"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought. Put yourself at our head, lead us out of this den of thieves,—conduct us to the Lower Ford,—to our companions, the emigrants; or, if that may not be, take us back to the Station,—or any where at all, where I may find safety for these females.—For myself, I am incapable ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... some women might have for a stranger. I wonder sometimes if you have any feeling left in you at all. I should think that you treat me as you do because you do not care for me and do care for some other person did I not know you to be utterly incapable of caring for anybody. Do you want to ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... toward Lockley. Big trucks and little ones; passenger cars in between them; a few motorcyclists catching up from the rear by riding on the road's shoulders. They were closely packed, as if by some freak the lead had been taken by great trucks incapable of the road speed of those behind them, yet with the frantic rearmost cars unable to pass. There was a humming and roaring of motors that filled the air. They plunged toward Lockley's ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... failure. The monotony, the sense of oppression, the physical and mental discomfort, the deadly uselessness of the life—even where to these things is not added concern for those outside—have made him incapable of fixed attention, incapable of effort, incapable of rest, alternately nervous and torpid, fearful, despairing. The "barbed wire disease" has him in its grip at last. "Another winter interned here," wrote such a one, "and I ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... the way, that truth alone is powerful? Falsehood is just as living as truth, if not more so. To be sure, I recollect that even during that week I felt from time to time an uneasy gnawing astir within me ... but solitary people like me, I say again, are as incapable of understanding what is going on within them as what is taking place before their eyes. And, besides, is love a natural feeling? Is it natural for man to love? Love is a sickness; and for sickness there is no law. Granting that there was at times an unpleasant pang in my heart; well, everything ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was a sensation of the rocking of the boat, and of aching limbs, through great part of the time; also there seemed to be a continual roaring and thundering around her, and such strange misty visions, that when she finally awoke, after a long interval of deeper and sounder slumber, she was incapable of separating the fact from the dream, more especially as head and limbs were still heavy, weary, and battered. The strange roaring still sounded, and sometimes seemed to shake the bed. Twilight was coming in at a curtained window, and showed ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that made the prince incapable of "ill-will against any person, however great the injury he had received from him," so that this placidity of disposition seemed an actual fault in him. He was accordingly thought "deficient in distributive justice." ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... hear her call out to him. For the time being he was back again in his life of twenty years ago. Those who find this hard to believe may see no way of accounting for what came about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. For our part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such an act from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute to him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... year 1760, Lord George Sackville was tried by a court-martial for his conduct in the battle of Minden, and declared incapable of serving his Majesty for the future in any military capacity whatever; he was however afterwards raised to the highest civil employments, being secretary of state to George III. and having a considerable share in those unfortunate councils, which severed for ever thirteen ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... not quite satisfied on that point. Hitherto the men had laboured away bravely, but some of the weaker and less spirited began to show signs of fatigue; and the instant they were relieved, threw themselves on the deck as though utterly incapable of further exertion. Some of the men, indeed, actually sank down at the pumps, but others took their places, and the doctor went round to the exhausted ones, giving them stimulants, and urging them ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... across may be a regular cheat; but you will find it out,—you'll find it out. You've had three months to find this out, and you couldn't. Whatever may be the explanation of the mystery, the man who can witness what you and I have witnessed, and pronounce it the trick of that incapable, washed-out woman, is either a liar or ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... through the questions and answers of a textbook without any explanation or amplification, and often without much comprehension on the part of the class. The teacher who has nothing of his own to add is incapable of teaching in the true sense of the word. At best he can only test as to the preparation ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... the house of Abbas, A.D. 809-13, a sanguinary and incapable prince, whose contemplated treachery against his brother El Mamoun, (whom, by the advice of his vizier, the worthless intriguer Fezl ben Rebya, the same who was one of the prime movers in the ruin of the illustrious ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... long time. Beneath one of the arched ways, in the Chester wall above referred to, I saw timbers that must have been in place five or six hundred years. The beams in the old houses, also fully exposed to the weather, seem incapable of decay; those dating from Shakespeare's time being ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... in the world; while there grew up in me, as in the parallel case of Caliban upon Setebos, a vague sense of a ruling power, wilful and freakish, and prone to the practice of vagaries—"just choosing so:" as, for instance, the giving of authority over us to these hopeless and incapable creatures, when it might far more reasonably have been given to ourselves over them. These elders, our betters by a trick of chance, commanded no respect, but only a certain blend of envy—of their good luck—and pity—for their inability to make use ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Gladwyn, rather testily, "that question is rather a severe test of one's credulity. As if it were possible for a parcel of howling redskins to conduct a siege! No one knows better than you that their only method of fighting is a surprise, a yell, a volley, and then a retreat. They are absolutely incapable of sustained effort." ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... 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 of those ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... others, the horror or weirdness of the idea intensified by the coolness of the narrator and of the principal actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand in the other. The same may be said of Bret Harte, also one of those great short story tellers who proved himself incapable of a longer flight. He was always like one of his own gold-miners who struck a rich pocket, but found no continuous reef. The pocket was, alas, a very limited one, but the gold was of the best. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Tennessee's Partner" are both, I think, worthy of a place ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but Madame de P—— is too accomplished a politician to go the simple straight road to her object. I now perfectly comprehend why she took such pains to persuade me that an imperial lover was alone worthy of my charms. She was alarmed by an imaginary danger. Believe me, I am incapable of disputing with any one les restes ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 fellow walked away rather crestfallen at this return ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be weak; their structure may be frail, and they may be incapable of violence or harm, but the depth of the footprints indicates a weight of at least one hundred and thirty pounds, and it certainly requires some muscular strength to break off a branch of ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... parents who themselves are seeking baptism; but I have not baptized any adults yet, they must be examined and taught for some time, for the Samoan and Rarotongan teachers sent by the Independent missionaries are very imperfectly instructed and quite incapable of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or what is now called intellect, did not make the world, or the smallest wheel or cog of it? What if, for want of obeying the laws of nature, parents bred up neither a genius nor an athlete, but only an incapable unhappy personage, with a huge upright forehead, like that of a Byzantine Greek, filled with some sort of pap instead of brains, and tempted alternately to fanaticism and strong drink? We must, in the great majority of cases have the corpus sanem if we want ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... a remarkable girl. Wild, wayward, with all the passions—brimful with untamed vitality—incapable of the common restraints. Her face was neither beautiful, nor, perhaps, even pretty—but Diana herself might have envied the full, lithe figure, the free grace of her movements. She was the creature of her desires—knowing no laws that opposed ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... its four government mules. The cow-boys had caught sight of it and captured it. Rushing to the post-trader's, they carried the sleeping men from the counter and laid them on the dray. Then, searching Drybone outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them, and ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... As obstinately bent against it, as if he were incapable of Love; not that his Principles concern me, yet such Heresy in Men ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... me were sitting at our breakfast next morning, we heard from Benjie, who had been early up fishing for eels at the water- side, that the whole town-talk was concerning the misfortunate James Batter, who had been carried home, totally incapable, far in the night, by Cursecowl and an Irish labourer—that sleeped in Widow Thamson's garret—on a hand-barrow, borrowed from Maister ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... in his fall, he was incapable of defence, and knew that he was lost; he shut his eyes, and waited for his death-blow, when the report of a rifle, and the springing of the bear in the agonies of death, made him once more open his eyes; he started upon his feet, there lay the huge monster, and near ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... for base purposes Burr professed love. Such men too frequently win upon the regards of women, and occupy high and enviable positions in female society; but their love is diffusive, and for the individual only for a time. In truth, they are incapable of a deep and sincere affection. The suspicion of woman's purity forbids an abiding love; it is a momentary passion, and not an elevated and enduring sentiment—not the embalming with the heart's riches a pure and innocent being who ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... She threw golden solidi of love into Geta's lap in lavish abundance. And her sister and her nieces, who often lived with us, treated me exactly as she did. They were distantly civil, or they shunned me; but my brother was their spoiled plaything. I was as incapable as Geta was master of the art of stealing hearts; but in my childhood I needed none of them: for, if I wished for a kind word, a sweet kiss, or the love of a woman, my nurse's arms were open to me. Nor was she an ordinary woman. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... period, there was but one surviving son, the dauphin. In his character there appeared a combination of most singular anomalies and contradictions. Though exceedingly impulsive and obstinate in obeying every freak of his fancy, he seemed incapable of any affection, and alike incapable of any hostility, except that which flashed up for ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 and ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... was very encouraging, and Peter followed the guard across the Exeter platform hopefully and expectantly. Right down the platform, on a side line, was a little train that reminded Peter of the Treliss to Truro one, so helpless and incapable did it look. The guard put him and his luggage into a carriage and then left him with a last word as to Salton being his destination. He waited here a very long time and nothing happened. He must have slept ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... since I was appointed to the parish of Kilronan. It happened in this wise. The Bishop, the old man, sent for me; and said, with what I would call a tone of pity or contempt, but he was incapable of either, for he was the essence ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... deviltry of this high protestation, knowing that Elizabeth, imperious, dominating, cold-blooded, was knifing a supposed rival—a rival not in love, for he fancied Elizabeth was incapable of love—felt ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... 31st January, 1917, Mr. Wilson was incapable of an impartial attitude towards Germany. He saw red whenever he thought of the Imperial Government, and his repugnance against it knew no bounds. Even to-day the bitter feeling still rankles within ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... brilliance of his college course in St. Petersburg was noteworthy. He quitted it to occupy a civil post under Government, a position, however, which he soon abandoned, in order to devote himself solely to music. Like so many other men of genius, he married a woman quite incapable of comprehending his artistic aims and ambitions; to quote the words of a Russian writer, Madame Glinka, nee Maria Petrovna, "was only a pretty doll, who loved society and fine clothes, and had no sympathy whatever with her husband's romantic, poetic side." One is glad to ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... dared not penetrate it. It was not that an actual restraint lay upon him: he knew, that is, that the door was open; yet it needed an effort of the will of which his paralysis of terror rendered him incapable.... ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... all night. Her brain, incapable of thought, kept turning round and round, showing her on an endless rolling screen the images of Lindley and Nannie Learoyd, clinging together, loosening, swinging apart, clinging together. When she came down on ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... feel any desire to work either. A dull anger disturbed him; he was irritated by the ironical accent of the countess who saw in him a man different from other men, a strange being who was incapable of acting like the insipid young men who formed her court and many of whom, according to common gossip, were her lovers. A strange woman, provoking and cold! He felt like falling on her, in his rage at her offence, and beating her with the same scorn that he would a low ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... despotism lodged in a few hands. Of all oriental races, the Affghans had best resisted the effeminacy of oriental usages, and in some respects we may say—of Mahometan institutions. Their strength lay in their manly character; their weakness in their inveterate disunion. But this, though quite incapable of permanent remedy under Mahometan ideas, could be suspended under the compression of a common warlike interest; and that had been splendidly put on record by the grandfather of Shah Soojah. It was not to be denied—that in the event of a martial prince ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... this is not regarded as an axiom in our current education in books is a very significant fact. It goes with another significant fact—the assumption, in most courses of literature as at present conducted, that a little man (that is, a man incapable of a great passion), who is not even able to read a book with a great passion in it, can somehow teach other people to ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... really is a polluted creature, guilty of the unutterable crime of contaminating a man of God, nay, a god himself. And then, unable to silence affection, she cries out in agony at the perversity of her nature, incapable even of hating sincerely its sinfulness; for would she not do it again, is she not the same Heloise who would have left the very altar, the very communion with Christ, at Abelard's word? At other times she is pious, resigned, almost serene; for is that ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... unexpected that the Seniors looked at one another as if an earthquake had occurred. They had imagined it was all "bluff" on the part of the younger girls, and that they were quite incapable of enforcing their demands. This sudden mutiny was a crisis such ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... alarmed 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
... however, always favourable. They were sometimes the reverse. The new horse was unmanageable, the bullocks were weak and could not draw the carts, the servants were remiss or incapable, the roads were in some places shockingly bad, we were left for hours without tent and food, and, as I have said, the weather now and then was wet and stormy. We had sometimes an amount of trouble which made us half regret we had left home. Ladies ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... or less failure to realise relations of fact in their logic; and the other faculties, in proportion as they fail to realize such relations in their own region, have a similar incapacity. Insanity, in the broad sense, is involuntary error in a nature incapable of effectual enlightenment, and hence abnormal or diseased; but the state of error, whether more or less, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether curable or incurable, in itself is the same. To take an example from one sphere, in the moral world the ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... them were contented with such a preparation, and did not look beyond it; some few perceived and regretted, when it was too late for a remedy, the insufficiency of their early training; with a few illustrious exceptions, the best of them never rose to be more than distinguished men of letters, incapable of scientific work. There was at that time no organisation for teaching the "auxiliary sciences" and the technique of research except in the case of French mediaeval history, and that in a special school, the Ecole des chartes. This simple fact, moreover, secured for this ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... might be exterminated from our lists, but this we know is not the case, as any one who has tasted good samples grown in France, the Channel Islands, and upon favorable soils in this country will bear out the statement that the flavor is superb. Some fruits, we know, are quite incapable of being good, as they have no quality in them; but here we have one of the hardiest of trees, capable of giving us quantity as well as quality, provided we cultivate properly. Pears, no doubt, are capricious, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... by laws to which they do not consent, disowned by their brethren and countrymen, refused the liberty not only of trading with their own manufactures, but even their native commodities, forced to seek for justice many hundred miles by sea and land, rendered in a manner incapable of serving their king and country in any employment of honour, trust, or profit; and all this without the least demerit; while the governors sent over thither can possibly have no affection to the people, further than what is instilled into them by their own justice ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... knew him well enough; knew him incapable of love apart from passion, and that to him there was no sacredness in maiden chastity or wifely vows. So he but gained his end he cared no whit what followed after; ruin, broken hearts, lost souls, a man slain now and then to keep the scale from tipping—all were ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... but seemed incapable of further speech, and sat silent while they dragged up the bridge of oars, which had ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... as to say after the Montmorency fight, 'I have no more anxiety about Quebec. Monsieur Wolfe, I am sure, will make no progress.' 'La, la,' as Madame Angelique would say when she teases me, what a poor prophet was his excellency Vaudreuil, but, indeed, prophecy has a trick of falling into incapable hands and I, being, I trust, capable, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... exclaimed, gasping; and the four obeyed him without thought. It was only when the panel was replaced that they noticed the floor of the cage; it was of clear glass, like the sides, and looked totally incapable of bearing their ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... that within half a century its annexation would be indispensable. "There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation," he said; and "Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which, by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off from its bosom." If Cuba is incapable of self-support, and could not therefore be left, in the cheerful language of Congress, ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... air which heard these very protestations from thee. But innumerable men experience this in their affairs; they persevere in labor when in power,[24] and then make a bad result, sometimes through the foolish mind of the citizens, but sometimes with reason, themselves becoming incapable of preserving the state, I indeed chiefly groan for hapless Greece, who, wishing to work some doughty deed against these good-for-nothing barbarians, will let them, laughing at us, slip through her hands, on account of thee and thy daughter. I would not make any one ruler of ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Ida almost wept at hearing these words from Monsieur de Magny, and tears came into her eyes, he said, as she took his hand for the first time, and thanked him for the delicacy of the proposal. She little knew that the Frenchman was incapable of that sort of delicacy, and that the graceful manner in which he withdrew his addresses was of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... preparing a large fleet, to carry soldiers as well as sailors. The best Spanish general was in command at first. His death put an incapable man in command, who was largely responsible for the defeat. The Duke of Parma was to co-operate from the Netherlands with a large army. In England, the small battle fleet was increased by the voluntary ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of great and immediate service, both to the public and to the company. To say the truth, something of this sort is absolutely necessary to vindicate the expense the nation is at; for if the trade, for the carrying on of which a company is established, proves, by a change of circumstances, incapable of supporting that company, and thereby brings a load upon the public, this ought to be a motive, it ought, indeed, to be the strongest motive, for that company to endeavour the extension of its commerce, or the striking out, if possible, some new branch of trade, ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... she was to love with her whole heart, and to wreck her love was to wreck her life. She had passed through all her life thus far without seriously noticing any young man, thus giving some the impression that she was incapable of love, being so intellectual. Others who read her better knew that she despised the butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, and was preserving her heart to give it whole into the ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... the process through which fresh (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 ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... exaggerate," answered Strong. "I know that some pastoralists are very vindictive but I regard most of them as honorable men incapable ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... the horrors of the night the electric-light plants were rendered incapable of service, and the gas lamps were also shut off, leaving the city in utter darkness. Fire broke out in several portions of the city, and the fire department was unable to make an effective fight because of the choked condition of the streets and the large number of firemen who were ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... distended with food as to be literally incapable of moving. Only yesterday, there swept past these doors a bright procession, going half-trot to a lively chant of music: the funeral of a woman. I enquired of a passer-by ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the lands of an imperious master, and at night was shut up in a subterranean cell. The laws hardly recognized his claim to be considered a moral agent,—he was secundum hominum genus; he could acquire no rights, social or political,—he was incapable of inheriting property, or making a will, or contracting a legal marriage; his value was estimated like that of a brute; he was a thing and not a person, "a piece of furniture possessed of life;" he was his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... I mean," said the Chief. "There is a type of man who is quite incapable of telling the plain, unvarnished truth. That type of fellow might have the most extraordinary adventure happen to him and yet be unable to let it stand on its merits. When he narrates it, he trims it up with all kinds of ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... concern, might so win their good will as to make them friends instead of enemies? The devil that lies at the bottom of all savage natures is easily roused, not at all so easily laid again, and as easily kept in his own place. Indians are not incapable of friendship, nor of good faith, although the best require a great deal of looking after—and close looking, too! But what I want to urge is this: that if you always appeal to the worst passions of the redskin, rob him of his rights and property, cheat ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... them too great a burden when they had become too old and their senses decayed, but because it was painful to see them in their decline, perpetually craving to be at their old work with the sheep, incapable of doing it any longer, yet miserable if ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... deeper, that it was inextricably wound up with inherited habits of thought and feeling, made it as impossible to restore to growth as a deep-rooted plant torn from its bed. Selden had given her of his best; but he was as incapable as herself of an uncritical return to former ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... which she belonged. Julia, she hoped, would one day do her honour. As for the islands of the South Seas, or the peculiar views and habits of life entertained by those white people who chose them for their residence, Mrs. Powle declared she was incapable from very ignorance of understanding or giving judgment about them. She made the whole question, together with her daughter, over to her sister Mrs. Caxton, who she did not doubt would do wisely according to her notions. But as they were not the notions of the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... we come to treat of gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he is—never so completely in his element as when acting the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... lieutenants faults sometimes inevitable, or easily to be foreseen, in the circumstances in which they were placed. The inexhaustible resources of his military genius were not, however, at a loss on the occasion of this first outburst of embarrassments, destined daily to increase. He recalled Marshal Ney, incapable of serving under any other than himself, and replaced him by Marshal Marmont, more docile, more skilled in questions of military organization, and very earnest in the service of Marshal Massena. The latter was charged with watching Lord Wellington, and with ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... as that of "Lohengrin," during the composer's stay at Marienbad, and occupied his attention at intervals for twenty years, as it was not finished until 1867. As is clearly apparent both from its music and text, it was intended as a satire upon the composer's critics, who had charged that he was incapable of writing melody. It is easy to see that these critics are symbolized by the old pedant Beckmesser, and that in Walter we have Wagner himself. When he is first brought in contact with the Mastersingers, and ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... atrocities committed by the Lamas on British subjects are revolting, and it is a matter of great regret and indignation to the Englishmen who visit these regions to think that the weakness of our officials in Kumaon has allowed and is allowing such proceedings still to go on. So incapable are they, in fact, that the Jong Pen of Taklakot in Tibet sends over, "with the sanction of the Government of India," his yearly emissaries to collect Land Revenue[8] from British subjects living on British soil. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and hopes for favorable turns of character, even in the most depraved. The exaltation of his intellectual pursuits, and his sincere piety, have enabled him to rise above all the petty disquietudes of everyday life, and he seems utterly incapable of envy or detraction, or the indulgence of any ignoble or unmanly passions. Indeed, one of his most intimate friends remarked "that he was the beau-ideal of dignified manliness and truthfulness of character." His manners possess all that unostentatious ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... important personage who ranks very high. Then came the Sultan (Abdul Hamid) himself in an open carriage, closely surrounded and guarded by officers. He was an elderly, careworn, bearded, sallow, melancholy looking man, whose features seemed incapable of a smile. He entered the Mosque alone; his wives remaining seated in their carriages outside. In the room in which we sat at an open window to view the ceremony we were regaled with the Sultan's coffee ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... That he was anxious for concealment was evident. Had he courted observation, I might have supposed him actuated by some far-sighted scheme of policy; and yet his rash and straightforward temperament rendered him incapable of any stratagem whatever. No, no—look at the thing as I would, there was no accounting for this most perplexing anomaly except on the ground of mental infirmity. Alas, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... a stupendous scale is geology to be studied in Mount Seir, where you have masses of red sandstone 1500 feet in depth; yellow sandstone extending miles away in ranges of hills, and the sandy desert beneath; all of this incapable of cultivation; and inspiring a sensation of deep sadness, in connexion with the denunciations of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have thus been petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think that they can, by mere assertion, overthrow results arrived at by the lifelong inquiries of the ablest students, while they have not given a day's serious or impartial ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Yankee to be too neatly made and elegant for a Western Virginian mountaineer employed at twelve dollars a month in caring for cattle in the hackings. When asked the price paid for the boots, the answer was fifteen dollars. The suspect was a highly educated gentleman, wholly incapable of acting his assumed character. He had touched the higher education and civilization of men of learning, and his tongue could not be attuned to lie and deceive in the guise of one to the manor born. Though at first Captain Cunard hesitated, he told the gentleman ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... its results. The Romans occupied Great Britain, and they occupied it hard upon four centuries, holding the people in "tutelage," and protecting them against themselves, as well as against their enemies. With what result? So emasculated and incapable of self-government did the people of England become during their "tutelage" that, when Rome at last withdrew, they found themselves totally unfitted for self-government, much more for facing a foreign enemy. As the last, ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... and other organs of the body are affected by the quality of the blood which nourishes them, and since the blood is made of the food eaten, it follows that the use of poor food will result in poor blood, poor muscles, poor brains, and poor bodies, incapable of first-class work in any capacity. Very few persons, however, ever stop to inquire what particular foods are best adapted to the manufacture of good blood and the maintenance of perfect health; but whatever gratifies the palate or is most conveniently obtained, is ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... necessary in the world to keep one at peace with it, and to ease declining life with comforts, and cheer with the serener pleasures, is condemned to keep his peace in a state of continual uncertainty; for, seeing a purse temptingly exposed, he is physically incapable of refraining from the endeavor to take it. What devil is there in his finger-ends that brings this about? Is this part of the curse of crime,—that, having once taken up with it, a man cannot cut loose, but, with all the disposition to make his future life better, he must, as by the iron ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... sorrow," he said, "but not as those who have no hope." The world knows a sorrow that the Christian does not know. Christians should be careful lest in hardening themselves against feeling they do not render themselves incapable of ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... offering them their pardons for the past and to give them high rewards. He continued the pursuit above fifty leagues or two hundred miles, till at length the horses were no longer able to carry their riders, and the men were incapable of proceeding, both from excessive fatigue and by the failure of provisions. The insurgent army at length arrived at Ayabaca[16], where the hot pursuit of the viceroy was discontinued, and the troops of Gonzalo halted for rest and refreshment. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... fervid periods to himself. And why? Just because this evil principle manifests itself in such a variety of ways. A man who detects worldliness in his neighbour with the greatest ease may be absolutely incapable of seeing it in himself, simply because his own and his neighbour's are so different in form. It is the old story. David boiled over with indignation at the hard-hearted monster who had taken the poor man's lamb; but the fact that he himself ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... are undistinguishable in shadow, because an object which is not in the highest light is incapable of transmitting its image to the eye through an atmosphere more luminous than itself; since the lesser brightness must be absorbed by the greater. For instance: We, in a house, can see that all the colours ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced for any reasons, moral or political; but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It's so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... driving in upon them; facing only the outsides of all those houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and shone upon the windows, or came puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of participation in any of the good things that were constantly being handled, through the street doors and the area railings, to prodigious cooks. Faces came and went at many windows: sometimes pretty faces, youthful faces, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... these poor wretches were left upon a detached piece of ice, of no considerable magnitude, without food, without shelter from the inclement storm, deprived of every means of refuge except in a single boat, which, on account of the number of men, and the violence of the storm, was incapable of conveying them to their ship. Death stared them in the face whichever way they turned, and a division in opinion ensued. Some were wishful to remain on the ice, but the ice could afford them no shelter to the piercing wind, and would probably be broken to pieces by the increasing ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... compelled to swear by the Dom at Bamberg, or by the Cathedral at Monreale—that he must abhor and denounce Michel Angelo's church or the Baths of Diocletian at Rome—why the person who enjoys 'Il Barbiere' is to be denounced as frivolously faithless to Mozart's 'Figaro'—and as incapable of comprehending 'Fidelio,' because the last act of 'Otello' and the second of 'Guillaume Tell' transport him into as great an enjoyment of its kind as do the duet in the cemetery between 'Don Juan' and 'Leporello' and the 'Prisoners' ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... mothers as cowards unfit for initiation, and sooner or later sympathetic magic would do its work, a poison-stick or bone would end them. Or if one of the initiates was considered stupid and generally incapable, having been brought to the Boorah for that purpose, he was now, after having been made to suffer all sorts of indignities, such as eating filth and so on, bound to the earth, strapped down, killed, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... men, a regiment of which he commanded, he writes: "I often have seen them march with a broken or compound fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh or wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, shot themselves. Such men do not turn up in the average of everyday life, nor do I ever expect to see their like again. All military science failed on a suddenly given field before such assailants, who came at a run to close ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... other independent societies is the first duty of the sovereign. "An industrious, and upon that account a wealthy nation is of all nations the most likely to be attacked, and unless the State takes some measures for the public defence, the natural habits of the people render them altogether incapable of defending themselves."[31] He further asserts that "even though the martial spirit of the people were of no use towards the defence of the society, yet to prevent that sort of mental mutilation, deformity, ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... grammar, and I could imperfectly understand the easy prose of a familiar subject. But when I was thus suddenly cast on a foreign land, I found myself deprived of the use of speech and of hearing; and, during some weeks, incapable not only of enjoying the pleasures of conversation, but even of asking or answering a question in the common intercourse of life. To a home-bred Englishman every object, every custom was offensive; but the native ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... transmission, this transplanting, is not the work of a blind destiny. While civilisation in the East succumbed and died out before the advance of races incapable of culture, it was welcomed in the West by races possessing the requisite capacity, which by their inborn force gave it new forms and indestructible bases for its outward existence. Nor have the nations and kingdoms arisen each from its mother earth, as it were in obedience ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... going to say something farther, but as if incapable of attending to her, he hastened out ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... fifteen days for refreshments. We sailed hence for our port of Lisbon, whence we were now 300 leagues distant to the west, and arrived there by the aid of the Almighty in 1502[11], with two only of our ships, having been forced to burn the other at Sierra Leone, as it was incapable of being navigated any farther. During this third voyage we were absent about sixteen months, eleven of which we had sailed without sight of the north Star or of the Greater and Lesser Bears, during which time we directed our course by the other ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Accession of the Red King. 1087.—In Normandy the Conqueror was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert. Robert was sluggish and incapable, and his father had expressed a wish that England, newly conquered and hard to control, should be ruled by his more energetic second son, William. To the third son, Henry, he gave a sum of money. There was as yet no settled rule of succession to the English ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... charlatan has for its object the purse of the patient. It is common to meet with physicians who have a good practical experience of art without possessing scientific knowledge, others who have both practical experience and science but are charlatans, others again who are very scientific but incapable in practice. The ideal is a combination of art, science and disinterested honesty; but it is not very uncommon to meet with a combination of ignorance, incapacity and charlatanism. Lastly, too many doctors, otherwise capable and intelligent, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... urea is formed by polymerization of ammonium carbonate, and formic aldehyde is synthesized from CO2 and OH2. The Nitro-bacteria are smaller, finer and quite different from the nitroso-bacteria, and are incapable of attacking and utilizing ammonium carbonate. When the latter have oxidized ammonia to nitrite, however, the former step in and oxidize it still further to nitric acid. It is probable that important consequences of these actions result from the presence of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... rare thing for loving sisters who have to resign their brothers to others' keeping to think so. But Amelie knew that Angelique des Meloises was incapable of that true love which only finds its own in the happiness of another. She was vain, selfish, ambitious, and—what Amelie did not yet know—possessed of neither scruple nor ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... be lamented, that, in undertakings of this kind, men of limited genius, of no experience in business, and incapable of acting with unanimity, have been too frequently employed; who are governed more by caprice than principle, and are consequently seldom able to reduce their ideas into practice, and allow their passions to predominate over the maxims of duty. Delicacy in managing the humours and interests ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... I. I disapprove of myself violently. I'm a doddering lunatic, incapable of thinking of anything but you. I can't work. I can't eat, I can't sleep. I'm no use to the world. I'm not a man, I'm a mess. I'm about to do something silly because I ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... your aristocratic republic," he said, "and that I were the head and centre of it. I have felt a strong desire to wring the neck of that many- headed nuisance called 'the people,' and proceed as if it were where the God of nations intended those incapable of governing should ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... vein of sarcasm, Raeburn's speech was, on the whole, temperate; it certainly should have been met with consideration. But, unfortunately, Mr. Randolph was incapable of seeing any good in his opponent; his combative instincts were far stronger than his Christianity, and Brian, who had winced many times while listening to the champion of atheism, was even more keenly wounded by the champion of his own cause. Abusive epithets abounded ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... labor between man and woman, man is less capable than woman of devoting himself to human welfare. "But the fact of the age which goes deeper than any other is that the male mind of the race as the result of the conditions out of which it has come, is by itself incapable of rendering this service to civilization. It is in the mind of woman that the winning peoples of the world will find the psychic center of Power in the future."—"The Science of ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... fricassee of these tales which I here present to you, for they have neither legs, head, bowels, nor anything of the sort; I mean that the amorous intrigues you will find in some of them, are so decorous, so measured, and so conformable to reason and Christian propriety, that they are incapable of exciting any impure thoughts in him who reads ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... worth nothing except in its own country, and even there receiving little recognition or circulation outside of the immediate neighborhood in which it is found. Still, the subject of blood and birth is a solemn one to those who believe in it, and they are absolutely incapable of comprehending the feelings of a world of scoffers, or, if they do, impute them to imperfect mental or spiritual development. On this point Cooper had the misfortune to say what some think but ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Sugar that he was to be cut into small lumps to sweeten Daddy Tyl's coffee and Mummy Tyl's syrups, they would have thrown themselves at their benefactor's feet and begged for mercy. In fact, they were incapable of appreciating their good luck until they were brought ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... the characteristic differences of the Cochin breed are more or less variable, and may be detected in a greater or lesser degree in other breeds. One sub-breed is coloured closely like G. bankiva. The feathered legs, often furnished with an additional toe, the wings incapable of flight, the extremely quiet disposition, indicate a long course of domestication; and these fowls come from China, where we know that plants and animals have been tended from a remote period with extraordinary care, and where ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... time. As soon as our hands were free in India, operations in China were actively pushed forward, the French troops joining us on account of the murder of some French missionaries. The war was practically a walk-over, for the Chinese army was quite incapable of meeting trained forces; and a treaty having been agreed upon, the representatives of the ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of his conveyance, leaped ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... ground. The upper block can easily be set in motion by the hand. It is called by the country people "La pierre aux maris trompes," and was formerly consulted by husbands to test the fidelity of their wives. Even now the partner of a faithless wife is said to be incapable of giving to the stone the rocking motion it so easily receives ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... rightly enough, on being able to execute this maneuver with impunity from discovery, knowing that she was incapable of hearing the sound of his breath when he blew her candle out, and that the darkness would afterwards not only effectually shield him from detection, but also oblige her to leave him alone in the room again, while she went to get another light. He had not calculated, however, on the serious ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... liberal (a term not then in circulation) would readily have admitted his chivalric loyalty and the imperishable convictions of one who puts his faith to the "Quotidienne"; he would have felt respect for the man religiously devoted to a cause, honest in his political antipathies, incapable of serving his party but very capable of injuring it, and without the slightest real knowledge of the affairs of France. The count was in fact one of those upright men who are available for nothing, but stand obstinately in the way of all; ready to die under arms ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Mangalor, Cochin, and Chale were to become the share of the Zamorin. At the same time, the king of Acheen was to attack Malacca, that the Portuguese, assailed at once on every important point, might be incapable of sending succours to the different places. Adel Khan was so confident of success, that he had assigned the different offices at Goa among his chiefs, and had even allotted among them certain Portuguese ladies, who were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... was directed to me. It was a warning spirit, that cried, beware of indulging an unjustifiable passion! Awake, at the call of virtue, and obey! Behold here a sickly mind, and aid me in its recovery!—To me her language was pointed, clear, and incapable of other interpretation. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... his circumstance and manner of living, added to his own uneasy reflections upon those misfortunes into which vanity and ostentation had brought him, soon reduced him by sickness to so weak a state that he was incapable, almost, of coming to chapel alone. Notwithstanding this, he continued to frequent it, some of the people about the prison being so kind as to help him upstairs. As his vices arose rather from the imitation of those fine gentlemen on whom he had waited while a lad, so he did ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... nineteen hands high at the chest, and will weigh nearly 2,000 lbs. It has the head of an antelope, but the body is more like that of an ox. It has magnificent straight horns, but they are not dangerous. They are easily run down, for, generally speaking, they are very fat and incapable of much exertion." ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... a woman could have thought of a thing like that?—-making your denunciation so defensible, so pardonable, so plausible, so inevitable! What skill! What patience! What diplomacy! And what will and nerve too! Who shall say now that women are incapable ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Anderson is heroic in size and manner. The lovely heiress to the house of the Capulets, on the turn of sixteen, swept in upon the stage as if she were mistress of the house, situation, and of fate, and bent on bringing the enemy to terms. Her face is sweet, at times positively beautiful, but incapable of expression. Her voice, while clear, is hard, metallic, at intervals nasal, and all the while stagey. She has been trained in the old Kemble tragic pump-handle style of elocution, that runs talk on stilts. Her manner is ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... exercises under Critical Notes 15th and 16th, being judged either incapable of correction, or unworthy of the endeavour, are submitted to the criticism of the reader, without any attempt to amend them, or to offer substitutes in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... dinner-table could lead to an acute change of feeling so that the subject who, before dinner, had felt she would like to play a new composition on the piano so as to obtain the opinion of the guest who had exhibited the critical tone, after dinner felt incapable of doing so. Her feelings had been hurt on many former occasions by critical remarks made by him in that tone. The critical remarks were not called to memory but there arose the feeling that under no circumstances could she ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... processes pass under the control of another. If this is indeed the method employed by Dr. Steiner and his adepts there would certainly seem to be some justification for the verdict of M. Robert Kuentz that "Steiner has devised occult exercises which render the mind incapable (rendent l'esprit aneanti), that he attacks the individual by deranging his faculties ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the Groyne, on the undefended shores of England, and only God's hand saves us from the effects of Essex's folly. A third time the Armadas of Spain are overwhelmed by the avenging tempests, and Essex returns to disgrace, having proved himself at once intemperate and incapable. Even in coming home there is confusion, and Essex is all but lost on the Bishop and Clerks, by Scilly, in spite of the warnings of Raleigh's sailing-master, 'Old Broadbent,' who is so exasperated at the general stupidity that he wants Raleigh to leave Essex and his squadron to get ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... us of its existence only by successive impulses, it must result that our sense of things will be rhythmic. The brain being alternately stimulated and relaxed we must think—as we feel—in waves, apprehending nothing continuously, and incapable of a consciousness that is not divisible into units of perception of which we make mental record and physical sign. That is why we dance. That is why we can, may, must, will, and shall dance, and the gates of Philistia ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Peytel is? Look at argument No. 1. Rey had no need to kill two people: he wanted the money, and not the blood. Suppose he had killed Peytel, would he not have mastered Madame Peytel easily?—a weak woman, in an excessively delicate situation, incapable of much energy, at the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... found by the naturalist, and thought worthy of being transported to His Majesty's botanic garden at Kew. This green house had been received at Sheerness, and stowed away in pieces; but I saw that when filled with boxes of earth, the upper works of the ship, naturally very weak, would be incapable of supporting the weight; and that in bad weather, we should be obliged to throw it over board for the safety of the ship. I therefore proposed its reduction to two-thirds of the size; and Mr. Brown being of opinion it would then ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Redgauntlet to make a pilgrimage to Saint Ninian's of Whiteherne, then esteemed a shrine of great sanctity; and departed with a precipitation which might have aggravated, had that been possible, the forlorn state of his unhappy friend. But that seems to have been incapable of admitting any addition. Sir Alberick caused the bodies of his slaughtered son and the mother to be laid side by side in the ancient chapel of his house, after he had used the skill of a celebrated surgeon of that time to embalm ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... entrenched positions, were no doubt, to some extent, necessary, not to guard against our immediate neighbours, for experience had taught us that without outside assistance they are incapable of a combined movement, but for the protection of such depots and storehouses as would have to be constructed, and as a support to the army ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... and talents roused, and developing themselves in a way that astonished myself. I had not known what I was, or what I was capable of. I had had no confidence in myself, and I had believed myself to be almost as incapable as my mother would have persuaded me, and everybody else. This sudden change of treatment had a most surprising effect. In the course of a few months I had grown nearly three inches taller, and not only my figure, but my features, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... account—quite insignificant in the eyes of all who looked upon him. If there were one opinion, in which the few who had taken the trouble to think of the puny, somewhat shambling stranger from Burgundy at all, coincided, it was that he was inoffensive, but quite incapable of any important business. He seemed well educated, claimed to be of respectable parentage, and had considerable facility of speech when any person could be found who thought it worth while to listen to him; but on the whole he attracted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... bosom heaved with agony severe: In vain with bitter sorrow he repined, No tender pity touch'd that sordid mind— To thee, brave Albert! was the charge consign'd. The stately ship, forsaking England's shore, To regions far remote Palemon bore. Incapable of change, the unhappy youth Still loved fair Anna with eternal truth; 300 Still Anna's image swims before his sight In fleeting vision through the restless night; From clime to clime an exile doom'd to roam, His heart still panted for its secret home. The ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... appearance in society both in London and Paris. She shortly reappeared in her native county as Duchess of Palata. At this time the fortunes of her family had reduced them to be the occupants of a small cottage at Morton, and age rendering her father incapable of active exertion, he filled the humble office of rural postman. To her honor it should be recorded that she enabled her parents to pass the remainder of their days in comfort. Six or seven years ago she again visited her native place, a widow, his ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... night till morning, wherein he showed what a sound constitution and few cares he had. Don Quixote's cares kept him restless, so much so that he awoke Sancho and said to him, "I am amazed, Sancho, at the unconcern of thy temperament. I believe thou art made of marble or hard brass, incapable of any emotion or feeling whatever. I lie awake while thou sleepest, I weep while thou singest, I am faint with fasting while thou art sluggish and torpid from pure repletion. It is the duty of good servants to share the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... alluded to in a former part of this address. What the turnip and sheep husbandry have done for the light lands of Great Britain, the general use of guano promises to do for ours. Lands a few years ago deemed entirely incapable of producing wheat, now produce the most luxuriant crops. From 15 to 20 bushels for one sowed, is the ordinary product on our poorest lands, from the application of 200 lbs. of Peruvian guano. I may remark, it is not usual, in Eastern Virginia, ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... seventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the spring conventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not compare it to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really subdued and infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but when he caught sight of the company he would be compelled to recognize it as the noise of our highest civilization. It may not be perfect, for there are limits to human powers of endurance, but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... proper relation of both times is preserved, or the advantage of both is secured, as more fully explained in the next member, viz. by discussing when they are incapable of disguise, and deciding, when they are not liable to mistake. Cf. Or. in loc., ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... of late been added circumstances which likewise from a practical point of view made interference and alteration necessary. Her lord and master had always been a bad manager, in fact worse than that; in important matters, thoroughly incapable and fatuous. That had not mattered much hitherto, since others had looked after his affairs; but now the control of them had fallen entirely into his own hands, and he managed them in such a way that expenses increased at a terrific ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... gravely, while the Mole, cocked up on a settle and basking in the firelight, his heels higher than his head, tried to look properly mournful. "Another smash-up only last week, and a bad one. You see, he will insist on driving himself, and he's hopelessly incapable. If he'd only employ a decent, steady, well-trained animal, pay him good wages, and leave everything to him, he'd get on all right. But no; he's convinced he's a heaven-born driver, and nobody can teach him anything; and all ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... had this estrangement taken place? Why was he, the intellectually developed man, incapable of living in harmony with the universal law of life when it was so easy for the primitive man to do so? It was evident that he had lost his way somewhere along the path of normal development. Everything pointed to this—its signs were apparent to all who wished to see. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... injured him, nor any man!" interrupted Wallace: "Sir Ronald Crawford was as incapable of injustice as of flattering the minions of his country's enemy. But Baliol is fallen, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... selecting a parson, a man's claims to preferment are too often determined by scholarship, by length of former service, by interest with authority, rather than by ability to govern a body of boys made up of widely different parts. A capable form-master may prove an incapable house-master. Richard Rutford, to give a concrete example, came to Harrow knowing nothing about Public Schools, and caring as little for the traditions of the Hill, but with the prestige of being a Senior Classic. Nobody questioned his ability to teach Greek. In his own line, and not ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... once through the smoke; then the necessity of the moment caught him, and, taking post between guns, he plied his long lance upon the wretches climbing the rising mound, some without shields, some weaponless, most of them incapable of combat. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... closer to us, easier to verify. Those who enjoy robust health often laugh at invalids: their imagination does not comprehend physical suffering, they are incapable of sympathizing with those who experience it. Likewise those who possess calm and even dispositions cannot witness without laughing an excess of mad anger or of impotent rage. In general we do not take seriously those ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park |
