"Inability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never be like you—perhaps it would be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you. "Non omnia possumus omnes," is the regular rule of the profession; some stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it—to draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and done, it will be a great deal more like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... business of Marshal Foch, and the facts and figures now given show how closely the great Frenchman was informed and how "completely," to use Marshal Haig's word, his plans were carried out. On the 3rd of October Hindenburg had written to Prince Max of Baden, that "as a result ... of our complete inability to fill up the gaps caused by the very heavy losses inflicted on us during the recent battles, no hope is left ... of forcing the enemy to make peace." How true this was is made plain by the details just published. On September 25th—that is to say, the day before the British ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The meal itself, with its elaborate cakes and meats and fruits, intimidated Lucy even more than the dinner had done. The breach between it and any small housekeeping was more complete. She felt that she was eating like a school-girl; she devoured her toast dry, out of sheer inability to ask for butter; and, sitting for the most part isolated in the unpopular—that is to say, the Lady Driffield—quarter of the table, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... headquarters of the General of the Army of the United States shall be at the city of Washington, and all orders and instructions relating to military operations issued by the President or Secretary of War shall be issued through the General of the Army, and in case of his inability through the next in rank. The General of the Army shall not be removed, suspended, or relieved from command, or assigned to duty elsewhere than at said headquarters, except at his own request, without the previous approval of the Senate; and any orders or instructions relating to military operations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... he used to spend in private charities. Your Uncle Barnes was, if possible, more generous. I have known him to part with his last dollar to relieve another from want or embarrassment, and this was not done through weakness or inability to refuse, but from a genuine impulse of ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... much from inability to begin a conversation that not long ago I took the extreme step of buying a book on the subject. I regret to say that I got but little light or help from it. It was written by the Comtesse de Z—. According to the preface the Comtesse had "moved in the highest circles of all the ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... Time lost from school by illness; school work as affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation; any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect health and therefore ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... his mind whether anything could still be done, whether he might yet have a chance, whether it would be well for him to quarrel with the man; whether he should be indignant with her, or remonstrate once again in regard to her cruelty. He had thought only of the blow, and of his inability to support it. Would it not be best that he should go forth, and blow out his brains, and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... in solemn charge, and compel that obtuse maiden to what redounded to her good. Mrs. Hanway-Harley doubted neither the propriety nor the feasibility of establishing a censorship over Dorothy's heart, should the young lady evince a blinded inability to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... knock I was sure it was the girls, for though Mary had promised Brandon she would not, under any circumstances, attempt another visit, I knew so well her utter inability to combat her desire, and her reckless disregard of danger where there was a motive sufficient to furnish the nerve tension, that I was sure she would come, or try ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... curious misuse of pronouns and a few other words. Considering the fact that her family spoke a foreign language at home and she had been but a short time in school this was not strange. Her lack of veracity was shown even in her assertions about her inability to understand English. At the first approach she denied her ability to do so, but later showed that she understood very well. This behavior was of a piece with her attitude shown in doing the ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... oil varnish is not my present purpose; why should I seek to close the door on research and on experiment? It is for you, students, to take home, each one of you, the lesson of the mighty failure of thousands gone before you, in inability to bring to a finish that upon which they have spent so many anxious hours, and do something different and better. It is my intention to teach you, step by step, how to lay on what you prepare for the brush: but not to say "get this or that oil," or "this ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... not be found amongst those Figures and Things that have passed away will be Conrad "en pantoufles." It is a constitutional inability. Schlafrock und pantoffeln! Not that! Never! I don't know whether I dare boast like a certain South American general who used to say that no emergency of war or peace had ever found him "with his boots off"; but I may say that whenever the various ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... sparingly on fish [added in different ink] about four. Went to Simpson. Was driven home by my physick. Drank tea, and am much refreshed. I believe that if I had drank tea again yesterday, I had escaped the heaviness of the evening. Fasting that produces inability is no duty, but I was unwilling to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... manner, and to the accompaniment of quite a number of amusing little incidents, did Mokalua and Vati become members of our small community. And glad enough were we all to have them, for the awkwardness and inconvenience arising from our inability to understand each other's speech soon passed away, the two savages manifesting an extraordinary aptitude to adapt themselves to the situation, and an equally extraordinary facility in the comprehension of what was required of them; so that they rapidly became of very material ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... resisted the constant temptation to send you word of what seemed to be extraordinarily good news, but many disappointments have made me a doubting Thomas, so I held off until I was really sure. To begin at the beginning, I was at the lowest ebb of disgust with myself last week for my inability to get in step with the grand march. Only a fool can be excused for failure, and I am not that. So a summons from the Frohman office somewhat restored my self-respect. It seems that Mr. Frohman has never forgotten my previous interview, so when he decided to make a play of a popular novel entitled ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... from their ordinary state. The doctor then took each one and subjected him to a separate physical test, such as sealing the eyes, fastening the hands, stiffening the fingers, arms, and legs, producing partial catalepsy and causing stuttering and inability to speak. In those possessing strong imaginations, he was able to produce hallucinations, such as feeling mosquito bites, suffering from toothache, finding the pockets filled and the hands covered with molasses, changing identity, and ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... control, but he suddenly determined to force the climax. "If you had employed your secret pen to better purpose, or not employed it at all, there would not be a Jacobin club in the country; this ridiculous Frenchman, unencouraged by your private sympathy, by your assurances of my inability to withhold the residue of the debt, would have calmed down long since. I accuse you here, deliberately and publicly, instead of writing private letters to the public, both because I have not your commanding ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... devotions were rather too much for me, was so obliging as to prescribe another species of pious exercise, in a letter which he wrote to me with his own hand. The holy father, after deeply regretting my inability to keep awake, informed me that he had a new act of penitence to suggest to me by the performance of which I might still hope to expiate my sins. He then, in the plainest terms, advised me to have recourse to the discipline of flagellation, ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... Besides the destruction of many towns, villages, and ships, burnt, plundered, and destroyed, the cannon, prisoners, and booty taken during this siege from the enemy were of considerable value. By these losses, and his inability to gain possession of Columbo with so large an army, Raju lost much reputation among the neighbouring princes, who waited the success of his preparations to declare for either side. The loss on the side of the Portuguese during this siege, consisted of 140 men slain, 50 only of whom were Portuguese; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Despair Evil days in which he was born National misfortunes predicted Idolatry the crying sin of the times Discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy Renewed study of the Law The reforms of Josiah The greatness of Josiah Inability to stem prevailing wickedness Incompleteness of Josiah's reforms Necho II. extends his conquests Death of Josiah Lamentations on the death of Josiah Rapid decline of the kingdom The voice of Jeremiah drowned Invasion of Assyria by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... grief and indignation—grief for the miserable dying wretches around me, and indignation at our utter inability to prevent such wholesale human suffering. But there was no time to lose; the schooner was already settling down beneath our feet, and I saw that it would very soon be "Every man for himself and God for us all;" so I passed my charge on deck and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... all these—what a pity she had never learned to keep them! He himself, for instance—the most insignificant of her acquisitions—was beginning to feel like a squeezed sponge at the mere thought of her; and it was this sense of exhaustion, of the inability to provide more, either materially or morally, which had provoked his exclamation on opening her note. From the first days of their acquaintance her prodigality had amazed him, but he had believed it to be surpassed by the infinity of her resources. If she exhausted ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... very much puzzled by the curious titles which novelists selected for their books, and very much annoyed by my inability to discover where they picked them up. I persevered, however, and discovered that they found them in the daily papers. In fact, I shrewdly suspect that I have discovered, in these veracious sheets, the very incidents ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... I beg to assure you that my silence did not arise from any discourtesy towards my challenger, nor from that discretion which, some people may think, is usually the better part of episcopal valor, and which consists in ignoring inconvenient questions from a sense of inability to answer them; but simply from the fact that I was not conscious that your lance ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that I give them, that France, supported by the other members of the Triple Entente, could appear, and did appear, as much a menace to Germany as Germany appeared a menace to France; that in France, as in other countries, there was jingoism as well as pacifism; and that the inability of French public opinion to acquiesce in the loss of Alsace-Lorraine was an active factor in the unrest of Europe. Once more I state these facts, I do not criticize them. They are essential to the comprehension of ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... third—another of Adversity's brood, who, like Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, had a chronic inability to adjudicate the rival claims (to himself) of Frost and Famine. Between him and the grave there was seldom anything more than a single suspender and the hope of a meal which would at the same time ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... would not have received at home because their parents had never noticed the need of it. Every one of them could by prompt attention, a small dentist's bill, a slight operation of the throat or nose, or the use of glasses, (almost 25,000 needed glasses) be saved great suffering or inability to ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... against Home Rule does me the honour to refer to an article which I wrote a year ago on "American Home Rule,"[24] expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... in my weak state of health and physical inability to write more than a few lines. But in these I expressed a hope that in time my poor friend might come to realise that his boy was "as much alive and as near to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... one seats one's self properly at table and takes reason into account, one will do tolerably well. One must not pull one's chair too closely to the table, for the natural result of that is the inability to use one's knife and fork without inconveniencing one's neighbor; the elbows are to be held well in and close to one's side, which cannot be done if the chair is too near the board. One must not lie or lean along the table, nor rest one's arms upon it. Nor is one to touch any of the dishes; ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... frequently overlaid by thin slabs of silver.[160] The origin of polychromacy, doubtless, dates back to the most remote ages. It was first needed to conceal imperfections, and to supply what the carver felt his inability to render. It connotes insufficiency in the form. The sculptor, of all people, ought to be able to see colour in the uncoloured stone: he ought to realise its warmth, texture and shades. Nobody has any right to complain that a statue is uncoloured: the substance and quality of the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... grant concessions in certain matters, which in reality from an union point of view seemed both unnecessary and undesirable. They may have complain as much as they like of the Norwegian national obstinacy, of their sickly fears of any sort of "confusion"; their inability to comprehend the requirements of the Union; it remained, however, a fact, that it was necessary to take into account, and indeed, it was a duty to respect it to a certain extent, as it originated in no slight degree from feelings fed by the subordinate position Norway had always ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... Moral Inability, in each kind of it, that the word Inability is used in a sense very diverse from its original import.... In the strictest propriety of speech, a man has a thing in his power, if he has it in his choice, or at his election; and a man cannot ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... over us as we gaze upon certain places, which associates the scene either with some dim remembered and dreamlike images of the Past, or with a prophetic and fearful omen of the Future. Every one has known a similar strange and indistinct feeling at certain times and places, and with a similar inability to trace the cause." Poe has written these words on the subject: "We walk about, amid the destinies of our world existence, accompanied by dim but ever present memories of a Destiny more vast—very distant in the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... and thought are hers already. "Oh, tell me to-night," cried a college freshman once to her President, "which is the right side and which is the wrong side of this Andover question about eschatology?" The young girl is impatient of open questions, and irritated at her inability to answer them. Neither can she believe that the first headlong zest with which she throws herself into society, athletics, into everything which comes in her way, can ever fail. But her elders know, looking on, that our American girl, the comrade of ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... thoroughly: for my father, not having kept up this part of his early acquired knowledge, could not spare time to qualify himself for removing my difficulties, and left me to deal with them, with little other aid than that of books: while I was continually incurring his displeasure by my inability to solve difficult problems for which he did not see that I had ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... to steal is just as irresistible as stealing is to some, and, therefore, no virtue. I cannot do it and they cannot help doing it. You understand, of course, that the idea of wanting to possess this gold is not lacking in me. Why don't I take it then? I cannot; it's an inability, and a lack is not a virtue. ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... greatest difficulty is the growing inability of the farmers' sons to secure land and the means to cultivate it when they arrive at a marriageable age. Those who have seen for threescore years the ever-increasing flow of boys and girls from the farms to the cities, greater in proportion ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... some of the difficulties and mistakes attaching to the WILL. Here there are the questions of world-renown, questions known even in Pandemonium—Free-will, Responsibility, Moral Ability, and Inability. It is now suspected, on good grounds, that, on these questions, we have somehow got into a wrong groove—that we are lost in a maze ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... I couldn't possibly comprehend—I do not now, really, but I find myself believing, in spite of my inability to understand, that the experience has cast such a light upon her way, poor child, that—off in some rude mountain home—she has a little fairer space than some. Con, knowing you, I believe you could not have—lowered her. She went back to her natural love—it ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... quickly brought a low table from an inner room, and with deft hands placed the steaming soup and broiled fish before him. The knife and fork were a concession to Merrit's inability to wield the chopsticks, and sitting on his heels was Merrit's concession to the inability of the house to ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... by false and venal acclamations, maintained an obstinate silence; and after a short pause, were dismissed to their quarters. The principal officers were entertained by the Caesar, who professed, in the warmest language of friendship, his desire and his inability to reward, according to their deserts, the brave companions of his victories. They retired from the feast, full of grief and perplexity; and lamented the hardship of their fate, which tore them ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... much the same intentions, the same civilian sympathies, the same policy of Europeanization, and a different, but more fatal, weakness of character. He was, perhaps, never wholly sane; but his aberration, at first attested only by an exalted conviction of his divine character and inability to do wrong, excited little attention until it began to issue in fantastic expenditure. By an irony of history, he is the one Osmanli sultan upon the roll of our Order of the Garter, the right to place a banner in St, George's Chapel having been offered ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... indifferent respecting the circulation of this protest; he merely wished to show the Emperor that he was better informed of passing events than Regnier, and to afford Napoleon another proof of the inexperience and inability of the Grand Judge in police; and Fouche was not long in receiving the reward which he expected from this step. In fact, ten days after the publication of the protest, the Emperor announced to Regnier the re-establishment of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... swells of the Atlantic. Before he lost them as sound he seems thus to have been aware of them as moving waves of air.... The next thing he took in was that amid the waste of silence that now followed his inability to hear, the figure of Philip Skale towered aloft towards the ceiling, till it seemed positively to occupy all the available space in the room ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... after a year of executive endeavour, the undersigned must express regret at his inability to serve in as vigorous a manner as would the ideal President. He is acutely conscious of his shortcomings in a position which demands constant care and exertion, and which imposes a strain that only the robust are perfectly qualified to bear. It would ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... any silly dreams about Gathbroke but she was curious to see his photograph. She remembered that it had crossed her mind that April day under the oak tree that if he had been older, if he had outgrown his hopelessly youthful curve of cheek, his fresh color, and the inability to conceal the asinine condition to which she had immediately reduced him, she might have given him an equal chance ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... onward a frantic wish to prevent the above-named issue: misgivings as to propriety, met by hope of ultimate exoneration: indignation at parental inconsistency in first encouraging, then forbidding: a chilling sense of disobedience, overpowered by a conscientious inability to brook a breaking of plighted faith with a man who, in essentials, had remained unaltered from the beginning: a blessed hope that opposition would turn an erroneous judgement: a bright faith that things would mend thereby, and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... vaunt about not lying: but inability to lie is still far from being love to truth. Be on ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... tell you in confidence, major, that another legend which has been spread about these Hlats is their supposed inability to escape from the cubicles. Even their attendants are supplied with this particular bit of misinformation. Actually, the various force fields in the cubicles don't hamper them in the least. The cubicles are ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... for the free instruction of children whose parents can show that they are unable to pay for it, but fees can be enforced in all cases where inability to pay them has not been proved. Large grants have been made by the legislature for school buildings, teachers' salaries, etc., in order to efficiently aid in the development of a thorough and comprehensive system of ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... and military academies, rigidly prohibit the use of tobacco by their pupils. So also young men in athletic training are strictly forbidden to use it.[12] This loss of muscular vigor is shown by the unsteady condition of the muscles, the trembling hand, and the inability to do with precision and accuracy any fine work, as in drawing or ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... positive means of liquidating them, on the strength of a contingency which, if he could but be taught to believe it, is of all earthly anticipations the most remote and uncertain. A passion for unnecessary expense is, under different circumstances, frequently repressed by an inability to procure credit; but it is the curse and bane of Mr. Omnium's nephew, and Miss Saveall's niece, that so far from any obstacle being opposed to their prodigality, almost unlimited indulgence is offered, nay, actually ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... must be some mistake or fumble about your application for the entree. The fact is, there is no distinct person at present to whom the reference is had at Brighton, and I have heard that the King complains bitterly of the inability of Knighton, who is quite incapable of writing a letter; whether this is true or not I cannot absolutely say, but I believe it from the quarter it came; it seems impossible that the King should have received the letter, or it must have escaped his memory on Thursday when ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... things are at their darkest light comes. After all God knows how much you can bear, and He will not, if you will only persevere, allow you to be utterly confounded. Don't be in the least discouraged at your inability to concentrate your attention. Even a man who had lived in the presence of God for years has ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... operators plunder and destroy their lesser rivals without a feeling of remorse, and by combinations which they know cannot be resisted blast the prospects and ruin the lives of scores whose greatest fault is an inability to oppose them successfully. Tricks so mean and contemptible that their perpetrator would not be tolerated in social life, are resorted to, and if successful are applauded as evidences of smartness. Every man's hand is against his neighbor. Clerks are bribed ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... had intrusted to the Colonel; and when, the next day, came a very courteous letter from Graham, thanking her gratefully for the kindness of her invitation, and expressing his regret briefly, though cordially, at his inability to profit by it, without the most distant allusion to the subject which the Colonel had brought on the tapis, or even requesting his compliments to the Signoras Venosta and Cicogna, she was more than put out, more than ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... might be with them some indifferent westerner who was obliged to resort to irregular means and harangue startled shop-keepers in order to provide himself with collars of a strange kind. He was usually very quick and brave of eye and noted for his inability to perceive a distinction between his own habit and the habit of others, his western character preserving itself inviolate amid a confusion ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... methods by which it can be secured. Can we be equally confident that much has been done by the Government to carry out the advice that has been given by this Committee? The Treasury is frequently blamed for its inability to check the rapacity and extravagance of the spending Departments. It is very likely that the Treasury might have done more if it had not been led by its own desire for a short-sighted economy into economising on its own staff, the activity and efficiency of ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... in an extremely eccentric ellipse, which are possible only when it is comparatively near perihelion, must fail to distinguish its orbit from a parabola. Evidently, then, it is not safe to class it as a parabola because of inability to detect the elements of an ellipse. But if extreme eccentricity of an orbit necessitates such inability, it seems quite possible that comets have no other orbits than elliptic ones. Though five or six are ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... inquire into the cause of this trend toward race degeneracy, we find that poverty and the inability of the workingman to support large families, luxurious living, and the life of ease and amusement on the part of the women of wealth; the fact that an increasingly large number of women have entered professions that prevent motherhood, and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... that God exists," he states that they do not see ({idein}) God,[43] and insists in more than one place that "neither by nature nor by human conception is it possible for men to know things so great and divine."[44] Frequently the patristic writers have occasion to emphasize the inability of man to attain by any of his natural powers to religious truth, and to point to the impotent longings and aspirations of Greek philosophy as an example of this. St. Clement of Alexandria, for example, asserts that "the chiefs of philosophy only guessed at" ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... the lectures to young persons in order that Morality may be preserved. In the East where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice; and that is a distinct proof of the inability of the East to manage its ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... men have been at some one time my lovers—at least after a fashion. Some of them are foolishly constant. They are not foolish on account of their constancy—a most commendable trait—but because of their inability to know just when to make a display of their devotion. The general run of lovers—at least mine—are distressingly inopportune. This a woman, in spite of herself, deeply resents; it is so unpardonably stupid of a sensible ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... and piled into a work, entirely uncongenial, but determined to win out. Things were in an awful mess because of my father's long inability to attend to business. My brother Pierce was still in college and could be of no assistance to me. I had to master the business from the beginning, learning every detail before I could put it on the ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... thoughts to notice that her husband drove off in the opposite direction from the stables. Her forehead was wrinkled and her head bent as she walked between the high hedges of ilex toward the south wing of the building. Her worry over their inability to pay the debt was increased by the fact that their ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... heresy which is described is a heresy of the 2nd century, and implies a definite Gnostic system. But the fact that the Epistle does not describe such a definite system is convincingly shown by the inability of certain critics to determine who the heretics are. The Balaamites of Asia Minor, the Carpocratians of Egypt, and some obscure sects of Syria, are all suggested. There is no evidence to show that the errors here described could ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... deduced pessimism from the voluntarist doctrine or doctrine of universal personalization, should have deduced from both of these that the foundation of morals is compassion. Only his lack of the social and historical sense, his inability to feel that humanity also is a person, although a collective one, his egoism, in short, prevented him from feeling God, prevented him from individualizing and personalizing the total and collective Will—the Will ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... all alone, robbed by her friends and associates. But she slept contentedly, having found a few francs that they had overlooked amid the bedclothes, enough to enable her to pass her evening at the Elysee! The prince might be written to; but he, no doubt, was weary of her inability to lead a respectable life, and knew, no doubt, that if he were to send her money, it would go as his last gift had gone. If she lived, Marie would one day be selling fried potatoes on the streets. And this decadence—was it her fault? Octave ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... outcome aroused the bitter resentment of the Regulators, as recorded by Herman Husband in his "Impartial Relation." During this whole period the insurrectionary spirit of the people, who felt themselves deeply aggrieved but recognized their inability to secure redress, took the form of driving local justices from the bench and ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... What seems obvious is that many graduates sympathized with his purposes but were alienated by his methods. His strength lay chiefly in the force of his appeal to democratic sentiment; his weakness in complete inability ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... read, "because of mechanistic approach to humanistic evaluation, subject displays inability to incorporate human equation in analytical computation, resulting in technically accurate but humanistically ...
— The Success Machine • Henry Slesar
... or gravel pebbles, ranging in size from 3/4 inch down to 1/4 inch, the resulting coating being about 3/4 inch thick. Many failures of this type of surface have been recorded due to the difficulty of securing adhesion to the concrete. This seems to be due in part to inability to get the proper bituminous materials and in part to climatic effects. Considerable progress has been made in developing this type of surface and it may eventually ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... that the earth goes round the sun. But the greatest scientist must admit his inability to tell or guess why it goes. "Give me the initial impulse," he says, "and all the ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... extent, and in a direction of which the great economist never dreamt. By moral restraint in the limitation of families Malthus meant only delayed marriage. In so far as men and women abstained from, or delayed their marriage, on the ground of inability to support a family, they fulfilled the law, and followed the advice of Malthus. Continence without the marriage bond was assumed; incontinence was classed with another ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... that had occurred since the first day he met him, John concluded that Gibson's single weakness, his inability to give up his social position when he found himself stranded financially, had worked his ruin. That love of the "niceness of conventionality," as Consuello had described it; that irresistible desire to live an easy life when he should have worked to restore his ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the vastly increased power of production and its apparent inability to satisfy for all humanity the most elementary human wants; between the immeasurable saving of labor effected by machinery and the brute fact of the continuance of ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... wetting his right thumb with spittle from his mouth, and touching therewith in the form of a cross the right ear of the person to be baptized, &c." The Mexican missionaries, it seems, had to leave out this ceremony, from sheer inability to provide enough of the requisite material for their crowds ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of the following year, Batoche joined the army of the Chevalier de Levis, and was present at the great victory of Ste. Foye. But the successful retreat of the British army, under Murray, behind the walls of Quebec; the inability of Levis to press the siege of the city; the gradual disbanding of the French forces throughout the Province, and the final surrender of Vaudreuil, at Montreal, whereby the whole French possessions in America, were ceded to Britain—one of the most momentous events of modern times in its gradual ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... expecting the pluck, suffered less derangement of its flight than on the former occasion. For all that, it was borne back, until its anchor "touched bottom." Then after making another upward effort, with the like result, it appeared to become convinced of its inability to rise vertically, and directed its flight in a horizontal line along the cliffs. The log was jerked over the ground, bounding from point to point, occasionally swinging in the air, but only for a few seconds at ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... streets were levelled with the ground, and more than five hundred houses destroyed. At The Hague, at Delft, and in other towns, many inhabitants had been induced to pull down their houses, from inability to keep them in repair or pay the taxes. The preservation of the dikes, requiring an annual expense of six hundred thousand pounds sterling, was everywhere neglected. The sea inundated the country, and threatened to resume its ancient dominion. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... "You profess inability to pay, Madame," Sir Giles rejoined. "I cannot believe you; having some knowledge of your means. Nevertheless, I will acquaint you with a rule of law applicable to the contingency you put. 'Quod non habet in cere, luet in corpore' ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... "Inability to locate you until after somewhat exhaustive inquiries had been made explains the failure to notify you by wire in time to permit of your attending the funeral of your father and brother, which took place in ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... my inability to issue a revised edition of 'Nests and Eggs.' For many years after the first Rough Draft appeared, I went on laboriously accumulating materials for a re-issue, but subsequently circumstances prevented my undertaking the work. Now, fortunately, my friend Mr. Eugene Gates has taken the ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the third volume I alluded to the conviction, daily gaining ground upon me, of the need of a more accurately logical education of our youth. Truly among the most pitiable and practically hurtful weaknesses of the modern English mind, its usual inability to grasp the connection between any two ideas which have elements of opposition in them, as well as of connection, is perhaps the chief. It is shown with singular fatality in the vague efforts made by our divines to meet the objections raised by free-thinkers, bearing on the nature and origin ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... why Germany cannot settle down. A greater difficulty appears to be her inability ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... three days at Sulkun, from inability to get on with the carts; and as the pass over the Kymore to the north (on the way to Mirzapore) was to be still worse, I took advantage of Mr. Felle's kind offer of camels and elephants to make the best of my way forward, accompanying that gentleman, en route, to his residence ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... said, with sudden energy, and showing a touch of annoyance at the turn which the talk was taking, "my trouble is not an inability to employ my time; I do not belong to the class of young ladies who are afflicted with ennui." And a sarcastic curve of her handsome lip made Ruth look very like the Miss Erskine that Dr. Dennis had always known. She despised people who had no resources ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... could not come. He had the gout. It was a most affectionate letter, and expressed great and true regret for his inability to attend. He hoped to come and pay them a visit soon, if they would have him; his Milton property required some looking after, and his agent had written to him to say that his presence was absolutely necessary; or else he had avoided coming near Milton as long as ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... tongue, to sanctify a visit; and people, I now see, were accustomed to give me a friendly lead in this direction, so that they might please him by reporting that I had 'testified' in the Lord's service. The whole thing, however, was artificial, and was part of my Father's restless inability to let well alone. It was not in harshness or in ill-nature that he worried me so much; on the contrary, it was all part of his too- anxious love. He was in a hurry to see me become a shining light, everything that he had himself desired to be, yet with ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... only too eager to subject the offending work to a scathing scrutiny, displaying withal a modicum of righteous indignation at the unblushing heresy of the author, not unmixed with a little scornful pity at his inability to believe very preposterous stories upon very meagre evidence. "Conservative" polemics of this sort have doubtless their function. They serve to purge scientific literature of the awkward and careless statements too often made by writers ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... He must not judge Rome by mere outward appearances, they said. What effect had the city produced on him? How had he found it, and what did he think of it? Thereupon he politely apologised for his inability to answer them. He had not yet gone out, said he, and had seen nothing. But this answer was of no avail; they pressed him all the more keenly, and he fully understood that their object was to gain him ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong (though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from her inability to resist a rising inclination [Footnote: Iago. Ay, too gentle. Othello. Nay, that's certain.]) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... inability to do so. He tried, however, to show the father the bright side of the affair, and bade him rest tranquil in the certainty that only a few hours separated him from the child he adored. When Daisy came home she would explain everything ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... sounds. They hurry or retard the movement for no reason besides their individual caprice or because the author did not indicate them. They perpetrate music of such a disorganized character that the musicians are utterly bewildered, and hesitate in their entrances on account of their inability to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... and most experienced statesmen to solve the serious problems of the hour. Great discontent should, therefore, be expected from the failure of inexperienced agitators after coming into power, because of their inability to solve an almost endless number of serious difficulties. Foremost among these would probably be food difficulties, which, as in Russia, Germany, and Hungary, have resulted in widespread opposition to the newly ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... came to an end, on account of Winn's inability to eat any more, the boy was surprised to find how much at home he had been made to feel by the unaffected simplicity and unobtrusive kindness ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... however, occurred too often, and I was forced to take advantage of my lost lawsuit and plead inability of purse to remain longer in London or its vicinage. I had been crossed in my intentions of going abroad, and found it convenient, for every reason of health, peace, and pecuniary circumstances, to retire ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Providence, to perform a part which, in its consequences, may deeply affect the interests not only of this institution, but of all similar institutions in this country. And although they are fully conscious of their own inability to perform this part in a manner worthy of its importance, yet they are firmly resolved, relying on divine assistance, not to shrink from any duty, or any danger, which ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... importance in a stage-coach, founded on the ignorance of your fellows, and their inability to detect it. It is excessively absurd, and can only gratify a momentary and foolish vanity; for, whenever you might make use of your importance, you would probably be at once discovered. There is an admirable paper upon this point in one ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... Rouquin, and Madame Rousseau completed her estimate of Mr. Bingle's English by spreading her hands in a gesture which signified utter inability to express herself in words. "Shall we peep into my bedroom?" went ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... chicken-broth, and peel oranges for the sick man, and to ply the small servant with glasses of wine, and choice bits of everything. The whole of which was so bewildering that Mr. Swiveller, when he had taken two oranges and a little jelly, was fain to lie down and fall asleep again, from sheer inability to entertain such wonders in ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the vice of busy idleness they display other vices. The same inability to forgo immediate enjoyment, at whatever cost, shows itself in other acts. They are nearly always spendthrifts, usually drunkards, often sexually dissolute. Next to their lack of industry, their most conspicuous quality is their incurable mendacity. Their readiness, their resources, ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... said the man in black, 'which the ancient British clergy asked of Austin Monk, after they had been fools enough to acknowledge their own inability. "We don't pretend to work miracles; do you?" "Oh! dear me, yes," said Austin; "we find no difficulty in the matter. We can raise the dead, we can make the blind see; and to convince you, I will give sight ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... anointed, and do my prophets no wrong.'—Even to our poor house did he send for sums of gold and sums of silver, as a ransom for our lives, and those of our brethren, to which we returned a Latin supplication, stating our inability to answer his demand, and exhorting him in the words of the preacher, Ne moliaris amico tuo malum, cum habet in te fiduciam [devise not evil against thy neighbour who dwelleth by thee in security]. Nevertheless, this Guilielmus Barbatus, this William ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the probable development of Moral Ideas with the development of the civilising process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: "In about two hundred years," I had written, "we may expect——" The sentence ended abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning, scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my Daily Chronicle from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden gate as he came along, and how I had listened to his odd ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... affairs have presented a most ingenious and mischievous combination of everything false, ill-tempered, malignant, and irritating. It is at present exercising itself upon the financial arrangements of our Government, and uttering prophecies, falsified before they have come to our knowledge, about the inability or the unwillingness of our loyal people to furnish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... and forwarded to the bishops for presentation to the queen a strong document, in which the clergy without a dissentient voice affirmed their belief in the Real Presence, Transubstantiation, the sacrificial character of the Mass, Roman supremacy and the inability of laymen to legislate regarding the doctrines, discipline, or sacraments of the Church.[5] This judgment of Convocation though hardly unexpected was a deadly blow struck against the government measures, showing ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... young Grahame West, who played the part opposite to hers in the Gilbert and Sullivan Opera that was then in the third month of its New York run, were among the honored patrons of the Hotel Salisbury. Miss Terrell, in her utter inability to adjust the American coinage to English standards, and also in the kindness of her heart, had given too generous tips to all of the hotel waiters, and some of this money had passed into the gallery window ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... he who dearly loved a joke may joke still, and he who thought he was collecting fine old pictures may still indulge his taste. Delusions! Not impossible or even unlikely. Kant demonstrated once for all our complete enslavement by phenomena and our inability to approach things-in-themselves. Spiritualistic interpretation of post-mortem conditions offers no exception. Imagination continues to master our souls. Spiritualism offends us by offering bread-and-butter when we ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... The inability of a child—and especially of a nervous and sensitive child—to form conceptions of his own individuality except from ideas derived from the suggestions of others, gives us the key to our management of him and to our control of his conduct. He has, as a rule, a marvellously quick perception ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... examination, the only thing abnormal was the condition of the soft palate and the surrounding tissue extending down both pharyngeal pillars. The soft palate was swollen to nearly three times its original size and hung down upon the tongue. The symptoms he complained of were inability to sing above F, and all high tones were husky. The production of the upper tones was accompanied with considerable pain. An emollient gargle was given and, soon after, astringent applications; but in vain. It was necessary three weeks afterward to amputate ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller |
