"Inability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... continuous warfare. They came together for the purpose of giving Europe that "peace and stability" which they thought that the people needed and wanted. They were what we call reactionaries. They sincerely believed in the inability of the mass of the people to rule themselves. They re-arranged the map of Europe in such a way as seemed to promise the greatest possibility of a lasting success. They failed, but not through any premeditated wickedness on their ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with this masterful stranger—who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger. Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... me one of her tender smiles and made a little gesture as if to say that she felt her inability to ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... himself only to equal or excel some other trifler, and is happy or miserable as he succeeds or miscarries: the man of sedentary desire and unactive ambition sits comparing his power with his wishes; and makes his inability to perform things impossible, an excuse to himself for performing nothing. Man can only form a just estimate of his own actions, by making his power the test of his performance, by comparing what he does with what he can do. Whoever steadily perseveres in the exertion ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... inability of the president of the said Audiencia of such nature that he cannot carry on the functions of government, the Audiencia itself shall assume the government and do all that he had authority to do—the senior auditor filling the office of president, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... of intrigue in his own hands, his royal master by the dogged pursuit of one end overthrew the minister's entire scheme. Saturated though he was with Machiavellian theories, a man of one book, and that book The Prince, Cromwell lost all by his inability to read the bent of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... arrive there, or take departure from her present anchorage, is a question that even her skipper cannot answer. If asked, he would most probably reply, "Quien sabe?" and, further pressed, might point to her deserted decks, offering that as an explanation of his inability to satisfy ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... quite pale with the painful wrist, and meditated, in a desperate fashion, on her inability to keep out of trouble and mischief; But Kittie was back in an incredibly short space of time, all flushed and panting, and with a little bundle of ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... self-distrust; and certainly the example of Dr. Kane will exert this wholesome influence, by the unmistakable directness with which it gives the lie to that lazy or cowardly skepticism of the powers of the will, which furnishes the excuse for thousands to slink away from duty on the plea of inability to perform it. To the young men of the country we especially commend this biography, in the full belief that it will stimulate and stir to effort many a sensitive youth who feels within himself the capacity to emulate the spirit which prompted Dr. Kane's actions, if he cannot hope to rival ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... tried and found wanting was tried again as though it were impossible for human minds to acknowledge defeat by an insensate plant. The axes, the scythes, weedburners and reapers were brought out again, only to prove their inability to cope with the relentless flow of the grass. Robot tanks loaded with explosives disappeared as had those containing the soldiers, and only the stifled sound of their explosion registered the fact that they had fulfilled their design if not ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... read the hymn through, and then deaconed out two lines at a time for the people to sing. He repeated the process with a second hymn, when Abel made a prayer; then Uncle Sam read from the Burial Service and began his exordium, apologizing for his inability to speak much on account of a sore throat, but holding forth for about half an hour upon the necessity for all to prepare for "dis bed," filling his discourse with Scripture illustrations and quotations aptly ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Because he had taken Emmy, he had a grievance. Right! But against whom? Against Emmy? Certainly not. Against himself? By no means. Against Jenny? A horribly exulting and yet nervously penitent little giggle shook Jenny at her inability to answer this point as she had answered the others. For Alf had a grievance against Jenny, and she knew it. No amount of ingenious thought could hoodwink her sense of honesty for more than a debater's five minutes. No Alf had ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... resent the burden and the discomfort and the expense of an ailing wife, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. It is a failing of the male species to be cursed with the inability to understand any type of nervousness in a wife. Being inexplicable to him he attributes the symptoms to an evil imagination or to a bad disposition. He believes he is being imposed upon and proceeds to resent it. Many homes are rendered permanently ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... resented his behaviour towards me. Fearful of discovery, I had never paid any attention to music since my marriage; I had always pretended that I could not sing. Even my wife was not aware of my talent; and although latterly I had no fear of the kind, yet as I had always stated my inability, I did not choose to bring forth a talent, the reason for concealing which I could not explain even to my wife and mother, without acknowledging the deception of which I ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Inability to do the things you professed to do involved grave risk of making intimate acquaintance with the gang. If, for example, you were a skipper and navigated your vessel more like a 'prentice than a ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Colonel and convey a letter to him detailing my situation, and was much taken with this idea, which I presently rejected because I did not clearly see what good could come of it. I was tortured with doubts, unable to decide for the best, and at last, from sheer inability to choose, resolved to adhere to my original plan ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... small social gathering, cards must be left within the following week. When unable to accept an invitation to dinner, a call should soon afterwards be made to express regret at the inability to be present. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... short, all the general process of a trial was passing before my view. Curiosity would naturally have made me spring from my bed and approach this extraordinary spectacle; but I am not ashamed now to acknowledge, that I felt a nervelessness and inability to speak or move, which for the time wholly awed me. All that I could discover was, that the accused was charged with incivisme, and that, defying the court and disdaining the charge, he was pronounced guilty—the whole circle, standing up as the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... day, when books are so easily obtained, there is no need of the excuse of inability to procure them. Circulating libraries are easy of access,—though caution should be used in selecting from them,—and each Sabbath school has a library open for all. There has been much said, and much written about books of fiction, whether they may be read with safety by the young. Fiction as ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... state of Paris was less satisfactory. That fickle populace cheered royalist allusions at the theatres, hissed off an "official" play that represented Cossack marauders,[438] and caused such alarm to Savary that he wrote to warn his master of the inability of the police to control the public if the war rolled on towards Paris. Whether Savary's advice was honestly stupid, or whether, as Lavalette hints, Talleyrand's intrigues were undermining his loyalty to Napoleon, it is difficult to say. But certainly the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... adieu he received before setting out we have space for only two. The first came from the venerable Professor Sedgwick, of Cambridge, in the form of an apology for inability to attend the farewell banquet. It is a beautiful unfolding of the head and heart of the Christian philosopher, and must have been singularly welcome to Livingstone, whose views on some of the greatest subjects of thought ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the five-year test ... The E was the final word, or should be. The colonists knew it. The E knew it, or should know it. Obviously then it was weakness on the part of the Junior if he allowed the colonists to dictate that there could be no mechanical science. Proof of his inability to handle the job. ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... consciousness on his part of anything in her mind beyond what her words implied. But she felt in peril of fire, so close to him, with a resurrection of an image in it—a vivid one—of the lawn-tennis garden of twenty years ago, and the speech of his friend, the real Fenwick, about his inability to swim. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... returned Cleek; "that the bird brought him a message of such importance it was necessary to leave this house at once, and that, not wishing to leave it unlocked while he was absent, and not—because of the captain's inability to get back upstairs afterward—having anybody to whom he could appeal to get up and lock it after him, he chose to get out of this window, and to go down by means of that wistaria. I think, too, we may decide that, as he left no note to explain his absence, he expected to return before morning, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the Government suffered inconvenience and embarrassment enough during the war in consequence of the inability of manufacturers to use this patent, and that its further extension will operate prejudicially to its interest by compelling it to pay to parties already well paid a large royalty for altering its ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... because of them, Sabre found with new certainty that he had no violent feelings. Increasingly he came to know that he had well expressed his constitutional habit, the outstanding trait in his character, when, on the day of that talk in the office with Nona, he had spoken of his disastrous inability—disastrous from the point of view of being satisfactory to single-minded persons, or of pulling out that big booming stuff called success—to see a thing, whatever it might be, from a single point of view and go all out for it from that point of view. "Convictions," ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... which to him was honorable; his hard work; his late hours; his devotion to a task which was often tedious; his many periods of heart-rending loss, which when they occurred would drive him nearly mad; his small customary gains; his inability to put by anything for old age; of the narrow edge by which he himself was occasionally divided from defalcation, he spoke to himself of himself as of an honest, hard-working professional man upon whom the world was ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... says (Div. Nom. iv) that evil is "weak and incapable." But weakness or inability either takes away or diminishes guilt. Therefore a human action does not incur ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... plaintive and disagreeable. He put it down to his lady wife's magnificence, in comparison with which all seemed common. Her money flew apace, in spite of the cheap living. She was even richer than he expected; and he remembered with shame how he had once regretted his inability to accept the thousand lire that Philip Herriton offered him in exchange for her. It would have been a ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... and injurious character of most of this legislation is best proved by the notable inability to effectively enforce its application. The chartered companies were continually complaining of the infringement of their monopolies by private adventurers, and more than one of them failed through inability ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the three sat at the entrance of the cave and discussed the Prince's affairs, in which the hermit and his daughter seemed to take a lively interest. At a little distance on the small stone sat the Single Adherent, also smoking a pipe of water-cress, and his inability to enjoy this novel sensation was plainly evident in the radiant beams of the full moon. In the course of an hour the Prince and his Adherent retired to a guest-cave near by; but the hermit and his daughter sat up far into the ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... of the Dei Gratia, an able and intelligent seaman, is of opinion that the Marie Celeste may have been abandoned a considerable distance from the spot at which she was picked up, since a powerful current runs up in that latitude from the African coast. He confesses his inability, however, to advance any hypothesis which can reconcile all the facts of the case. In the utter absence of a clue or grain of evidence, it is to be feared that the fate of the crew of the Marie Celeste will be added to those numerous mysteries of the deep which will never be solved ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a rush of words came to Harry that he was silent by the sheer inability to decide which to utter first. But then ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... inform you where she is," I answered, petulantly. "I scarcely think it was worth while to disturb me for the sake of asking me a question you must have known my inability ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... (a)—There is an inability to release a word; in others, (b)—A tendency to repeat a syllable several times before the following syllable can be uttered; in others, (c)—The tendency to substitute an incorrect sound for the correct one; ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... jealousies have taken possession of the Indian mind. The difficulties are the inability of the Indians to select a high or principal chief from amongst themselves, and as to the matter and extent of the ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... faculty meeting he brought up the plight of an old woman who was about to be evicted from her little shack on the outskirts of the town because of her inability to pay the nominal rent which she was charged. He arranged to have her rent paid out of a sum of money which he always had included in the school budget for the relief of such cases. In such ways he was constantly ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... nearly converted to her side as the journey grew hotter and heavier, seeing her maintain her pace as well as himself, if not better, that he found himself stumbling every few yards sheerly through his inability to keep his eyes from her. He was bursting to talk; there was yet a problem unsolved in his mind; and when a stretch of level glade gave him back his breath, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... and even when the service was over, and they entered the choir, these thoughts had not so passed away as to enable her to give full admiration to the exquisite leafy capitals and taper arcades of the Lady Chapel. Perhaps, too, there was a little perverseness in her inability to think that this Cathedral ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... different way. But sometimes the solution proposed for a given problem is almost the same in substance, even when the two thinkers we are contrasting belong to centuries which lie far apart. In this case, only our own inability to strip off the husk and reach the fruit itself prevents us from seeing that we have before ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... 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 ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... conviction. The correlations between his idiosyncrasies and his precepts are undeniable. This has special reference to his point of view in the matter of fasting and abstinence from meat. He too frequently vents his own aversion to fish, or talks of his inability to postpone meals, not to make this connection clear to everybody. In the same way his personal experience in the monastery passes into his disapproval, on principle, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... man may be an active component in the economic and industrial life of society, yet his inability to hear and his frequently consequent inability to speak stand in the way of his prompt and continuous partaking in its social life. He may, and does, have many friends among his neighbors and acquaintances, but in the discourse between ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... still remain a skeptic as regards Spiritualism, but I repeat my inability to explain or account for what must have been an intelligent force which produced the writing on the slate, which, if my senses are to be relied on, was in no way the result ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... pent-up bitterness of a young life condemned to a slavery intolerable to any refined or sensitive nature. Is it strange that people here take to drink? To me it is far more surprising that so many are sober. I am convinced that, in the slums, far more drunkenness is caused by abject poverty and inability to obtain work, than want is produced by drink. Here the physical system, half starved and often chilled, calls for stimulants. Here the horrors of nightmare, which we sometimes suffer during our sleep, are present during every waking hour. An oppressive fear weighs forever on the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... great majority" has done for this country in the past, and is doing for it at the present time, and especially when we contrast its sense of justice and right with the weakness and inability of some of its public servants, does it not seem to be a little presumptuous for them to assume that "the danger is from the multitudes—the majority, with whom is the power," and that, were it not for their superior wisdom and patriotic ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Thresk lived over again that evening in the tent upon the desert, but with a new understanding. His mind was illumined. He saw the world as a prison in which each living being is shut off from his neighbour by the impenetrable wall of an inability to understand. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... and art critic. I cannot now put my hand, for purposes of quotation, upon the title of the periodical in which these appeared; but I remember that the writer was greatly amused, as well as somewhat provoked, by his inability to get any of the philosophers with whom he sought interviews to take an aesthetic view of any poem, or painting, or other art product. They would talk of its "message" or its "ethical content"; but as to questions of technique or beauty, they gently put them ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... ashore, where the ambulances stood upon the dock. Maurie had admitted his inability to drive, but asked to be allowed to go into the town. So he left the ship with the others and disappeared ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... history: 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
... Ebony by treating him with the same deference which he accorded to his companions. In short each of our travellers congratulated himself not a little on this pleasant acquisition to the party—the only drawback to their satisfaction being their inability to reconcile the existence of such good qualities with ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... The inability of his contemporaries to understand his profound decorative genius, his tact in the handling of the great problem of lighting—the key is always higher because of the different or softer light of public buildings and the gloom of churches—and his feeling for the wall, purely as wall, a flat ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Man's inability to solve these sovereign problems is nowhere more poetically expressed than in Edward Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam's ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Holden sourly went away. There had been no particular consequences of Johnny Simms' inability to remember what was right and what was wrong. But Holden felt like a normal man about men whose wives look patient. Even psychiatrists feel that it is somehow disreputable to illtreat a woman who doesn't fight back. This attitude is instinctive. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to think he had better go. Lydia was surrounded by men who were speaking to her in German. He felt his own inability to talk learnedly even in English; and he had, besides, a conviction that she was angry with him for upsetting her cousin, who was gravely conversing with Miss Goff. Suddenly a horrible noise caused a general start and pause. Mr. Jack, the eminent composer, had opened ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... many teachers are apt to run, and that is, to condemn every thing which is vehement and forcible as theatrical. It is an old trick to depreciate what we can not attain, and calling a spirited pronunciation theatrical, is but an artful method of hiding an utter inability of speaking with force and energy. But though school-boys ought not to be taught those nice touches which form the greatest difficulties in the profession of an actor, they should not be too much restrained ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... were all four in such high spirits that they could no more help playing together than four colts could help playing in a grass field. Besides, Vincent had taunted Adelaide with her inability ever to make it up with Wayne. ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... sin. If we gather into one dismal pile the weakening of power for good, the strengthening of impulses to evil, the inward poverty, the unrest, the gnawings of conscience or its silence, the slavery under evil often loathed even while it is being obeyed, the dreary sense of inability to mend oneself, and often the wreck of outward life which dog our sins like sleuth-hounds, surely we shall not need to imagine a future tribunal in order to be sure that sin is a murderess, or to hear her laugh as she ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... something out of it, if I have to put in some more winters like the one I have just come through—which was Sheol, with ice and snow in the place of the traditional fire and brimstone. If I have one good quality—as I sometimes doubt—it's the inability to know when I am satisfactorily and ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... successfully in the silent drama. Lacking this knowledge, it is impossible to succeed. But the great majority of the ones who fail, and who, otherwise, would almost certainly have succeeded sooner or later, owe their failure to their inability to hit upon and develop original, ingenious and dramatic or truly humorous plots and plot-situations. Many a man of brains and of excellent education who in any other calling might easily make his mark, finds himself totally unable to win success in short-story writing and photoplay writing ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... standpoint of observation and inexperience, I would say that the supremest lack of men as lovers is the inability to say, "I am sorry, dear; forgive me." And to keep on saying it until the hurt is entirely gone. You gave her the deep wound. Be manly enough to stay by it until it has healed. Men will go to any trouble, any expense, any personal inconvenience, to heal it without ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... "dug-out;" but Mr. Low had before him the possibility of our having been assailed by bad characters, or of our having encountered a tiger in the jungle, and of my having been carried off from my inability ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... was on January 1, 1866, or at any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to read and write sections of such constitution. Precinct election inspectors having in charge the registration of electors shall enforce the provisions of this section at the time of registration, provided registration be required. Should registration be dispensed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... facie case existed against him, or that sort of evidence that would induce a grand jury to indict. I offer this as an instance of the feeling that exists in all classes against the negro, and their inability to realize that he is a free man and entitled ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... there, "Rastas," as they are familiarly called by the Parisians, who make little if any distinction in their minds between a South American (blazing in diamonds and vulgar clothes) and our own select (?) colony. Apropos of this inability of the Europeans to appreciate our fine social distinctions, I have been told of a well-born New Yorker who took a French noblewoman rather to task for receiving an American she thought unworthy of notice, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... steam engine was devised by James Watt, an English inventor of great ingenuity. He invented a cylinder containing a piston, which could be forced back and forth by the introduction of steam. His progress was much retarded by the inability of the mechanics of his time to make an accurate cylinder of sufficient size, but in the year 1777 the new machine was successfully used for pumping. A few years later (1785) he arranged his engine so that it would ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... 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 officer shall ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... unconsciousness of the other are happily contrasted. A sad monologue by Othello prepares the way for the coming outbreak. The handkerchief trio follows, in which the malignity of Iago, the indignation of Othello, and the inability of Cassio to understand the fell purpose of Iago are brought out with great force. At its close a fanfare of trumpets announces the Venetian embassy, and the finale begins with much brilliancy. Then follows the scene ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... she is sadly grieved at not having wished you good-bye. She says little Susan has kept watch down the lane for days past.—Nay, Margaret, what is the matter, dear?' The thought of the little child watching for her, and continually disappointed—from no forgetfulness on her part, but from sheer inability to leave home—was the last drop in poor Margaret's cup, and she was sobbing away as if her heart would break. Mr. Hale was distressingly perplexed. He rose, and walked nervously up and down the room. Margaret tried to check herself, but would ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... not answer that question,—a carefulness which touched even Petronius somewhat, for, with all his inability to feel the difference between good and evil, he had never been an informer; and it was possible to talk with him in perfect safety. He changed the conversation again, therefore, and began to praise Plautius's dwelling and the good taste which ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... we must discard, because of its inability to explain a great part of the facts, the most easy and simple hypothesis—that of some mechanical signal (e.g. by means of a supposed pressure of the hand under the cardboard, or by the hand itself which is held out to the animal, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... mother's idol, but his utter lack of worldliness, his inability to drive a shrewd bargain sometimes annoyed his father, who was a just, but an undeniably hard man, who demanded a hundred cents for his dollar ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... plainly," answered the curate, "that what you say, I must do. But how, while on duty as a clergyman, I DO NOT KNOW. How am I, with the sense of the unreality of my position ever growing upon me, and my utter inability to supply the wants of the congregation, save from my uncle's store of dry provender, which it takes me a great part of my time so to modify as, in using it, to avoid direct lying—with all this pressing upon me, and making ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... up. His men were waiting and longing for a spurt and caught it up at once. But again the swing was marred by Franklin's inability to support the terrific pace. After the first stroke or two the boat began to roll heavily, the form and time became ragged, and ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... inability to be present at the meeting which is to be held, under your Lordship's auspices, in reference to M. Pasteur and his Institute. The unremitting labours of that eminent Frenchman during the last half-century have yielded rich harvests of new truths, and are models of exact and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... was this. The Persians were constantly victorious in the open field; Constantius was again and again defeated; but no permanent gain was effected by these successes. A weakness inherited by the Persians from the Parthians—an inability to conduct sieges to a prosperous issue—showed itself; and their failures against the fortified posts which Rome had taken care to establish in the disputed regions were continual. Up to the close of A.D. 340 Sapor had made no important gain, had struck no decisive blow, but stood nearly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... followed by general fever, loss of consciousness, delirium, sopor while the child is lying in bed, interrupted more or less by sudden cries; boring of the head into the pillow, with copious sweat about the head, having the odor of musk; inability to hold the head erect; squinting of one or both eyes; dilatation of the pupils; gritting of the teeth; protrusion of the tongue; desire to vomit; nausea, retching and vomiting; collapse of the abdominal walls; scanty urine, which is sometimes milky; costiveness; trembling ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... general, had however been prudent enough to send them back severally in order to facilitate the liquidation of their pay, and the Council had believed that they would in the end consent to some reduction. But at present ill-will was caused by the inability to pay them. This debt was confused in the minds of the people with the 3200 Euboic talents exacted by Lutatius, and equally with Rome they were regarded as enemies to Carthage. The Mercenaries understood this, and their indignation found vent in threats and outbreaks. At last they demanded ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... two sail of ships of warr, crewsing up and down about Ostend: at which we are alarmed. My Lord Sandwich is come back into the Downes with only eight sail, which is or may be a prey to the Dutch, if they knew our weakness and inability to set ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... this rule when after water animals, and it is not always through a spirit of mercy toward the victim that actuates their motive, but the fact that they would otherwise lose many a catch, since the captive in despair over its inability to escape ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... wrote to Secretary of State Seward: "That Great Britain did, in the most terrible moment of our domestic trial in struggling with a monstrous social evil she had earnestly professed to abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to master it, and then become the only foreign nation steadily contributing in every indirect way possible to verify its judgment, will probably be the verdict made against her by posterity, on calm comparison of the evidence[1]." Very different were the views ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... got to school, he made a violent struggle against his physical inability to study. He sat gripped, making himself pale and ghastly in his effort to concentrate on the book, to take in what he had to learn. But it was no good. If he beat down his first repulsion, and got like a suicide to the stuff, he went ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... without any concealment, fully exonerating Mildred. Although the judge maintained his stern, impassive aspect throughout the scene, he hugely enjoyed the floor-walker's dismay and confusion, and his tortured inability to warn ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... external tears but within; he mourned the bitterness of solitude, the inability to exchange a single thought with her. He had so many things to tell her which were burning his soul! How he would talk with her, if some mysterious power would bring her back for an instant. He would implore her forgiveness; he would ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... moment came—no money—no relief. With sinking heart he went to the holder of the mortgage to announce his utter inability to meet his demand. While there, just at the last moment, when he was about to leave, the gentleman said, "By the way, here is an envelope I ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... previous resolutions, Clare found himself gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid to Mrs. Brantley—a fact which may serve as a small proof of the weakness of man's resolve, and his general inability to fight against fate, especially when it is embodied in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... his inability, looked around him for an active agent, and believed he had found one in a Mr. Gray, a man of captivating manners and good connexions, but almost as useless a person as the General himself. Fully ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... a talk with the village headman. He was elected for one year, he told me, by the people of the hamlet, comprising about forty families. He confessed his inability to read or write, but his face was intelligent and his bearing showed dignity and self-respect. Petty disputes and breaches of the peace were settled by him according to unwritten custom and his native shrewdness; and he was also responsible for the collection of the land tax due ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... existence; and are warned from recognising the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... escaped. Their misery could not be conveyed to the mind. The woman was like a demon come among them. They felt chiefly degraded, not by her vulgarity, but by their inability to cope with it, and by the consequent sickening sense of animal inefficiency—the block that was put to all imaginative delight in the golden hazy future they figured for themselves, and which was their wine of life. An intellectual adversary they could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dint of hard pulling they got within hail of the transport, and asked for help. "We cannot give it you," was the answer; "we have a boat-load of horses alongside." A second transport was neared, and then another and another, but all declared their inability to render assistance. Green was almost in despair; the artillerymen were shouting out more lustily than before, asserting that the raft was fast filling. At length the boats managed to tow her up alongside a transport, the master of which responded to their appeal, and assisted them ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... through the ceremony of squatting on the floor of the Durbar—our seven pair of unruly legs all converging to a common centre, from our inability to double them under us, as his Majesty did—we adjourned to the hall below to witness the "Hoolie" in safety. On each side of the court-yard was a sort of garden-engine, one filled with a purple and the other with a light-red fluid. ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... say, in passing, that the barrenness of incoherent ideas, and the sterility of widely distant species and genera of animals and plants, are one in principle—the sterility of hybrids being just as much due to inability to fuse widely unlike and unfamiliar ideas into a coherent whole, as barrenness of ideas is, and, indeed, resolving itself ultimately into neither more nor less than barrenness of ideas—that is to say, into inability to think at all, or ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... regret now—that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of her repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Merle had been so—well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped, from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Merle had been. Whatever it was it was for Madame Merle herself to regret it; and doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was going. It concerned Isabel no more; she only had an impression ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... qualms of conscience, which were deepened by his wife's sagacious words; and suddenly it struck him that the new-fangled vehicle which had brought him home so quietly from Scargate had shown a strange inability to stand still for more than two minutes at his side door. So much had he been hurried by the apparent straits of his charioteer that he ran out with box C without ever stopping to make an inventory of its contents—as he intended to do—or even looking whether the all-important deed ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... has not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of this fact. It accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formless extravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; possibly, too, for his inability, or let us say lack of sympathy, for the monumental. He is essentially a sculptor of the intimate emotions; he delineates passion as a psychologist; and while we think of him as a cyclops wielding a huge hammer destructively, he ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... according to the desired pattern: in this case the fault probably lies in a lack of the power of co-ordinating the various activities. The necessary associations between the hearing centres and the motor centres for the control of voice have not been built up. But they can be so built, and then the inability to sing vanishes. A person who can speak has the necessary machinery for song, and to say that one has ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast he drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he said he had brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read; and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety was immediately blotted out. I then most earnestly pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to take the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... No one had spoken to him outside of Burton. Judd imagined that they all were conscious of his showing the white feather. The first team men seemed especially hostile. They had received a tongue-lashing from the coach for their inability to run the score up. Of course he could not know that they were a bit resentful at him for having thwarted their scoring attempts by his ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... and there to my chamber till anon comes Mr. Turner and his wife and daughter, and Pelting, to sup with us and talk of my wife's journey to-morrow, her daughter going with my wife; and after supper to talk with her husband about the Office, and his place, which, by Sir J. Minnes's age and inability, is very uncomfortable to him, as well as without profit, or certainty what he shall do, when Sir J. Minnes dies, which is a sad condition for a man that hath lived so long in the Office as Mr. Turner hath done. But he aymes, and I advise him to it, to look for Mr. Ackworth's ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... all, was kindly and just, and never lifted a hand to him. Having survived sea-sickness at the first, and never setting foot upon the land so that he never again knew sea-sickness, Kwaque was certain he lived in an earthly paradise. He never had to regret his inability to climb trees, because danger never threatened him. He had food regularly, and all he wanted, and it was such food! No one in his village could have dreamed of any delicacy of the many delicacies which he consumed all the time. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... reach Horne and his characteristics—of which I can tell you with confidence that they are grossly misrepresented where not altogether false—whether it proceed from inability to see what one may see, or disinclination, I cannot say. I know very little of Horne, but my one visit to him a few weeks ago would show the uncandidness of those charges: for instance, he talked a good deal about ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... should befal him; but Peter with an ungrounded Resolution, and in a Flush of Temper, made a sanguine Protestation, that tho all Men were offended in him, yet would not he be offended. It was a great Article of our Saviours Business in the World, to bring us to a Sense of our Inability, without Gods Assistance, to do any thing great or good; he therefore told Peter, who thought so well of his Courage and Fidelity, that they would both fail him, and even he should deny ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... but a fierce and warlike temper, was shown in the first youthful exploit of Rodrigo. His father Diego, when too old to bear arms, was grossly insulted by an enemy, the Count of Gormaz. Diego wept and raged at the insult put upon him and his inability to resent it. Moved deeply by his father's grief, Rodrigo determined to avenge the insult to the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... exclaimed, "It is finished." It is even so with all faithful missionaries. They feel it to be an unspeakable privilege to be co-workers with Christ; recognizing the fact that it is not their work but God's, and while they acknowledge their utter inability to save a single soul, yet, doubtless, their joy and satisfaction in all their work springs from the sacred consciousness that there is not only rejoicings and gladness of heart experienced on earth, but "joy in the ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... diminishes naturally with the consciousness of growing strength. By strength, I mean strength of body, no less than strength of mind, so closely are our body and mind connected with, each other. The helplessness of childhood, which presses upon it every moment, the sense of inability to avoid or resist danger, which makes the child run continually to his nurse or to his mother for protection, cannot but diminish, by the mere growth of the bodily powers. The boy feels himself to be less helpless than the child, and in that very proportion he is apt to become ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... hope that New York City might again come into a mastery of the trade with the West, as at the time when the Erie Canal was first completed and because of the inability of the railroads to meet the demands of traffic, the legislature of New York, in 1903, appropriated $100,000,000 for the enlargement of that waterway and the two branch canals, the Oswego and Champlain. The proposed uniform depth is twelve feet and it is otherwise to be large enough for boats ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... strung, so delicately balanced. Often the lack of spiritual joy and peace and power in prayer is attributable to nothing else than our confinement in the narrow limits of a tiny room; to the foul, gaseous air we are compelled to breathe; to our inability to get beyond the great city, with its wilderness of brick, into the country, with its blossoms, fields, and woodland glades. In a large number of spiritual maladies the physician is more necessary ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... around him, far meaner souls many of them than he, have only known and remembered that and, remembering it, have made due allowances for his vagaries, all might have been well. His generous letter of the third of July failed utterly of its mission; but not so much, perhaps, because of Hindman's inability to appreciate it or unwillingness to meet its writer half-way, as because of the very seriousness of Hindman's own military situation, which made all compromises impossible. The things he felt it incumbent upon him to do must be done his way or not at all. The letter of July 3 could scarcely ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... [inverted Y]-ligament, the foot is advanced and the heel drawn up. It is not uncommon for the patient to be able to walk after the accident, and only to seek advice some time later on account of inability to adduct and extend the limb. There is apparent lengthening of the limb due to tilting of the pelvis downward on the affected side. The hip is flattened, the trochanter less prominent than usual, and the ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... both countries attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. By May 1994, when a cease-fire took hold, Armenian forces held not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also a significant portion of Azerbaijan proper. The economies of both sides have been hurt by their inability to make substantial progress toward a peaceful resolution. Turkey imposed an economic blockade on Armenia and closed the common border because of the Armenian occupation of ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... information of the ostler was literally true with regard to the horse-shoe; at least the blacksmith of the village, to whom we conducted the animal, confessed his inability to shoe him, having none that would fit his hoof: he said it was very probable that we should be obliged to lead the animal to Lugo, which, being a cavalry station, we might perhaps find there what ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... feel towards him all the respect due to a parent arrived at a time of life when things are not as they were wont to be, nec mens, nec aetas. I may be among those he accuses of sometimes employing "unintelligible jargon," but shall not retort while I confess my inability to understand such expressions as "some obscure occurrence of unwholesome circumstances" which seem to have, according to him, both "brought" the disease to Jessore in 1817, and produced it there at the same time. Sir Gilbert marks out for the ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... nothing which more certainly proves the innate evil of the human heart than its refusal of that mystery of grace. Disbelief is the creature, not of the intellect, but of the will. It is not the result of inability to understand, but of stubborn obstinacy and stiffneckedness. Here is the supreme manifestation of moral beauty, but man has no eyes for it. Here is the highest revelation of God's desire for man to be reconciled ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... rescue of the two boys, much to the discomfort of the blushing Job, and they rose to take their departure, feeling no ill will toward the Governor for his inability to help them. As they started to go out of the room, a loud insistent knock was heard. "Come in," said Johnson, and immediately the door was opened to admit a short, well-built gentleman, very much flushed as ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... him as a sincere believer, comparing his past life (though neither licentious nor reckless) with the perfectness of the divine law, the retrospect might well depress him with a consciousness of his own unworthiness, and of his total inability to perform the work which he saw (p. 004) before him, without the strength and guidance of divine grace. For that strength and that guidance, we are assured, he prayed, and laboured, and watched with all the intenseness and perseverance of an humble faithful Christian. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... contemptuous snort, turns his back on the phenomenon; mounts his horse and rides home. [Pollnitz, ii. 212, 214.] A divided man from this Grumkow henceforth. The Prince waited on her Majesty; signified his sorrow for past estrangements; his great wish now to help her, but his total inability, being ousted by Grumkow: We are for Halle, Madam, where our Regiment is; there let us serve his Majesty, since we cannot here! [Wilhelmina, i. 90, 93.]—And in fact the Old Dessauer lives mostly there in time coming; sunk inarticulate in tactics of a truly deep nature, not stranding ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hyaenas. In the greater states men felt perfectly helpless without a king to rule the anarchical chaos into which society would have dissolved without him. When the Spanish Communes rebelled against Charles V they triumphed in the field, but their attempt simply collapsed in face of their utter inability to solve the problem of government without a royal governor. They were as helpless as bees without a queen. Indeed, so strong was their instinct to get a royal head that they tried to preserve themselves by kidnapping Charles's mother, poor, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I agreed with him—for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was sent to report the state of affairs to Mr Dallas, who lay on his rough couch, apparently quite calm and confident, but with a red patch burning in either cheek, as he bitterly felt his helplessness and inability to do more than give a word or two of advice. But this advice he did give, when the frigate was about ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... on a good and well-connected plan, and apparently with a sincere desire to tell the truth. He accepts the British official accounts as needing nothing whatever to supplement them, precisely as Cooper accepts the American officials'. A more serious fault is his inability to be accurate. That this inaccuracy is not intentional is proved by the fact that it tells as often against his own side as against his opponents. He says, for example, that the guns of Perry's and Barclay's squadrons "were about equal ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... wet through, with the exception of his coat, and but for John's apparent inability to go home alone, would at once have returned to his boarding-house to exchange his ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... state of servitude; look back, I entreat you, on the variety of dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that period in which every human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential preservation, you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... others of my congregation, and I heartily thank you for your friendly advice and godly admonitions; believing them to have been given in that love which purifies the heart. I am very sensible that the charge committed to my care is very great; and am also fully convinced of my own inability for so great an undertaking. And I do assure you, that when I was called to the task, I trembled at the idea, and was ready to say, "Who am I." But when I consider that God can send by whom he will, and as you very justly have observed, he sometimes makes use of the feeblest instruments ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various |
