"Incapability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father, has been in command of Jolo Archipelago, no disturbance of any description has occurred; the reason is, that he has taken great interest in our country and its people. He was the man who saw our poverty, our incapability of paying customs duties, as more than one calamity has befallen our islands; therefore, we thank him and we trust him, although not knowing what he will do in the future, if it will change or not. Therefore, I and my people ask you ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... the object. In his impatience to consult the one authority competent to decide the question of Arnold's position toward Anne, he had sided with Sir Patrick, as a means of ridding himself of the unwelcome presence of his friends—and he had defeated his own purpose, thanks to his own brutish incapability of bridling himself in the pursuit of it. Whether he was now discouraged under these circumstances, or whether he was simply resigned to bide his time till his time came, it was impossible, judging by outward appearances, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... at heart, but still trusting to the incapability of Mrs Macintyre to undertake so onerous a charge, went with his sister-in-law to meet Mrs Constable at the appointed hour at Ardshiel that afternoon. When they joined Mrs Constable at the lodge gate, he did not hear the one lady say to the other, 'The dear thing will ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... relation to experience in the world to come, is in the same category as his assertion of the eternity of future punishment, and would appear, by applying the argument already expounded (p. 80) with respect to that doctrine, to be in like manner contributory towards generating in the spirit of man an incapability of sinning. It is farther to be taken into account that these words were addressed by the Lord to his apostles—to the elect of the elect—with particular reference to the sin of betraying the Son of man, which was exemplified by the outward act of Judas, ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... platform a few minutes after the train had arrived. That entire incapability of devising administrative measures for the management of large crowds, which is one of the characteristics of Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than at York. Three different lines of railway assemble three passenger mobs, from morning to night, under one ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... or weak-minded egotist is a frequent though unnecessary accomplice in nearly every crime, owing to his susceptibility to suggestion and incapability of understanding the gravity of ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... matter may exist without any of the known properties of matter, and may therefore be changeable, he concludes that it can not be eternal, because "eternal (passive) existence necessarily involves incapability of change." I believe it would be difficult to point out any other connection between the facts of eternity and unchangeableness, than a strong association between the two ideas. Most of the a priori arguments, both religious ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... chance of having her rent free; if she refuses this tithe of flesh and blood she is too often thrust into the street. So I am told. Now, which of these facts is the truth? It seems to be clearly too much left to the decision of private enterprise or parental incapability. The Legislature is the only school in which to decide the question. During my stay in South Carolina I never heard one woman advocate the mills for children. One mother, holding to her breast her illegitimate child, her face dark ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... mortified at the result of his ocular proof of Juno's incapability of biting, still more mortified at having so far forgotten himself as to utter an oath, and altogether discomfited by the laughter, turned away ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... himself in importance with the woman he has purchased as a kind of superior slave. For long her guileless innocence and purity, her utter inability to conceive such a feeling, leaves her only in doubt and perplexity before it; long after it has first betrayed itself, she reveals this incapability in the fullest extent, and in the way most intensely irritating to her husband's self- love—by her simple-hearted proposal that whatever of his property would devolve on her should be shared with Ladislaw. Then it is that Casaubon is roused to inflict ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... aversion to the giving of pain, by a softness which causes the fretfulness of others to be an agony to himself,—as by any actual fear which the firmness of the imperious one may have produced. There is an inner softness, a thinness of the mind's skin, an incapability of seeing or even thinking of the troubles of others with equanimity, which produces a feeling akin to fear; but which is compatible not only with courage, but with absolute firmness of purpose, when the demand for firmness arises ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... her. Afterwards when she remembered this time, she wondered at herself; she could not comprehend the absence of sensation with which she had left the dear home and all the familiar objects of her whole life, the incapability of feeling either keen sorrow at the parting, or hope in the unknown future. The days they spent in hurrying hour by hour further away from Canada, always remained in her recollection little more than a blank, and she scarcely seemed to recover herself ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... perplexed between his philanthropy and his jealousy, his desire to show the one and his incapability of concealing the other, that he became unintelligible; and Helen laughed, and told him that she could not now understand what his opinion really was. She was quite ready to agree with him, she said, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... uninfluential upon the literature of the country. No succeeding writer appears to have caught from them a ray of inspiration; no author in the least distinguished has ventured formally to imitate them, except the boy Chatterton, on their first appearance. . . This incapability to amalgamate with the literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless. Contrast, in this respect, the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... fashionable sin of torturing pigeons at Hurlingham." And the words he quotes from a letter addressed to the Times of Dec. 3, 1880, by the illustrious General Gordon, after a visit to the much afflicted country, show with equal clearness the sad condition of affairs in Ireland, and the apparent incapability of the English public to realize it. "I have been lately over the south-west of Ireland," he wrote, "in the hope of discovering how some settlement could be made of the Irish question, which, like a fretting cancer, eats away our vitals as a nation." After the bold ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various |
