"Competence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and angrily. There was no doubt about it—he was trapped. This fearful scoundrel at his side, who boasted of his cleverness, would stick to him like a leach—he would have to share. All his own smart schemes for exploiting Mrs. Mallathorpe, for ensuring himself a competence for life, were knocked on the head. There was no helping it—he would have to tell—and to share. And so, ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... "The competence of the ant is not like that of man. It is devoted to the welfare of the species rather than to that of the individual, which is, as it were, sacrificed or specialized for the ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power—those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten—with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where we formerly walked: live better, and lie softer—and shall be wise to do so—than we had means to do in those good old days you ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... armies have thus become mere bands of traders eternally selling or exchanging, comparing or pricing, transporting or shipping. Every man of them wishes to know whether there is a fortune in a collection of old porcelain or merely a competence, and whether it is true that a long robe of Amur River sables, when the furs are perfect and undyed, fetch so many hundreds of pounds on the London market. There are official military auctions going on everywhere, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... our hero and heroine proved their faith by their works. By hard, honest toil and economy, they had laid up a competence which was regularly invested each year, and of which the children were not allowed to know anything, lest it might make ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... pupils in actual practice regard examinations as an end or as a means to an end? As corroborating evidence or as a final proof of competence? ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... replied Jackson, "when Walker recommended you for this service. However, it is all the better so, because I know your devotion, and Tandy has assured me of your competence. Sit down, our talk is likely ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... facts of our human past and their causes that we are enabled to understand our human present, for the present is the child of the past; and it is only in proportion as we thus learn to understand the present that we can face the future with confidence and competence. Past, Present, Future—these can not be understood singly and separately—they are welded together indissolubly ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... qualities of a constitutional monarch are more within its reach? I am afraid it cannot. We found just now that the characteristic use of an hereditary constitutional monarch, at the outset of an administration, greatly surpassed the ordinary competence of hereditary faculties. I fear that an impartial investigation will establish the same conclusion as to his uses during the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the incredibility of miracles, the falsity of prophecy, the cruelty or immorality of Moses and David and other Old Testament worthies, the disagreement of the evangelists in their gospels, etc. The spirit of his book and his competence as a critic are illustrated by his saying of the New Testament: "Any person who could tell a story of an apparition, or of a man's walking, could have made such books, for the story is most wretchedly told. {380} The sum total of a parson's learning ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... excitement about the gold-fields of California was at its highest pitch. Men were flocking to that region from all parts of the earth. Fortunes were being made by some in a few months, and lost by others, at the gaming-tables, in a few days, or even hours. While a few gained a competence, many gained only a bare subsistence; thousands lost their health, and not a few their lives. It was a strange play that men enacted there, embracing all the confusion, glitter, rapid change of scene, burlesque, and comedy of a pantomime, with many ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... matter, namely, the churchly doctrine of revelation.[4] There are three possible relations of reason to this doctrine. First, it may be affirmed that the content of religion and theology is matter communicated to man in extraordinary fashion, truth otherwise unattainable, on which it is beyond the competence of reason to sit in judgment. We have then the two spheres arbitrarily separated. As regards their relation, theology is at first supreme. Reason is the handmaiden of faith. It is occupied in applying the principles which it receives at the hands of theology. These are the so-called Ages ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... he had no leisure to cultivate letters, still less the arts; but he acquired a routine knowledge of his business, and when he had an opportunity to rise, under the Empire, to the sphere of superior employees, he assumed a superficial air of competence which concealed the son of a porter, though none of it rubbed into his mind. His ignorance, however, taught him to keep silence, and silence served him well. He accustomed himself to practise, under the imperial regime, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... to one specified class; and the election of governor should be free, although with the limitation that only ex-ministers and high dignitaries of the army or of any other institution, who merit through their lofty talents, known competence, and proved morality, that Espana should entrust to them its representation and the exercise of its sovereignty in so precious a portion of its domains, should be eligible to it. Thus jointly do the prestige ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... earning a little money by keeping school himself; not an advanced school, of course, but an ordinary school, such as was kept in the country districts in the winter. He felt no hesitation as to his competence. The qualifications required by the school committees were by no means large, and so far there ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of the Northwest to offer a competence to the needy, the baffled, the discouraged, the tormented of the eastern States and of Europe. The bulk of its fast-growing population consisted, it is true, of ordinary folk who could have lived on in fair comfort in the older ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... investment, and safe keeping of property, must engage, more or less, the attention; and owing to the extreme selfishness of the heart, are very liable to awaken a lively interest. Hence, the more people are employed in the acquisition of affluence or competence, the more covetous they usually become. This influence, so chilling to the generous affections, can be resisted only by a counter process of reflection. The truth that ourselves and all we have belong to God; the extreme selfishness of the natural ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... mystery to her utterly incomprehensible. At least it seemed so now, when, with the years and the character of a child, she was called to the highest duty of woman's life. This duty comes to some girlish mothers as an instinct, but it was not so with Mrs. Rothesay. An orphan, and heiress to a competence, if not to wealth, she had been brought up like a plant in a hot-bed, with all natural impulses either warped and suppressed, or forced into undue luxuriance. And yet it was a sweet plant withal; one that might have grown, ay, and might yet ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Suppose competence, health, and honesty; then a happy marriage depends on four things:—1. An understanding proportionate to thine, that is, a recipiency at least of thine:—2. natural sensibility and lively sympathy in general:—3. steadiness in attaching and retaining sensibility to its proper objects in its ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... he was proposed for a medal of honour and—singular dream of Frenchmen—he was decorated in 1889. He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full life, a happy one, and at the last, glory—"le soleil des morts," as Balzac said—and a competence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writers as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carriere from the beginning. In 1904 Carriere was made honorary ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... was to him boring and incomprehensible, like music to one who has no ear. He looked at people simply from the business point of view, and divided them into competent and incompetent. No other classification existed for him. Honesty and rectitude were only signs of competence. Drinking, gambling, and debauchery were permissible, but must not be allowed to interfere with business. Believing in God was rather stupid, but religion ought be safeguarded, as the common people must have some principle to restrain ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... we subordinate, His gifts. The less, too, shall we dread their loss, the less be at the mercy of their fluctuations. The capitalist does not think so much of the year's gains as does the needy adventurer, to whom they make the difference between bankruptcy and competence. If you have God for your 'enduring substance,' you can face all varieties of condition, and be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... died, without leaving him, a younger son, a competence. Nor would his great relatives give him an office or sinecure by which he might be supported while he sought truth, and he was forced to plod at the law, which he never liked, resisting the blandishments and follies by which he was surrounded; and at intervals, when other young ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... at the hands of the English. They have chosen to regard the method by which I earn my living as unlawful, and on no less than four occasions have brought me to the verge of ruin at the moment when I was upon the point of realising a handsome competence. They have persecuted me relentlessly, confiscated my property, slain my two brothers in action, and would have hanged me ignominiously, had I not been fortunate enough to effect my escape from them; and it was an Englishman who—well, that is a story into which I need not enter with you; let ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the new man. Of large stature, Irons had a reputation of being the strongest man in the New Hampshire grants. No name was better known or respected in all the western valleys. His father, a man of some means, had left him a reasonable competence. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... Lacene, one of the most brilliant women of France, died a few years ago at Lyons in her 104th year. Her will was under contest on account of her extreme age, but the court was fully satisfied of her intellectual competence. In the olden time she had often entertained Mme. de Stael, Mme. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... which, as Mrs Merrifield states, solves the paint of old pictures, and leaves the modern untouched. In a former paper, in which we dwelt much on this subject, we mentioned that we had the report of a very scientific friend, who had spent nearly a life of leisure and competence in experiments on pictures, that the paint of the old masters fused, not only where white lead had been used, but in every part; and we ourselves saw him try the experiment upon the background of an old picture, by means of the blow-pipe, and the result was a fused substance—a glass. We ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... had broken the family back, was accurately and clearly stated in Nora's best hand. The total at the foot evoked a low whistle from Connie. How had it come about? In spite of her luxurious bringing up, there was a shrewd element—an element of competence—in the girl's developing character, which was inclined to suggest that there need be no more difficulty in living on seven hundred a year than seven thousand, if you knew you had to do it. Then she rebuked herself fiercely for a prig—"You ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... money, or anxious about it. But, though every day makes me less and less eager for wealth, every day shows me more and more strongly how necessary a competence is to a man who desires to be either great or useful. At present the plain fact is that I can continue to be a public man only while I can continue in office. If I left my place in the Government, I must leave my seat in Parliament too. For ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... seem a single organism; but cut them into as many parts as you please, each has a life of its own and stirs with independent being. There is nothing that words will not do for him; no service seems too mean or too high. And then his abundance! He puts one in mind of the definition of a competence by the only man I ever saw who had the true flavor of Falstaff in him—"a million a minute and your expenses paid." As Burns said of himself, "The rhymes come skelpin, rank and file." Now they are as graceful and sinuous as water-nymphs, and now they ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... affirm any thing, as of our own knowledge and competence, respecting heavenly bodies which are said to be millions of millions of miles removed from us, it would not perhaps be amiss that we should possess ourselves of a certain degree of incontestible information, as to the things which exist on the earth we inhabit. Among these, one ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... business-absorbed as he might be, Clement Derville was a man of vehement impulse and extreme susceptibility of female charm—weaknesses over which he had again and again resolved to maintain vigilant control, as else fatal obstacles to his hopes of realising a large competence, if not a handsome fortune. He succeeded in doing so; and as year after year glided away, leaving him richer and richer, Madame de la Tour poorer and poorer, as well as less and less personally attractive, he grew to marvel that the bent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... a widow when Bessie was twelve years old, with a neat little cottage in the suburbs of the city and a snug competence in a secure investment. I was fairly settled in business, with an income that would enable us to live in modest comfort, and was determined not to disturb the investment or have it drawn upon in any way for household expenses. But the old lady—I already began ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... vindictively that family livings were a corrupt and indefensible institution. Mr. Grey replied calmly that they probably were, but that the fact did not affect, so far as he could see, Elsmere's competence to fulfil all the duties of rector ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... court poet. It is difficult to ascertain the truth as to his circumstances. The facts above mentioned, as well as his possession of a house in the city and a villa at Nomentum, [40] would point to an easy competence; on the other hand the poet's continual complaints of poverty [41] prove that he was either less wealthy than his titles suggest, or else that he was hard to satisfy. On the accession of Trajan he seems to have left Rome for Spain, it is said because the emperor refused to recognise his ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and a hard long-drawn-out struggle for a livelihood and competence, Sam could conceive of living his life with Sue and deriving something like gratification from just her companionship, and her partnership in his efforts—here and there during the waiting years he had met men who had found such ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... gentleman; but partly owing to his own mismanagement and extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether unavoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of supporting his family, which at that time consisted of a wife and two children. He was not without ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... Sime's competence as a biographer of Goethe, both in respect of knowledge of his special subject, and of German literature generally, is ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... end, we are apt to lose the sense of the purpose which inspired us. This is more drearily true of the pursuit of money than of anything else. I could name several friends of my own who started in business with the perfectly definite and avowed intention of making a competence in order that they might live as they desired to live; that they might travel, read, write, enjoy a secure leisure. But when they had done exactly what they meant to do, the desires were all atrophied. They could not give up their work; they felt it would be safer to have a larger margin, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is a competence for the missus and kids," he kept on repeating to himself, "and the way to finger that competence is to get power." He never owned to himself that this thirst for power was one of the greatest curses of his life; and it did not occur to him that his lust ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... which declared the marriage of Anne Boleyn valid, annulled the title of Catharine's child, Mary, and declared the children of Anne the only lawful heirs to the crown. His faith in the power of Parliament over all civil matters was too complete to admit a doubt of its competence to regulate the succession to the throne. But by the same Act an oath recognizing the succession as then arranged was ordered to be taken by all persons; and this oath contained an acknowledgement that the marriage with Catharine was against Scripture and invalid from the beginning. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... Children ought to stay longer at school and ought to have more encouragement to continue education after they leave the elementary school. But it is chiefly an improvement in the teaching that is wanted, and that of course means the securing of higher competence in the teacher by raising the remuneration and the status of ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... myself an entire absence of the joy in risks with which Merton faced our venture, but at the same time I knew that I was not sorry for a chance to satisfy myself in regard to an untested side of my own character. I knew, too, that I should be afraid, but would that lessen my competence? I had a keen interest in the matter, and was well aware that there was very real danger and possible disgrace if we were caught in a position which we could not afford ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... the darkness and privation of the present, in their faith in the brightness of the years to come. Thus they wait in patience for, while they command success, and the end of their toil is an old age of competence, and in the closing years of life, quiet and repose. Well, he was enjoying these pleasant visions when he saw, some thirty rods ahead of him, a huge bear, with her cubs, 'travelling his way,' as the saying ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... This was not the case a hundred years ago. Now a large proportion of them have been led by bad example and foolish notions to give up such matters to "the servants," whether they are able to afford competent servants or even to judge of the competence of a servant or not. Many of these "mistresses" now devote themselves exclusively to "dress," "amusements," "charity," "politics," and dabbling inconsequently in various crazes. They are not to blame. It is the men who are to blame who deliberately neglect to give to their womenkind a ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... beautiful auburn hair of my wife was borne up from her shoulders, upon which it had been hanging loose, and floated a second or two on the wave after her head had disappeared, I sighed at the remembrance of the transitory enjoyment of competence and love which I had shared with ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for the white pioneer who married an Indian and lived the Indian life—so it was that this gave him competence and a comfortable home after the old trader had been driven out by the railway and the shopkeeper. With the first land he sold he sent his daughter away to school in a town farther east and south, where she had been brought in touch with a life that at once cramped and attracted ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... itself together; the people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none of the professional man's singleness of purpose, might on the basis of a complete story have lost sight of the war in a melee of faction and counter-faction about the competence of the officers. Instead, therefore, of letting the public act on all the facts which the generals knew, the authorities presented only certain facts, and these only in such a way as would be most ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... crucible of another man's mind, and come out again, one and all, in the form of written words. With the loss of every degree of such realism as we have described, there is for art a clear gain of liberty and largeness of competence. Thus, painting, in which the round outlines of things are thrown on to a flat board, is far more free than sculpture, in which their solidity is preserved. It is by giving up these identities that art gains true strength. And so in the case of novels as compared ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 100,000, and the capital investments L200,000,000 sterling, and the desire so ardently entertained by the people of the land, for twenty years back, was gratified at last. The burghers shared in the prosperity to a very large degree, and in lieu of former poverty, competence and wealth became the rule, and many of them became exceedingly rich. It was not unusual to hear Boers expressing undisguised gratitude, not merely for the natural gold deposits, but specially also that people had come to prospect and to invest capital, without which the wealth of the land would ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... circumstances have enabled us to shew some gratitude for benefits heaped upon us? How much greater are these privations to my uncle and aunt now that they are so much more advanced in years, and have been so much longer accustomed to competence and ease; and shall we repine or even regret, unless it is on their account? surely, my dear ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... would follow. He set the completion of this work as the period when he must enlist; working on with difficult self-restraint toward the appointed hour. If he had regrets for a career broken at the very point where it had reached success and was assured of more than competence, he never expressed them. His one regret was the effect of his enlistment on those most closely bound to him by affections which had been deepened and made more tender by the sense of common exile. At last the hour came when he ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... rare that many of them cannot be cited; but simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong. Successful search has been made by one whose competence as an observer is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes place. I refer to the author ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... heart. Bound by these shackles, long my lab'ring mind, Obscurely trod the lower walks of life, In hopes by honesty my bread to gain; But neither commerce, or my conjuring rods, Nor yet mechanics, or new fangled drills, Or all the iron-monger's curious arts, Gave me a competence of shining ore, Or gratify'd my itching palm for more; Till I dismiss'd the bold intruding guest, And banish'd conscience from my ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... fire, or by walking a hundred Yojanas all the while reciting the Vedas, or by giving away one's whole property to a Brahmana conversant with the Vedas, or at least so much as would secure to him a competence for life, or a house properly furnished, and by protecting kine and Brahmanas, one may be cleansed of the sin of having slain a Brahmana. By living upon the scantiest meal every day for a space of six years, a person may be cleansed of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Mrs. Hartwell's train was found to be gratifyingly on time; and in due course Billy was extending a cordial welcome to a tall, handsome woman who carried herself with an unmistakable air of assured competence. Accompanying her was a little girl with big blue ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... that my father was an apparitor, and I went to Oxford as a servitor, so that in birth you have the advantage of us. Of course, I do not mean that every one does not in the abstract prefer prosperous matches, but John has a fair independent competence, and can afford to do as he pleases; and, for my part, I should be very sorry if this ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... must be considered as highly distinguished, beyond the common lot of mortality, with the temporal blessings of comforts, honour, and long life. With respect to the first of these, he enjoyed health, peace, and competence; for, besides what he derived from his own family, the present Duke of Marlborough, after his father's death, settled an annuity on Mr. Bryant of 600 l. which he continued to receive from that noble family till ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... that Mrs. Burgoyne would approach him again, coldly as she had parted from him. She had betrayed to him all the sick confusion of soul that existed beneath her intellectual competence and vigour. The situation between them, indeed, had radically changed. He laid aside deference and humility; he took up the natural mastery of the priest as the moral expert. She had no faith; and faith would save her. She was ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Here, within the short space of fifteen months, he produced a rapid succession of dramas, operas, and farces, as well as several small poems. The success of his works obtained him the appointment of poet to the court. He was now in the enjoyment of all that could render life happy—competence, distinction, esteem, friendship and love; but he resolved to sacrifice them all "for that greatest mortal blessing, his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... fairly well. Mowbray has had a Lift in his Inland Revenue Office, and now is secure, I believe, of Competence for Life. Charles wrote me a kindly Letter at Christmas: he sent me his own Photo; and then (at my Desire) one of his wife:—Both of which I would enclose, but that my Packet is already bulky enough. It won't go off to-night when it is written—for ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... country, where broad woods of fir and birch divided the large, well cultivated farms. The gards, or mansions, which we passed, with their gardens and ornamental shrubbery, gave evidence of comfort and competence. The people were in the harvest-fields, cutting oats, which they piled upon stakes to dry. Every one we met saluted us courteously, with a cheerful and friendly air, which was all the more agreeable by ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... whatever confidence any individual of meditative mind may have in these representations of the principles and feelings of the people of Spain, both as to their sanctity and truth, and as to their competence in ordinary circumstances to make these acknowledged, it would be unjust to recall them to the public mind, stricken as it is by present disaster, without attempting to mitigate the bewildering terror which accompanies these events, and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... studded, here and there, with the smiling faces of women and children, happy in the excitement of novelty; or with loads of produce, hastening to the common market at Albany, that served as so many snares to induce the emigrants to enter into those wild mountains in search of competence and happiness. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... by sagacious prevision is the laurel of the statesman, which, in failing to achieve except by force, he takes from his own brow and gives to the warrior, it is none the less a necessary part of his official competence to recognize that in public disputes, as in private, there is not uncommonly on both sides an element of right, real or really believed, which prevents either party from yielding, and that it is better for men to ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... naturopath, illness is not a perplexing and mysterious occurrence over which you have no control or understanding. The causes of disease are clear and simple, the sick person is rarely a victim of circumstance and the cure is obvious and within the competence of a moderately intelligent sick person themselves to understand and help administer. In natural medicine, disease is a part of living that you are responsible for, and quite ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... is to be found the tenderness, the generosity, the philanthropy of Serenus, who might have lived in competence and ease, if he could have looked without emotion on the miseries of another. Serenus was one of those exalted minds, whom knowledge and sagacity could not make suspicious; who poured out his soul in boundless intimacy, and thought community of possessions the law of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... people do not any longer pay much attention to those tempting little arithmetical sums by which it is demonstrated that paying so much for ten acres of barren land, and so much for planting it with vines or oranges, the income in three years will be a competence to the investor and his family. People do not spend much time now in gaping over abnormal vegetables, or trying to convince themselves that wines of every known variety and flavor can be produced within the limits of one flat and well-watered field. Few now expect to make a fortune by ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... bitterly resented marriage under such false pretences, and was never weary of protesting. Of her own affairs she refused to tell her husband anything, but as Mr. Lezzard was found to possess no money at all, it became necessary to provide him with a bare competence for the credit of the family. He did his best to win a little more regard and consideration, in the hope that when his wife passed away the reward of devotion might be reaped; but she never forgave him, expressed the conviction that she would outlive him by many years, and exhausted ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... prophecies of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... overwhelmingly on the side of good. And in all such discussions we are apt to allow far too little weight to the change which the New World, and especially the United States, has brought about. In matters of personal prosperity and a high general standard of intellectual and moral competence, what has been achieved there would outweigh a good deal of our Old World defects when we come to drawing ...
— Progress and History • Various
... demonstrate out of this single act of the present minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of your revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the richest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every idea of the known, settled policy of England,) are ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the Black Friars, in London, the famous Court was formally opened, and the King and Queen were cited to appear before it on the 18th of June.[622] Henry was then represented by two proxies, but Catherine came in person to protest against the competence of the tribunal.[623] Three days later both the King and the Queen attended in person to hear the Court's decision on this point. Catherine threw herself on her knees before Henry; she begged him to consider her honour, her daughter's and his. Twice Henry raised her up; he protested ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... give or bequeath money to him, for it would have gone immediately to Romanist ecclesiastical purposes. He had nearly stripped himself of his own considerable means, reserving to himself only the bare competence on which a Catholic priest might live. He was altogether a very queer fish! I remember his coming to me once in tearful but very angry mood, because, as he said, I had guilefully spread snares for his soul! ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... are plenty rich and silly women in Glasgow who are systematically fleeced by the undeserving poor—people who have no earthly business to be poor, who have hands and heads which can give them a competence, only they are moral idiots. No woman should be allowed full use of large sums of money. She is so soft-hearted, she can't say no, and she's imposed ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... in finding that there was, as it were, especially reserved for me the affection of such a noble, right-minded creature as Bessy? My life, commenced in rags and poverty, had, by industry and exertion, and the kindness of others, step by step progressed to competence and every prospect of mundane happiness. Had I not, therefore, reason to be grateful, and to feel that there had been a little cherub who had watched over the life of Poor Jack? On my bended knees I acknowledged ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of the Fatherland; all were well set up, with the look of men who would figure to advantage in any affair calling for physical competence and courage, from coffee and pistols at sunrise in the Parc aux Princes to a battle royal in ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... offer you is a life of endless trouble and care. I know all about it myself. It's all very well to talk of a competence and a big house, and if you were to take me, perhaps we might keep the old place on and furnish it again, and my mother thinks a great deal about the title. For my part I think it's only a nuisance when a man has not got a fortune ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... broke up late, but the new Under-secretary sat up still later, reading and smoking in his bedroom. A box of Foreign Office papers lay on his table. He went through them with a keen sense of pleasure, enjoying his new work and his own competence to do it, of which, notwithstanding his remarks to Mary Lyster, he was not really at all in doubt. Then when his comments were done, and the papers replaced in the order in which they would now go up to the Secretary of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... earned it in the simplest way. The waters of the Lough below possessed a peculiar virtue. You had only to sink a log or stick therein, and in fifty years' time that log or stick would be turned to stone. St. Piran was as quick as you are to divine the possibilities of easy competence offered by this spot. He took time by the forelock, and in half a century was fairly started in business. Henceforward he passed all his days among the rocks above the fall, whistling to himself while he whittled bits of cork and wood into ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... relieving the indigent, comforting the distressed; and, by his unlimited means, devising and executing plans for the complete extirpation of poverty, and all its attendant sufferings and crimes. Never were grander schemes for general good, for the distribution of boundless wealth and universal competence, devised than by this poor, indigent alchymist in his ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... world at her feet, and a most docile husband, ready to make any reasonable, and many unreasonable, sacrifices to idols of her selection—were the merest drops on the surface of Life's crucible. What her soul really longed for was a modest competence of two or three thousand a year, with a not too ostentatious house in town, say in Portland Place; or even in one of those terraces near the Colosseum in Regent's Park, with a sweet little place in Devonshire to go to and get away from the noise, concocted from specifications from the poets, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... musical endowments of his child and at once set to work to make a "prodigy" of him, as Handel, Bach, and Mozart had been before; for in this way the father hoped to secure a mine of wealth and lazy competence for himself. So the boy, when only a few years old, was kept for long weary hours practising the piano, and one of the earliest stories of his life is of the five-year-old little child made to stand on a bench before the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... reference to something already settled by reason, viz. that the Sudra is not qualified for the performance of sacrifices which cannot be accomplished by one not acquainted with the sacred fires (and not to deny the Sudra's competence for devout meditation).—But how can meditation on Brahman be undertaken by a man who has not studied the Vedas, inclusive of the Vedanta, and hence knows nothing about the nature of Brahman and the proper modes of meditation?—Those also, we reply, who do not study ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... inevitably the world of mediocrity; justice that would come of enlightened views; justice that would be the lesson learnt by the nations widely educated up to some point generally accessible; justice well within earthly sight and competence. This confidence was also her reward. For what justice did the Queen look? Here it is the "abyss that appeals ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... after seven years of marriage, when his boy was barely six. During those seven years he had managed to squander the best part of the fortune he had inherited from his step-brother; so that, at his death, his widow and son were left with a scant competence. Mrs. Peyton, during her husband's life, had apparently made no effort to restrain his expenditure. She had even been accused by those judicious persons who are always ready with an estimate of their neighbours' ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... father Joseph. My father had a small factory at Coventry, which he enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling. He was a patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business met with such success that he was able to sell it and to retire upon a handsome competence. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... luxuriating in the extraordinary cheapness of life in Cranham Chambers. Not that she had any special need of cheapness; but the spinster aunt who brought her up had, together with a comfortable competence, left her the habit of parsimony. If, however, she did not know how to enjoy her own income, she allowed many women poorer than herself to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... doing, far away in London, where he had gone to fill a responsible position in a large City firm of solicitors, and whence he had promised to return faithful to his first love, as soon as he found himself fairly on the road to a competence ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... his turn at the spade but to Kenny his methodical competence proved an irritant. He was glad when Hughie's back gave out and forced him ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... shameless That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged sister, by the name of BIGGS. She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always been particularly blameless; Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence, owing to some fortunate speculations in ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... matters affecting the Communal welfare, and, as these matters have never been legally defined, its recognised competence is very wide. It fixes the time for making the hay, and the day for commencing the ploughing of the fallow field; it decrees what measures shall be employed against those who do not punctually pay their taxes; it decides whether a new member shall be admitted into the Commune, and whether ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... it," Henri Verbier answered: he was leaning his elbows on the window-sill and gradually drawing closer to the young cashier. "I don't suppose that an important position like the one you hold, requiring absolute integrity and competence, is given without fullest investigation. Your work is not tiring, but that does not mean it ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... offset the complexion of his face and spectacles," resumed Mrs. Jaynes. "Now let us look at the matter in a worldly point of view. He is able to give you not only a place, but the very highest position in society; he can offer you, not wealth, but competence, which is better than either poverty or riches. Why, my dear, there are a hundred girls in this town, many of whom excel you in everything which men think desirable in a wife, except, perhaps, the poor, perishable quality of beauty,— girls of good family, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and noble creature. And I—in love! Not so discouraged as you may suppose; for Lord Rainsforth often hinted encouragement which even I could scarcely misconstrue. Not caring for rank, and not wishing for fortune beyond competence for his daughter, he saw in me all he required,—a gentleman of ancient birth, and one in whom his own active mind could prosecute that kind of mental ambition which overflowed in him, and yet had never had its vent. And Ellinor!—Heaven forbid ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and hearing of evidence. The testimony of the parents of the victims is heard, and Robin Guillaumet, acting sergeant-at-arms, the man who arrested the Marshal at Machecoul, reads the citation bidding Gilles de Rais appear. He is brought in and declares disdainfully that he does not recognize the competence of the Tribunal, but, as canonic procedure demands, the Prosecutor at once 'in order that by this means the correction of sorcery be not prevented,' petitions for and obtains from the tribunal a ruling that this objection be ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... a page where the right of royal initiative in Council had been thoughtfully underlined by the Professor; and he discovered with astonishment that a whole series of constitutional questions lay altogether outside the competence of ministers to deal with until they had been first formally submitted to the King himself. Under this heading he found that no financial proposal touching on Crown lands, or on grants to the royal family, could become a matter of ministerial discussion without his consent first given; no proposal ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... up this cable in my letter to Lord K. of date, where I say, "I have just seen Bertie Lawrence who I am sending to reinforce Wallace. He is bitterly disappointed at losing his Brigade, but there is no help for it. He is a business man of great competence, and I think he ought to be able to do much to get things on to a ship-shape footing. General Douglas is very sorry too and says that Lawrence was one of the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the intelligent study of the best of the old masters; had made new friends and cemented more strongly the ties that bound him to old ones; and he was returning to his dearly loved native land and to his family with high hopes of gaining for himself and his three motherless children at least a competence, and of continuing his efforts in behalf of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... private business, which keeps me in the Confederate lines, I shall be with ——- again. Tell him to be in good spirits. This city has still a great deal of money hoarded in garrets—and we shall soon be here. Then we can retire on a competence—and when Fonthill is confiscated, we will purchase it, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... days Not equally oppressive is to all. Him, who ne'er listened to the voice of praise, The silence of neglect can ne'er appal. There are, who, deaf to mad Ambition's call, Would shrink to hear th' obstreperous trump of Fame; Supremely blest, if to their portion fall Health, competence, and peace. Nor higher aim Had He, whose simple tale these ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... which, she was tolerably sure, she never appeared to anybody else—as the true child of the line of frugal forebears, of sea-scouring men and cheese-paring women, who, during nearly two hundred years of thrift, had put penny to penny to save the Guion competence. Standing in the cheerful "Colonial" hall which their stinting of themselves had made it possible to build, and which was still furnished chiefly with the objects—a settle, a pair of cupboards, a Copley portrait, ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and on the route to China, fall into the hands of any other European Power, and the only means of preventing such a catastrophe is by the proclamation of a Protectorate over it—a Protectorate which, so long as the successors of Raja BROOKE prove their competence to govern, should be worked so as to interfere as little as possible in the internal affairs of the State. The virulently hostile and ignorant criticisms to which Sir JAMES BROOKE was subjected in England, and the financial ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... out of town. Then he said he would stay in Boston until he came back, that he had information for him that was of the greatest importance, and that when he told father what it was, that he, Langdon, could have anything my father possessed in the way of a job and a competence for life. It sounded like blackmail—I could think of nothing else coming from Tom Langdon—and I told him so. That was unfortunate. There were several persons in my office at the time. He resented the statement and we quarreled. They heard it ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... first appearance she renewed her protestation against the competence of the tribunal. Bromley lord-chancellor answered her, showing the jurisdiction of the English law over all persons within the country; and the commissioners ordered both the objection and the reply to be registered, as if to save ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... bookstall. I have often heard him say that literature as a profession is misunderstood, and that rightly followed, with the same pains and the same prudence which are brought to bear on other professions, a competence at least can be always ultimately obtained. But the way may be long and tedious, and it leads to no power but over thought; it rarely attains to wealth; and though reputation may be certain, fame, such as poets dream of, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Paris elected as its magnus magister in 1381, and who afterward wore the archiepiscopal and also the cardinal's hat, tells us that not ex jure humano, not from human legislation, but ex jure divino, from divine law, does science derive its competence to exercise the censura; and the privileges and charters granted by popes, emperors and kings are nothing more than the acts of recognition of this prerogative of science that comes to it ex jure divino, or, as an alternative expression has it, ex jure naturali, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... my dignity by telling him that if it was my seamanship he was alluding to I wanted him to understand that a fellow who had survived being turned inside out for an hour and a half by Captain R- was equal to any demand his old ship was likely to make on his competence. However he didn't give me a chance to make that sort of fool of myself because before I could open my mouth he had gone round on another tack and was addressing himself affably to Mr. Powell who swinging his leg never ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... shall be yours. I command you to be dutiful towards her, as I hope she will be just and kind to you; and I recommend it particularly to you, if ever you enjoy the estate of Hamilton, and what may, I hope, justly belong to you, (considering how long I have lived with a small competence, which has made me run in debt,) I hope God will put it into your head to do justice to my honour, and pay my just debts. There will be enough to satisfy all, and give your brothers and sisters such provisions ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... from April to September, 1898, President of the Paris Peace Commission in October, in December, after a career of prime national importance for nine months in which he had demonstrated his high competence, Day retired to the relative obscurity of the United States circuit bench. Although later raised to the Supreme Court, he has never since been a national figure. As an example of a meteoric career of a man of solid rather than meteoric qualities, ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... should ascertain the direction of those faculties. Instinct tends to promote the interests of the species, and is limited to the more or less skilful, but monotonous, performance of a special task. Within that limited sphere its competence is perfect. Reason may be often at fault, but its capacity enlarges with practice, and the scope of its application is unlimited. It may be exerted in the interest of the species, of the tribe, of the family; it may devote itself to the service of an abstract principle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... will decorate himself and his department with names to fit his ideas of beauty and usefulness, and he'll proclaim these in the official gazette for the intention of his department. The Guadaloupeans argue the competence of a minister according as he has a department with titles that sweep the horizon and claim kin with the Antipodes and the Resurrection. Only it seemed to me that these things tended in time to make the figures of speech on ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... and greatest deeds? Who has beheld a Thersites transformed into an Achilles? Who a Shylock, Iago, or Regan changed into an Antonio, Othello, or Cordelia, or a Simon Magus into a Paul? What virtue of nature is in a man culture may bring out; but to put nature into any man surpasses her competence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... preceded the Communistic cataclysm. We have poor men, and men who can live only by daily labour; but these have dissipated their wealth, or are looking forward at no very distant period to a sufficient competence. The entire population of our planet does not exceed two hundred millions, and is not much increased from generation to generation. The area of cultivable land is about ten millions of square miles, and half a square mile in these equatorial continents, which alone are at all generally ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... gloomy and melancholy character, left the service after the trial instituted against his general at Paris. He took no part in the conspiracy; but unalterably attached to republican principles, this officer, whose tastes were very simple, and who possessed an ample competence, left France when the Empire was established, and took no pains to disguise his aversion to the head of an absolute government. Finally, although of most inoffensive conduct, he was one of those designated under the name of malcontents. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... trees in the paddock, and at the front by the apple trees in the orchard. Perhaps it was because it had such a snug, cosy, restful look about it that it had been queerly christened Thankful Rest. The land adjoining the homestead was rich and fertile, and brought in every year a crop worth a goodly competence to its possessors. The family at Thankful Rest consisted of two people—Joshua Strong and his sister Hepzibah. You are to make their acquaintance immediately, but a remark made once by old Reuben ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... say, and then that my father would easily be brought round. Of course I knew that two important events must occur before anything I could say or do would be of any use. The abominable war between England and the United States must cease, and I must become possessed of a competence to support a wife as I felt Madeline ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... that an individual may by his own exertions justly acquire a hundred thousand dollars, which is an ample competence, and that as an encouragement and reward for his industry, society may justly allow him to dispose of it by will, which I think is a liberal concession, I see no sufficient reason for extending his authority beyond that amount. All above that amount, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... Keiley by Austria. He says: A question has arisen with the Government of Austria-Hungary touching the representation of the United States at Vienna. Having, under my constitutional prerogative, appointed an estimable citizen of unimpeached probity and competence as Minister to that Court, the Government of Austria-Hungary invited this government to cognizance of certain exceptions, based upon allegations against the personal acceptability of Mr. Keiley, the appointed Envoy, asking that, in view thereof, the appointment should be withdrawn. ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... For example, their competence and the comforts which it brings shield women of the higher and middle classes in this country, in a great measure, from certain snares of the devil in which multitudes of their poorer sisters miserably ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... art, or any of the higher creative activities, to flourish under any system which requires that the artist shall prove his competence to some body of authorities before he is allowed to follow his impulse. Any really great artist is almost sure to be thought incompetent by those among his seniors who would be generally regarded as best qualified to form an opinion. And the mere fact of having to ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... end of his life. Hardly a day passed in which he did not sigh to be rich, and complain of the unequal and unjust distribution of property. He could point to a score of men who had not worked half so hard as he had, in his own opinion, that had made fortunes, or at least won a competence, while he was as poor as ever, and in danger of having his place taken away from him. People said that John Wilford was lazy; that he did not make the most of his land, and that his ferry, with closer attention to the wants of passengers, might be made to pay double the amount he made from it. He ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... which he boasted his descent had found a refuge beyond the Atlantic. One southland farmer, three grey-plaided shepherds, and six dogs, now tenanted the whole glen, which in his youth had maintained, in content, if not in competence, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... cheerfully. "Warm things for the journey, and cooler things for when you get there." She made no show of consulting Notya and, moving with leisurely competence from wardrobe to chest of drawers, she laid little heaps of clothing on ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... practice of hunting and shooting for diversion with vain sports; and we believe the awakened mind may see, that even the leisure of those whom providence hath permitted to have a competence of worldly goods, is but ill filled up with these amusements. Therefore, being not only accountable for our substance, but also for our time, let our leisure be employed in serving our neighbour, and not in distressing the creatures of God for ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Benjamin junior retired to Hampstead a few years after his father, leaving the business to a younger brother, John, who continued bookselling until the earlier part of the present century, when he, in his turn, gave up active work for the 'enjoyment of a country life' with 'an easy competence.' In one of the catalogues of this celebrated firm—our copy is minus the title-page, but it was evidently issued about 1790—four of the most interesting entries occur among the folios: Caxton's 'Lyfe of the Faders,' with 'curious old wooden plates, not quite perfect, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... loved to share his lot. The world has just learnt that Tennyson was engaged to his wife for twenty years, from her seventeenth to her thirty-seventh year, owing again to stress of circumstances, and there is living now one eminent man for whom, as for Immanuel Kant, comfort, competence, and fame have come too late to allow of any share in the blessing and joy of home. Such things cannot but deepen the hold these elect spirits have and shall have ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... expressly to please her the moment he was in a position to do so; had bought it, indeed, when she was showing a most settled determination to have nothing to do with him—directly after her refusal to accept a competence at ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... accountable for all, and must answer it at their perils. He hath a vast revenue constantly arising from the hearth of the Householder, the sweat of the Labourer, the rent of the Farmer, the industry of the Merchant, and consequently out of the estate of the Gentleman: a large competence to defray the ordinary expense of the Crown, and maintain its lustre. And if any extraordinary occasion happen, or be but with any probable decency pretended, the whole Land at whatsoever season of the year does yield him a plentiful harvest. So forward are his people's affections to give ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... to be sought nor shunned. With them or without them the highest life is possible; and on the whole it is easier without than with great riches. A moderate amount of wealth, however, is essential to the fullest development of one's powers and the freest enjoyment of life. Of such a moderate competence the industrious ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... a mistress of detail, and a housekeeper whose enthusiasm was matched by her competence. At first Dion had been rather surprised when he followed from afar, as is becoming in a man, this development. Before they settled down in London he had seen in Rosamund the enthusiastic artist, the joyous traveler, the good comrade, the gay ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... your father, if I remember right, the deceased Prince Urban, whom I had the honor of knowing when I served in the zouaves. He was a fine Roman nobleman, and did honor to his name. What I have told you is proof that I have some competence in the matter of a duel.... Well, we have always held that seconds were constituted to arrange affairs that could be arranged, but also to settle affairs, as well as they can, that seem incapable of being arranged. Let us now inquire ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... affected great indignation on this occasion, in order to hide the treason which he meditated, is highly probable. But it is impossible to believe that a man of his sense would have urged the members of a council of war to inflict a punishment which was notoriously beyond their competence.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
