"Capacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Chapel, was a man of far greater mental capacity and culture. His sermons were clear, logical, conclusive, and earnest. It is not generally known that he was a voluminous writer. He was a frequent contributor to some of the best periodicals of his time. He wrote and published, under the titles, first of "The Evangelical Rambler," and afterwards ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... at all, who lived before the invention of the mariner's compass, and when half our globe was as yet unknown. The same observations are applicable when we would estimate the moral excellence of an individual, his worth in a private or a public capacity, his character as a subject or a governor,—as the framer, or the guardian, or the administrator of the laws. Many a practice in ordinary social intercourse, which would not be tolerated, and would ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... of Casgar, and all who were witnesses of this operation, were less surprised to see humpback revive, after he had passed a whole night, and great part of a day, without giving any sign of life, than at the merit and capacity of the barber, who performed this; and notwithstanding all his faults, began to look upon him as a great physician. The sultan, transported with joy and admiration, ordered the story of humpback to be written down, with that of the barber, that the memory ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Maude took over command and his wonderful capacity for administration was soon manifested. Also more boats were arriving for river transport, more supplies, both Medical and Military, were being sent out. Control of the campaign was taken over by the War Office. Canteens were established at different points, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... exclusively the Jewish population.* It now possesses a very ably-conducted weekly organ, and of all sections of the Social-Democratic group it is unquestionably the best organised. This is not surprising, because the Jews have more business capacity than the Russians, and centuries of oppression have developed in the race a wonderful talent for secret illegal activity, and for eluding the vigilance of ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... (astuce)—her anxiety not to commit herself in writing; her transmission to Prince Talleyrand of a verbal message; and of the climax of the whole intrigue in the arrival in Paris that same night of Louis Philippe, and of his proclamation in his capacity of Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. The transition from this to royalty was easy, for it had been pre-arranged. It was M. de Talleyrand, we are assured, who overcame the "faint scruples" of the Duke of Orleans, and it was his advice that "decided the king to go at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... proof of that than his faith in Millner's power to grasp the situation, and his tacit recognition of the young man's right to make the most of it. Millner felt that Mr. Spence would have despised him even more for not using his advantage than for not seeing it; and this homage to his capacity nerved him to greater alertness, and made the concluding moments of their talk as physically exhilarating as ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned the touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. The world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices; and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross than any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... three boxes containing the panorama right side up with care, you see. I had them carted from the depot. Cost me a dollar. People thought they were coffins. Ha! ha! Six new tin candlesticks, you observe; also the ceiling whitewashed; also ten extra seats introduced, making the entire capacity of the hall three hundred and fifty—giving twelve inches of sitting room to each person. No extra charge for these fixings, though I made them expressly on your account. There are some things about this hall to which I would call your ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... be taken for granted, that he wished for more active employment in seamanship, than he could well expect to obtain, on board a man of war, in the capacity of a midshipman. The mode which his uncle is said to have adopted for what is called the recovery of the original bias of his nephew's mind, was to work on the ambition which, it is on all hands agreed, he in a supereminent degree possessed, ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... but his attendants suspected some snare. They burst into loud lamentations, and were described by some children, who observed them, to be 'greeting and roaring like women.' This incident the lady of Drumakiln (who was a person of some capacity) afterwards told her neighbours as a strange instance of effeminacy in these ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... to the chemical studies which have been already mentioned, Gloody was employed as assistant, to the extent of his limited capacity for making himself useful. He had no reason to suppose that I was the object of any of the experiments, until the day before the tea-party. Then, he saw the dog enticed into the new cottage, and apparently killed by the administration of poison of ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... Miss Porter couldn't deny, said the sisterhood,—she was accepting devoted attentions from Mr. Stuyvesant, and in her capacity as a Red Cross ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Leonard seemed to have no capacity to think or speak of the future or the past. He set Aubrey off on his own concerns, and listened with interest, asking questions that showed him perfectly alive to what regarded his friend, but the passive ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first declaration of love in by-gone times.—"Great works," at last was my bursting exclamation. In old Europe I had to take off my hat half a dozen times, and walk from east to west before I could earn one pound in the capacity of sworn interpreter, and translator of languages in the city of London. Here, I had earned double the amount in a few minutes, without crouching or crawling to Jew or Christian. Had my good angel ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... while I merely laughed at his last observations, "that if the Minister had been no more than a mathematician, the Prefect would have been under no necessity of giving me this check. I know him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant. Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate—and events ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were among the earliest settlers of the colony. While still a boy, Johns Hopkins came to Baltimore without any capital but good health, the good habits in which he had been brought up, and unusual capacity for a life of industrious enterprise. He began on the lowest round of the ladder of fortune, and by his economy, fidelity, sagacity, and perseverance he rose to independence and influence. He was called ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... Mr. Brinkley's recommendation, and have not repented—Cuvier's Theory of the Earth. It is admirably written, with such perfect clearness as to be intelligible to the meanest, and satisfactory to the highest capacity. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... a striking countenance to look upon. The poet wore a luxuriant black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded the forehead. The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... subject and so employed have always understood that after being received into the Military service of the United States, in any capacity, they could never be reclaimed by their former holders. Except upon such understanding on their part, the order of the President, as to this class of Persons, would be inoperative. The General Commanding ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... joy, we understand that there are many learned, able, godly, and prudent ministers in that Kingdome, fit to be imployed in that government, together with such able and pious men, as are to be joyned with them in the capacity of ruling Elders. It shall be a part of our prayers, that the Lord of the Harvest may send forth many more labourers in that Kingdome, where the Harvest is so great and the Labourers so few proportionably; ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... and considerable borough influence, was destitute of ability of any kind, and had not even any of that official experience which in some situations may at times compensate or conceal the want of talent.[73] The King preferred Lord Shelburne, a statesman whose capacity was confessedly of a very high order, who had more than once been Secretary of State,[74] and who had been recognized as the leader of what was sometimes called the Chatham section of the Whigs, ever since the death of the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... could be more brilliant in point of color than the group of seven water-color pictures of a sunny flower-garden by Mrs. Sears. In these works pure and limpid color has been pushed to its extreme capacity, under full daylight conditions, with a splendor of brightness which never crosses the line of crudity, but holds the same relative values as we see in nature, the utmost force of local color courageously set forth and contrasted without apparent ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... prostrate on the threshold of his own temple. The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the provost-marshal, amplified by Oriental exaggeration, justified the ideas which were entertained of the capacity of Ali Pacha. Impatient of celebrity, he took good care himself to spread his fame, relating his prowess to all comers, making presents to the sultan's officers who came into his government, and showing travellers his palace courtyard ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with a curious base of naturalness, swept in upon him for a moment and tugged at his heart-strings. She had been his woman; the little boy with the sticky mouth was child of his. The bald humanity of his affections for them joined forces for a moment with the simple greatness of his new capacity. Dimly he realized that somewhere behind all these things lurked a truth greater than any he had as yet found. Then, with an almost incredible swiftness, this new emotion began to fade away. His brain began to work, his new fastidiousness asserted itself. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of Spencer against the Board of Registration has decided that by the operation of the first section of the XIV. Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, "Women have been advanced to full citizenship and clothed with the capacity to become voters," and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... orbits rise more obliquely into the cranial cavity, thus diminishing the space for the lower part of the anterior lobes of the brain, and the absolute capacity of the cranium is far less than that of Man. So far as I am aware, no human cranium belonging to an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical capacity than 62 cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed in any race of men by Morton, measuring 63 cubic inches; while, on the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... satisfy so well the requirements of Angiosperms that distribution by vegetative buds is only an occasional process. At the same time every bud on a shoot has the capacity to form a new plant if placed in suitable conditions, as the horticultural practice of propagation by cuttings shows; in nature we see plants spreading by the rooting of their shoots, and buds we know may be freely formed not only on stems but on leaves and on roots. Where detachable buds ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... quite positive as to the existence of a house, but doubted its capacity in regard to sleeping accommodations; he also corroborated the testimony of the driver respecting the difficulty of obtaining a vehicle, every horse being engaged haying. The ladies announced that, as the distance was only six ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... entered the Corporation in 1885 as Alderman of the Ward of Bridge, and served the office of Sheriff in 1889-90. He is a member of the Goldsmiths' Company, and is now Master of the Guild of Plumbers for the second time. In this capacity he has taken great interest in all matters connected with sanitation and hygiene. He is a leading member of the Roman Catholic laity ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hardiness is understood the capacity to resist against any special condition of environment. So in speaking of hardiness of the plant it may mean hardiness as to either cold, heat, drouth, fungus or insect trouble. In the present discussion hardiness against cold will be considered ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... and after swelling up are treated with 4 kilogrammes of sodium carbonate previously dissolved in the requisite quantity of water (caustic alkalies cannot be used). The swollen seed is worked up uniformly with shovels, and then placed in an apparatus of 400 kilogrammes capacity, similar to that used in the distillation of ethereal oils, and charged with steam under a pressure of three atmospheres. Coniine distills over with the steam, the greater part separating out in the receiver as an oily stratum, while a part remains dissolved ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... scholars who were of my form and standing, went to Cambridge and proved excellent divines, only poor I, William Lilly, was not so happy; fortune then frowning upon father's present condition, he not in any capacity to ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... more than mere neglect, for he seems to have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no capacity for business. He had not even the supreme quality, associated in doggerel with Dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much. Consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his collection of works of fine art had been sold at public ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... Rockefeller displayed unusual business ability even before he entered the oil business. A young man who, at the age of nineteen, could start a commission house and do a business of nearly five hundred thousand the first year must have had commercial capacity to ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... common wife was undergoing at the victor's hands, the five Pandavs made grim threats, and raised such a protest that the blind uncle, interfering, sent them off to the forest with their wife for twelve years. He also decreed that, during the thirteenth, all must serve in some menial capacity, with the proviso that, if discovered by their cousins, they should never regain ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... stealing and cheating. They seek to avail themselves of every opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires. Their universal bad character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge, malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning, though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of no use in society. The boys will run like wild things after carrion, let it stink ever so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle, there these wretched creatures are to be ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... of the many nobodies; and if he ever attended dinners and banquets and balls, it was in the capacity of reporter. But his cynical humor, which was manifest even in his youth, saved him the rancor and envy which is the portion of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the province of Silesia. Other powers, large and small, threw in their lot with one or the other; while the position of England was complicated by her king being also elector of Hanover, and in that capacity hurriedly contracting an obligation of neutrality for the electorate, although English feeling was strongly in favor of Austria. Meanwhile the failure of the Spanish-American expeditions and the severe losses of English commerce increased the general ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... somehow, this man, to his mind, was an even more powerful factor than Doc Crombie. It was not that Peter held any great appeal with the people, but somehow there was a reserve of mental strength in the man that lifted him far above his fellows, in his capacity to do in emergency. He felt that, with the great shadow of Peter standing by, he had little to fear from ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... off without a hitch, the tent being crowded almost to its capacity, Phil Forrest throwing himself into his work in the air with more spirit and enthusiasm than he had shown at any time since he ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... heard and read of Lucien Apleon, 'The Genius of the Age,' sage, savant, artist, sculptor, poet, novelist, a giant in intellect, the Napoleon of commercial capacity, the croesus for wealth, and master of all courts and diplomacy. But I had not heard that you were in England, the last news par' of you which I read, gave you as at that wonderful city, the New Babylon, more wonderful, I hear, than any of the former cities ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Socialism which culminated towards 1848, whose best-known publicists were Cabet, Pecqueur, Louis Blanc, Vidal, is precisely that it no longer attributes to the State the power to transform, the capacity to revolutionize, the role of magic regeneration, which the writers in this dangerous phase of enthusiasm assigned to it. For the Utopians all the machinery of a bureaucracy could be put at the service of all the classes, fraternally reconciled in view of the coming social regeneration. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... in the wagon, with Mrs. Graham, waiting on that lady in the capacity of maid. Stella had undertaken to teach her the duty of maid, and the girl soon did for Mrs. Graham what had taken a ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... grasses, winged creatures are in the shrubs, the trees, the air, active, eager, beautiful life is everywhere. The heart thrills with the beauty, the joy, the zest, the abundance of it, expands to a capacity for the amplitude of it. Human life grows sweeter, richer, more worth while. There is so much to live for, so much to hope for; this is the meaning and ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... capacity as war correspondent for the Planet, I was with Madero's column. But, in the moment of defeat at the hands of the regulars, the miserable greasers turned on me as a gringo. I was compelled to flee for my ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... and trustworthy, and naturally a capable fellow; but I think he is rather too unsophisticated to act in that capacity, as I don't believe he has ever visited a town of over three hundred ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... her hypersensitive nerves could almost have called his smile a leer; but she looked at the man's broad face, whose lines told of no resources of thought, no great natural capacity for heroism, and yet were furrowed by the sharpness of this persecution. The face would have been fat had it not been half-starved. It was pale now under the ill-kempt hair, and the set purpose of helpfulness was stamped upon it. She took back the word "leer" ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Palace. But the Palace did not retain influence so long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It was by degrees discovered that the King, in his individual capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters, bishoprics and embassies, lordships of the Treasury and tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud and bedchamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been already shown how bi be, is used as an Auxiliary in the declension of all verbs. There are two other verbs which are occasionally employed in a similar capacity; the one with an Active the other with a Passive effect. These are dean to do or make, ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... in the advantages of union, which he had been the first to urge at the Reform convention of 1859. Mr., afterwards Sir, Alexander Campbell, who had been for some years a legal partner of Sir John Macdonald, was gifted with a remarkably clear intellect, great common sense, and business capacity, which he displayed later as leader of the senate and as minister of the crown. Mr., afterwards Sir, Oliver Mowat, who had been a student of law in Sir John Macdonald's office at Kingston, brought to the discharge of the important ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... civil engineer; and, in this capacity, I was brought out to the mines of Mexico, by the owner of one of them, who knew my father. I was young at the time, and I spent several years employed in the mines of Zacatecas ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... to teach. In short, he resembled those vagrant swallows that skim along the level of some pool or river, without venturing to wet one feather in their wings, except in the accidental pursuit of an inconsiderable fly. Yet, though his capacity or inclination was unsuited for studies of this kind, he did not fail to manifest a perfect genius in the acquisition of other more profitable arts. Over and above the accomplishments of address, for which he hath been already celebrated, he excelled ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... marksmanship a little piece of statistical information in the British Museum, referring to the Boston Volunteers, shows the capacity of the men for hitting the target (no question of Bullseyes!) The total number of men firing was 108 and, after several rounds each, the number of men who had actually hit the target was 37, the number of those who did not hit the target ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... breakfast leisurely at nine o'clock may be satisfied with a roll and a cup of hot drink, but a commuter with a trip ahead to office or shop, and the farmer who must make an early start in the day, cannot rely on light, quickly digested food in the morning. Their energy and working capacity will slow down ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... ever loyal, in his wake. For the boy, without blaming anyone, anxious only to fulfil a responsibility that weighed on him, was aware that Mr Willett—whether considered as a man or as a treasurer— had taken in overmuch beer, and might need support in either capacity or ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... must talk somewhat louder still. And since I am talking to you now, there's something else I might as well say to you—not in my capacity as justice, but simply man to man, Mr. Krueger. A man who is after all an honourable citizen should be more chary of his confidence—he should not adduce the evidence of ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... for an imperial income, would bear the burden of those grotesque teeth, protruding like a sample of wares in a dentist's showcase? But as the teeth came nearer and the great rubicund face bore down upon him, the prominence of the notorious incisors affected him less than their carnivorous capacity—he felt himself almost swallowed up by this monstrous beast of prey, so admirably equated to our small day of large things, to that environment in which he, poor degenerate artist, was but a little singing-bird. The long-forgotten word ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... have in Anne's lifetime, as touching her father—the old man had been square all through. He was as good as they make 'em. But there was nothing for him, Raven, in the concern except its cumulative capacity for making money. He'd no traditional pride in it, as the old man had. He'd worked for all he was worth, to squeeze every drop he could out of it so that his mother—"your grandmother, you know, Dick"—might have every last luxury she wanted. Well, she'd had 'em, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... in every native of Normandy, be he peasant or gentleman, an infinite capacity for enjoyment, and at the same time a marvellous faculty for co-ordinating and systematizing ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the ants might have seemed to us more promising. Their smallness of size was not necessarily too much of a handicap. They could have made poison their weapon for the subjugation of rivals. And in these orderly insects there are obviously a capacity for labor, and co-operative labor at that, which could carry them far. We all know that they have a marked genius: great gifts of their own. In a civilization of super-ants or bees, there would ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... common with them, as distinguished from either Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Raikes. At the last elections both for Oxford and Cambridge, the Liberal candidate was an actual Professor. Mr. Stuart indeed is much more than a mere professor; he has shown his capacity for practical work of various kinds. But I could not but look on the Oxford choice of 1878 as unlucky. Mr. H. J. S. Smith was brought forward purely on the ground of "distinction," distinction, it would ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... steadfast, capable of a deep devotion and self-forgetfulness. But the age changes, and with it must change our ideals of human quality. Not that we would give up what we have loved: we would add what a new life demands. In a new age men must acquire a new capacity, must be men upon a new scale, and with added qualities. We shall need a new Renaissance, ushered in by a new "humanistic" movement, in which we shall add our present minute, introspective study of ourselves, our jails, our slums, ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... achievements is a record of service. The men and women who have helped the world most were all servants—servants to humanity. The happiest man is he who serves. God calls some men to sow and some to reap; some to work in wood and stone; to sing and speak. Work is honorable in all, regardless of the capacity in which we serve. There is no great difference, after all, between the ordinary laborer and the railroad president; both are servants, and the standard of measurement to be applied to each man is the same. It is not so much a question of station ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... the citizens had suffered from the inconveniences of the Iter, when a brief adjournment over Easter took place. In the meantime, an assay was held at the Guildhall of the new weights and measures which Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, had, in his capacity as the king's treasurer, caused to be issued throughout the country. One result of the trial was that whilst the city's weight of eight marks was discovered to be slightly deficient, the city's bushel was found to be more ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... discover if the Three-pronged Osmia shared her capacity, in the first place, with the other bramble-dwellers and, in the second, with Bees differently housed, but also destined laboriously to cut a new road for themselves when the hour comes to quit the nest. Well, apart from ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... forms in which his high spirits and passionate nature expressed themselves. Art, in the shape of a bad education, aggravated his faults; but his honesty and imagination, his generosity and childlike capacity for admiration and affection were from nature alone. He was a schoolboy who never grew up; cultivating his cabbages at Worthing in 1875, he is essentially the same shrewd, passionate, romantic scapegrace who deserted his ship ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the midst of his female senate, converted so adroitly into provincial detectives, and his personal capacity, had induced the Congregation of Jesus to select him out of all the ecclesiastics in the town, as the secret proconsul of Touraine. Archbishop, general, prefect, all men, great and small, ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... wisdom of the Wala's daughter, not the rich treasury of runes, have availed to change Siegfried from his big incurable simplicity,—as his answer in effect declares: "More did you give me, wonder-woman, than I have capacity to retain! Be not angry that your teaching should have left me still untaught. One knowledge there is which I, none the less, hold fast: that Bruennhilde lives and is mine; one lesson I learned with ease: to ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... for his years. Hannah, she says he's older now than I be," and she blushed a little as she looked up at me; while for a moment the tears came into my eyes, as I thought of this poor, plain woman, who had such a capacity for enjoyment, and whose life had been so dull, and far apart from the pleasures and satisfactions which had made so much of my own life. It seemed to me as if I had had a great deal more than I deserved, while this poor soul was almost beggared. ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... the ignorance of the whole household, in which life ran smoothly on, while the head of both was a fugitive from justice, if not the victim of a swift retribution. He worked in all the pathos which the facts were capable of holding, and at certain points he enlarged the capacity of the facts. He described with a good deal of graphic force the Northwick interior. Under his touch the hall expanded, the staircase widened and curved, the carpets thickened, the servants multiplied, the library into which "the Events' representative ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... peculiar charm? Oh! but, say you, this was a young fellow of too low a rank of life to deserve so great a display. May be so: but was my condition, strictly considered, one jot more exalted? or, had I really been much above him, did not his capacity of giving such exquisite pleasure sufficiently raise and enoble him, to me, at least? Let who would, for me cherish, respect, and reward the painter's, the statuary's, the musician's art, in proportion to the delight taken in them: but at my age, and with my taste for ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... great range of geological changes, only a few of which can well be traced by the general student. The work of land water is due to three classes of properties—to the energy with which it is endowed by virtue of its height above the sea, a power due to the heat of the sun; to the capacity it has for taking substances into solution; and to its property of giving some part of its own substance to other materials with which it comes in contact. The first of these groups of properties may be called ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... in their capacity for prolongation, and in this respect are classified into immutable, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... violence, or change the title of Patricius, bestowed upon him by the eastern emperor, for that of king. In this death-struggle of the realm the senate showed courage. The Roman fathers in their corporate capacity served as a last bond of the State as it was falling to pieces; and Sidonius Apollinaris said of them that they might rank as princes with the bearer of the purple, only, he adds significantly, if we put out of ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... the sense of freedom of contract, judicially translated into what one Justice has labelled the Allgeyer-Lochner-Adair-Coppage doctrine,[157] lost its potency as an obstacle to the enforcement of legislation calculated to enhance the bargaining capacity of workers as against that already possessed by their employers. Prior to the manifestation, in Senn v. Tile Layers Protective Union,[158] decided in 1937, of a greater willingness to defer to legislative judgment as to the wisdom and need of such enactments, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... carrying out this authority, that is, money and military service—the body, of which the popular will and authority is the soul. The people declare their will that such and such individuals shall be clothed with, and represent their united power, and act for them in this representative capacity. The persons thus chosen, and who constitute the government or central head, with its subordinate agencies, declare from this central position of authority with which they have been invested by the people, that such and such things are necessary for the welfare and orderly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was to be made as happy as possible. The physician made minute inquiries as to the arrangements for attendance in the sick-room, and suggested a professional nurse. But I pleaded so hard against this, assuring him of my capacity for doing much more than I had to do, that he gave way, and consented to Milly being waited only by ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... them. That was obvious to his mind at the first glance. He could not but perceive the strong preference that General Harero evinced for Isabella Gonzales, nor could he disguise the fact to his own heart that she cared not a farthing for him. It required but a very simple capacity to understand this; any party, not interested in the general's favor, could easily discern it. But the general counted upon his high rank, and also upon the fact that his family was a good one, though his ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... time, may be considered, in the severe sense of a great and symmetrical musical work, the finest lyric drama ever written, with the possible exception of Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "Iphigenia in Tauris." It is rarely performed, because its broad, massive, and noble effects are beyond the capacity of most singers, and belong to the domain of pure music, demanding but little alliance with the artistic clap-trap of startling scenery and histrionic extravagance. Yet our composer's conscience shows its completeness in his obedience to the law of opera; for the music he has ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... things that are in accord with itself, collecting and arranging them in and under itself-in itself that they may be its own, and under itself that they may be its servants; but other things not in accord with it it discards and expels. That there is present in love every capacity for receiving truths in harmony with itself, and a longing to conjoin them to itself, has been made clear also by the fact that some who were simple-minded in the world were taken up into heaven, and yet when they were with the angels they ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... indeed, frequently have a pronounced unpleasant flavour, due to the nature of the soil, to careless vinification, or to the inferior quality of liqueur with which the wines have been dosed. Out of some fifty samples of all ages and varieties which in my capacity of juror I tasted at the Paris Exhibition I cannot call to mind one that a real connoisseur of sparkling wines would care ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... came gradually to establish, at the office of Household Words, that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But we settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual, self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... would be useful as showing how much, rather than how little, could be put into such an edifice. It contains, besides the museum proper, the floor-space of which amounts to about 10,000 square feet, a lecture-hall with a seating-capacity of about 1,200, a library and four large class-rooms, which, if the intentions of the founder are fully carried out, will be used for practical instruction in the fine arts. Desirable as all these rooms are in a building of the kind, the only one which seems to us absolutely necessary is ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... Phil's capacity and mine was exhausted comparatively early in the feast, but everybody else was eating steadily on, so we dared not refuse a course, lest it should be considered rude in Holland. We did our best, straight through to a wonderful iced pudding, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... presenting many obstacles to its speedy advance, not the least of which was the difficulty of proceeding directly to the point proposed.[14] To obviate this, however, they were accompanied by three persons in the capacity of guides;[15] whose knowledge of the woods, and familiarity with those natural indices, which so unerringly mark the direction of the principal points, enabled them to pursue the direct course.—When they had approached within six miles of the town, the [116] army encountered ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... continued in this path until the highest attainable degree of utility of the parts determined was reached. But in addition to the organs of positive or negative selection-value, there were some which were indifferent as far as the success and especially the functional capacity of the workers was concerned: wings, ovarian tubes, receptaculum seminis, a number of the facets of the eye, perhaps even the whole eye. As to the ovarian tubes it is is possible that their degeneration was an advantage for the workers, in ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... of men whose duty it is to believe in the supernatural, to perform daily miracles, and to keep alive that mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination. But in the English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief, but through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... as in those of the two previous seasons, articles of clay predominate. They consist of Tinajas, or large, decorated, vase-shaped water-vessels. These vary in capacity from one to six gallons, and are the principal vessels used for holding and storing water for domestic purposes. These vases do not vary greatly in form, yet the colored designs with which they are ornamented present as many variations as ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... was beating in her throat. She dreaded to find herself alone with this grande dame. She believed that Ben had kept his promise and that this move of his mother was being made of her own volition, but in what capacity was she being invited? Was it a case of giving a piece of employment to a needy girl in her son's absence, or was she being asked on the footing of a friend? In any case, she knew her lover would wish her to go, and as for Miss Upton she would ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... with him, upon the subject of the world's redemption by the Saviour of it, and the doctrine of repentance preached from heaven, together with an holy faith of our blessed Redeemer Jesus Christ; and then I proceeded to explain to him, according to my weak capacity, the reason why our Saviour took not on him the nature of angels, but rather the seed of Abraham; and how the fallen angels had no benefit by that redemption; and, lastly, that he came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... terminated Fitzgibbon's animosity. Soon afterwards, he became Lord Chancellor, and a peer of Ireland, by the title of Lord Clare; and in the former capacity he found an opportunity, by means of his judicial authority, of ungenerously crashing the rising powers and fortunes of his late antagonist. Curran, who was at this time a leader, and one of the senior practitioners at the Chancery Bar, soon ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... your retirement last summer from the town: for it was immediately after, that this comedy was written. If I have failed in my performance, it is only to be regretted, where there were so many not inferior either to a Scipio or a Lelius, that there should be one wanting equal in capacity ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension, nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what I wish him to respect in me, the name ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... Dan called that; and then nothing being forthcoming to toss with—dice or money not being among our permanent property—the eggs were distributed according to the "holding capacity" of the company: one for the missus, two for the Maluka, and half a dozen each for the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... earlier lecture that there are hypotheses and hypotheses, and when people tell you that Mr. Darwin's strongly-based hypothesis is nothing but a mere modification of Lamarck's, you will know what to think of their capacity for forming ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Washington, although moments of terrific doubt and despondency were continually crossing his mind. To him the rules of service were familiar, and he was more accustomed to consider his general in the capacity of a ruler, than as exhibiting the characteristics of the individual. A dreadful instance had too recently occurred, which fully proved that Washington was above the weakness of sparing another in mercy to himself. While pacing, with hurried steps, through the orchard, laboring under ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... out, is a masterpiece of wisdom. In view of the absolute sovereignty of God and man's absolute dependence upon it, Luther urges man to go to work in his chosen occupation in childlike reliance upon God. He is to employ to the utmost capacity all his God-given energies of mind and body and work as if everything depended on his industry, strength, prudence, thrift, planning, and arranging. Having done all, he is to say: Dear Lord, it is all subject to Thy approval. Thou art Master; do Thou boss my business. If Thou overrulest my plans, ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... hand, and even that had lost its strength; so it was necessary to find some gentlemanly occupation for it. After trying a little of everything, I fell upon card-box making, and here I am at cases for the lace and buttons of the national guard; it is work of little profit, but it is within the capacity of all. By getting up at four and working till eight, I earn sixty-five centimes; my lodging and bowl of soup take fifty of them, and there are three sous over for luxuries. So I am richer than France herself, for I have no deficit in my budget; and I continue to serve her, as ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... time. When the war broke out between Charles and his parliament, Huw espoused the part of the king, not as soldier, for he appears to have liked fighting little better than tanning or husbandry, but as a poet, and probably did the king more service in that capacity than he would if he had raised him a troop of horse, or a regiment of foot, for he wrote songs breathing loyalty to Charles, and fraught with pungent satire against his foes, which ran like wild-fire through Wales, and had a great ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... cries of perplexity and discontent that still fill the air. Thus men often say, "If you believe in liberty for yourself, why refuse it to the Tagals?" That is right; they should have, in the degree of their capacity, the only kind of liberty worth having in the world, the only kind that is not a curse to its possessors and to all in contact with them—ordered liberty, under law, for which the wisdom of man has not yet found a better safeguard than the guaranties of civil rights in the ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... checked apron she had worn, came out to shake hands with the company and tell them supper was all ready, before she went back to her deserted boarding-house. Even Bud was going to stay at the new house that night, in some cooked-up capacity or other, and all the men from the bunk-house were hiding out among the trees to see Margaret's father and mother and shake hands ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... bound to exercise ordinary diligence and reasonable skill; and he is responsible only for the want thereof. Ordinary diligence is that which persons of common prudence use in conducting their own affairs. Reasonable skill is that usually possessed by persons of common capacity employed in ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No such conflict was perceived whilst society had not yet grown beyond national communities too small and simple to overtax Man's limited political capacity disastrously. But we have now reached the stage of international organization. Man's political capacity and magnanimity are clearly beaten by the vastness and complexity of the problems forced on him. And it is at this anxious moment that he finds, when he looks upward for a ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... ground. Large forest trees withered and cast their leaves. In spots, the mountains looked as if they had been scorched by fire. The salt sea-water came up the Hudson ninety miles, when ordinarily it scarcely comes forty. Toward the last, the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb and dissipate the smoke was exhausted, and innumerable fires in forests and peat-swamps made the days and the weeks—not blue, but a dirty yellowish white. There was not enough moisture in ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the head of the table—a big, joyous, vigorous widow, who had managed the Company House at Kirkwood ever since its erection two years before, and who had been an employee of the Light and Power Company, in one capacity or another, for some five years before that—or ever since, as she put it, "the juice got pore George." Mrs. Tolley loved every inch of Kirkwood; for her it ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... not signed by Strigel), was added as an interpretation of Strigel's declaration. But even now a minority refused to submit to the demands of the Duke, because they felt that they were being deceived by ambiguous terms, such as "capacity" and "aptitude," which the wily Strigel and the Synergists used in the active or positive, and not in the passive sense. These conscientious Lutherans whom the rationalist Planck brands as "almost insane, beinahe verrueckt," were also deposed and banished, 1562. Strigel's declaration ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... lingering, summing up their victory, and counting the future as assured, there was a silent watchful man on the other side of the redoubts who for forty-eight hours never left the lines, and who with a great capacity for stubborn fighting could move, when the stress came, with the celerity ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... appointed brigadier-general, of a subsequent date to General Floyd's commission. He goes to the West, where laurels grow; but I think it will be difficult to win them by any one acting in a subordinate capacity, and especially by generals appointed from civil life. They are the aversion of the West Pointers at ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... being casements, unglazed, but protected by a grille of iron bars set vertically—the reja. In the centre of its front facade is a double door, of gaol-like aspect, giving admittance to the passage-way, called saguan; this of sufficient capacity to admit a waggon with its load, intended for those grand old coaches that lumbered along our own highways in the days of Dick Turpin, and in which Sir Charles Grandison used luxuriously to ride. Vehicles of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... it, and in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him that it would be preferable for college men to wait until they could go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He replied that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt dissuasion. He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned, and ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... fastidious choice of language, his power of word-painting, but in the depth and seriousness of his studies. That the amount he has produced, in a literary life of thirty years, is not greater, is one proof among many of the spirit in which he worked. His genius was "an infinite capacity for taking pains." That delicacy of insight, that gift of penetrating into the heart of things, that subtleness of interpretation, which with him seems an instinct, is the outcome of hard, patient, conscientious study. ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Church in Stockholm, one of the largest I ever saw, with two galleries and three aisles, was filled to its capacity. Dr. Talmage was to preach through an interpreter, himself a foremost preacher in his own country. The Doctor had preached through interpreters three times in his life; once when a theological student addressing a congregation ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... reached two stone pillars where a man was standing. Beyond the man he had a glimpse of lawns, a well-kept driveway which curved toward the wood. The man at the gate was of about Peter's age but tall and angular, well tanned by exposure and gave an appearance of intelligence and capacity. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... When a person designated for appointment shall have reported in person to the appointing officer, he shall be appointed for a probational period of six months, at the end of which period, if his conduct and capacity be satisfactory to the appointing officer, he shall receive absolute appointment; but if his conduct and capacity be not satisfactory to said officer he shall be notified that he will not receive absolute appointment, and this notification shall discharge him from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Should this process go on unchecked, in a short time the earth would be completely overrun with living beings. It has been calculated that if a plant produces fifty seeds (which is far below the reproductive capacity of many plants) the first year, each of these seeds growing up into a plant which produces fifty seeds, or altogether two thousand five hundred seeds the next year, and so on, it would under favorable conditions of growth ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... to wriggle into military service without the customary delays, and in the capacity of messenger he had ridden a motorcycle between various headquarters and the front until he had been caught by the Germans in a raid while he was engaged in giving an imitation of Charlie Chaplin in the French trenches. He spoke of General Haig as "Haigy;" ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... these people," said he in his sonorous fashion, "whether judged by cranial capacity, facial angle, or any other test, cannot be regarded as a low one; on the contrary, we must place it as considerably higher in the scale than many South American tribes which I can mention. On no possible supposition can we explain ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you are found guilty of high treason to the people. Have you anything to say?" It was Bagshaw, the President, who spoke, in his capacity as general ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the berths of the large, roomy kind which the grasp for economy and capacity had ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... her admiration, prove himself worthy of her regard, appeal to her sympathy—and then wound her. She is never wholly his until she realises that he has the power to make her miserable as well as to make her happy, and that love is an infinite capacity for suffering. ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... his power of endurance; and a hard gallop of five miles was about the extent of his capacity. The rude jolting of his arm made it extremely painful, while his system, reduced by the fever attending the wound, was incapable of supporting such a heavy draft upon his strength. He bore up against the ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... it fun!" and to myself, "To be typical of our tradition-ridden valley-people, the opposition ought to come from the dead hand of the past." I asked a caller, "One lump or two?" and thought as I poured the tea, "And if the character of that opposition could be made to indicate a fierce capacity for passionate feeling in the older generation, that would make it doubly useful in the story, not only as part of the machinery of the plot, but as indicating an inheritance of passionate feeling in the younger generation, with whom the story is concerned." I dozed off at night, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... cluster of associations that might have hallowed its claims as the "commercial metropolis." Among the State capitals Boston alone had the needed historical eminence, but, besides the obvious drawback of its situation, its capacity and its commissariat resources, except for a host of disembodied intellects, must prove insufficient. There remained the central city of the past, the seat of the Continental Congress, of the Convention and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... no more, for her strength was exhausted, and the power of her mind had consumed the artificial and nervous capacity of her body, which was greatly overtasked. Aminta was ill. With her beautiful head resting on her mother's shoulder, she was taken to her room. All withdrew ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... extension dining-table, built of mahogany. The table is perfectly round, and the leaves, instead of being added in the middle, are curved pieces, fitting around the outer edge in two series, so that when extended to its full capacity the table is still round. I have ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... do our duty here and hereafter let come what may." But this sincerity hides a yet deeper insincerity. May it perhaps be that by saying "We must not talk about it," they succeed in not thinking about it? Our will is weakened? And what then? We lose the capacity for human action? And what then? It is very convenient to tell a man whom a fatal disease condemns to an early death, and who knows it, ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... that her grace the Countess of Bristol's(621) will is really known yet. They talk of two wills—to be sure, in her double capacity; and they say she has made three coheiresses to her jewels, the Empress of Russia, Lady Salisbury, and the whore of Babylon.(622) The first of those legatees, I am not sorry, is in a piteous scrape: ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... his way home from what had proved a really pleasant job. A remarkable piece of luck had come his way this evening, all the more welcome because it was quite unexpected! The young lady at whose birthday party he had been present in capacity of waiter had come into a fortune that day, and she had had the gracious, the surprising thought of presenting each of the hired waiters ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes |
