"Unfitted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these manners, customs, opinions, have old roots which must be sought in a historic past; that they are connected with the constitution of human nature, and that then in turn they prepare modifications of that constitution. His narrow, symmetrical, impatient humour unfitted him to deal with the complex tangle of the history of social growths. It was essential to his mental comfort that he should be able to see a picture of perfect order and logical system at both ends of his speculation. Hence, he invented, to begin with, his ideal state of nature, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... conceive, farther, that such spirits should be able to assume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse with men, or to perform any act for which their proper body, whether of fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. And it would have been to place them beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the form of man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures. Hence the easy step to the more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at first to shock us, but which are ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... The other two are Riwallawn Walth Banhadlen, and Llacheu son of Arthur. [15] The only instance in which I have found medicine directly connected with the knightly order is in the case of the warrior clan of the Samurai, in Japan, where members, physically unfitted for the task of a warrior, were trained as Royal Doctors, the Folk Doctors being recruited from a class below the Samurai. Cf. Medizin der Natur-Volker, Bartels, ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... alarmed," he said, smiling at the man's scared face; "my Indian habits have unfitted me for any exertion. The walk in the broiling afternoon sun has knocked me up: or perhaps the wine I drank at Southampton may have had something to do with it," he added, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... elections, is sufficient to convey to any person of ordinary intelligence as much familiarity with these matters as is necessary for the intelligent appreciation of their objects and purposes. Nor is the material out of which the prospective citizen is to be made wholly unfitted for its purpose. To be sure, the Latin races, the Slavs, Hungarians, Poles, and others have no inherited aptitude, nor if we may judge from the history of the races, any inherent capacity for self-government and free institutions, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... these ebullitions he threw himself energetically into his theological writings and worked off his surplus physical steam in the management of the Roscarna estate, for which Jocelyn was gradually becoming more and more unfitted. In this, as in most things that he undertook, Considine showed himself efficient, and Jocelyn began to congratulate himself on the fact that he had secured a son-in-law with a genuine passion for the land that meant so ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... speaks of a turtle that continued to live after its brain was taken from its skull, and the cavity stuffed with cotton. Is not England, with spinning-jenny PEEL at the head of its affairs, in this precise predicament? England may live; but inactive, torpid; unfitted for all healthful exertion,—deprived of its grandest functions—paralyzed in its noblest strength. We have a Tory Cabinet, but where is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... title of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, though he did not deem it right to refuse the kingly authority. He soon had occasion to exert his power, for the Caliph of Cairo had by this time collected a large army, and was on his march to Jerusalem. The Crusaders, though unfitted for a fresh campaign, prepared to defend their conquest, and, at the head of his troops, Godfrey advanced toward Ascalon, where the enemy was stationed. A battle took place on the adjoining plains, in which the Moslem force was routed with terrific ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... have cost ten thousand men, and that would have been butchery. Later on, Grant, in a single brief campaign, lost twenty-five thousand men! But if Grant had suffered such losses in 1861 or 1862, he would have been dropped by Washington as unfitted for a military campaign. ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... elsewhere—in their studies, counting-houses, professions—not knowing the food, or rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellectual life is sustained. It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose imaginations are most inflammable, that ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... indeed may have become attached to gaming from habit, and may not wish to throw off the habit from the difficulty of finding fresh employment for the mind at an advanced period of life. Some may be unfitted by nature or taste for society, and for such gaming may have a powerful attraction. The mind is excited; at the gaming-table all men are equal; no superiority of birth, accomplishments, or ability avail here; great noblemen, merchants, orators, jockies, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... me until I essayed the six flight climb-up to the cave of these cliff-dwelling people, when I found that the one-storied existence I had been leading in the Pelham bungalows had completely unfitted me for mountain climbing. As I toiled upward I wondered dimly how these people ever managed to keep so fat after having mounted to such a great distance for so long a time. Somehow they had done it, not only maintained their already acquired fat but added greatly ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... the mind alone can determine whether we speak or are silent, and a variety of similar states which, accordingly, we say depend on the mind's decree. But, as to the first point, I ask such objectors, whether experience does not also teach, that if the body be inactive the mind is simultaneously unfitted for thinking? For when the body is at rest in sleep, the mind simultaneously is in a state of torpor also, and has no power of thinking, such as it possesses when the body is awake. Again, I think everyone's experience will ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... surmountable, difficulty of getting into their company, I might find amongst them a tranquil life and settle down in their midst as a planter or agriculturist for I was already convinced that I was unfitted for commercial enterprises in which very often scruples of conscience and uprightness ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... that most army officers were unfitted by their training to perform civil functions. He organized municipal governments with all possible promptness in the towns occupied by his troops, and in this work he requested my assistance, which I was of course glad to give. Sr. Felipe Calderon drafted a simple provisional scheme of municipal ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... introduction, he says: "That I love, you is but a faint expression of my feelings, and should I be so happy as to have that feeling reciprocated by you, I pledge you the best efforts of my life to promote your happiness. Nature, I fear, has wrought me in her rougher mould, and unfitted me to appear to advantage in an undertaking like this, in which so much delicacy of sentiment seems to be required in these, our days of refinement. Such as I am—and I have endeavored to appear without any false coloring—I offer myself a candidate for your affections, for ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... himself redoubtable. He was a scurrilous wretch, a great drunkard, and a debauchee; not at all cowardly, and with a face hideous as that of an ugly satyr. He was not insensible to this; and so, unfitted for intrigues himself, he assisted others in them, and, by this honest trade, had acquired many friends amongst the flower of the courtiers of both sexes—above all with the ladies. By way of contrast to his wickedness, he was called "the good little fellow" and "the good little fellow" ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Russell said each nation must suit itself in this respect; we have perhaps been in error in thinking our Constitution could be generally adopted; some nations it may suit, others may find it unfitted ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the Word of God, but by his own will, his grounds of confidence for salvation unfitted him for Christian fellowship, unless he happened to fall in with a man who had imbibed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... identified with many schemes for the strengthening of the monarchy. For Mr. Morris, while a most ardent republican in his own country, was a royalist in France, convinced that a people, used from time immemorial to an almost despotic government, extremely licentious, and by nature volatile, were utterly unfitted for a republic. In many of the drawing-rooms where indiscriminate and dangerous republicanism was so freely advocated, he was held to be trop aristocrate. With amazing good-humor and keenness he attacked the ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... despise the quantitative method of reasoning on such questions, and may find themselves in 1912 provided with a new hall admirably adapted to illustrate the dignity of London and the genius of their architect, but unfitted ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... Strindberg turned his back on all this success and shut himself up in his laboratory to delve into chemistry. This he did with such earnestness that with his discovery of Swedenborg his experimentations and speculations reduced him to a condition of mind that unfitted him for any kind of companionship, so that when his wife left him to go to their child who was ill and far away, he welcomed the complete freedom. Strindberg says of their parting at the railway station that although they smiled and waved to each other ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... unusual occurrence in Baghdad; true, it can be reduced to 100 deg. in the cellars of the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray of light, and it is there that the inhabitants mostly spend their days in summer. The oppression is such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and unfitted for any kind of activity. "Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by the high temperature, that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with their mouths open, panting ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex, the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage. Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The laborer is so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... others had had their sails blown away, some their bulwarks smashed in, and two or three had lost their bowsprits. There was a consultation between the admirals and the principal captains, and it was agreed that it was best to sail back to England for repairs, as many of the ships were unfitted to take their place in line of battle, and as the Dutch Fleet was known to be fully equal to their own in strength, it would have been hazardous to risk an engagement. So the ketches and some of the light frigates were at once sent off to find ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... of a fragile and delicate constitution, and one always regarded by her friends as peculiarly unfitted to have part in labors or hardships of any kind. But from the beginning to the end of the war, she was an exemplification of how much may be done by one "strong of spirit," even with the most ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... new life. For them an impossible task. To grapple effectually with even purely material problems requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people generally imagine. No two beings could have been more unfitted for such a struggle. Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of death. They could only ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Emperor Hadrian, has exercised an influence, through certain peculiarities of his style, which has extended even to us. As a philosopher he is to be classed among the Platonists, yet with a predominance of the prevailing Orientalism. His mental peculiarities seem to have unfitted him for an acceptance of the national faith, and his works commend themselves rather by the pleasant manner in which he deals with the topic on which he treats than by a deep philosophy. In some respects an analogy may be discerned ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... noble pursuit. They had full right to look down upon their neighbours wallowing in the mire of sordid and selfish materialism. But by living in that spiritual hothouse of dreams, philosophical speculations, and abstractions, these men unfitted themselves only the more completely for participation in real life; the absorption in interests having nothing to do with the life of their own country, estranged them still more from it. The overwhelming stream of words drained them ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... fatness and early maturity, it is not necessary that the sire should himself be obese. It is to be regretted that so many sires of the Shorthorns and other improved varieties should be used for breeding purposes, when their hearts and lungs have become, by over-feeding the animals, unfitted for the proper discharge of their function. The progeny of such sires must naturally inherit the acquired taint of their diseased progenitors, and prove weakly ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... are not well mated, then they must accept the inevitable and endure to the end, "for better or for worse;" for only in this way can they find consolation for having found out, when too late, that they were unfitted for a life-long companionship. A journalist has said: "No lessons learned by experience, however sharply taught and sadly earned, can enlighten the numbed senses which love has sent to sleep by its magic fascination; and things ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... obsolete. We really retain only the knowledge we apply. We should get up interest in new processes like that of a naturalist in new species. Those who leave school at any age or stage should be best fitted to take up their life work instead of leaving unfitted for it, aimless and discouraged. Instead of dropping out limp and disheartened, we should train "struggle-for-lifeurs," in Daudet's phrase, and that betimes, so that the young come back to it not too late for securing the best benefits, after having ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... to criticise this modern tendency, but rather to point out how it may be accepted, and yet religion in the highest sense saved to us, if not without struggle (for that is always impossible in the nature of religion), yet without that intellectual conflict for which many minds are entirely unfitted, and which can never be said in itself to ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... 1846 he quit seafaring. He was in mediocre health, and though from a cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he would ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars, so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. That he was unfitted for, and meeting Eugene Blery he became interested in etching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. "An etching by the latter ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... a new basis for education? Does the foundation upon which education rests really change? Is the educational system of one age necessarily unfitted to provide for the educational needs of the next? These, and a multitude of the similar questions which people interested in educational progress are asking themselves, arise out of the process of transition ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... and the steel is thereby rendered much more sound. In conclusion of my observations on the subject of iron and steel manufacture, I wish to call attention to the invention of Messrs. Thomas & Gilchrist, by which ores of iron, containing impurities that unfitted them to be used in the manufacture of steel, are now freed from these impurities, and are thus brought into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... loving amiss, when so much depended on her loving wisely! The whole fate of the House of Hotspur was in her hands,—to do with it as she thought fit! Sir Harry trembled as he reflected what would be the result were she to come to him some day and ask his favour for a suitor wholly unfitted to bear the name of Hotspur, and to sit on the ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... justified? The man who might have answered the question sauntered into the room. A wonderfully well-preserved man was Sir Charles Darryll, with a boyish smile and an air of perennial youth unspotted by the world, a man who was totally unfitted to cope with the hard grip and sordid side of life. There were some who said that he was a grasping, greedy, selfish old rascal, who under the guise of youthful integrity concealed a nature that was ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... Mr. Monk on the 7th of August, and they started together. Something less than twenty hours took them from London to Killaloe, and during four or five of those twenty hours Mr. Monk was unfitted for any conversation by the uncomfortable feelings incidental to the passage from Holyhead to Kingstown. Nevertheless, there was a great deal of conversation between them during the journey. Mr. Monk had almost made up his mind ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... him, and the younger branches of the family are affected but it will be only momentary. But alas in all this vast ado, there is only the sorrow of the world which worketh death. O how gladdening would it be if we were in as great bitterness for sin as for the loss of a first-born. O how unfitted persons or families is for trials who knows not the divine art of casting all their cares upon the Lord, and what multitudes are there that when earthly comforts is taken away, may well say What have I more? all their delight is placed ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... He had made good his own escape. He had resolved that, let her be woman or wild cat, he would not marry her, and in that he knew he had been right. Her antecedents, as now declared by herself, unfitted her for such a marriage. Were he to return to her he would be again thrusting his hand into the fire. But his own selfish coldness was hateful to him when he thought that there was nothing to be done but to leave her desolate and lonely in Mrs ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... persuading Sophy to go with her, though more often the unhappy mother shrank from meeting her little son's innocent greetings and caresses. The terrible fits of depression which followed every indulgence of her craving frequently unfitted her for any exertion. She clung to Ann Holland's faithful friendship; but it was not near enough or strong enough to keep her from yielding ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... done." "Time to think" was the one thing Hetty dreaded. As resolutely as if they were a sin, she strove to keep out of her mind all reminiscences of her home, all thoughts of her husband, of Raby. Whenever she gave way to them, she was unfitted for work; and, therefore, her conscience said they were wrong. While she was face to face with suffering ones, and her hands were busy in ministering to their wants, such thoughts never intruded upon her. It was literally true that, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Within one moment they would be round and artless like a child's, and long and cozening like a gypsy's. One hand raised her gown, undraping a little shoe, high-heeled, with its ribbons dangling, untied. So heavenly she was, so unfitted to stoop, so qualified to charm and command! Perhaps she had seen David coming, and had waited for ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... from breakfasting with Sir James Macintosh. Fanny was with me, double, double pleasure, but we both feel as we suppose dramdrinkers do after their "mornings." My hand and my mind are both unsteadied and unfitted for business after this intoxicating draught. O what it is to "come within the radiance of genius," [Footnote: Quoted from a letter of her sister Anna after the death of Dr. Beddoes.] not only every object appears ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... occasion, however, the commandant was absent and an indiscreet sergeant offered to show me the two rooms used for prison purposes. The building was a wooden one and one of the rooms, though heavily barred, did not seem unfitted except in case of overcrowding, which I was told sometimes occurred. The other room was extremely repulsive. It was dark and a foul odor rising from a hole in the wooden floor demonstrated the truth of the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... sort of instruction; and yet a truly religious and patriotic spirit is of inestimable value for life, and, above all, for the soldier. It is the more regrettable that instruction in the national school, as fixed by the regulations, and as given in practice in a still duller form, is totally unfitted to raise such feelings, and thus to do some real service to the country. It is quite refreshing to read in the new regulations for middle schools of February 10,1910, that by religious instruction the "moral and religious ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... Chateau-Thierry. His father, a man of some substance and station, committed two blunders in disposing of his son. First, he encouraged him to seek an education for ecclesiastical life, which was evidently unsuited to his disposition. Second, he brought about his marriage with a woman who was unfitted to secure his affections, or to manage his domestic affairs. In one other point he was not so much mistaken: he laboured unremittingly to make his son a poet. Jean was a backward boy, and showed not the least spark of poetical genius till his twenty-second year. His ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfit the soldier for useful labor after leaving the army. Men, skilled in a trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after a military experience, find themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... character that their offer of marriage is an insult to any good woman. Society will have to be toned up and corrected on this subject, so that it shall realize that if a woman who has sacrificed her honor is unfitted for marriage, so is any man who has ever sacrificed his purity. What right have you, O masculine beast! whose life has been loose, to take under your care the spotlessness of a virgin reared in the sanctity of a respectable home? Will a buzzard ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... something else than he had been willing to admit. It was the first thing he had done for a long, long time that was romantic and unconsidered and actual. And it appeared that, after all, he wasn't needed. Concentration on the nuances of minor fifteenth-century poets had unfitted him for being swept on, as these had been, by the world-currents. They had married each other, pushed by the mating instinct in the air—the world's insistence on marriage to balance the death that had swept it. Now they ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... no less ardent for the great step. She raged against the world's law, the injustice by which a husband's cruelty was not sufficient ground for divorce. 'But we finer souls must take the law into our own hands,' she wrote. 'We must teach society that the ethics of a barbarous age are unfitted for our century of enlightenment.' But somehow the actual time and place of the elopement could never get itself fixed. In September her husband dragged her to Scotland, in October after the pheasants. When the dramatic day was actually fixed, Winifred wrote ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... college. The committee has just expressed to you a hope that Mr. Crank, the officiating principal, may be able to pass an examination in the native languages. This hope can never be realised; and if he does I shall have to record my opinion that he is otherwise unfitted. The power of nominating a principal rests entirely with the trustees; and if you concur in my views you might at once prepare for the change by getting a man from England or elsewhere, such as Mr. Maclagan, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... stern fate has been hard, His body unfitted for labours of men, His mind, with the sensitive make of the bard, Unfitted for aught, but the work ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... a courageous result, though capable of following to the death the master who should do it for him. His was the true artist nature, as unfit to deal with rough human forces as a bird that flies through the air is unfitted to a hand-to-hand grapple with the armed forces of the lower world. There is strength in these artist natures. Curious computations have been made of the immense muscular power that is brought into exercise when a swallow skims so smoothly through the blue sky; but the strength is of a kind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of wandering in the wilderness, or tempted by other prospects, refused, for the most part, to continue any longer in his service. Some set off for the Sandwich Islands; some entered into other employ. Wyeth found, too, that a great part of the goods he had brought with him were unfitted for the Indian trade; in a word, his expedition, undertaken entirely on his own resources, proved a failure. He lost everything invested in it, but his hopes. These were as strong as ever. He took note of every thing, therefore, that could be of service to him in the further prosecution of his ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... In a sense, all that belongs to Time belongs also to Eternity; but these lower correspondences are in their nature unfitted for an Eternal Life. Even if they were perfect in their relation to their Environment, they would still not be Eternal. . . . An Eternal Life demands an Eternal Environment. Natural Law, Eternal ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... show a general desire in the Western Church to settle the canon. The two most influential men of the period were Augustine and Jerome, who did not entirely agree. Both were unfitted for a critical examination of the topic. The former was a gifted spiritual man, lacking learning and independence. Tradition dominated all his ideas about the difficult or disputed books. He did not enter ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... good enough for a king—too good, far too good. For the lack of those qualities she was not to blame, since they spring from heredity or environment. Sukey's parents were good, honest folk, but wholly unfitted to bring up a daughter. Sukey at fourteen was quite mature, and gave evidence of beauty so marked as to attract men twice her age, who "kept company" with her, as the phrase went, sat with her till late in the night, took her out to social gatherings, and—God help the girl, she ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... combined. The two together do not constitute a perfect pigment, that is, a material of practical utility and value. In the last chapter, allusion was made to a green which possesses both the one and the other, and yet is—at present, at least—quite unfitted for artistic use. Hence, with a strong partiality for simple original pigments, we are bound to confess there are cases where mixtures are justifiably preferred. All we contend for is, that each constituent of such mixtures ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... break the back; unhinge, unfit; put out of gear. unman, unnerve, enervate; emasculate, castrate, geld, alter, neuter, sterilize, fix. shatter, exhaust, weaken &c 160. Adj. powerless, impotent, unable, incapable, incompetent; inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c v.; armless^. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu [Lat.], unfortified, indefensible, vincible, pregnable, untenable. paralytic, paralyzed; palsied, imbecile; nerveless, sinewless^, marrowless^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seeing this reprieve from affliction, though her keener sensations unfitted her from partaking of it; much indeed was the uneasiness which kept her awake; the care of Mrs Harrel seemed to devolve upon herself, the reception she might meet from the Delviles was uncertain, and the horrible adventures of the night, refused for a moment ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... all likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences. These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower "joint" of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing at a tremendous rate for nearly half ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... preserved after death in any way to answer for food, and must therefore have been alive: large tanks for the purpose of keeping them would take up considerable of the ark's space. The water in such tanks would soon become unfitted for the respiration of the fish, and there must have been some provision, by air-pumps or otherwise, for charging the water with the ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... 'foul,' and passed for nothing. Whoever shot the mark took the prize, and was expected to 'treat the crowd.' As 'the crowd' seemed a thirsty one, it struck me that turkey would prove expensive eating to the fortunate shots; but they were oblivious to expense, and in a state of mind that unfitted ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... passed various laws whose effect could not be other than to keep the negro in a condition of "involuntary servitude." To the South these measures seemed to be demanded by ordinary prudence to retain at least temporary control of a race unfitted for a wise use of liberty; to the North they appeared a determination to evade the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, and Congress decided upon more radical measures. One wing of the old Abolitionists, under the leadership of Phillips, had steadfastly insisted that there could be ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... confessed merely for plunder, were remaining in it to rule, and they could not rule by their own unguided instincts. Their institutions, which had answered well enough for a half-civilised people, leading their simple, primitive life in the clearings of the forest of Germany, were quite unfitted for the complicated relations of the urban and social life of the Mediterranean lands. There is one passage[4] which has been quoted almost to weariness, but which it seems necessary to quote again, in order to show how an enlightened barbarian chief looked upon the problem ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... musket-barrel. The heavy dragoons all wore cocked hats, of all coverings of the head the most unprotecting and the most inconvenient. The French light troops, too, all wore cocked hats. The very colour of the royal French uniform, as well as the Austrian, was white, of all colours the most unfitted for the rough work of the bivouack, and also injurious, as shewing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and unfit to serve in any of our civil establishments, or in those of any very civilized Governments; and they are just as unfitted to serve in our military establishments, where strict discipline is required. The lands they occupy are cultivated because they depend almost entirely upon the rents they get from them for subsistence; and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... on the other, a fearful disinclination to resume that awful duplicity—that dreadful self-sacrifice, an apprehension lest the enjoyment of the faculties of hearing and speech for so long a period should have unfitted her for the successful revival and efficient maintenance of the deceit; these were the arguments on the negative side. But Nisida's was not a mind to shrink from any peril or revolt from any sacrifice which her interests or her aims might urge her to encounter; and it was with ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the public more than with the authors. Those who ventured on the quest would find noble eloquence in Clarendon, lively narrative in Burnet, critical analysis in Hume; but the indolence of the Universities and the ignorance of the general public unfitted them for the effort required to value a knowledge of history or to take steps to acquire it. It is true that the majestic style of Clarendon was puzzling to a generation accustomed to prose of the fashion inaugurated by Dryden and Addison; and that Hume and other historians, with ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... course upon the Arthurian cycle that his aspiration fixed. When he did so, he no doubt believed at least the historical existence of Arthur. As soon, however, as he came to understand the fabulous basis of the Arthurian legend, it became unfitted for his use. In the Trinity College MS. of 1641, Arthur has already disappeared from the list of possible subjects, a list which contains thirty-eight suggestions of names from British or Saxon history, such as Vortigern, Edward the Confessor, Harold, Macbeth, &c. While he demanded the basis of ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... of the English language; he was merely echoing criticisms which had been expressed frequently since the early sixteenth century. The number of English monosyllables was sometimes complained of, because to ears trained on the classical languages they sounded harsh, barking, unfitted for eloquence; sometimes because they were believed to impede the metrical flow in poetry; sometimes because, being particularly characteristic of colloquial speech, they were considered low; and often because they were associated with the languages ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... of least resistance, driven or led by the accidents and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted or which holds little ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... to my house through the moonlit streets. 'Chopin's variations,' he began, as if in a dream, 'are constantly running through my head; the whole is so dramatic and Chopin-like; the introduction is so concentrated. Do you remember Leporello's springs in thirds? That seems to me somewhat unfitted to the theme; but the theme—why did he write that in A flat? The variations, the finale, the adagio, these are indeed something; genius burns through every measure. Naturally, dear Julius, Don Juan, Zerlina, Leporello, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... however, were without substantial foundation. Steve had not as yet seen the uprooted garden, and consequently was still ignorant of her ill-humor. Long confinement to a work for which he was unfitted had worn upon him, and he felt the need of rest and change. As of old, in his weariness he looked to the woods and streams for refreshment, for although poorly adapted to the wringing of his daily bread from the soil, he was nevertheless ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... themselves clear to Lord Ellingham, whom he throughout referred to as his nephew. He had no desire, he told them, to recover his title, nor the estates. He did not care a cent—his own phrase—for the title. He was now sixty years of age. The life he had lived had quite unfitted him for the positions and duties of an English nobleman. He wanted to go back to the country in which he had settled. But as title and estates really were his, he wanted his nephew, the present holder, to make him a proper payment, ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... in the organisation of an expedition of long duration is the choice of one's companions. Many men are excellent fellows in civilisation and exactly the reverse in the bush, and, similarly, some of the best men for bush work are quite unfitted for civilised life. I was therefore grievously disappointed when I heard the decision of my late partners not to accompany me. Dave Wilson thought it unwise to come because his health was poor and his blood ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... had been sent to France to begin his studies. How he applied himself we do not know; but with a large letter of credit he spent a great deal of money; and we heard that, with great talents and wonderful skill in his profession, he was yet unfitted for close application, and plunged madly into the vortex of dissipation around him. I heard, too—or at least my brothers told me—that his extravagances had seriously impaired his fortune, and that his duels had been so numerous and desperate ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... with wattled walls and thatched roofs, are placed apart, to lessen the danger from fire, near the large gates which give admission to the village, through the wattled fence encircling it. These gates, closed at night, are guarded by peasants who are unfitted, through age or infirmities, for field labor. They employ themselves, in their tiny wattled lean-tos, in plaiting the low shoes of linden bark, used by both men and women, in making carts, or in some other simple occupation. An axe—a whole armory of tools to the Russian peasant— and ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... were liable to be dismissed from their employment at any moment, and this rendered them very careful, for a man who had once been cashier at a Musical Bank was out of the field for other employment, and was generally unfitted for it by reason of that course of treatment which was commonly called his education. In fact it was a career from which retreat was virtually impossible, and into which young men were generally induced to enter before they could be reasonably expected, considering ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... than this. Divorce cannot be considered on the physical side alone, there is a psychological divorce which is far deeper, and also far more frequent. The woman or man who for any reason is unhappy in marriage is unfitted to be a parent in that marriage, and the way should be opened to them, if they desire, to have other children born in love in a new marriage with a more fitting mate. Our eyes are shut to the damning facts which confront us on every side. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sensuality, which is neither acknowledged nor understood. Hence this woman's marriage with a man, who, sufficiently a hero to die magnificently (as a matter of truth he does not die and returns in the end to receive the Victoria Cross, but it was believed he was dead) was quite unfitted to live decently. You see, his ideals did not get any further than his vanity. In his view a woman—whether wife or mistress, it did not signify which she was—was only a chattel, an object to give enjoyment to him, in fact, a prostitute. He did not know he felt this, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... it," answered Gotthold. "You are unfitted for a life of action; you lack the stamina, the habit, the restraint, the patience. Your wife is greatly better, vastly better; and though she is in bad hands, displays a very different aptitude. She is a woman ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a marriage has received the full authorization of the ruler, and there is any issue, the children cannot be educated without the sovereign's wishes being consulted. The parents, in fact, are regarded much as if they were either minors, outlaws, or demented people, unfitted to be entrusted with the control and bringing up of their offspring, for the sovereign is ex officio the guardian of all children who are under age, belonging to the married members of his family, and his rights over the children are superior to those of the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... death: "A severe bout of influenza weakened him, and whilst he was travelling abroad for change of air, and to recover his strength, one of his usual attacks apparently returned upon him without warning, whilst he was still unfitted to resist it; so that when his poor father came back from a walk through the streets of Vienna, he was lying dead on the sofa where he had been left to take a short rest. Mr. Hallam sat down to write his letters, and it was ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... amongst the hills would have the effect of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit 25 of at least 500 miles extra; besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to the Torgau at a point unfitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The defile in the hills, therefore, it was resolved to gain; and yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of light 30 cavalry, there was little chance but it would be found preoccupied by the Cossacks. They, it is true, had suffered greatly in ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... mare was turned out to graze, partly from sentiment, and partly because she, too, was unfitted for any practical purposes; and Peter had outgrown his pony before he went away, though he had ridden it to hounds many times, unknown to his father. Lady Mary thought it would be a pleasure to see her boy ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... historical role, that became the immediate task of the proletariat. Here was an example of the manner in which lifting over revolutionary steps was accomplished. Of course, the peasantry was in a backward and even primitive state which unfitted it for the proletarian role. Nevertheless, it had a class consciousness of its own, and an irresistible hunger for land. Without this class supporting it, or, at least, acquiescing in its rule, the proletariat could never hope to seize and hold ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... judgment on March 27, 1817. In fifteen carefully worded paragraphs he showed his reasons for depriving Shelley of his children. He insists through all that it is Shelley's avowed and published opinions, as they affected his conduct in life, which unfitted him to be ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... unable to sustain. In wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to his conversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow from very quickness. For he saw so many arguments for and against every possible course that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would have been. Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts, he replied ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... organ of criticism of hard and fast dogmas. But the work of education is constructive, not critical. It assumes not old beliefs to be eliminated and revised, but the need of building up new experience into intellectual habitudes as correct as possible from the start. Sensationalism is highly unfitted for this constructive task. Mind, understanding, denotes responsiveness to meanings (ante, p. 29), not response to direct physical stimuli. And meaning exists only with reference to a context, which is excluded ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... was evident that he had thought the matter over. "My wife is not a lady. She is wholly unfitted to take her place in the officers' class. There is no democracy among women. Better for us both that I return ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... possible as an accomplishment, never when it is a profession. Look at that dear old man over there"—and she pointed to Nathan, who was bending forward running over on his flute some passages from the score, his white hair covering his coat-collar behind—"so absolutely unfitted for this world as he is, so purposeless, so hopelessly inert. He breathes his whole soul into that flute ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... itself. The Romantic is a picture—what do I say? a vivisection—of cowardice, seen through the horrified eyes of a woman who loved the subject of it. The scene is the Belgian battlefields, to which John Conway, being unfitted for active service, had taken out a motor-ambulance, with Charlotte Redhead as one of his drivers. All the background of this part of the tale is wonderfully realised, a thing of actual and unforgetable experience. Here gradually the first tragedy of Conway is made clear, though shielded ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... brought to the boiling point by seeing or reading of the cruel practices of ignorant and vicious men toward animals whom they despised because of their alleged standing "below man." By his vicious and cruel nature, many a man is totally unfitted to own, or even to associate with, dogs, horses and monkeys. Many persons are born into the belief that every man is necessarily a "lord of creation," and that all animals per se are man's lawful ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... not be supposed, however, that he sank into a state of mystic contemplation that unfitted him for every-day life. On the contrary, he took more interest in his physical surroundings than ever. It was now October, and he threw himself with almost feverish energy into the garden-work belonging to that month. There were potted carnations to be removed into ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... girl learns and practices but one thing,—some one mechanical movement, which gives no scope for invention, ingenuity, or any other of the powers called into play by domestic labor; so that she is in reality unfitted in ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the oracle of that circle and had given it a tone. Conversation was the great staple there, and of this Johnson was a master. He had been a reader and thinker from childhood; his melancholy temperament, which unfitted him for the pleasures of youth, had made him so. For many years past the vast variety of works he had been obliged to consult in preparing his Dictionary had stored an uncommonly retentive memory with facts on all kinds of subjects; making it a perfect colloquial ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... different boy. His merit was a ceaseless diligence, in which it was doubtful whether ambition or conscientiousness had the greatest share. Reserved and thoughtful, unfitted for or indifferent to most games, he was anything but a favourite with the rest, and Eric rather respected than liked him. When he first came he had been one of the most natural butts for Barker's ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... individual feelings, or even our present judgment on the subject,—as to which neither of us can perhaps say that his mind is not so made up that it may not soon be altered,—we know that the present union cannot remain. It is unfitted for that condition of humanity to which we are coming, and if so, the change must be for good. Why should not he do it as well as another? Or rather would not he do it better than another, if he can do ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... had hailed with no slight pleasure his succession to a fortune which, though limited in its duration, was still a great thing for a young lounger about town, not only with no profession, but with a mind unfitted for every species of business. Grey, to the astonishment of his former friends, the wits, made an excellent domestic match; and, leaving the whole management of his household to his lady, felt himself as independent in his magnificent ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Joel answered. "I hadn't thought of their doing such a thing. I don't see why they should want me. But if it's offered you may be sure I'll decline. I'd be totally unfitted for it; and, besides, I haven't got ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword. Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment; and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and his friends were left without the help of his excellent sense, his tact, and his urbanity. But, in spite of the absence of these two distinguished members of the Lower House, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indigested^; unmellowed^, unseasoned, unleavened. unrehearsed, unscripted, extemporaneous, improvised, spontaneous, ad lib, ad libitem [Lat.]. fallow; unsown, untilled; natural, in a state of nature; undressed; in dishabille, en deshabille [Fr.]. unqualified, disqualified; unfitted; ill-digested; unbegun, unready, unarranged^, unorganized, unfurnished, unprovided, unequipped, untrimmed; out of gear, out of order; dismantled &c v.. shiftless, improvident, unthrifty, thriftless, thoughtless, unguarded; happy-go- lucky; caught ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... occurred some three months later. Mr. James Bryce, speaking on December 14th, 1899, stated that Sir Bartle Frere "sent to govern the Transvaal Sir Owen Lanyon, an officer unfitted by training and character for so delicate and difficult a task."[154] The following passage, which the present writer subsequently published, affords precise and overwhelming evidence of the absolute untruth of Mr. Bryce's assertion. It appears in a letter written by Sir Bartle Frere ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... day in May he was taken to a secluded nook in a park and his door set open. His first flight was to a low tree, twenty feet from the silent spectator, who waited, anxious to see if his year's captivity had unfitted him for freedom. ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... seamstress or even a barmaid. She wouldn't have known how to begin. She was the captive of the meanest conceivable fate. And she wasn't mean enough for it. It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting them on this earth. As I don't want you to think that I am unduly partial to the girl we shall say that she failed decidedly to endear herself to that simple, virtuous and, I believe, teetotal household. It's my conviction that an angel would have failed likewise. It's no ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... without me. You were never meant for the formal restrictions and conventionalities of society—civilization would become irksome to you, and in a little while you would long for the freedom of your old life—a life to which I am as totally unfitted as you ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the mere fact of being arrivee confers any special enjoyment. At what has she arrived? At carriages, at dresses, at houses and furniture, and at servants of a style she is totally unaccustomed to and unfitted for. When you tremble before your butler, and have to learn how to behave at table from your housekeeper, wealth cannot be unalloyed pleasure. Without education and taste, the parvenue has small means of enjoying herself except ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... posing as the mascot of the form, she certainly deserved some consideration, for she was a dear little thing, with a very sweet temper, and never made any of the ill-natured remarks that some of the other girls flung about like missiles. She was so manifestly unfitted to take her own part that somebody else ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... men are often long-lived men; so do they after many days find the bread with which they have been willing to keep other men alive. The great age of our Eliot was but agreeable to this remark; and when his age had unfitted him for almost all employments, and bereaved him of those gifts and parts which once he had been accomplished with, being asked, "How he did?" he would sometimes answer, "Alas, I have lost everything; my understanding leaves me, my memory fails me, my utterance fails me; but, I thank ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or to excel as a performer on wind-instruments. We impute to him no fault for this sort of incompetence. We should rather charge him with consummate folly, if he undertook a line of exercises for which he is so clearly unfitted. We do not wonder, in fact, when this unfortunate pulmonary constitution sends its possessor to an early grave. Why not apply the same philosophy to the brain, which may partake of all the defects incident to organized matter? Why expect of one among whose progenitors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... that the general conditions of an entirely undefined happiness form an ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance individual temptation or, to give even willingness, let alone ardour, to the self-denials that are required of us. In the first place the conditions are so vague that even in the extremest cases the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... better methods, she should not be too boastful. Incompetence is not always a reason for pride. And they hurry the children into a hundred textbooks, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, then into a diploma, then into life,—with a dazed mind, untrained and unfitted for the real duties ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan |
