"Ineptitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abstractions, stretching itself into comprehensive generalisations. But the excesses to which such a character is liable are, in him, prevented by a firm and watchful sense of propriety. His simplicity never degenerates into ineptitude or insipidity; his enthusiasm must be based on reason; he rarely suffers his love of the vast to betray him into toleration of the vague. The boy Schiller was extravagant; but the man admits no bombast ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... have worked it out at her leisure, to the last link of the chain, the way their prettiness had set them trap after trap, all along—had foredoomed them to awful ineptitude. When you were as pretty as that you could, by the whole idiotic consensus, be nothing but pretty; and when you were nothing "but" pretty you could get into nothing but tight places, out of which you could then scramble by nothing but masses of fibs. And there was ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the home management of the war; although I wish to repeat that the real blame for this rested primarily with us ourselves, the people of the United States, who had for years pursued in military matters a policy that rendered it certain that there would be ineptitude and failure in high places if ever a crisis came. After the siege the people in Washington showed no knowledge whatever of the conditions around Santiago, and proposed to keep the army there. This would have meant that at least three-fourths of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... call that elusive thing, by writing himself down an ass. The history of critical literature would reveal many such. Think of such an accomplished practitioner as the late M. Brunetiere, writing as he did of Flaubert and Baudelaire. And that monument to critical ineptitude, Degeneration, by Max Nordau. A more modern instance is the judgment of Julius Hart in the publication, Tag (1901), concerning our dramatist. He wrote: "In German literature to-day there is nothing as vile as the art of Frank Wedekind." Fearing this sparkling gem of criticism might escape ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... grieved at the ineptitude of the conversation. Were these the topics for a prominent and wealthy merchant to discuss? I thought the simplicity with which he made himself at home rather attractive; but what is one to talk about to a ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... spirit of the fighter in the game of life, a spirit, which, even though misdirected, must never be unreservedly deplored. To his mind it were better to fight a battle, however wrong be the prompting instinct, than to run for the shelter of supine ineptitude. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum |
