"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mysterious thing is the working of terror on the human mind. Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralysing their limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in anticipating death. Others under the stress of that grim passion have their wits preternaturally sharpened. The ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... women, while the husband is busy at home, sweeping the floor and attempting to pacify the squalling baby. This is the idea which has been spread by cinematographs and reviews and which has impressed itself upon the minds of the unthinking masses, who are incapable of rising above ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... From thinking proceeds speaking. Hence to acting is often but a single step. But how irresistible and tremendous! What a triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... It may be that certain stirrings of conscience warned her that delay might defeat her whole purpose. She was an obstinate woman, by nature; obstinate to the point of wilful blindness when necessary; and to do her justice, she was perfectly incapable of estimating the gain or the loss of such an affection as Diana's, or of sympathizing with the suffering such a nature may know. It was not in her; she had no key to it; grant the utmost mischief that she supposed it even ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... of no more importance in her eyes than that stool, and he might visit her if he pleased, but on one condition—that he should forget all the past, and never presume to speak to her of love. "Love! Men are all incapable of it." She was thinking of Henry, even while she was speaking of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... allowed them for the sale of the reversion of the said offices. In 1684 the Council of State extended the preceding regulations to those Protestants holding the title of honorary secretary to the king, and in August of the same year Protestants were declared incapable of serving on a ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... may lead to more accurate knowledge of the properties of matter. If experiments on gases are inconsistent with the hypothesis of these propositions, then our theory, though consistent with itself, is proved to be incapable of explaining the phenomena of gases. In either case it is necessary to follow out these consequences ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it is not really complete; and can never be so. For when we consider the nature of love alone, it becomes ridiculous to speak of an absolute or complete love. If the love of these "companions of men" became at any moment incapable of a deeper and wider manifestation, at that very moment the whole stream of life would cease, the malice of the adversary would prevail, and nothingness would swallow up the universe. It is because we are compelled to regard the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... municipal body, the majority is composed of an incompetent lot, some of them being journeymen-spinners or thread twisters, and others second-hand dealers or shopkeepers, "incapable," "without means," with a few crack-brains among them: one, "his brain being crazed, absolutely of no account, anarchist and Jacobin;" another, "very dangerous through lack of judgment, a Jacobin, over-excited;" a third, "an ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hour at which she was accustomed to get up, and then went downstairs. His heart beat so violently as he touched her door that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was limp and tremulous, almost incapable of the slight effort of turning the handle to open it. He knocked. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... their ranks a strong force, which was increased by their allies to sixteen hundred warriors. The Indians continued this terrible slaughter for three days, and only ceased when fatigue and drunkenness rendered them incapable of further continuance. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... law upon an incapable and merely real man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of sympathy govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put at the head. We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep insist on in a leader. With men who ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... know what you think of me as clearly as if you had spoken. Let me say what I think of you. You are a gallant gentleman, full of the ideas of the past, and incapable of changing; you will be a loyal servant to your own cause, and it will be beaten. To you I owe my life. Possibly it might have been better for you to have let me fall by the sword of one of Conde's dragoons, but we are all in the hands of the Eternal, Who doeth what He wills ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... lolling, ichoglans and pages, with lazy looks and shabby dresses; and among them, sunning himself sulkily on a bench, a poor old fat, wrinkled, dismal white eunuch, with little fat white hands, and a great head sunk into his chest, and two sprawling little legs that seemed incapable to hold up his bloated old body. He squeaked out some surly reply to my friend the dragoman, who, softened and sweetened by the tarts he had just been devouring, was, no doubt, anxious to be polite: and the poor worthy ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that magic stones, or any such stone objects, perforated or not, were necessarily incongruous with "the earlier Scottish civilisation?" No civilisation, old or new, is incapable of possessing such stones; even Scotland, as I shall show, can boast two or three samples, such as the stone of the Keiss broch, a perfect circle, engraved with what looks like an attempt at a Runic inscription; and another in a ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... the tension had become too great, and the universal patience snapped. Two of the old ladies, Mrs. Blair and Miss Dyer, who were settled in the Home for life, and who, before going there, had shown no special waywardness of temper, had proved utterly incapable of living in peace with any available human being; and as the Home had insufficient accommodations, neither could be isolated to fight her "black butterflies" alone. No inmate, though she were cousin to Hercules, could be given a room to herself; and the effect of this dual system on ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... sufficient for the cure of the majority of ills. But when the internal physician, the man himself, was tired or incapable, some remedy had to be applied, which should antagonize the spiritual seed of the disease.[247:1] Such remedies, known as arcana, were alleged to possess marvellous efficiency, but their composition was kept secret. That is to ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... ignorant of it, madame," said the cardinal, accompanying his words with a slight shrug of the shoulders; "alas, our own wars quite absorb the time and the mind of a poor, incapable, infirm old ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... particular, will say to our labours. Some authors, I am told, profess an oyster-like indifference upon this subject; for my own part, I hardly believe in their sincerity. Others may acquire it from habit; but, in my poor opinion, a neophyte like myself must be for a long time incapable of such ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... conceivable, and that the chief reason of the imperfections of real language must be found in the fact that its original framers were ignorant of the true nature of things, ignorant of dialectic philosophy, and therefore incapable of naming rightly what they had failed to apprehend correctly. Plato's view of actual language, as far as it can be made out from the critical and negative rather than didactic and positive dialogue of "Kratylos," seems to have been very much the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... writhing collapse—and this time, the mirror fell free, supported by only two tubes, and permanently out of focus, incapable of ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... Larry what the matter was with the young man. The truth was he had at some time been temporarily in charge of a small portable or "donkey" engine, such as are used for hoisting purposes in stone quarries and in other out-of-door work, and he was incapable of recognizing the difference between the simple construction of such a machine and the complicated work in the great motive-power of the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... part of the previous afternoon in preparing it, and she must have put the package in the post at Crewe. Secretive and delightful little thing! After his recent experience beyond the bay he had imagined himself to be incapable of ever eating again, but it was not so. The lemon gave a peculiar astringent, appetising, settling quality to the chocolate. And he ate even with gusto. The result was that, instead of waiting for the nine o'clock boarding-house ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... weakest point. This point was represented by the Numidian infantry perched on the height. Some of these were exhausted and perhaps dispirited, others it is true were as yet untouched by the toil of battle; but as a body Metellus believed them wholly incapable of standing the shock of a Roman charge. The confidence was almost forced on him by his despair of any other solution of the intolerable situation. The evening was closing in, his army had no camp or shelter; even if it were possible to guard against the dangers of the night, morning would ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... was too small to defend the whole, but Sir Horace Vere and Sir John Ogle alone gave their advice to abandon the outlying forts rather than endanger the loss of the town. The other officers were of opinion that all the works should be held, although they acknowledged that the disposable force was incapable of doing so. Some days elapsed, and Vere learned that the Spanish preparations were all complete, and that they were only waiting for a low tide to attack. Time was everything, for a change of wind would bring speedy succour, ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... extorted from publishers by my hypnotizing rascal of an agent; and when I think of the publishers, endeavouring in their fur coats to keep warm in fireless rooms and picking turkey limbs while filling up bankruptcy forms—I blush. Or I should blush, were not authors notoriously incapable of ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... when Margaret's patience had given way, and she had for a brief while wished, and almost resolved, that she could and would regard with indifference the state of mind of one who was not reasonable, and who seemed incapable of being contented. But such resolutions of indifference dissolved before her sister's next manifestations of generosity, or appeals to the forgiveness of those about her. Margaret always ended by supposing herself the cause of the evil; that she had been inconsiderate; ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... important occasion, and only observe that Mrs. Pickle's mother and aunt stood godmothers, and the commodore assisted at the ceremony as godfather to the child, who was christened by the name of Peregrine, in compliment to the memory of a deceased uncle. While the mother confined to her bed, and incapable of maintaining her own authority, Mrs. Grizzle took charge of the infant baby double claim, and superintended, with surprising vigilance, the nurse and midwife in all the particulars of their respective offices, which were performed by her express direction. But no sooner was ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was now almost incapable of speech. "Very well, rascal Greek! die you shall, like your master. Holy prophet! what a state for a Mussulman to go to Paradise in—impregnated with the essence of a cursed Jew!—Wretch! ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the large "40 L/40" gun, the German press observes that in 1868 artillery was incapable of piercing in one-hundredths of an inch what it is now piercing in tenths of an inch. The principle was formerly admitted, it says, that a shell should by right have a thickness equal to its caliber. Now, "the largest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... him: he was a man incapable of forming plots, because his head would not hold them. He was an impulsive man, who could impale a character of either sex by narrating fables touching persons of whom he thought lightly, and that being done he was devoid ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances. Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of 'the milk of human kindness, is frank, sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commission of guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... two general servants, who are supposed to do all the work of the house, and who are as amiable and obliging and incapable as they well can be. Oonah generally waits upon the table, and Molly cooks; at least she cooks now and then when she is not engaged with Peter in the vegetable garden or the stable. But whatever happens, Mrs. Mullarkey, as a descendant of one of the Irish kings, is to be looked ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... suppose you will turn him out?" asked the doctor, lazily. In the beatitude induced by a completed article and an afternoon smoke, he was for the moment incapable of taking a tragic view either of Marsham's shortcomings or ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pealed, and she clung to Hubert, too frightened for screaming. His fear was that the cockleshell of a boat should fill and founder; he tried to bale out the water with his hat, and to make her assist, but she seemed incapable, and he could only devise laying her down in the bottom of the boat with his coat over her, hiding her face in terror. Her hat had long ago been blown away, and her hair was flapping about. Ejaculations were in his heart, if not on his lips, and ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... examines Zeno's four puzzles: "The Dichotomy," "Achilles and the Tortoise," "The Arrow" and "The Stadium."] If movement is not everything, it is nothing, and if we postulate, to begin with, that the motionless is real, then we shall be incapable of grasping reality. The philosophies of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Plotinus were developed from the thesis that there is more in the immutable than in the moving, and that it is by way of diminution that we pass from the ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... give one anything like the joy of completing a single poem. One's emotions take on such perfection of form in a poem; they can, as it were, be taken up by the fingers. But prose is like a sackful of loose material, heavy and unwieldy, incapable of ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... all nonsense this morning. Mr Dallas is wounded, and incapable. I am senior officer, and the captain's orders must be carried out. Call the men together, and I'll have ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... not study. Study is work. Study is agony. The whole soul must be roused, its every energy put forth, with a fixed, rapt attention, like that of a man struggling with a giant. Study, worthy of the name, forgets for the time every thing else, excludes every thing else, is incapable of being diverted by any thing else, the whole internal and external man being bent upon making just one thing its own. Such study of course soon exhausts the energies. It cannot be long protracted, nor need it be protracted. Take rest in the season of rest; but, when you study, study with ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... Passage. He said; and leaping from his Chariot, lest Ariadne should be afraid of the Tygers, the Sand sunk under the Weight of his Feet; and catching her instantly in his Arms, he carried her, who was incapable of scratching, directly off; (for every Thing, we know, is in the Power of a Deity:) And now, whilst Part of his Train sing the Hymenaeum, and other cry Evie Evoe, two very mysterious Words, and full of Masonry, the God and his new-ravished ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... the young lady preserved her presence of mind, for Bruce seemed incapable of connected thought or action. He roused himself, indeed, at his daughter's call, but gazed stupidly about him, stammered in his speech, and faltered in his step when he crossed the room. The shock of grief had evidently overmastered ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... man. He fell into bankruptcy, and even into a debtor's prison, by his blind, unquestioning confidence in the agent who managed his business. His faith in James was of a piece with his whole character. He appears to have been temperamentally incapable of perceiving the unworthiness of ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... be expected—that an Act passed as the organic Act of 1858 was passed, amidst intense excitement and most disturbing circumstances, should have been in existence for half a century without disclosing flaws and imperfections, or that its operations would not be the better for supervision, or incapable ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... is stated by the celebrated traveler, Count de Strzelecki, in his Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land. "Whenever," he says, "a fruitful intercourse has taken place between an aboriginal woman and an European male, that aboriginal woman is forever after incapable of being impregnated by a male of her own nation, although she may again be fertile with a European." The Count, whose means and powers of observation are of the highest possible order, affirms that "hundreds of instances of this extraordinary fact are on record in the writer's ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... swear that I loved you even then; and I shall always love you, as I have never loved—never could love—any other woman. Believe me, I don't say this to justify myself. There would be far more excuse for me if I had been simply incapable of the feeling. As it is, I sinned against the highest, the best part of myself, as much as against you." There was more in the same strain, only less coherent; hurried sentences jotted down in the night, whenever he could snatch a minute from his duty. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... of the desecration of the Great Church, writes with the utmost indignation of the barbarians who were incapable of appreciating and therefore respecting its beauty. To him it was an "earthly heaven, a throne of divine magnificence, an image of the firmament created by the Almighty." The plunder of the same church in 1453 by Mahomet ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... Dorothy seemed incapable of reasoning further. She threw herself down on her bed and gazed fixedly at the ceiling, as if expecting some inspiration to come from the dainty blue ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... beyond measure I could find no reply and sat staring dumbly, while Herr von Uhl, beginning to speak of chemical matters, inquired if I had any preference as to the problem I should now take up. Incapable of any clear thinking I could only ask if he had any ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... an amount of money of equal value. As money happened to be the universal measure of value, this simply meant the return of the same amount of money. Those who maintained that something additional might be claimed for the use of the money lost sight of the fact that the money was incapable of being used apart from its being consumed.[1] To ask for payment for the sale of a thing which not only did not exist, but which was quite incapable of existence, was clearly to ask for something for nothing—which obviously ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... been looked upon as attacks upon Revelation, but rather as corroborations of it. What the Editor believes as a Christian (if he is one is therefore another affair, nor does he reckon himself so infallible or incapable of alteration in his sentiments, as not at another time to adopt different ones upon more reflexion and better information; therefore, though he has at present little or no doubt of what he asserts (taken upon the principles ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambuskenneth!'" In the same amiable author's famous novel of "Thaddeus of Warsaw," there is more crying than in any novel I ever remember to have read. See, for example, the last page. . . . "Incapable of speaking, Thaddeus led his wife back to her carriage. . . . His tears gushed out in spite of himself, and mingling with hers, poured those thanks, those assurances, of animated approbation through her heart, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prediction that he would not live to the age of forty or fifty years did him much harm in his youth. But there is no need to quote from so well-known md accessible a book; whoever opens it will not lay it down il] the last page. Cardano admits that he cheated at play, that e was vindictive, incapable of all compunction, purposely cruel in his speech. He confesses it without impudence and without feigned contrition, without even wishing to make himself an object of interest, but with the same simple and sincere love ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... down the avenue beside him. I had not been Yone to him before. How quiet we were! he driving on, bent forward, seeing out and away; I leaning back, my eyes closed, and, whenever a remembrance of that instant at noon thrilled me, a stinging blush staining my cheek. I, who had believed myself incapable of love, till that night on the balcony, felt its floods welling from my spirit,—who had believed myself so completely cold, was warm to my heart's core. Again that breath fanned me, those lips touched mine, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... and the gay and fashionable woman, no longer ennuyed by the emptiness and frivolity of life, found her thoughts and hands alike fully occupied, and rose into a sphere of life and action, of which, a month before, she would have considered herself incapable. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... time I had listened as in a dream. For a time I seemed incapable of action. I was stupefied by the villainy of my brother, while my blood surged madly at the sound of Ruth's voice. It seemed so strange that I should have come thus, and be listening to such a conversation. At first I could not think it real, and yet I remembered I had ridden thirty-five miles ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... children, that name of Darrell can alone live still in the land. I say to you, that even were my daughter now in existence, she would not succeed me—she would not inherit nor transmit that name. Why?—not because I am incapable of a Christian's forgiveness, but because I am not capable of a gentleman's treason to his ancestors and himself;—because Matilda Darrell was false and perfidious; because she was dead to honour, and therefore her birthright to a heritage of honour ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... between one part and the other; in the smallest part may be the subtlest nerve. And hence the universal magnetism of Nature. But man contemplates the universe as an animalcule would an elephant. The animalcule, seeing scarcely the tip of the hoof, would be incapable of comprehending that the trunk belonged to the same creature,—that the effect produced upon one extremity would be felt in an instant by the other.) Centuries passed, and lives were wasted in these discoveries; but step after step was chronicled ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (drinkable) water becomes salt (undrinkable) water; hence, desalination is the reverse process; also involves the accumulation of salts in topsoil caused by evaporation of excessive irrigation water, a process that can eventually render soil incapable of supporting crops. siltation - occurs when water channels and reservoirs become clotted with silt and mud, a side effect of deforestation and soil erosion. slash-and-burn agriculture - a rotating cultivation technique in which trees are cut down and burned in order to clear land ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... his canvas. He could never imitate his illustrious master. He was incapable of painting anything but what he saw, and his brush, after reproducing the blue and white raiment, stopped, hesitating at the face, calling in vain on imagination. After futile efforts it was the grotesque mask of Rodriguez that ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the new land in its hour of calamity. Men rich in the honors of commerce, of the professions, of the schools, artists, journalists, leaders, bore witness to the native power of a people, who had been written down in the books of the hour as idle, inferior, incapable by their very nature. In the sanctuary sat priests and prelate, a brilliant gathering, surrounding the delicate-featured Cardinal, in gleaming red, ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... fat or lean, the soul is more spoiled than the body. A superstitious respect keeps them cowed under their burden, or makes them cringe before their master. Servile, slothful, gluttonous, feeble, incapable of resisting adversity, if they have acquired the miserable skills of slavery, they have also contracted its needs, weaknesses and vices. A crust of absurd habits and perverse inclinations, a sort of artificial and supplementary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... instance, was thought of the royal power by the multitudes who saw the king held in check by the Assembly, and incapable, in the heart of Paris, of defending his strongest fortress against the attacks ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... of change one might perhaps conclude that the absolutely existing being is incapable of any mental activity or consciousness. We have no authority for assuming that Melissus came to this conclusion; but there is a curious remark of Aristotle's respecting this and previous philosophers of the school which certain critics ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... kindness and caresses, and the generous nobleness of his character had seemed to claim them as a natural element. "And now, why," he asked impatiently, "should this bull-dog sort of fellow have set his whole aim to annoy, vex, and hurt me?" Incapable himself of so mean a spirit of jealousy at superior excellence, he could not make it out; but such, was the fact, and the very mysteriousness of it made it more ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... commonwealths had ridden forth from those gloomy portals. Military renown, maritime ascendency, the policy once reputed so profound, the wealth once deemed inexhaustible, had passed away. An undisciplined army, a rotting fleet, an incapable council, an empty treasury, were all that remained of that which had been so great. Yet the proudest of nations could not bear to part even with the name and the shadow of a supremacy which was no ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... looms the guillotine or the pistol-snap of the suicide. All who fall on the pavement of Paris rebound against these yellow-gray walls, on which a philanthropist who was not a speculator might read a justification of the numerous suicides complained of by hypocritical writers who are incapable of taking a step to prevent them—for that justification is written in that ante-room, like a preface to the dramas of the Morgue, or to those enacted on ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... a feeling that is true as truth, for if it was a mere conventional flame we should take no note of it—that the editor of the Athenaeum, a most grave, considerate gentleman, should be cited to Gray's-inn Coffee-house, and by an ignorant and unimaginative mob of jurymen voted incapable of writing reviews upon his own books, or the books ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... I never supposed such a thing. I'm incapable of it. I beseech you to believe that no one could have more respect— reverence"—He twirls his hat between his hands, and casts ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ad hominem absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him?—O my God! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper right, Sir,—you are incapable of it;—you would have trampled upon the offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... especially on light lands. Very light and feeble horses are the most expensive variety on almost any kind of farm; for whilst they consume nearly as much food as the most powerful animals, and are therefore nearly as costly, they are incapable of effectively performing their work. A large proportion of the farm horses used by the small farmers of Ireland are totally unsuited for tillage purposes. On the other hand, there is no need to employ horses equal in size to the ponderous creatures that ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side. Archie watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and if these nerve centers escape special involvement, other organs may be affected, such as the stomach, bowels, and liver; if these escape, the bones may be so deficient in vitality as to be incapable of sustaining the frame as development proceeds; the skin only may be involved, or the mucous membranes so affected as to make of the child a perpetual snuffler and inefficient breather. In most cases of lesser as well as greater mental defect, the tests show syphilitic infection. Endless ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... Oceana, or any other nation of no greater extent, must have a competent nobility, or is altogether incapable of monarchy; for where there is equality of estates, there must be equality of power, and where there is equality of power, there ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... at first, would soon decline, and hope and courage might utterly desert us. If men on nearer acquaintance turned out to be, as some pessimists have represented them to be, hard egotists, ingrates, slanderers, backbiters, envious, incapable of generous admirations, sodden in sensuality, knaves devoid of scruple; if experience indeed bore out this sweeping impeachment, if especially the so-called masses of mankind were hopelessly delivered over to the sway of brutal instincts, of superstition and folly; ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... the negro as a free laborer. To most of the Southern whites this problem was utterly bewildering. Many of them, honest and well-meaning people, admitted to me, with a sort of helpless stupefaction, that their imagination was wholly incapable of grasping the fact that their former slaves were now free. And yet they had to deal with this perplexing fact, and practically to accommodate themselves to it, at once and without delay, if they were to have any ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... he infringes on our rights," Dora informed me. "I have never heard him say an angry word to a nurse. He just has a way of smiling at one, as if he were beholding an infinitesimal infant totally incapable of understanding. The sarcasm of it is utterly fierce and the nurse goes off, red and shaken, and feels like killing him. Don't you think we've got just as good a right as any whipper-snapper of a new ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... his room in a confused and thwarted anxiety. That was in itself a pleasurable reflection—but it was only the beginning. When the young Lothario met him he would find a man—to all seeming—childishly innocent of the facts and fondly incapable of suspicion. He, Eben Tollman, would lead them both slowly into self-conviction by as deliberate a campaign as that which had won him his wife in the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... fed them be emptied, than was the dissolution of the democratic societies of America, when the Jacobin clubs were denounced by France. As if their destinies depended on the same thread, the political death of the former was the unerring signal for that of the latter; and their expiring struggles, incapable of deferring their fate, only attested the reluctance with which they surrendered their much ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... pleasant to look at. He could navigate his vessel along the coast almost blindfold. Charts were rarely used by such nautical aborigines, as he and scores of his compeers disdained the very idea of being thought incapable of carrying all the knowledge in their heads that was necessary for the purposes of practical navigation. They had a perfect knowledge of the compass and the lead. The courses, cross-bearings, lights, buoys and beacons were ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... she had made up this strange story to account for her husband's having left her! I could tell you more than one tale of a woman having deceived not only her lawyer, but, later, a judge and a jury, as to such a point of fact. But from what I know of Mrs. Dampier she would be quite incapable of inventing, or perhaps what is quite as much to the purpose, of ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... has no existence. At length the difficulty is solved; the answer, in the language of the Republic, appears 'tumbling out at our feet.' Acknowledging that there is a communion of kinds with kinds, and not merely one Being or Good having different names, or several isolated ideas or classes incapable of communion, we discover 'Not-being' to be the other of 'Being.' Transferring this to language and thought, we have no difficulty in apprehending that a proposition may be false as well as true. The ...
— Sophist • Plato
... fifty so employed—a very small number indeed to procure the means of rendering the colony independent of the mother-country for the necessaries of life. The rest were occupied in carrying on various public works, such as stores, houses, wharfs, etc. A large number were incapable, through age or infirmities, of being called out to labour in the public grounds; and the civil establishment, the military, females, and children, filled up the catalogue ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... type of Hamlet are doubtless rare, yet we all know the sort of genius who is so much a genius that he is incapable of action and does nothing but reflect. Hamlet seems meant to show how vain it is to be merely a philosopher in this world. Hamlet is always pondering, thinking of the abstract rights and wrongs of the case. In the result, though he does eventually avenge his father's ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... said Marguerite. "It would be an outrage on my father. It is not so long since my mother uttered her last words that I have forgotten them. My father is incapable of robbing his children," she continued, giving way to tears of distress. ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... blood; he was not in the least excited. He made no unnecessary thrusts, but wounded his three adversaries in the hand, the elbow, the forearm, whereby he rendered them incapable of further combat. De Fervlans saw how his skilled demons gave way before Vavel's masterly thrusts, while the Volons drew their unfortunate trumpeter from beneath his horse, and assisted him to mount again, after they had also helped the ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... this door shall now be thrown open to the Asiatic population. If it be, there is an end to republican government there, because it is very well ascertained that those people have no appreciation of that form of government; it seems to be obnoxious to their very nature; they seem to be incapable either of understanding it or of carrying it out; and I can not consent to say that California, or Oregon, or Colorado, or Nevada, or any of those States, shall be given over to an irruption of Chinese. I, for my part, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... unconscious of itself; and thus their aim is to help, to encourage, to sympathize; and their artistic gifts are subordinated to a deeper purpose, the desire of giving and serving. One with such a passion in the heart is incapable of believing art to be the deepest thing in the world; it is to such an one more like the lily which floats upwards, to bloom on the surface of some dim pool, a thing exquisitely fair and symbolical of mysteries; but all growing out of the depths of life, and ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the public affairs were in this posture, Claudius was on the sudden hurried away out of his house; for the soldiers had a meeting together; and when they had debated about what was to be done, they saw that a democracy was incapable of managing such a vast weight of public affairs; and that if it should be set up, it would not be for their advantage; and in case any one of those already in the government should obtain the supreme ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... as a man must feel who has just heard the death sentence pronounced upon him. Hilton seemed to have become incapable of speech or action; and in silence we stood watching Carneta tending the unconscious man. She forced brandy from a flask between his teeth, kneeling there beside him with her face very pale and dark rings around her eyes. Presently ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... 1880), bore graceful testimony to his personal worth. "That he is not with us," they said, "is hard to imagine.... A cultivated man of letters, an admirable scholar, he was as free from pedantry as he was incapable of idleness. From first to last he was, in the highest and best sense, 'Thorough.' ... Quick to detect and appreciate talent, he was ready in every way and on all occasions to hold out a helping hand ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... danger of driving the vanquished to despair, Urbain replied that he was ready to endure all the persecutions which his enemies might succeed in inflicting on him, but as long as he felt that he had right upon his side he was incapable of drawing back. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... scripture also affirmeth, that by the sin of one, judgment came upon all; and renders this reason, 'for that all have sinned' (Rom 5:12). Nor is that objection worth a rush, that Christ by his death hath taken away original sin. First. Because it is scriptureless. Secondly. Because it makes them incapable of salvation by Christ; for none but those that in their own persons are sinners are to have salvation by him. Many other things might be added, but between persons so well agreed as you and I are, these may suffice at present. But when an antagonist comes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... king was beyond his reach, James Kennedy was biding his time, and the country was returned to its state of misrule and violence, wherein an individual priest could do little: yet Malcolm would have held by his post, had not his health been so utterly shattered that he was incapable of the work he had hitherto done, as a confessor and a preacher. And therefore, as the state of his beloved King, 'sent to his account unhouselled, disappointed, unannealed,' hung heavy on his mind, he determined, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seemed incapable of further speech, and stood gazing at her husband with her mouth partly open. It was Becky who exclaimed, with a faint colour of excitement in her cheek, "Oh ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... of forming the most dangerous of these intermediate agents; but in my opinion, without justice. The most formidable, to my thinking, is the conductor of the orchestra. A bad singer can spoil only his own part; while an incapable or malevolent conductor ruins all. Happy indeed may the composer esteem himself when the conductor into whose hands he has fallen is not at once incapable and inimical; for nothing can resist the pernicious ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... of the SAN NICOLAS, giving her a most tremendous fire, then passed on for the SANTISSIMA TRINIDAD. The SAN NICOLAS luffing up, the SAN JOSEPH fell on board her, and Nelson resumed his station abreast of them, and close alongside. The CAPTAIN was now incapable of further service, either in the line or in chase: she had lost her foretop-mast; not a sail, shroud, or rope was left, and her wheel was shot away. Nelson therefore directed Captain Miller to put the helm a-starboard, and calling for the boarders, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... between us. We belong to two different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the wall to talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow, incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Heritage?" said Edna. "But, of course, you would condemn anyone who failed to conform to your prim, governessy little notions of right and wrong. I might have known as much! I am only sorry I should have gone out of my way to offer you a privilege you are so incapable of appreciating. You ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... nose, and Mary thought she perceived a tear twinkle in his eye. Finding she was incapable of administering consolation, she was about to quit the room, when the Doctor, recovering himself, called ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... is rarely grateful, and seldom attached. He is generally incapable of appreciating those advantages which, with your cultivated judgment, you know to be most conducive to his welfare. Do you accord to him regular hours, and a stated allowance of work; do you refrain from ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... more than a passing thought. No reproaches; only a simple declaration of what had burned in this boy's heart. And she had almost forgotten this son. A species of paralysis laid hold of her, leaving her for the time incapable ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes swimming in ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... dear friend," cried Mr. Mavity, "I really don't think you ought to say that. Hate is a very dreadful word. I am sure Alix is incapable of actually hating any one. And as for David, he is kindness, gentleness itself. It is just one of those unfortunate situations that cannot be ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... permit them; then laid him on his back, and dragged him along as well as they could, for no persuasion would induce him to assist the transportation by any exertion of his own. He lay as silent and inactive in their hands as a dead corpse, incapable of opposing, but in no way aiding, their operations. When he was dragged into daylight, and placed erect upon his feet among three or four assistants, who had remained without the cave, he seemed stupefied and dazzled by the sudden change from the darkness of his cavern. While others were superintending ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... o'clock on Monday afternoon, January 19, she was quietly receiving some food from the nurse, when suddenly she said, "The room seems dark." She then made a surprising effort, such as she had been incapable of for some time, and reached forward from her pillow, saying, "Who is that at the door?" The nurse was with her alone, and at her side, the family being at the table. Coming to her room, we found that she was apparently sinking into a ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... soft waves of far-off harmony. The doors which divided the inner chapel from the outer gave it a faint sound, as if it were miles away; each note, however, was distinct; no sound was lost. The boys' voices rose high in the air; they were angelic in their sweetness. Prissie was incapable, at that moment, of taking in the meaning of the words she heard, but the lovely sounds comforted her. The dreadful weight was lifted, or, at least, partially lifted, from her brain; she felt as if a hand had been laid on her hot, angry heart; as if a gentle, a very gentle, touch ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... was so peculiar, that it seemed to pertain to one who had been long entombed, and who was incapable of resuming the healthy glow and hue of life. He was not particularly tall, but extremely well made, and, like the men of the south, had small hands and feet. But what astonished Franz, who had treated Gaetano's description as a fable, was the splendor of the apartment ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which they describe.—The public can have no grounds for suspecting my veracity on a point in which I can have no possible interest in deceiving them; and those who know me will do me the justice to acknowledge, that I have a mind superior to the arts of deception, and that I am incapable of sanctioning an imposition, for any purpose, or from any motives whatever. Thus much I deemed it necessary to say, as well from a regard for my own character, and from a due attention to the public, as from a wish to prevent the circulation of the work from being subjected to the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... one's sails, scotch the snake, put a spoke in one's wheel; break the neck, break the back; unhinge, unfit; put out of gear. unman, unnerve, enervate; emasculate, castrate, geld, alter, neuter, sterilize, fix. shatter, exhaust, weaken &c. 160. Adj. powerless, impotent, unable, incapable, incompetent; inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c. v.; armless[obs3]. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... class of tooth which would indeed be useless, for the construction of the feline jaw precludes the possibility of grinding, and therefore a flat-crowned tuberculous tooth would be out of place. As I have before described it, the jaw of a tiger is incapable of lateral motion. The condyle of the lower jaw is so broad, and fits so accurately into its socket, the glenoid cavity, that there can be no departure from the up and down scissor-like action. The true Cats have, therefore, only one molar on each side of each jaw; those in the upper jaw being ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... contrary, much interested in your hunting talk. To paraphrase a well-worn quotation somewhat widely, nihil humanum a me alienum est. Even hunting stories may have their point of biological interest; the philologist sometimes pricks his ear to the jargon of the chase; moreover, I am not incapable of appreciating the subject matter itself. This seems to excite some derision. I admit I am not much of a sportsman to look at, nor, indeed, by instinct, yet I have had some out-of-the-way experiences in that line—generally when intent on other pursuits. I doubt, for instance, if even you, ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... form the group where I am. So near the goal, so far unscathed, shall we not reach it? Yes, we will reach it! We make great strides and no longer hear anything. Each man plunges straight ahead, fascinated by the terrible trench, bent rigidly forward, almost incapable of turning his head to right or to left. I have a notion that many of us missed their footing and fell to the ground. I jump sideways to miss the suddenly erect bayonet of a toppling rifle. Quite close to me, Farfadet jostles me with his face bleeding, throws ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... individual was fittest to be a Custom-House officer. Most persons, owing to causes which I may not have space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable of it; and, were he to continue in office to the end of time, would be just as good as he was then, and sit down to dinner with just as ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shouts, the terrified girls made no effort to save themselves. They were incapable ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... he had sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would never yield; and yet when he did yield he had no plans to make, because he found them already prepared and worked out in detail in his mind; as if he had long contemplated the "step" he believed himself incapable ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Cuxson had been able to do something, anything, what a mint of trouble he would have saved himself and others, but instead, he stood rooted to a spot just inside the door, incapable of moving hand or foot, held by a force he did not even guess at, and therefore could not fight, watching Leonie as she moved slowly forward, as though she were walking in her sleep ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... "my lord was incapable of such an action; If Master Edmund is the son of my lord, he is also the ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... drunkenness to pomp; an oaken table, surrounded by jolly fellows, to ante-rooms crowded with obsequious courtiers; a hunting song with a brave chorus to the less stormy diversion of polite conversation. Of these free-living lawyers, George Jeffreys was a conspicuous leader. Not averse to display, and not incapable of shining in refined society, this notorious man loved good cheer and jolly companions beyond all other sources of excitement; and during his tenure of the seals, he was never more happy than when he was ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... first place, as to whether these unities have a real existence; and then how each individual unity, being always the same, and incapable either of generation or of destruction, but retaining a permanent individuality, can be conceived either as dispersed and multiplied in the infinity of the world of generation, or as still entire and yet divided from itself, which ...
— Philebus • Plato
... however, that in the last analysis he not only deceived others but also deceived himself—that his charlatanry was the work of a man constitutionally incapable of distinguishing between reality and fiction in so far as related to the performance of feats contributing to the success of his "mission." In other words, that he was, like other historic personages whom we have already encountered, a victim of dissociation. ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... flowed again, unchecked. Bill stood beside her, his shoulders drooping, but in no situation of his life had he ever felt more helpless, more incapable of aid. "Don't cry," he pleaded. "Don't cry, Miss Tremont. I'll take care of you. Don't you ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... all seems to Western eyes! A country, we should suppose, where such things occur, is incapable of organisation. But it is certain that we are wrong. Our notion is that everything must be done by authority, and that unless authority is maintained there will be anarchy. The Chinese notion is that authority ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... divine expression on the maiden's face. But those eyes bathed in tears, that air of rapture, which filled my Lord the Bastard with amazement, was not an ecstasy, it was the imitation of an ecstasy.[1147] The scene was at once simple and artificial. It reveals the kindness of the King, who was incapable of wounding the child in any way, and the light-heartedness with which the nobles of the court believed or pretended to believe in the most wonderful marvels. It proves likewise that henceforth the little Saint's ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Mr. Kingsley thinks it right to adopt. Observe this first:—He means by a man who is "silly" not a man who is to be pitied, but a man who is to be abhorred. He means a man who is not simply weak and incapable, but a moral leper; a man who, if not a knave, has everything bad about him except knavery; nay, rather, has together with every other worst vice, a spice of knavery to boot. His simpleton is one who has become such, in judgment for his having once been a ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... ever could have known what these three young people had said if some stenographic notes in Rouletabille's memorandum-book did not give us a notion; the reporter had overheard, by accident surely, since all self-respecting reporters are quite incapable of eavesdropping. ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... one of the Council. Discretionary powers were handed to the small secret service branch which is controlled by Bright and myself. Orden was prevented from reaching the Foreign Office and was rendered for a time incapable. The consideration of our further action with regard to him was to depend upon his attitude. Owing, no doubt, to some slight error in Bright's treatment. Orden has escaped from the place of safety in which he had been placed. He is ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a re-adjustment. The consequence was, that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and York. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the truth of religious teachings concerning such wonderful mysteries as the Immaculate Conception (the Mystic Birth), the Crucifixion (the Mystic Death), the cleansing blood, the atonement, and other doctrines of the Church, which the intellect refuses to believe, as they are incapable of demonstration, and seemingly at war with natural law. Material advancement may be furthered when intellect is dominant and the longings of the heart unsatisfied, but soul growth will be retarded until ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... impartial review of their probability at the moment. Most impressive of all, however, is the strength of conviction, which lifts him from the plane of doubt, where unaided reason alone would leave him, to that of unhesitating action, incapable of looking backward. In the most complete presentation of all his views, the one he wished brought before the Prime Minister, if his conduct on this momentous occasion were called in question, he ends thus: "My opinion is firm as a rock, that some cause, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... sophists been unduly depreciated? Are the opinions and practices of the Greek sophists incapable of vindication? Matson, p. 421: Briefs ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... very well," protested St. Maur. "But you are deserting the battlefield, and leaving an unfledged pupil in charge. Is this nothing to you? Are you incapable of becoming attached to anybody? Without fishing for compliments, is it nothing to you to break ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... such arrangements, with such objects, be exposed to the censure or jealousy of the warmest friends of republican government. They are incapable of abuse in the hands of the militia, who ought to possess a pride in being the depository of the force of the Republic, and may be trained to a degree of energy equal to every military exigency of the United States. But it is an inquiry ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... exercised by the writings of Adam Smith and his successors was not so much in pointing out that it was unjust or unwise to interfere with men's natural liberty in the pursuit of their interests, as in showing, as it was believed, that there were natural laws which made all interference incapable of reaching the ends it aimed at. A series of works were published in the latter years of the eighteenth and the early years of the nineteenth century by Malthus, Ricardo, Macculloch, James Mill, and others, in which principles ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... the bushes before the wigwam; but perceiving that the sounds increased, and were actually drawing nigh, and that the sleepers were waking on the square, he sprang again to his feet, and, flinging his blanket around Edith, who was yet incapable of aiding herself, resolved to make a bold effort to escape, while darkness and the confusion of the enemy permitted. There was, in truth, not a moment to be lost. The slumbers of the barbarians, proverbially light at all times, and readily broken even when the stupor of intoxication has ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... usually accurate judgment of his own character seems at fault; his opinions being always most decided, even to the point of sometimes rendering him incapable of fairly appreciating the ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... frail body can escape a similar experience. This is poor comfort in comparison with the hope of glory which sustains the Christian under trial. He knows not only that his soul shall live for ever, but that the life of eternity is one in which the body too, then incapable of pain, weariness, or death, shall have part. "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... paternal solicitude of the poet-publisher had adorned his own volume. Mr. Moxon seems to be—like most sonneteers—a man of amiable disposition, and to have an ear—as he certainly has a memory—for poetry; and—if he had not been an old hand—we should not have presumed to say that he is incapable of anything better than this tumid commonplace. But, however that may be, we do earnestly exhort him to abandon the self-deluding practice of being his own publisher. Whatever may have been said in disparagement of the literary taste of the booksellers, it will at least be admitted that their experience ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... it, I purposely render it as concise as possible, but I am utterly incapable of imparting to it the dramatic effect of her recital, heightened and added ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... into small slices and mixing them with paste, which food was distributed amongst the soldiers, and gave rise to the breaking out of a scorbutic disease in the fort which rendered half the garrison incapable of work. On January the 13th, Colonel Vallenstierna tried to break his way through the rebel lines with 2,500 men, but he returned with hardly seventy. The remainder, about 2,000 men, remained on the field. At any rate, they no longer asked for food! A few hundred hussars, however, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... the country has been left unsolved. In this wise it happens that the situation is something like this. Whilst the country is governed by an able president, the people enjoy peace and prosperity. But once an incapable man assumes the presidency, chaos will become the order of the day, a state of affairs which will finally lead to the overthrow of the president himself and the destruction of the country. In such circumstances, how can you devise a general policy for the country ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... inventors of curious engines amongst mankind, has exposed this great machine of the universe to the view of the only creatures capable of contemplating it, so an exact and curious observer, who admires His workmanship, is much more acceptable to Him than one of the herd, who, like a beast incapable of reason, looks on this glorious scene with the eyes of a dull and ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... been replenished, and the flushed faces and thickened utterance of the guests evinced that from the cold properties of the claret there was but little to dread. As for Mr. Bodkin, his manner was incapable of any higher flight, when under the influence of whiskey, than what it evinced on common occasions; and as he sat at the end of the table fronting Mr. Blake, he assumed all the dignity of the ruler of the feast, with an energy no one seemed disposed to question. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... faces that were familiar to him, but he had forgotten that he must be seen and recognized by people unknown to him. Miss Giltinan's clear and candid mind rejected these rumours for lying inventions, incapable of belief that her idol, Jonah, would carry on with any woman. They talked about him going upstairs to hear the piano. What was more natural when he couldn't play it himself? And she dismissed the matter from her mind and went ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Some say women are incapable of such a masculine virtue—that women cannot put their private feelings in their pocket and act in subordination to the good of the whole—that they cannot sink their self-importance and their petty jealousies—that they cannot suppress ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions, Maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation, for she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection, by the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim. She could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human mind. She had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... fleet. Eustatius was a free port, and general depot of West Indian and American produce, the property of nations both neutral and belligerent. It was, however, a Dutch island, and that was sufficient to warrant the seizure. And this was done without any difficulty. De Graaf, the governor, incapable of making any defence, surrendered at discretion; and merchandise of all descriptions, at the estimated value of more than L3,000,000 sterling, which was stored up in the island, fell into the hands of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... days that followed he became convinced that his teacher was a charming, conscientious, and precise young lady, but that she was very badly educated, and incapable of teaching grown-up people, and he made up his mind not to waste his time, to get rid of her, and to engage another teacher. When she came the seventh time he took out of his pocket an envelope with seven roubles in it, and holding it in his hand, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and bewilder, while inspiring and intoxicating the hearer or reader. He recorded, in regard to himself, that "history and particular facts lost all interest" in his mind after his first launch into metaphysics; and he remained through life incapable of discerning reality from inborn images. Wordsworth took alarm at the first experience of such a tendency in himself, and relates that he used to catch at the trees and palings by the roadside to satisfy himself of existences out of himself; but Coleridge encouraged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... in the previous July. The Apostolic Commissary notified her of the sentence which King Philip had confirmed. She was to be transferred to another convent, there to undergo a term of four years' solitary confinement in her cell, and to fast on bread and water every Friday. She was pronounced incapable of ever holding any office, and was to be treated on the expiry of her term as an ordinary nun, her civil list abolished, her title of Excellency to be extinguished, together with all other honours and privileges conferred ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... methought, did take me up very prettily in one or two things that I said, and I was so sensible of it as to be a caution to me hereafter how I do venture to speak more than is necessary in any company, though, as I did now, I do think them incapable to censure me. We broke up, they back to Walthamstow, and only my wife and I and Sir W. Pen to the King's playhouse, and there saw "The Mayden Queene," which, though I have often seen, yet pleases me infinitely, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... He knows the idiosyncracy of his confederate in crime. Rather a strange one for a man who has committed many robberies, and more than once imbued his hands in blood. Cards, dice and drink are his passions, his habitual pleasure. Of love he seems incapable, and does not surrender himself to its lure, though there has been a chapter of it in his life's history, of which Uraga is aware, having an unfortunate termination, sealing his heart against the sex to ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... faculties narrower still, for all their keenness and intensity. The largeness of brain with which Shakespeare endows his human devil, and the largeness of heart of which he does not seem to wish us to imagine him as in certain circumstances incapable, contrast sharply enough with the peasant meanness of Lisbeth. Indeed, Balzac, whose seldom erring instinct in fixing on the viler parts of human nature may have been somewhat too much dwelt on, but is undeniable, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a readjustment. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... him not in a row would involve a flight of imagination of which we, at any rate, are utterly incapable. He has lived in an atmosphere of rows—rows in the nursery, rows at the dinner table, rows in the schoolroom, rows in the playground. His hands are like leather, so often have they been caned; his ears are past all feeling, so often have they been ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... innovations and reforms, was vindicated. For breadth of design and statesmanship there was not one sovereign in the coalition who could compare with this man who, Bishop Burnet thought, was better fitted for a mechanic than a Prince—and "incapable ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... her mouth open, her eyes wide with alarm. For one moment she was incapable of reasoning out this catastrophe. She had never seen Beatrice cry—her tears, because of their rarity, were as terrible as a man's, and could not be explained away by nerves or fatigue. This was something else. Mrs. Cary ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... paint without consideration or devotion in the churches. And I should like to direct our discussion to this end, being sure that the carelessness with which some paint the holy images cannot be good. Work which a very incapable painter or man dares to do, without any fear, so ignorantly that instead of moving mortals to devotion and tears, he ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... of Tristan, mainly on account of the Vienna papers, which always ran me down and scoffed at my proposal. Officially I was referred to the actual manager of the Opera, Herr Salvi, who had formerly been the singing-master of a lady- in-waiting to the Grand Duchess Sophia. He was an absolutely incapable and ignorant man, who was obliged to pretend in front of me that, according to the command of the supreme authorities, nothing lay so near his heart as the furtherance of the performance of Tristan. Accordingly he tried by perpetual expressions of zeal and ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... that the three eggheads were incapable of realizing the potentialities of their discovery, he had little difficulty in arguing himself into the stand that he should. It helped considerably to realize that in all the world only four persons, including himself, were aware of the existence ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... out of the necessities of this state England hated the Netherlands Friendly advice still more intolerable Haereticis non servanda fides He who confessed well was absolved well Insensible to contumely, and incapable of accepting a rebuff Languor of fatigue, rather than any sincere desire for peace Much as the blind or the deaf towards colour or music Subtle and dangerous enemy who wore the mask of a friend Word peace in Spanish mouths simply ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... great kindness, his habitual placidity of temper, and uncommon sweetness of disposition, and all this was eminently true of him; but if you are led by such accounts to think of him as in any degree what is called a yea-nay sort of character, or as destitute of spirit, or even incapable of passion, you will make a great mistake. He was not at all deficient in firmness, and had not only moral but physical courage in an eminent degree. As he never wantonly gave so he never tamely brooked an indignity. His eye could flash as well as laugh. I was one day conversing pleasantly ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... evening that preceded such a night. And she mused of white heat and of what it means—the white heat of the brain blazing with thoughts that govern, the white heat of the heart blazing with emotions that make such thoughts seem cold. She had never known either. Was she incapable of knowing them? Could she imagine them till there was physical heat in her body if she was incapable of knowing them? Suzanne and the two Arabs were distant shadows to her when that first moon-ray touched their ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the beginning of the year to the end. No more does she—and perhaps it's even worse in a woman. You are both as selfish as you can live, with nothing in your head or your heart but your vulgar pleasure, incapable of a concession, incapable of a sacrifice!' She at least spoke with passion; something that had been pent up in her soul broke out and it gave her ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... more so every day. The King is despised and I do not wonder at it; but he has brought it about to be hated at the same time, which seldom happens to the same man. His ministers are known to be as disunited as incapable; he hesitates between the Church and the parliaments, like the ass in the fable, that starved between two hampers of hay: too much in love with his mistress to part with her, and too much afraid of his soul to enjoy her; jealous of the parliaments, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield |
