"Inadequacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... best practicable mail establishment. To arrive at that end it is indispensable that the Post-Office Department shall be enabled to control the hours at which the mails shall be carried over railroads, as it now does over all other roads. Should serious inconveniences arise from the inadequacy of the compensation now provided by law, or from unreasonable demands by any of the railroad companies, the subject is of such general importance as to require the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... uncertainty, until the old are displaced by the new conditions. We should learn from these facts that it is folly to brand as false and condemn as worthless the rules and formulas, and even religious thought, of the past when we find upon careful investigation and crucial tests their inadequacy to account for present conditions. They were true in their cycle, and applied to past conditions and states of mental development. But in this new era, upon whose threshold we now stand, the vibrations ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... every vicissitude the determined spirit and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and its essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me with no other discouragement than what springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties. If I do not sink under the weight of this deep conviction it is because I find some support in a consciousness of the purposes and a confidence in the principles which I bring with me into this ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... deplore, however, is the general mental inadequacy that is paired with this spasmodic energy of scorn. Common sense is not the highest of dramatic qualities, but a modicum of it would have made Schiller's first heroine, to say the least, more interesting. She has no power of initiative and seems made only to ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... event, to 1828, we find a book styled 'Past Feelings Renovated,' a reply to Dr. Hibbert's 'Philosophy of Apparitions.' The anonymous author is 'struck with the total inadequacy of Dr. Hibbert's theory.' Among his stories he quotes Wraxall's 'Memoirs.' In 1783, Wraxall dined at Pitt Place, and visited 'the bedroom where the casement window at which Lord Lyttelton asserted the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the inadequacy of such hand-to-mouth criticism as that of a monthly reviewer must be upon works demanding so minute an examination as a dictionary deserves. For ourselves, we should wish to own both Webster and Worcester, but, if we could possess ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the life of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... well as myself, had to learn that I needed Hope with me to make my work more perfect. We must first feel our own inadequacy before our helpers can be fully appreciated. I think she came in the right time," said ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... temper being every whit as bold as her husband's. When Stanton with a monumental playfulness proposed to have her portrait painted in a commanding attitude on the parapet of Fort Stevens, she gave him the freedom of her tongue, because of the inadequacy of his department.(9) ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... extraordinary. The inadequacy of the means for preventing it was a sufficient proof that it was considered impossible. The sanctuaries were protected by terror more than by their walls. Matho expected to die ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... its expression that looseness of style in speaking and writing may nearly always be traced to indistinctness and feebleness in the grasp of the subject. No degree of polish in expression will compensate for inadequacy of knowledge. But with the fullest information upon any subject, there is still room for the highest exercise of judgment and good sense in the proper choice and arrangement of the thoughts, and of the words with ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... if it is difficult to guarantee in a few that sympathy with all earnest books which does not preclude rigid honesty in the application of firmly held principles, it is more difficult with the many. And if it is hard to exclude bias, inaccuracy, over- statement, and inadequacy from the work even of a small and chosen group, it is still harder to be certain of complete competence if the net is ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... for him and his mission in that wild, reckless life of theirs? What had he to bring them. Only a Tale? In the face of that vigorous, strenuous life it seemed at that moment to Shock almost ridiculous in its inadequacy. Against him and his Story were arraigned the great human passions—greed of gold, lust of pleasure in its most sensuous forms, and that wild spirit of independence of all restraint by law of Good or man. He was still looking at the map ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... Norse was largely derived from the Latin tomes, and such conceptions as those quoted are therefore common in his poem. That the poet realized the inadequacy of such knowledge, the review of Herbert's poetry, published in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1806, shows. In this article he has a vision of what shall be when men shall be able "to trace ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... turned back in my life and sought not to hasten, but to linger in the precincts of study, and the imperious necessity of getting to the only occupation which would give me the independence I desired, alone deterred me from a post-graduate course of study to compensate for the inadequacy of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in the best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all; and, although through a large tract of life "there comes one event to all, to the wise and to the unwise," ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... for all the affectionate interest, the kind solicitude, the innumerable thoughtful attentions you have so indefatigably shown to Aunt Patty, in the sad complication of misfortunes that so suddenly overwhelmed her; and I feel the inadequacy of any attempt to express my thanks. Your letter can only rivet more indissolubly the links of an affectionate friendship that must always bind you and me; but the future can hold no renewal of pledges ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... from Mexico he was married to Julia Dent. The next six years were spent in military duty in Sacketts Harbor, New York, Detroit, Michigan, and on the Pacific coast. He was promoted to the captaincy of a company in 1853; but because of the inadequacy of a captain's pay, he resigned from the army, July, 1854, and rejoined his wife and children at St. Louis. In speaking of this period Grant says, "I was now to commence at the age of thirty-two a new struggle for ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... Horace listened in resigned bewilderment. The Chamberlain referred to the unanimity and enthusiasm with which the resolution had been carried, and said that it was his pleasing and honourable duty, as the mouthpiece of that ancient City, to address what he described with some inadequacy as "a few words" to one by adding whose name to their roll of freemen the Corporation honoured rather themselves than the ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... admitted and discussed, but the prospective patient hears a different story. "Cut loose the womb, shorten the ligaments, put it into the right position, and everything will be well." This sounds plausible and seductive; but everyday experiences expose the inadequacy and the destructive ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Revue de Paris in April, May and June, 1855. Unfortunately, however, no information was given as to the unfinished state in which it had been left by Balzac, and therefore no explanation was offered of the insufficiency of the denouement, and the inadequacy of the last chapters. Madame de Balzac worked hard, and long before her death in April, 1882, the whole of ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... only that her weight of metal was less, to cope with such frigates as the United States, the President, and the Constitution. On the 12th of November, the Java sailed from Spithead, the remonstrances of Captain Lambert against the inadequacy and inexperience of his crew being of no avail with the authorities. He was told, when he insisted that he was no match for an American, even of equal size, that "a voyage to the East Indies and back would make a good crew." The difficulties in the way of getting to the East Indies, to say nothing ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... now in the same way turn to the correcting of the humanist's emphasis upon man's native capacity and insist upon the complementary truth which fulfills this moral heroism of mankind, namely, the divine rescue which answers to its inadequacy. Man must struggle for his victory; he can win; he cannot win alone. We must then insist upon the doctrine of salvation, turning ourselves to the other side of the humanist's picture. Man cannot live by this ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... thought would suit it. Senecal declared himself in favour of authority; and Frederick noticed in his remarks the exaggeration which characterised what he had said himself to Deslauriers. The Republican even inveighed against the masses for their inadequacy. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... careful than Napoleon was, when dealing with problems of war? Who was ever more attentive to details, who more industrious, who more untiring? And yet Napoleon's plans for his Russian campaign were inadequate to an amazing degree, and the inadequacy was the cause of his disaster. But whether the cause was carelessness or moral cowardice on his part, the fact remains that he did not estimate the situation with sufficient care, and make ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who think my similes are overdone, search out in the nearest museum the dustiest of purple-throated cotingas,—Cotinga cayana,—and then, instead, berate me for inadequacy. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... would not ensue under the conditions he has assigned. Without dwelling on these shortcomings, we shall terminate this portion of the author's inquiry with a few general strictures. First, on its inconsistency with what we know of the solar system; and, secondly, on its inadequacy to explain the facts of which we are cognizant ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... after all, not so much the things we do as the way we do them, and what we think about them, that accomplishes nervous harm. Strangely enough, the sense of effort and the feeling of our own inadequacy damage the nervous system quite as much as the actual physical effort. The attempt to catch up with life and with affairs that go on too fast for us is a frequent and harmful deflection from the rules of the game. Few of us avoid it. Life comes at us and goes by ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... mechanical arts, and it is the object of the following pages to assist the young physicist in making his first steps towards acquiring a working knowledge of "laboratory arts." However humble the ambition may be, no one can be more keenly alive than the writer to the inadequacy of his attempt; and it is only from a profound sense of the necessity which exists for some beginning to be made, that he has had the courage to air his views on matters about which there are probably hundreds or thousands ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that final emergency he debated, thrust ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... as an attempt to reclaim the world of art as a world of fixed laws, to show that the creative activity of genius and the simplest act of thought are but higher and lower products of the laws of a universal logic. Criticism, feeling its own inadequacy in dealing with the greater works of art, is sometimes tempted to make too much of those dark and capricious suggestions of genius, which even [75] the intellect possessed by them is unable to explain or recall. It has seemed due to the half-sacred character of those ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... to assure her that it was just the glare on the water, that she would be able to see again in a moment, but I felt the pitiful inadequacy of my empty words, and it seemed that the light had gone out of my life. I pray that I may never again witness such a harrowing sight as that of Myra, leaning her beautiful head on my shoulder, suddenly stricken ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... by deplorable loss of life, which were at one time so common, almost entirely ceased, but, owing to more regular running, and especially the resumption of night running, the carrying capacity of the railways has greatly increased. Indeed, it is the inadequacy of the lines themselves to meet the enormous and ever-increasing extra requirements resulting from the war, and the shortness of rolling-stock, not any interference from the enemy, which causes us whatever difficulties—and they are still ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... withered hag her mother, he had taken a little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,—when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in general,—that the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his bachelor's bungalow by day or night, and the life that ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... close, as it does to things measurable by our senses, divergency makes the difference between truth and error; but where it is question of the substitution of one analogy or symbol for another, the more elegant is not necessarily the more truthful; nor when we consider the infinite inadequacy of even the noblest conceivable finite symbolism to bring God down to our level, need we pride ourselves much for being on a mountain whose height is perceptible from the plain ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... accountable, could tone, with out quenching, the fire and energy of youthful years, and lead in the clean paths of righteousness. But, alas, how inadequate to meet the actual state of things. Solomon himself shall serve to illustrate the utter inadequacy of his own counsel. What comfort or hope could he extract from it? His were now already the years in which he must say "I have no pleasure in them." A more modern poet might ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... how terrible it would be if the People of any land learned to judge their preachers and teachers by the lines of fact alone! Inasmuch as fact would convincingly prove to them that their leaders prospered and grew rich, while they stayed poor; and they might take to puzzling out reasons for this inadequacy which would inevitably cause trouble. For this, and divers other motives politic, the rosy veil of sentiment is always delicately flung more or less over every new move on the national debating-ground,—and whether marriageable princes and princesses love or loathe each other, still, when ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... low brow showed no trace of shame or sin. The doctor knew he was in the presence of one of the most popular hostesses, one of the most admired women, in the kingdom. Yet his keen professional insight revealed to him an arrested development; possibilities unfulfilled; a problem of inadequacy and consequent disappointment, to which he had not the key. But those outstretched hands eagerly held it towards him. Could he bring help, if he accepted a knowledge of the solution; or—did help ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... important and predominant experiences of the time. When, for example, we try to decide whether our school days were our happiest days, as is so often alleged, it is obvious that we are liable to fall into illusion through the inadequacy of memory to preserve characteristic or typical features, and none but these. We cannot easily recall the ordinary every-day level of feeling of a distant period of life, but rather think of exceptional ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... electro-motor was in 1837, to a man named Thomas Davenport, of Brandon, Vt. He was a man far ahead of his times. He built the first electric railroad ever seen, at Springfield, Mass., in 1835, and considering the means, whose inadequacy is now better understood by any reader of these lines than it then was by the deepest student of electricity, this first railroad was a success. Davenport came as near to solving the problem of an electric motor as was possible without the invention of Pacinotti. Following this ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... plays, beginning at three in the afternoon, were ordinarily over by the dinner-hour of five. Less satisfactory was the entire absence of women-actors, who did not appear on the public stage until after the Restoration of 1660. The inadequacy of the boys who took the part of the women-characters is alluded to by Shakspere and must have been a source of frequent irritation to any dramatist who was attempting to present ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... thereof, it shall not be counted unless both Houses of Congress are favorable.[3] It should be noted that no provision is made by this Amendment for the situation which would result from a failure to choose either a President or Vice President, an inadequacy which Amendment XX ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... deplored to each other the inadequacy of their means of communication with their guide. The bright-eyed Gene had a hundred things to point out to them on the prairie, most of which they could only guess at. For one thing, he made them understand he was following in the tracks of two cayuses that had gone that way ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... President, to the consideration of the petition presented by the Senator from Kentucky, and to an examination of the views he has presented to the Senate on this highly important subject. Sir, I feel, I sensibly feel my inadequacy in entering into a controversy with that old and veteran Senator; but nothing high or low shall prevent me from an honest discharge of my duty here. If imperfectly done, it may be ascribed to the want of ability, not intention. If the power of my mind, and the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers of ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... germ of all the spiritual ideas of religion as well as of the essence of religion itself. The Godhead, Eternity, Immortality, are concepts which arise within the soul through a consciousness of the inadequacy of all natural things and of even mental descriptions and explanations to answer and to satisfy the potency and ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... upholstery, sumptuous costumes, have, in the remembrance of many, been squandered in profusion upon the boards of one of our London theatres in the getting up of a drama by the master-dramatist. All this has tended, however, only to realise the more painfully the inadequacy of the powers, no less of the leading star than of his whole company, to undertake the interpretation of the dramatic masterpiece. The spectacle which we are viewing in such an instance is, no doubt, resplendent; but it is so purely as a spectacle. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... though she were a thousand miles away. I stood there impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing that puzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. She still so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me to understand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear her explaining that my husband had no intention of going to Reno, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... color. Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life you live ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... were able to make the islands, although not little is the discomfort and not few the additional expenses that have been incurred because of their inability to make this port. What I grieve over most is to see the inadequacy of the aid, which does not reach two hundred and fifty thousand pesos, while I informed the viceroy that we needed four hundred thousand, as I wrote last year. Consequently, I again petition your Majesty in the same terms as in that letter, to be pleased to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... prognostics of us; but she is only connected with us as the road is with the goal it reaches in the end. She exists independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the variety, knowledge, love, power and finish of God, to urge ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... compliment sooner. The true reason, however, of the haughty distance, at which, both now and afterwards, he stood apart from his more opulent neighbours, is to be found in his mortifying consciousness of the inadequacy of his own means to his rank, and the proud dread of being made to feel this inferiority by persons to whom, in every other respect, he knew himself superior. His friend, Mr. Becher, frequently expostulated with him on this ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Indeed, the very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that incompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a reflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially relevant to the subject under discussion: for if God's knowledge necessarily and immeasurably ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... wonder worker, the spoken word, is no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought, or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. The very fact that most ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... seemed completely to direct and regulate their motions. The state of tumult throughout and over the face of the country was indeed frightful, and it is very likely that a chief constable and only forty police felt the danger of their position and the utter inadequacy of their numbers, either to carry the decrees of the law into execution, or to defend themselves, with anything like success, against the burning ferocity of the armed multitudes by whom they ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... neither a condensed play, nor one "big" scene or a single act from a long play, is not a playlet should be apparent when you remember the impression of inadequacy left on your own mind by such a vehicle, even when a famous actor or actress has endowed it with all of his or her charm and ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... contents himself by compassionating the inadequacy of my efforts for dealing with the miseries which they contemplate, with the remark that I don't go deep enough, that mine is a superficial operation, whereas they destroy poverty by dragging it up ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of course, from the inadequacy of the piano transcription, for it was conceived and written orchestrally. Paula, too, has given finer performances of it;—indeed, she sang it better a little later that same evening. But spurred as she was by the knowledge ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... responsible for this, she ceased to take them in, and took in sewing instead. It had become necessary to do so, for the allowance she received from the government was about a quarter of Gerhardt's weekly earnings. In spite of its inadequacy it was something, and she felt she must be grateful. But, curiously enough, she could not forget that she was English, and it seemed strange to her that, in addition to the grief caused by separation from ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... that uses the pupil's experience as a basis upon which to build has a value not to be overlooked. The fact that such expressions as those quoted above are so easily remembered proves the value of connecting new knowledge with the pupil's experience. But the inadequacy of this experience must be recognized and taken into account. The concepts of the average pupil are entirely too indefinite and limited to supply the necessary foundation for a science such as physiology. Herein lies the great value of experiments and observations. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... soul of man. There stood the Tent, there went in the lonely Priest, with the blood of bull and goat, as "a parable for the period now present,"[H] the time of the Writer and his readers, in which a ritual of offering was still maintained whose annual recurrence proved its inadequacy, its non-finality. Yes, this majestic but sombre system pictured a state of jealous reserve between the worshippers and their God. Its propitiations were of a kind which, in the nature of things, could not properly and in the way of virtual force set the ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... most remarkable and most menacing adjuncts of the crisis, is the singular sense of inadequacy to resist its career, which seems to paralyse the habitual defenders of the right cause. The consecrated guardians of the church seem only to wait the final blow. The great landholders in the peerage are contented with making protests. The agricultural interest, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the common-place observation, that the overcoming of difficulty is a source of pleasure, nor find anything meritorious in a work of art merely because it is artificially composed. As for the claim which the French advance to set themselves up, in spite of all their one-sidedness and inadequacy of view, as the lawgivers of taste, it must ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... address I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two sections. I did so in language which I can not improve, and which, therefore, I ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Whatever inadequacy or error there may be, throughout, in materials or modes of demonstration, I have no doubt of the truth and necessity of the main result; and though the reader may, perhaps, find me frequently hereafter ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... each description of offence, and, from time to time, to increase or diminish, as occasion seems to require, the severity of the existing code. The considerations by which, at least in our own time, these reforms are determined are such as these: the adequacy or inadequacy of the punishment to deter men from the commission of the offence, the tendency of excessive punishment to produce a reaction of sentiment in favour of the criminal, and a reluctance on the part of the judge or jury to convict, the superfluous suffering ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... essential part of my system, but that the animal Life of man is the identity of all three. To whatever other system this objection may apply, it is utterly irrelevant to that which I have here propounded: though from the narrow limits prescribed to me, it has been propounded with an inadequacy painful ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... activities of woman, the party system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken. The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of safeguarding life and property is ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... those other artistic enthusiasms, as the prophet of the French drama or the architectural taste of Lewis the Fourteenth, he had contributed himself generously, helping out with his own good-faith the inadequacy of their appeal. Music alone hitherto had really helped him, and taken him out of himself. To music, instinctively, more and more he was dedicate; and in his desire to refine and organise the court music, from which, by leave of absence ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... the Bannocks, which led first to some acts of violence on the part of some members of the tribe and finally to the outbreak, appears to have been caused by an insufficiency of food on the reservation, and this insufficiency to have been owing to the inadequacy of the appropriations made by Congress to the wants of the Indians at a time when the Indians were prevented from supplying the deficiency by hunting. After an arduous pursuit by the troops of the United States, and several engagements, the hostile Indians were reduced ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Writings;" all of which were characterized by a calm and rational philosophy, that recognized the laws of life and fed the wisdom which obeys them. Even Agnosticism, in so far as it is the confession of the inadequacy of every interpretation of the universe, finds despondent yet still earnest expression in Ecclesiastes, and humble, hopeful expression in Job; and the silence of many of the noblest natures of our age, which the churches ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... made. Consistently, the leadership of Elizabethan adventures to North America, including those of Gilbert and Raleigh, had come from the western counties and outports of England, and with equal consistency hopeful projects had foundered on the inadequacy of their financial support while London favored other ventures—to Muscovy, to the Levant, and more recently to the East Indies. It was not merely that London had the necessary capital and credit for a sustained effort; it also had experience in the management of large ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... Pekin only for the purpose of deposing him. To complete the quarrel, Amursana declared himself King of the Eleuths, and absolutely independent of China. But the energy and indignation of Keen Lung soon exposed the hollowness of these designs, and the inadequacy of Amursana's power and capacity to make good his pretensions. Keen Lung collected another army larger than that which had placed him on his throne, to hurl Amursana from the supremacy which had not satisfied him and which he ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... because he conserves all his powers for individual achievement and does not put any of his energy into the training which will give him the ability to act with others. The individual acts promptly, and we are dazzled by his success while only dimly conscious of the inadequacy of his code. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than in industrial relations, as existing between the owner of a large ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... concluded that the actual beginning of the malady was unknown, and that the inability of the doctors to master the disease arose from the inadequacy of the means ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... himself, had he failed? How could he find himself? Was his life to be like his father's after all? Had he put off until too late the mission he had set himself so long ago, that of seeking the secret of his father's inadequacy? For a few wild moments, Jim planned to answer the Secretary's letter with his resignation, to give up the thankless fight and ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... caught a vision of a world without end of sunlit spaces and starry voids through which he drifted with her, his arm around her, her pale gold hair blowing about his face. In the same instant he was aware of the pitiful inadequacy of speech. God! If he could so frame words that she could see what he then saw! And he felt the stir in him, like a throe of yearning pain, of the desire to paint these visions that flashed unsummoned on the mirror of his ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we vote?"—rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into office. The primary, however, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... meeting of the American Medical Association declared, "Idiots and epileptics and lunatics are many; but all together they are less numerous than the victims of nervousness—the people afflicted with lesser grades of psychasthenic and neurasthenic inadequacy, who become devoted epicures of their own emotions, and who claim a large share of the attention of every general practitioner and ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... I at last and then, struck by the inadequacy of these trite words, drew a pace nearer. "Oh, pray—pray don't weep!" I pleaded. "If I have hurt you, I crave your forgiveness!" Here she sobbed but the fiercer. "But indeed—indeed," I stammered, "I thought—that is, I did not think, I—I mean I could not leave you destitute and having ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... for me to speak: which strongly impressed me; notwithstanding that he was ten years younger than myself, and I had seen him so lately in a lighter mood. I felt that his reputation had not belied him—that here was a great man; and reflecting with despair on the inadequacy of the tale I had to tell him, I paused to consider in what terms I should begin. He soon put an end to this, however. 'Come, sir,' he said with impatience. 'I have told you that you may speak out. You should have been here four days ago, as I take it. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... that as in other things, his will is not on a par with his aspirations: this inadequacy was the cause of numberless disappointments. Thou art, Clergye says most appropriately, one of those who want to know but ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... anew by that. The monstrous inadequacy of it was too much for him. He had tricked her, certainly, and that wasn't a manly thing to do. He seemed to be trying to get his faculties adjusted. Yet the words he uttered finally were pathetically irrelevant, it would ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... comes with the completion of every piece of work well and wisely done does not arise from the futility of the work, as the pessimists tell us, but from its inadequacy to express entirely the thought and force of the man who has striven to express himself completely in a material which, however masterfully used, can never give its ultimate form to a spiritual conception. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of our defeat was the inadequacy, or indeed the total lack of organisation in the occupied countries. Instead of doing as we had done during the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, and leaving behind the advancing army small bodies of troops ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... quartermaster's department—the inadequacy of the funds with which it was supplied—the reciprocal disgusts and complaints produced by these causes, had determined congress to make still another radical change in the system. This subject had been taken up early in the winter; but such were the delays inseparable from the proceedings ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... other hand, those who believe that religion has a supreme place in the education of a child, and that provision should therefore be made for it in its school life, realize the inadequacy of ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, Monsieur Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it, in my judgment, was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp Monsieur Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... other phases than that of mere inadequacy, and there are countless small difficulties recorded; petty thefts, insolent speeches, and the whole familiar list which we are apt to consider the portion only of the nineteenth century. But there is nothing more certain than that, in spite of creeds, human nature ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... of the Invincible Club Rooms and the traitor's dungeon at Camp Douglas, upon his appearance in the Temple, assigned two chief reasons for the recent action of the Supreme Council. First and most important was, the obvious inadequacy of the Order of American Knights to subserve the purpose for which it was instituted, in consequence of the subordination of the military to the civil department. And, second, the disclosure in ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... may feel at times the inadequacy of the phrase as it stands to convey justly the composer's idea. Take, for instance, the well-known change which every soprano who sings the role of Leonora introduces in the Miserere scene of Il Trovatore. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... address, which he had delivered that morning, no attempt had been made to deny the inadequacy of the Company's office organization to cope with the exceptional crop conditions of 1911 and 1912. The latter season particularly had been very trying owing to the lateness of the crop and the wet harvesting conditions. Twenty-five per cent. of ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... McDonnell. Bryant, on his part, had gone evenings to Sarita Creek when he could spare an hour, and, for that matter, when he could not. But the meetings with her were infrequent, and always left him with a sense of inadequacy, of dissatisfaction, because partly Ruth and he seemed to have no common interests and partly that she now let her affection go for granted. Her talk was not of the subjects usually discussed by an engaged couple—of their coming ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... time we had a heavy snowstorm. A strong gale now set in from the southwest; the deck of the brig was covered with ice and snow and the weather became exceedingly damp and cold. The men were suffering not only from want of sufficient room but from the inadequacy of the clothing." ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... failures in this connection, one may well profit by them. The amazing complexity of religious phenomena must somehow be seen to be consistent with their common nature. The religious experience must not only be found, but must also be reconciled with "the varieties of religious experience." The inadequacy of the well-known definitions of religion may be attributed to several causes. The commonest fallacy is to define religion in terms of a religion. My definition of religion must include my brother's religion, even though he live on the other side of the globe, and my ancestor's ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... craftsmanship in Louis Quinze furniture, in the later Chinese porcelain, in modern jewelry, no less than in Dutch painting, which is the death of art. All great works of art show an effort, a roughness, an inadequacy of craftsmanship, which is the essence of their beauty and distinguishes it from the beauty of nature. As soon as men cease to understand this and despise this effort and roughness and inadequacy, they demand from art the beauty ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... slenderness, gauntness, spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and fashions; for architecture, in the last analysis, is only the handwriting of consciousness on space, and materialism has written there already all that it has to tell of its failure to satisfy the mind and heart of man. However beautiful old forms may seem to him they will declare their inadequacy to generations free of that mist of familiarity which now makes life obscure. If, on the other hand, submitting himself to the inspiration of the demos he experiences a change of consciousness, he will become truly ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Inaugural Address I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of Disunion, as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two Sections. I did so in language which I cannot improve, and which, therefore, I ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... for it are complex. There were in this affair individual and collective failures, imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy, divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate retreats, a premature waste of men, and, finally, the inadequacy of certain of our troops and their leaders, both as regards the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Kentucky. Some estimates are as high as 150,000. I know, and Mr. Benjamin knows, that Gen. Johnston has not exceeding 29,000 effective men. And the Secretary knows that Gen. J. has given him timely notice of the inadequacy of his force to hold the position at Bowling Green. The Yankees are well aware of our weakness, but they intend to claim the astounding feat of routing 150,000 men with 100,000! And they suppose that by giving us credit for such a vast army, we shall not deem ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... weight (M) of the substance, and investigated the relations of chemical grouping to refractivity. Although establishing certain general relations between atomic and molecular refractions, the results were somewhat vitiated by the inadequacy of the empirical function which he employed, since it was by no means a constant which depended only on the actual composition of the substance and was independent of its physical condition. A more accurate expression (n^2-1)/(n^22)d was suggested in 1880 independently and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... since it must guide us at every turn. The reason for education of judgment is also evident. Every person is bound to make many mistakes; but he will make far fewer when his ability to judge has been properly trained. The utter inadequacy of instruction that aims mainly at acquisition of facts is likewise evident; for the exercise of judgment involves the use or adaptation of knowledge to particular conditions, and the mere possession of facts bears ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry |
