"Capable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... battle. He is an honest, plain, down-looking citizen, lame and tall, somewhat at a loss for conversation, apparently amiable and good-natured, but certainly neither courtier nor orator; a man of undeniable bravery, capable of supporting almost incredible hardships, humane, and who has always proved himself a sincere lover of what he considered liberty, without ever having been actuated by ambitious ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... think, to wait, and to fast, but you thought this was of no use. But it is useful for many things, Kamala, you'll see. You'll see that the stupid Samanas are learning and able to do many pretty things in the forest, which the likes of you aren't capable of. The day before yesterday, I was still a shaggy beggar, as soon as yesterday I have kissed Kamala, and soon I'll be a merchant and have money and all those things you ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... to dictate to his Highness, it seems! Since when is that your right?' She spoke sneeringly, and Eberhard Ludwig felt that her taunt was directed in part at himself. She did not deem him capable of resisting Forstner, perhaps? she considered him as a being whose conduct could ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... reasonings concerning quantity or number" or "experimental reasonings concerning matter of fact and existence" deserve to be committed to the flames. In view of this limitation of knowledge to that which is capable of exact measurement and that which is present in experience, as well of the principle that the elements added by thought are to be sharply distinguished from the positively given (the immediate facts of perception), we must agree ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... before John's eyes, delighted with the spectacle, a genuine American bull-dog revolver, which, judging from its appearance, is capable of doing considerable execution when held by a determined hand, and ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... he gives thanks to the Goddess, he owns the justice of Jupiter. His spirit pervaded by what he has seen and heard, he carries on the office of High Priest, with all the zeal of a true servant of his God, and with all the joy whereof a mortal is capable. It seems to me that this continuation of the tale may elucidate the difficulty which Valla did not wish to treat. If Apollo has represented aright God's knowledge of vision (that which concerns beings in existence), I hope that Pallas will have not discreditably ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... were true miracles, since all, however strange, might be capable of explanation. What right then had we to expect a ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... to resent affronts. So wretched had his education been that, when he was told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress in his vast empire, he asked whether Mons was in England. [291] Among the ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly caprice, was none capable of applying a remedy to the distempers of the State. In truth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed body would have been a hard task even for Ximenes. No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like a giant in his first manhood, and cast off all restraint; like Hercules in his cradle, he strangled the serpents which were hissing around him. It was indeed a painful happiness to know that I had again a heart, that I was capable of feeling the rapture and the pain, the longing, the hopes and fears, the enthusiasm and exaltation, the doubt and the despair which make the passion of love, and I have to thank you, Wilhelmina—you alone, you, my wife, for this new birth. You turn away your head, Wilhelmina! You ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... necessary equipment. Each man knew how to take care of himself. He knew only the elementary principles of drill, but was none the less a very tough proposition for a Hun to tackle. Skilled in woodcraft and travelling, able to cover great distances with the minimum of fatigue, and capable of going on short rations without loss of efficiency the Rhodesians were ideal men for the work on hand. One and all had a score to wipe off; though few, if any, had fallen in with von Gobendorff they deeply ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... all the philosophies. The impressionist calls upon every part of his work to speak of light, the middle tint, the high lights and the shadow all vibrating with it. From the decorative point of view alone, the picture, as a surface containing the greatest amount of beauty of which the subject is capable is more beautiful when varied by many tones, or by few, in strong contrast, than when this variety or contrast is wanting. Those decorative designs have the strongest appeal in which the balancing ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... Arab ruffians. Bare legs. Look capable of anything. Should not be surprised to hear that ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... astonish a boy. Cadbury was regarded as capable of anything, and when the sash was cautiously raised, and the string pulled up, the fact that a real roast chicken, half-wrapped in newspaper, dangled at the end, caused more amusement ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... as to externals, he was in heart a most catholic man—would have found himself far too catholic for the community over which he presided, had its members been capable of understanding him. Indeed, he had with many, although such was the force of his character that no one dared a word to that effect in his hearing, the reputation of being lax in his ideas of what constituted a saving faith; ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... His mother could not be alive still. Of his wife's relatives there had never been one who would have taken any trouble about him after her death, hardly even before it. John Lammie was the only person, except Dr. Anderson, whose friendship he could suppose capable of this development. The latter was the more likely person. But he would be too much for him yet; he was not going to be treated like a child, he said to himself, as often as the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... by it now until there is nothing left of me—nothing.... And yet I remain. It is our weakness, our national idleness. I haven't the strength to leave Nicholas. I am soft, sentimental, about his unhappiness. Pah! how I despise myself.... I am capable of living on here for years with husband and lover, going from one to another, weeping for both of them. Already I am pleading with Sherry that he should remain here. We will see what will happen. We will see what will happen! Ah, my contempt ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... equally clear proof of an increasing consumption, and consequently of an increasing produce, which could alone support that consumption. Great Britain seems to support with ease, a burden which, half a century ago, nobody believed her capable of supporting, Let us not, however, upon this account, rashly conclude that she is capable of supporting any burden; nor even be too confident that she could support, without great distress, a burden a little greater than what has already ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... public sacrifice, and chose Solon to new-model and make laws for the commonwealth, giving him the entire power over everything, their magistracies, their assemblies, courts, and councils; that he should appoint the number, times of meeting, and what estate they must have that could be capable of these, and dissolve or continue any of the present constitutions, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... truthfully: "I cannot conscientiously give up the Library, sir. I realize the work may not seem important in your eyes. Indeed, in anybody's eyes it must seem an inadequate outcome of a man's whole life. But it unfortunately happens to be the only kind of work I am capable of doing. And—if you will pardon me, sir,—I do not think it would be honest for me to accept this generous salary and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... injustice, of ambition, and vain-glory in the fundamental provision which subjects all questions of war to the will of the nation itself, which is to pay its costs and feel its calamities. Nor is it less a peculiar felicity of this Constitution, so dear to us all, that it is found to be capable, without losing its vital energies, of expanding itself over a spacious territory with the increase and expansion of the community for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... child, and she was dead. The child stood before him, an accuser and a witness. She bore witness for her mother. The mother had known that she was dying; and at the deathbed of her child not even the lowest creature would do what he had thought her capable of doing. The child accused him. He had struck a mother at the side of her child's deathbed. No man can do that, not even if the woman were guilty. And she was not; the child testified to that. Now he knew that the pale, dumb countenance of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... human instinct. Shades are looked on as aliens, and aliens are generally enemies. In particular, ghosts are conceived of as sometimes wandering about in search of food or warmth, or as cherishing enmity toward persons who had wronged them in their earthly life. They are supposed to be capable of inflicting disease or pain, and precautions are taken against them. Cases are reported of persons who killed themselves in order that, as ghosts, they might wreak vengeance on enemies.[196] On the other hand, to the members of its own family the departed soul is sometimes ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... but as no more was ever found in Cuba, it was afterwards supposed to have been brought from Yucatan. They found no people in this place, as they had all fled, but they saw another canoe ninety-five spans long, capable of holding fifty persons, made all of one piece of wood like the rest, and hollowed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... she returned with her husband and Edith to the settlement; and they were accompanied by Brewster, whose pious exhortations and sympathizing kindness were invaluable to the bereaved and afflicted parents. The grief of Edith was less capable of being suppressed; and it broke out afresh when little Ludovico came to meet them, and inquired for his brother. From the child they learnt, that while he and Henrich were busily engaged in their several occupations in the wood, two Indians had suddenly rushed from the thick brushwood, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... was capable of executing his threat, and, since it was known that he enjoyed the protection of the all-powerful Flemings and was something of a favourite with the young King himself, the members of the Consulta and some of the principal ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of the masters—freely supplied him by Mr. Pearson. With Bennett and his colleagues in the House he took a bold line; admitted that he had endangered his popularity both inside Parliament and out of it at a particularly critical moment; and implied, though he did not say, that some men were still capable of doing independent things to their own hurt. Meanwhile he pushed a number of other matters to the front, both in the paper and in his own daily doings. He made at least two important speeches in the provinces, in the course of these days, on the Bill ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long—long—epistle for me on the road, containing those descriptions and incidents you promised to favour me with: how I long to read them, and to show them to my aunt Margaret, who, I believe, does not suspect you to be capable of doing that which I know, or rather feel, you can. Knowing from any thing but feeling and the innate evidence of our sympathies, seems to me something like heresy in friendship. Oh, Anna! how could ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... knew the instinctive jealousies of the race and their predisposition to extravagant misconstruction. From what he had gathered, and particularly from the voices he had overheard on the Fair Plains Road, it seemed to him that Pedro was more capable of mercenary intrigue than physical revenge. He was not aware of the irrevocable affront put upon Pedro by Peyton, and he had consequently attached no importance to Peyton's own half-scornful intimation ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... maintained that at any given moment any given set of people will be found to be in agreement on all points. All I ventured to suggest was, that instead of our all being made, as you contend, radically different, we have, underneath our differences, a common nature, capable of judging, and judging truly, about Good, though only on the basis of actual experience of Good. And on this view I shall, of course, expect to find differences of opinion, corresponding to differences of experience, even among people as much alike as ourselves; ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... however; and it is called Godhead. The mysterious thing we call life organizes itself into all living shapes, bird, beast, beetle and fish, rising to the human marvel in cunning dwarfs and in laborious muscular giants, capable, these last, of enduring toil, willing to buy love and life, not with suicidal curses and renunciations, but with patient manual drudgery in the service of higher powers. And these higher powers are called into existence by the same self-organization of life still more wonderfully into rare ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... the external forms of a very serious kind of passion seem trivial, fantastic, foolish? And the worst of all is that the heroic part which I imagined I was playing proves to have been almost the reverse. The only comfort which I can find in my humiliation is that I am capable of feeling it. There isn't a bit of a paradox in this, as you will see; but I only mention it, now, to prepare you for, maybe, a little morbid sensitiveness ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... position on the roadside or on the doorstep of a house and sets to work to pick out her best fruit and place it on the top of her basket. She is generally a Deccani, either Musulman or Hindu, varying in age from 20 to 40 and is fully capable of conciliating the Lord of the Bombay pavements, when he somewhat roughly commands her to move on. "Jemadar Saheb" she calls him; and if this flattery is insufficient she offers one of her ripest mangoes with a glance that he cannot ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... either side, stood a white farm-house—sending from a tall chimney a thin misty reek up to the sky. I crossed the bridge, which, however diabolically fantastical it looked at a distance, seemed when one was upon it, capable of bearing any weight, and soon found myself by the farm-house past which the way led. An aged woman sat on ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... which the managers of the Field Lane Institution strive to approach and benefit the poor of London. It is situate in Little Saffron Hill, Farringdon Road, the service being held in a barn-like room, which on weekdays serves for school, and is capable of accommodating a thousand children. No money has been expended in architectural embellishment, and no question of a controversial character is likely to arise in connection with accessories in the shape of altar, surplice, or candles. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... divide until a number of small cells are formed within the old one. These develop cell walls, and escape by the breaking of the old cell wall, which is left behind, and takes no part in the process. The cells thus formed are sometimes provided with two cilia, and are capable of active movement. ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... tea, and hides imported from any country imposing on American goods duties, which, in the opinion of the President, were "reciprocally unequal and unreasonable." This more equitable result is to be ascribed wholly to Blaine's energetic and capable leadership. ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... atmosphere of the house that supplied a distinct want in the motherless girl's life. There were a number of vague possibilities of trouble in the world, half perceived, half divined by Eve; which possibilities Mrs. Harrington seemed capable ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... strange, electric quality in the atmosphere. The community was in that state of suppressed agitation and suspicion which no word adequately describes. The slightest circumstance would have swayed it to the belief in any man's guilt; and, indeed, there were men in Stillwater quite capable of disposing of a fellow-creature for a much smaller reward than Mr. Shackford had held out. In spite of the tramp theory, a harmless tin-peddler, who had not passed through the place for weeks, was dragged from his glittering cart that afternoon, as he drove smilingly into town, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... she kept out of sight among the bushes by the roadside; but sped swiftly along. The Absolute Fool, however, mounted upon a fine horse, rode boldly along upon the open road. He was a good-looking youth, with rosy cheeks, bright eyes, and a handsome figure. As he cantered gayly along, he felt himself capable of every noble action which the human mind has ever conceived. The Gryphoness kept near him, and in the course of the morning they overtook the Princess, who was allowing her horse to walk in the shade by the roadside. The ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... roses every one were her words kept. And Fontenette got his new business but could not come back that year, nor the second, nor the third. The hither-side of his affairs he assigned for the time to a relative, a very young fellow, but ever so capable—"a hustler," as our fat friend would say in these days. We missed the absentee constantly, but forgave his detention the easier because incidentally he was clearing up a matter of Senda's over there, in which certain displeased kindred had overreached her. Also ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... characteristic of the man's to produce these sudden and startling changes of mood towards himself? Marchmont was puzzled at the notion; he was too little able to sympathise with the attraction to find himself capable of understanding the force and extent of the revulsion. "At all events she must be pretty well prepared for what he is by now," he said to himself with the mixture of pity and resentment which his love for her and her rejection of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... me," replied Louisa Speck, with rising indignation. "Do you think I'm not capable of doing things on my own? I can use my eyes and ears as well as you can—and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... his employer, professionally bland and capable, and with no animus to be discerned in his attitude, provided Duncan with one brief, evanescent flash of hope, one last expiring instant of dignity (tempered by his unquenchable humour) in which to face his fate. Something of the hang-dog vanished from his habit and ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... theatrical performances at the expense of the state, and the building of porticos and public baths. As the government and wealthy citizens assumed a larger measure of responsibility for the welfare of the citizens, the people became more and more dependent upon them and less capable of managing their own affairs. An indication of this change we see in the decline of local self-government and the assumption by the central administration of responsibility for the conduct of public business in the towns of Italy. This last consideration suggests ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... garden close at hand, called the Yaboo-Khaneh, or lines of the baggage-cattle, was a small detachment of the Shah's sappers and miners, and a party of Captain Ferris's juzailchees. Captain Trevor's tower was capable of being made good against a much stronger force than the rebels at this present time could have collected, had it been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... intelligence that the Mussulmans were repulsed, and that the laundress was hanged; though I never knew exactly for what crime, as she certainly was not a debtor of the unhappy firm. These are some of the warning events of life, gentlemen; and as I feel sure of addressing those who are capable of making the application, I shall now conclude by advising all who hear me to great discretion of speech on every ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... horror; 'can you imagine for one moment, Sir, that I or any man living could suppose for an instant, that my respected friend, Mr. Nutter, to whom (a low bow to Nutter, returned by that gentleman) I have now the misfortune to be opposed, is capable—capable, Sir, of poisoning any living being—man, woman, or child; and to put an end, Sir, at once to all misapprehension upon this point, it was I—I, Sir—myself—who poisoned him, altogether accidentally, of course, by a valuable, but mismanaged receipt, this morning, Sir—you—you ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... reprimanded James Williams for imitating a copyrighted burglar and given him as honourable a discharge as the department was capable of, Mrs. Williams rearrested him and swept him into an angle of the station-house. James Williams regarded her with one eye. He always said that Donovan closed the other while somebody was holding his good right hand. Never before ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Coast Guard (includes Air Wing), Presidential Protection Unit (includes Presidential Guard), Police Force (includes Police Mobile Unit, a special weapons and tactics unit capable of assisting the Army in maintaining ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... flying, the sun came out at times, but the wind was high, the cold intense, and the snow still drifting. Poor Skookum had it harder than the men, for they wore snowshoes; but he kept his troubles to himself and bravely trudged along behind. Had he been capable of such reflection he might have said, "What delightful weather, it keeps ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... said, in the kindest manner of which he was capable, 'what are you going to do now? You can't be going out again in this state and in ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... have besides engaged myself to relate it, in point of countenance to poor Emily. It will add, too, one more example to thousands, in confirmation of the maxim, that women get once out of compass, there are no lengths of licentiousness, that they are not capable of running. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... dhirty cannibal!" interposed Mr McCarthy. "He'd be quite capable of that; bad cess ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Senator did look like it. His hair tinged to an unnatural hue by the sulphur of Vesuvius, his square, determined jaw, his heavy, overhanging brow, marked him as one who was capable of any desperate enterprise. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... 'none, none. I have no friend among those intimates: there is not a man of them who cares to serve or is capable of serving me.' ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... assumption that the whole of the earth is buried beneath the ocean, and that the moon is placed in the plane of the equator. We may also entirely neglect for the present the tides produced by the sun, and we shall also make the further assumption that friction is absent. What friction is capable of doing we shall, however, refer to later on. The moon will act on the ocean and deform it, so that there will be high tide along one meridian, and high tide also on the opposite meridian. This ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... with mud sand gravel and drift wood. the beaver is then compelled to seek another spot for his habitation wher he again erects his dam. thus the river in many places among the clusters of islands is constantly changing the direction of such sluices as the beaver are capable of stoping or of 20 yds. in width. this anamal in that way I beleive to be very instrumental in adding to the number of islands with which we find the river crouded. we killed one deer today and ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... hanging from a chatelaine at her waist, a gold crown on the handle of her lorgnette, and so many rings on her long pink fingers that they bulge over her knuckles. Her nails are manicured to appear almost crimson, her teeth are shining white under her curved lips, that look capable of bitter sayings and ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... when shot are hollow, and a gun is chambered and, not unfrequently, has a muzzle almost as large as the open end of a flour-barrel, and a breech as big as a hogshead. At the commencement-of this century a long twelve-pounder was considered a smart piece, and was thought very capable of doing a good deal of mischief. The main battery of the ship was composed of guns of that description, while one of the brigs carried eight nines, and the other fourteen sixes. As the ship mounted altogether thirty, if not thirty-two, guns, this left the governor to contend with batteries that ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... in this rough valley women might not achieve the finer successes of cottage folk-life, where it led up into gracefulness and serenity, in a coarser fashion the essential spirit of pride in capable doing was certainly theirs. They could, and did, enjoy the satisfaction of proficiency, and win respect for it from their neighbours. If they were not neat, they were very handy; if there was no superlative finish about their ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... lands are "used" by rabbits and dingoes. Peron's appreciation of well-observed facts gave him some political insight in the philosophical sense, and he comprehended the development of which the country was capable. Could Baudin's shade visit to-day the shores that he traversed more than a century ago, he would surely acknowledge that orchards of ripening fruit, miles of golden grain, millions of white fleeces, the cattle of a thousand hills, great cities throbbing ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... of taming the most savage and ill-natured brutes, which is generally attended with success; but it requires a much higher skill, and is but seldom successful, to soften the ill-nature and inhumanity of man: whether it is that the brutes are more capable of receiving instruction, or whether the ill-nature of man exceeds that of the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... them, preferring to tag after Frank, and perfectly happy when he allowed me to play with him. I regret to say that the small youth was something of a tyrant, and one of his favorite amusements was trying to make me cry by slapping my hands with books, hoop-sticks, shoes, anything that came along capable of giving a good stinging blow. I believe I endured these marks of friendship with the fortitude of a young Indian, and felt fully repaid for a blistered palm by hearing Frank tell the other boys, 'She's a brave little thing, and you can't make ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the better become the individual to whom so high a dignity is offered," said Eveline, "to consider how far she is capable ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... having abandoned. To advance or to recede was now equally impracticable; for, on every side, he was begirt by enemies, into whose hands a single false step must inevitably betray him. What would he not have given for the presence of Oucanasta, who was so capable of advising him in this difficulty! but, from the moment of his descending into the ravine, he had utterly lost sight ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... industrial system, but there are also very evident benefits. It is, like human nature itself, a mingled thing. Instead of exaggerating the evils, the wiser course would surely be to inquire how far they are capable of remedy, and then cautiously—for the daily bread of these many millions of British folk depends on the normal working of our industrial system—to attempt reforms. Reckless denunciation is not only wrong in itself, but it creates a listless, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... only say that because some woman has said it to you. The Diana of the Stag wore the first rainy-day gown. The Greek dress was capable of ever so many modifications. If I were making a handbook of proverbs for women, I should say, 'A good complexion is rather to be chosen than many fine dresses, and glossy and abundant hair turneth away wrath.' I believe in the simplification of life. I understand ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... advised to see and she was about to pass on when she felt eyes watching her from the steep shadow of the shed which bordered the corral. Then she made out a dapper olive-skinned fellow sitting with his back against the wall in such a position of complete relaxation as only a Mexican is capable of assuming. He wore a short tuft of black moustache cut well away from the edge of the red lip, a moustache which oddly accentuated his youth. In body and features he was of that feminine delicacy which your large-handed Saxon dislikes, and though Marianne was by ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... eyes reverting to the page before him, "from our secret agent in Turin, whose name I need not mention"—Blondel nodded—"informing us of a fresh attempt to be made on the city before Christmas; by means of rafts formed of hurdles and capable of transporting whole companies of soldiers. These he has seen tried in the River Po, and they performed the work. Having reached the walls by their means the assailants are to mount by ladders which are being made to fit into one another. They are covered with black cloth, and can be laid ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... "The girl is capable of doing the most unexpected things, Andrew. I really think she'll play the game. When she told me what her intentions were, I believe she stated the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... enquire much into the affairs of others are seldom capable of retaining the secret that they ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... besought the girl. "He has reason to dislike Major Hennion, and he is capable of such ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... be quite a job, but every man who talks politics thinks himself capable of bossing the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... live in a world like a savage surrounded by the traps of a hostile tribe. Carlos, who spares me the pains of thinking, regards the position as dangerous, and he has undertaken to pay Nucingen out if the Baron takes it into his head to spy on us; and he is quite capable of it; he spoke to me of the incapacity of the police. You have lighted a flame in an old chimney choked ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... truly for intelligence as for valor. When once awakened and really attentive, young minds are more earnest and more capable of complete comprehension than any one would suppose. In order to explain fully to my grandchildren the connection of events and the influence of historical personages, I was sometimes led into very comprehensive considerations and into pretty deep studies of character. And in such ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... last. The scarlet shame would have burned her face, if she had owned to herself that she loved this man, whom she had married to another, believing that she was making his happiness. She would not own it. Had she admitted it then, she would have been capable of leaving him within the hour, and of shutting herself up forever in the Convent at Subiaco to expiate the sin of the thought. It was monstrous in her eyes, and she would still ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... in the form of galleries laboriously built of a mixture of mud and sand, and each indicating superiority to the naked denizen of the clement mud. They seem to be superior in appearances also, for some of the animals display brightly coloured plume-like tentacles, long and capable of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... megalithic monuments of Europe marks the last refuge of vanquished Neolithic races, fleeing before their conquerors. All these hypotheses are plausible, all can be defended by arguments, the weight of which it is impossible to deny, but none are capable of conclusive proof, none ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... visits within the last fortnight—one to search for arms, the other under pretext of ascertaining the number of troops each house is capable of lodging. But this was only the pretext, because the municipalities always quarter troops as they think proper, without considering whether you have room or not; and the real object of this inquisition was to observe if the inhabitants answered ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Mystics, who had instructed Him in the Mystery of the Immanent God, abiding everywhere and in all things. He had advanced far beyond the conception of Deity which pictured the One as a savage, bloodthirsty, vengeful, hating, tribal deity, ever crying for sacrifices and burnt-offerings, and capable of the meanest of human emotions. He saw this conception as He saw the conception of other races and peoples, all of which had their tribal or national gods, which loved that particular tribe or people, and which hated all other races or nationalities. He saw that ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... know full well—for you have been over this country—that the Rebels have sent into the field all their available fighting men—every man capable of bearing arms; and you know they have kept at home all their slaves for the raising of subsistence for their armies in the field. In this way they can bring to bear against us all the strength of their so-called Confederate ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... toward her father's study. Lenore made a futile attempt to be patient. She heard her father's deep voice, full and earnest, and she heard Dorn's quick, passionate response. She wondered what this interview meant. Anderson was not one to give up easily. He had set his heart upon holding this capable young man in the great interests of the wheat business. Lenore could not understand why she was not praying that he be successful. But she was not. It was inexplicable and puzzling—this change in her—this end of her selfishness. Yet she shrank in terror ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... The translation, as a whole, stands out from similar works of the time (1800) in almost as marked a degree as Coleridge's Wallenstein, and some passages exhibit powers of a high order; a few, however, especially in the earlier scenes, seemed capable of improvement, and these have been revised, but, in deference to the translator, with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... addition, certain of the more pretentious boasted special attractions. Thus, one place supported its ceiling on crystal pillars; another—and this was crowded—had dashing young women to serve the drinks, though the mixing was done by men; a third offered one of the new large musical boxes capable of playing several very noisy tunes; a fourth had imported a marvellous piece of mechanism: a piece of machinery run by clockwork, exhibiting the sea in motion, a ship tossing on its bosom; on shore, a water mill in action, a train of cars passing over a bridge, a deer chase with ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... sun looks not on a people more free then we are from all oppression. Is it wealth? Hundreds of examples shew us that industry and thrift in a short time may bring us to as high a degree of it, as the country and our conditions are yet capable of: Is it securely to enjoy this wealth when gotten? With out blushing I will speake it, I am confident theare lives not that person can accuse me of attempting the least act against any mans property. Is it peace? The Indians, God be blessed round about us are subdued; we can onely feare the Londoners, ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... you see the situation in which we stand? We are practically doing nothing—leaving everything in his hands. Now, if he should tell us some fine day that he can have nothing more to do with our project (and I believe he is quite capable of it), here we are with our time nearly spent, deeply in debt, ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... will be perfectly satisfied either way it may go. I am not anxious; for I know that if God really wants me to preach he will take care of it all and will work everything out in his own good time and way. If he does not work it out so that I am considered capable of preaching, then I shall take it for granted that it was a suggestion of the enemy, and I will take a vehement stand against those feelings as an imposition of the enemy. Now, I consider what I have said is sufficient, and it will be no trial for me, for I shall feel that I am in ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... in the situation of this city of Roger Williams, that should have invited thither so many makers of cheap trinkets? It is a solid town, that makes little show for its great wealth, and contains less than the average number of people capable of wearing tawdry ornaments. Nevertheless, along with machine-shops of Titanic power, and cotton-mills of vast extent, we find these seventy-two manufactories of jewelry. The reason is, that, about the year 1795, one man, named ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... observed a common-looking woman standing in front looking at us. She had a bundle in her hand, and her face, unnaturally ruddy though it was, had a scared look which was all the more remarkable from the fact that it was one of those wooden-like countenances which under ordinary circumstances are capable of but little expression. She was not a stranger to me; that is, I had seen her before in or about the house in which we were at that moment so interested; and not stopping to put any curb on my excitement, I rushed down to the pavement ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... small increase of physical power might be the means of saving hundreds who lay helpless in their hammocks. In his own vessel, the Lion, which was manned with two hundred and fifty men, when she sailed from Amsterdam, there were not more than seventy capable of doing duty; and the other ships had ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... we committed all the wantonness she wished and I was capable of performing, for with me the age of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of the age was thought capable of doing what he had thus done. Yet, after all, what had he accomplished? Did he not feel in his heart of hearts that he was but a strong and most skilful swimmer struggling for a little while against an ocean-tide which was steadily sweeping him and his master and all their fortunes far out into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the loss of the Psyche, another matter was brought to the fore which was destined to exercise a very important influence upon my fortunes. This matter had reference to the dearth of shallow-draught vessels in the slave squadron vessels capable of following the slavers in over the bars of the African rivers and fighting them upon equal terms. At the moment in question we had not a ship in the squadron drawing less than fourteen feet of water; consequently, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... called by sailors a 'sou'-wester,' and stood watching the proceedings of his comrade, which were by no means as expeditious as his own; for that gentleman proceeded very leisurely to encase his feet in a pair of thick woollen stockings, and a pair of shoes more capable of resisting the wet than those which he then wore. After this, he put an oil-cloth jacket over his other one, and surmounted the whole by a coat similar to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... whom he had to deal, and of what this raving woman was capable. If she had been English, or German, and had gone utterly to the bad, she might by this time have been lethargically besotted, and would have given him very little trouble so long as she received her ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of describing, papa?" The eldest daughter of this distinguished family made this appeal with a face beaming with the enthusiasm of her deep appreciative nature. Anne Douglas possessed not the great beauty of her sister Mary, yet was a lovely and loveable woman, capable of inspiring deep regard. Sir Howard acknowledged by saying, that if she continued, the comparison would turn the weight on the other side. "Not yet, papa dear," said Miss Douglas, "you must hear further. We were speaking freely of our warm reception from the citizens, ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... dressinge the same; in gatheringe of cotten whereof there is plentie; in tillinge of the soile there for graine; in dressinge of vines whereof there is greate aboundaunce for wyne; olyves, whereof the soile is capable, for oyle; trees for oranges, lymons, almondes, figges, and other frutes, all which are founde to growe there already; in sowinge of woade and madder for diers, as the Portingales have don in the Azores; in dressinge of raw hides of divers kindes of beastes; in makinge and gatheringe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... emphasizing the strong coloring of his weather-darkened skin. On the whole, it was a prepossessing face, clearly cut—indeed, it was a trifle thin—with a hint of quiet determination in the clear gray eyes and firm mouth. He looked capable of resolute action and, when it was needed, of Spartan self-denial. There was no suggestion of anything sensual, or even of much ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... rival who may at any moment become an antagonist,—who will almost certainly become such, if we do our best to help him in it. Especially in judging the qualities of a people, we should be careful to take our measure by the highest, and not the lowest, types it has shown itself capable of producing. In moments of alarm, danger, or suffering, a nation is apt to relapse into that intellectual and moral condition of Mob from which it has slowly struggled upward; and this is especially true in an age of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... of view, these great bathing institutions were capable of being used for the treatment of various diseases, and for physical culture. No doubt, they were extensively employed for these purposes and with good results, but their legitimate use became increasingly limited, and abuse of them was a prime factor in promoting national ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... herself. She often wondered why she was going to marry Bixby instead of Charley Greengay. She knew that Charley would go further in the world. Indeed, she had often coolly told herself that Percy would never go very far. But, as she admitted with a shrug, she was "weak to Percy." In the capable New York stenographer, who estimated values coldly and got the most for the least outlay, there was something left that belonged to another kind of woman—something that liked the very things in Percy that were not good business assets. However much she dwelt upon the effectiveness of Greengay's ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... stomach, he said, was as dry as a lime-kiln, and, though water answers to slake lime, he demanded something stronger to slake the fire that burned within him. He was very suspicious of me when Hall told him of my canoe journey. After eying me from head to toe in as steady a manner as he was capable of, he broke forth with: "Now, stranger, this won't do. What are ye a-travel'ing in this sort of way ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... diversified than that of the Trias, while its chief types, so far as osteology enables us to judge, are quite as highly organised. Thus it is certain that a comparatively highly organised vertebrate type, such as that of the Labyrinthodonts, is capable of persisting, with no considerable change, through the period represented by the vast deposits which constitute the Carboniferous, the Permian, and the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Hsuean Tsung's reign the capital had been in the east at Loyang; then it was transferred once more to Ch'ang-an in the west due to pressure of the western gentry. The emperor soon came under the influence of the unscrupulous but capable and energetic Li Lin-fu, a distant relative of the ruler. Li was a virtual dictator at the court from 736 to 752, who had first advanced in power by helping the concubine Wu, a relative of the famous empress Wu, and by continually playing the eastern against the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... impressed. At intervals the cries of the children rent our hearts. At that instant a weeping and agonized mother bared her breast to her dying child, but it yielded nothing to appease the thirst of the little innocent who pressed it in vain. O night of horrors! what pen is capable to paint thy terrible picture! How describe the agonizing fears of a father and mother, at the sight of their children tossed about and expiring of hunger in a small boat, which the winds and waves threatened to ingulf at every instant! Having full before our eyes the prospect of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... a little whirlwind, white of face and dark of eye, with a resoluteness I could not have deemed her capable of. She was as strong and supple as a panther, too. But she need not have been either resolute or strong, for the clasp of her arms, the feel of her warm breast as she pressed me back were enough to make me weak as water. My knees buckled as I touched the chair, and I was glad to sit down. My face ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... years these two had been—not friends: she was incapable of so true a passion; he was too capable to misapply it so unerringly. Their association had assumed the character of one of those belated intimacies, which sometimes spring up in the lives of aged men and women when each wants companionship but has ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... stop with the story of Saint Monica. He lost himself in those details of asceticism, martyrdom, superhuman possibilities which man is capable of attaining under peculiar conditions of life—something he had ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... of the literary world as I was, and I am afraid his head was a little turned when he woke up one morning to find himself famous. He was Christina's son, and perhaps would not have been able to do what he had done if he was not capable of occasional undue elation. Ere long, however, he found out all about it, and settled quietly down to write a series of books, in which he insisted on saying things which no one else would say even if they could, or could ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... angelic, are but an inert mass, which, like Caliban, verges on the brutal; and this is called in human tongues, as I tell you, neither more nor less than apoplexy. Come, if so you will, count, and continue this conversation at my house, any day you may be willing to see an adversary capable of understanding and anxious to refute you, and I will show you my father, M. Noirtier de Villefort, one of the most fiery Jacobins of the French Revolution; that is to say, he had the most remarkable audacity, seconded by ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by the Gens of Dalis, already in potential revolt against the Earth. Mars was next, and by forcing the Earth into close proximity to Mars the people of the Moon had played into the hands of Earth-people—if the people of Earth were capable of carrying out the program of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... hadn't known he was capable of, he described great airships, steered automatically and bristling with guns that discharged explosives powerful enough to kill everything within a range of a thousand miles. He told of billions of thirty-foot giants ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... drill husbandry was the inferiority of the drills hitherto invented. They were complex in construction, expensive, and hard to procure. It seemed impossible to make a drill or drill plough as it was called, for such it then was—a combination of drill, plough, and harrow—capable of sowing at various depths and widths, and at the same time light enough for ordinary use. All the drills hitherto made were too light to stand the rough use of farm labourers: 'common ploughs and harrows the fellows ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... unloaded and ready to run. Among other things, there was a land vehicle on light caterpillar treads capable of running where there were no roads and carrying a load of several tons. And there was an out-and-out tractor with ...
— Shepherd of the Planets • Alan Mattox
... painful to dwell. The drunken old men, with incredible agility, whirled round the prostrate form of Jean. There was no question now of eulogizing his virtues: he was accused, in language which seemed devil-born, of every crime, every infamy, of which the human race is capable; held up to scorn and ignominy, he was cursed and execrated with a shower of blasphemy and obscenity; a by-stander, contemplating his calm, clear face, the lips parted in prayer, gleaming amidst the contorted features of the screaming miscreants, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... bear it no longer. Believe me, you are mistaken in the whole romance you have imagined to yourself about Miss Hunter. She is no more in love with me than I am with her. Since you fixed my attention upon her, I have studied the young lady. She is not capable of love: I don't mean that she is not capable of wishing to be married, but that is quite a different affair, which need not give me any peculiar disturbance. My dear mother, find another husband ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... How little he was capable of understanding the pang this announcement gave his poor wife! But she only closed her eyes and kept perfectly quiet, and he never ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... be unfair," she replied. "Only, since you ask me, I have to tell you that that is the way it seems to me. I don't want to introduce the question of right and wrong into this, Hugh, I'm not capable of unravelling it; I can't put myself into your life, and see things from your point of view, weigh your problems and difficulties. In the first place, you won't let me. I think I understand you, partly—but only partly. You have kept yourself shut up. But why discuss ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hundreds of snags were above water and as ugly as mud, age, sun bleach, and turkey-buzzards could make them. Many a chute comfortably run by the Votaress was now "closed for repairs," said one of the pilots of the Enchantress. He was the whilom steersman we knew as Watson's cub; a very capable-looking man now. At the moment, he was off watch and had come out from the bar to the boiler deck with a trim, supple man of forty, whose shirt of fine white flannel was open at the throat, where a ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... took place in Celtic times, when the trade with Phoenicia was at its height, or subsequently—in which case it is strange there is no historical record of so remarkable a fact—or whether those prehistoric peoples who built huge camps and erected mighty monoliths were yet capable of so stupendous a feat as felling the timber of sixty thousand acres, and carting it over roadless country, is at least open to question. There is another theory, that the Romans in their struggle to subdue the Britons, who took refuge ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... reservations. As between him and others there should be but one choice. But did she really know him? Was he simply the open, jolly, generous, upright adoring fellow he appeared? Or were there less pleasant, more ignoble sides to his character? Was he, as well as his father, capable of a mean, unworthy, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... a true reaction against tradition. It replaced an old tradition by a new one; it substituted a rigid, unprogressive authority for one capable of growth and adaptation to changing requirements. In the end, Karaism became so hedged in by its supposed avoidance of tradition that it ceased to be a living force. But we are here not concerned with the religious defects ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... the habitues were the notary Cournant and his wife, and Doctor Neraud, whose youth was said to have been stormy, but who now took a serious view of life; he gave himself up to study and was, according to all Liberals, a far more capable man than Monsieur Martener, the aristocratic physician. As for the Rogrons, they no more understood their present triumph than they had ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... In London, I tried to interest her in Society, or Politics, and the Opera—and now Luke is trying to interest her in Colonial questions—but she always drifts back to—Men. She can't help it. And the funny thing is, I don't believe that in her heart she is capable ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... very enemies deemed him so before his death. He honoured his memory for having kept this country in peace many years, as also for the goodness and placability of his temper.' Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 509), says:—'My father alone was capable of acting on one great plan of honesty from the beginning of his life to the end. He could for ever wage war with knaves and malice, and preserve his temper; could know men, and yet feel for them; could smile when opposed, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... captain. A deputy provost-marshal supervised the enrolment and draft for the State, and the whole was under the control of the provost-marshal-general at Washington, Colonel James B. Fry. The law provided for classification of all citizens capable of military duty between the ages of twenty and forty-five, so as to call out first the unmarried men and those not having families dependent on them. The exemptions on account of physical defects were submitted to a board of three, of which ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... furthermore, light, sceptical, changeable, captivating, energetic, and irresolute, capable of everything and of nothing; selfish by principle and generous on occasion, he lived moderately upon his income, and amused himself with hygiene. Indifferent and passionate, he gave himself rein and drew back constantly, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... domestic animals were also distributed by the State to the people. All labour was executed in common for the good of the State; roads and bridges were made, mines worked, weapons forged, and all the men capable of bearing arms had to join the ranks when the kingdom was threatened by hostile tribes. The harvest was stored in government warehouses in the various provinces. An extremely accurate account was kept of all goods belonging to ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... call race-courses. There were several at Rome, the most celebrated being the Circus Maximus, which was first laid out in the time of the Tarquins, and afterwards enlarged as the population of the capital increased, until it was capable of holding two or three hundred ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... you'd tell the poor kid she had to live with her own mistakes," growled Magnusson. "You're capable of it." ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of that which you can adduce for the benefit of the Committee?—I can only make an assertion; I cannot prove it; but I assert it with confidence, that no workman, whose mind I have examined, is, at present, capable of design in the arts, only of imitation, and of exquisite manual execution, such as is unsurpassable by the work of any time or any country; manual execution, which, however, being wholly mechanical, is always profitless to the man himself, and profitless ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... as though afraid the Colombian ape would hear and become angry; "don't annoy the creature. He looks fully capable of coming right out ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... beyond measure. In a while, if he be a man of sense, he will begin to see how natural the position of the Australian native is, and then he will cease to be astonished, though he may still be grieved. The society is large and powerful. It includes within its ranks a great number of the most capable of the rising men and the younger of those already risen. Speaking broadly, its aspiration is for a separate national life. It will "cut the painter"—that is the phrase—which ties it to the old ship of state. In its ranks are many who love ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... circumstances, and increase the excitement; and we may afterwards accustom the pupil to act from the hope of distant pleasures. Unless children can be actuated by the view of future distant advantage, they cannot be capable of long continued application. We shall endeavour to explain how the value of distant pleasures can be increased, and made to act with sufficient force upon the mind, when we hereafter speak ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... the support of the imposture. I am very well satisfied to think the whole population believed in those poor, cheap miracles—a people who want two cents every time they bow to you, and who abuse a woman, are capable of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remained in that position till he got up to eat his supper. He seemed much better after it, though he still limped when he attempted to walk, and his nose showed the scars which the swan's beak had made on it. Had he been capable of any feeling of revenge, it would have afforded him infinite satisfaction to know that he was devouring his late antagonist; but such a thought did not enter his canine mind. There was the food; he ate it, and ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... to make much of the seeing of the light, and not so much of the actual sighting of land; and he was on the spot, and the reward was granted to him. Even if we assume that in strict equity Columbus was entitled to it, it was at least a matter capable of argument, if only Rodrigo de Triana had been there to argue it; and what are we to think of the Admiral of the Ocean Seas and Viceroy of the Indies who thus takes what can only be called a mean advantage of a poor ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... wildest imaginings of which I was capable. After the first shock, you understand, I recovered very quickly. The order of the world was safe enough. He was a civil servant and she his good and faithful wife. But when it comes to dealing with human beings anything, anything may be expected. So even my astonishment did not last ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... deliberate seeking of external ends in marriage, such as money, position, family connections, and the like, it ought not to be necessary to say a word to any thoughtful person. It is the basest act of which man or woman is capable. It is an insult to marriage; it is a mockery of love; it is treachery and falsehood and robbery toward the person married. It subordinates the lifelong welfare of a person to the acquisition of material things. It introduces fraud and injustice into the inmost center of one's life, and ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... elective principle must triumph in the end, and the little difficulties you seem to anticipate would give way on the introduction of a well-balanced scheme, capable of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... in conversation with a missionary who had spent many years in China, I asked him, having this subject in my mind, whether he thought that his converts were capable of receiving Christianity in the sense in which he himself held the faith. His answer, which he illustrated by instances, was that the heathen conceptions and propensities could not be entirely ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... is not capable of proof, but a 17th-century etymologist regards it as identical with the female name Jug,[34] for Joan or Jane. This is supported by the fact that jack was ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... detail of floor and wall, spades, hoes, and weeders, for a hidden significance. The lantern was still hot, and Marta's finger smarted with a burn, but she did not twitch. She was so keyed up that she felt capable of walking over red-hot coals, while she joked about ghosts. "There!" she exclaimed, after the lantern was lighted. "This is going to be great sport. Ghost hunting—think of that! We might have ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... grief which was in his brother's voice. Innocent Miss Dora, who knew no evil, had scarcely a doubt in her mind that Frank was guilty; but Jack, who scarcely knew what goodness was, acquitted his brother instantaneously, and required no other proof. Perhaps if he had been capable of any impression beyond an intellectual one, this little incident might, in Miss Dora's own language, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... so-called 'cream of lime.' These being filled with water, the lime and water are thoroughly mixed by air forced by an engine through apertures in the bottom of the reservoir. The water soon dissolves all the lime it is capable of dissolving. The mechanically suspended lime is then allowed to subside to the bottom, leaving a perfectly ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... skilful navigator to steer through the many currents which eddied round him. A strong Russophile party formed itself in the army; on the night of August 21, 1886, some officers of this party, who were the most capable in the Bulgarian army, appeared at Sofia, forced Alexander to resign, and abducted him; they put him on board his yacht on the Danube and escorted him to the Russian town of Reni, in Bessarabia; telegraphic orders came from St. Petersburg, in answer to inquiries, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... though it was not of such precious material. It is true that it was executed with such art, and represented such a beautiful person, as to prevent any strangeness in its charming a Prince whose eyes were so delicate and so capable of judging all beautiful objects. This statue was of life-size, placed upon a pedestal of gold, on the four sides of which were bas-reliefs of an admirable beauty. On each were seen captives, chained in all sorts of fashions, but chained only by little Loves, unsurpassably executed. As ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and nodded. He judged in a detached spirit—a mere spectator at a play—and he was forced to admit to himself that it was subtly done of his brother, and showed an astuteness in this thing, at least, of which he had never supposed him capable. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... would have been punished with the scourge and the pillory, rewarded with the English crown. To the old nobility of the realm it seemed insupportable that the bastard of Lucy Walters should be set up high above the lawful descendants of the Fitzalans and De Veres. Those who were capable of looking forward must have seen that, if Monmouth should succeed in overpowering the existing government, there would still remain a war between him and the House of Orange, a war which might last longer and produce more misery than ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... without injury to his moral character. Whether he be so or not is not our business to discuss—but it is our duty to relate those things which may be set down as a counterpoise to the blamable disregard of economy of which he is impeached by many who are perhaps little capable of estimating his means or his motives. He is one of the most dutiful and generous of sons to an amiable mother, whose old age he cheers with punctual bounty, and by the most constant and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... think what might be my fate, and I can honestly say that the thought of failing to fulfill my errand bore as heavily upon me as the sense of personal dangers; for it is a great thing to be trusted, to be looked upon as honest and true, and deemed capable of transacting ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... which is based on no other grounds save those of intuition. Logical men look beyond the immediate effects of an action and predicate its results on posterity. The percepts and recepts which form the concept of equal rights also embody an eject which, though conjectural, is yet capable of logical demonstration, and which declares that the final and ultimate effect of female suffrage on ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... Agamogenesis is known in which, when A differs widely from B, it is itself capable of sexual propagation. No case whatever is known in which the progeny of B, by sexual generation, is other ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... conscience, and to our entire honor, to have kept ourselves clear from a war which must have given the Confederacy the invincible alliance of England,—was exactly what our enemies in Europe did not suppose us capable of doing. But we have done it in the handsomest manner, and there is not one liberal heart in this hemisphere that is not rejoiced, nor one hater of us and of our institutions that is not gnashing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... peculiarity of talent, or rather talents,—poetry, music, voice, all his own; and an expression in each, which never was, nor will be, possessed by another. But he is capable of still higher flights in poetry. By the by, what humour, what—every thing, in the "Post-Bag!" There is nothing Moore may not do, if he will but seriously set about it. In society, he is gentlemanly, gentle, and, altogether, more pleasing than any individual ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... result so uniform, that I no longer hesitate to announce, as a certain discovery, the singularities which retarded fecundation, produces on the ovaries of the queen. If she receives the male during the first fifteen days of her life, she remains capable of laying both the eggs of workers and of drones; but should fecundation be retarded until the twenty-second day, her ovaries are vitiated in such a manner that she becomes unfit for laying the eggs of workers, and will ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... secondary type, since they must first be charged from a dynamo, after which they can supply full currents for one hundred hours—enough to take them around the globe—while partly consuming the elements in the cells. The power is applied through turbine screws, half of which are capable of propelling the flat deck in its inclined position at sufficient speed to prevent its falling. The moving parts have ball bearings and friction rollers, lubrication being secured automatically, when required, by a supply of vaseline that melts if any part ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Gianapolis was a man capable of the uttermost sacrifices upon either of two shrines; that of Mammon, or that of Eros. His was a temperament (truly characteristic of his race) which can build up a structure painfully, year by year, suffering unutterable privations in the cause of its growth, only to shatter ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... and carry for either of the combatants to the prejudice of the other. Hence came the right of search, in order that unjust falsehood might be prevented. But the seas were not then bridged with ships as they are now bridged, and the laws as written were, perhaps, then practical and capable of execution. Now they are impracticable and not capable of execution. It will not, however, do for us to ignore them if they exist; and therefore they should be changed. It is, I think, manifest that our own pretensions as to the right of search must be modified after ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... Troup, turning upon him suddenly. "It is this. You are so greatly endowed that more is expected of you than of other men. You were fashioned to make history; to give birth, not for your own personal good, but for the highest good of a nation, to the greatest achievement of which the human mind is capable. Therefore, when you trip and stumble like any fool among us, when you act like a mere mortal with no gigantic will and intellect to lift him to the heights and keep him there, some power in the unseen universe is infuriated, and you pay the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... words "he is all alive," "thoroughly alive." So the word quick, which began by signifying "having life," is now mostly applied to energy of life as shown in swiftness of action. Breathing is capable of like contrast. We say of a dying man, he is still breathing; or we speak of a breathing statue, or "breathing and sounding, beauteous battle," TENNYSON Princess can. v, l. 155, where it means having, or seeming to have, full and vigorous breath, abundant life. Compare ACTIVE; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... surface is worn down and roughly polished, as is the case with all the exposed surfaces of ancient limestones in Australia; the result probably of the acidulous properties of rain water, or of the atmosphere, which, in a tropical climate, where violent showers alternate with great drought, is capable of producing various sensible changes in rocks in a long series of ages. Many rocks of limestone in New South Wales, even harder than the Burdekin marble, are actually grooved in short parallel furrows, over wide surfaces, and along their sides, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt |
