a pity to be obliged to reinvestigate the ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... the order of the day when Piedmont and Lombardy were conquered by Bonaparte. The truth is, that France was saved, not by the Committee of Public Safety, but by the energy, patriotism, and valor of the French people. Those high qualities were victorious in spite of the incapacity of rulers whose administration was a tissue, not merely of crimes, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... transgressing an established rule of literary conduct, which ordains that an author must always speak of his own work with downcast eyes, excusing its existence on the ground of his own incapacity. All the same an author's preferences interest his readers, and having transgressed by telling that these Irish stories lie very near to my heart, I will proceed a little further into literary sin, confessing that ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... benevolent intention to make an additional present to Van Dieman's Land, of a young bull and cow, together with some sheep and goats. But, upon reflection, he laid aside this design; being persuaded that the natives would destroy them, from, their incapacity of entering into his views with regard to the improvement of their country. As pigs are animals which soon become wild, and are fond of the thickest cover of the woods, there was the greater probability of their being preserved. For the accommodation of the ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Not a soul believed that there was anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs. Fairmile has been an intrigante from her cradle. Barnes was at one time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the marriage, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impersonal end. By force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity may be called the instinct of workmanship. Wherever the circumstances or traditions of life lead to an habitual comparison of one person with another in point of efficiency, the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... there was a new manliness and dignity about him, as if he knew that his mother and Nelly had no one but himself to depend upon. It was plain to see that his early burden of shame and sorrow had developed a strong character in the lad. There was none of the listlessness and awkward incapacity and self-admiration that made some of the other Tideshead boys so unattractive, but Harry Foster had a simple way of speaking and of doing whatever had to ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... your honours, this poor fellow, on his own behalf, and on the part of his fellow—prisoners, complains of the incapacity of the sworn interpreter, and requests that I may be made the channel ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
