"Inadequacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consciousness on space, and materialism has written there already all that it has to tell of its failure to satisfy the mind and heart of man. However beautiful old forms may seem to him they will declare their inadequacy to generations free of that mist of familiarity which now makes life obscure. If, on the other hand, submitting himself to the inspiration of the demos he experiences a change of consciousness, he will become truly and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... in the remembrance of many, been squandered in profusion upon the boards of one of our London theatres in the getting up of a drama by the master-dramatist. All this has tended, however, only to realise the more painfully the inadequacy of the powers, no less of the leading star than of his whole company, to undertake the interpretation of the dramatic masterpiece. The spectacle which we are viewing in such an instance is, no doubt, resplendent; but it is so purely as a ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... that we did not give way to depression for long, for soon every one was as cheery as usual. Laughter rang out from the tents, and even the Boss had a passage-at-arms with the storekeeper over the inadequacy of the sausage ration, insisting that there should be two each 'because they were such little ones,' instead of the one and a ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... explain my own inadequacy to answer such a question and my total lack of authority to voice American sentiment. While I was confident that many Americans believed in the cause of the Allies, and had every confidence in the outcome ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... departure at the end of 1845, the inadequacy of his system stood revealed. He had indeed a majority in the Assembly, but a small and doubtful majority; and since its members had been elected rather to support Metcalfe than to co-operate with his ill-assorted {184} ministry, difficulties ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... a political, problem is a correct diagnosis. Then necessarily follows a long period devoted to observation, to investigation and experiment. If, in the case of the yellow fever, a score of years only ago an observer had pointed out the nature of the disease and the manifest inadequacy of current theories and prevailing methods of prevention and treatment, do you think others would have had a right to turn upon him and demand that he instantly prescribe a remedy which should be not only complete, ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... the front rank of anatomical monographers," and for sixty-two years the flow of his contributions to scientific literature never ceased. In 1856 he was appointed to take charge of the natural history departments of the British Museum, and before long set forth views as to the inadequacy of the existing accommodation, which led ultimately to the foundation of the buildings now devoted to this purpose in South Kensington. Owen died on December 18, 1892. His great book, "Comparative Anatomy and ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... me," he put in as she paused reflectively. "I didn't hurt you, at any rate." It seemed to her that his tone was shadowed. "You have never hurt me, Arnaud," she assured him, conscious of the inadequacy of her words. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... specimens of that lofty moral fiction which was always common amongst the Jews after the Exile, and was known as "The Haggadah." So clearly is this proven to most critics, that they willingly suffer the attempted refutations of their views to sink to the ground under the weight of their own inadequacy. (The Bible and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... municipal regulation already referred to was, in the early days of Hull-House, parallelled by the inadequacy of the charitable efforts of the city and an unfounded optimism that there was no real poverty among us. Twenty years ago there was no Charity Organization Society in Chicago and the Visiting Nurse Association had not yet begun its beneficial work, while the relief societies, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... every whit as bold as her husband's. When Stanton with a monumental playfulness proposed to have her portrait painted in a commanding attitude on the parapet of Fort Stevens, she gave him the freedom of her tongue, because of the inadequacy of his department.(9) ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... merits of the Shelburne districts and those of the St John river it is difficult to understand. Edward Winslow frankly accused him of jealousy of the St John settlements. Possibly he was only too well aware of the inadequacy of the preparations made to receive the Loyalists at the mouth of the St John, and wished to divert the stream of immigration elsewhere. At any rate his opinion was in direct conflict with the unanimous ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... amazing complexity of religious phenomena must somehow be seen to be consistent with their common nature. The religious experience must not only be found, but must also be reconciled with "the varieties of religious experience." The inadequacy of the well-known definitions of religion may be attributed to several causes. The commonest fallacy is to define religion in terms of a religion. My definition of religion must include my brother's religion, even though he live on the other side of the globe, and my ancestor's religion, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... pardon!" said I at last and then, struck by the inadequacy of these trite words, drew a pace nearer. "Oh, pray—pray don't weep!" I pleaded. "If I have hurt you, I crave your forgiveness!" Here she sobbed but the fiercer. "But indeed—indeed," I stammered, "I thought—that is, I did not think, I—I mean I could not leave you destitute and having ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... of the inadequacy of the intuitive theory comes when we observe that conscience is by no means always clear in its dictates. It often leaves us in the lurch. Developed in us as it has been by circumstance and suggestion, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... he was a coward. That was the shame and the curse of his life. He did not think it had always been so, but believed it had come about gradually. At first he had not minded the whippings that other boys gave him because of his temper and his physical inadequacy, for he had invited the punishment; but when they all learned that his fighting spirit had weakened, that they could whip him easily, that they need not wait for provocation, and that he would never tell, they bullied and hounded and beat ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity." We think his "fact ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... with such a tyrannical and boundless desire might have become fatal; in any case, an exit into the open had to be found for it as quickly as possible, whereby it could rush into pure air and sunshine. Lofty aspirations, which continually meet with failure, ultimately turn to evil. The inadequacy of means for obtaining success may, in certain circumstances, be the result of an inexorable fate, and not necessarily of a lack of strength; but he who under such circumstances cannot abandon his aspirations, despite the inadequacy of his means, will only become embittered, and consequently ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cupboards, and other utensils for holding their dolls and their trinkets. He had lived nearly six years in the same house with Miss Storey, and there is reason to believe that their youthful friendship gradually rose to a higher passion; but the smallness of her portion, and the inadequacy of his own fortune, appear to have prevented the consummation of their happiness. Miss Storey was afterwards twice married, and under the name of Mrs. Vincent, Dr. Stukeley visited her at Grantham in 1727, at the age of eighty-two, and obtained ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... connected with us as the road is with the goal it reaches in the end. She exists independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the variety, knowledge, love, power and finish of God, to urge us forward ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... to tell whether the sermons of John Everard were generally known to the early Quakers or not. He held similar views to theirs on many points, and he reiterates, with as much vigour as does Fox, the inadequacy of University learning as a preparation for spiritual ministry. One Quaker at least of the early time read Everard and appreciated him. That was John Bellers. In his "Epistle to the Quarterly Meeting of London and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... clearly based on the later precedents of Charles I, but it must be noted that Penn is told 'to expect more particular instructions' in regard to the fighting article. We may assume therefore that the admiralty authorities already recognised the inadequacy of the established fighting instructions, and so soon as the pressure of that critical time permitted intended to ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... done," Leonard answered, and instantly feeling the awkwardness of the words, blushed so painfully that Miss Bartram felt the inadequacy of her social tact to relieve so manifest a case of distress. But she did, instinctively, what was really best: she gave Leonard the check for her trunk, divided her satchels with Betty, and walked ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two sections. I did so in language which I cannot improve and which, ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... adapted to his use, for when he entered any one of them for bathing purposes "bad scran to the wan that 'ud take him in furder than to the knees." Obviously this was not deep enough, so one day when unusually in need of a bath and driven desperate by the inadequacy of the means, "he spit an his han's an' went to work an' made Lough Carra. 'Bedad,' says he, 'I'll have a wash now,' an' so he did," and doubtless enjoyed it, for the lake is deep and the water clear ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... thoughts half indignant, half self-compassionate, came reproach and a great wave of tenderness filial. She saw, as with a sudden gift of retrospection, her mother's long battle with inadequacy, and how it had aged her; saw, too, that the battle had been fought unselfishly, since she knew her mother's declaration that she could contentedly "go back to nothing" was no mere petulant boast. It was for her daughters that she had grown thin and haggard and irritable under the persistent ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... friend. It resulted, moreover, from this clearness of judgment that Caesar never formed to himself illusions regarding the power of fate and the ability of man; in his case the friendly veil was lifted up, which conceals from man the inadequacy of his working. Prudently as he laid his plans and considered all possibilities, the feeling was never absent from his breast that in all things fortune, that is to say accident, must bestow success; and with this may be connected the circumstance that ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... limited knowledge, and refuse to believe anything they cannot see themselves, but from the older school of astronomers, who are not very receptive of new ideas; and who are, perhaps, naturally reluctant to admit the inadequacy or inaccuracy of their early theories. This is a very common failing with experts of all kinds, and we have had many instances of it in connection with astronomy all through our history; but we have amongst us many intelligent persons who are open to conviction, being unfettered in regard to particular ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... for the corps to be broken up, and the men to rejoin their respective regiments, and to accompany them on the expedition; but the earnest representations of Colonel Monro of the 35th Regiment, who was now in command, of the total inadequacy of the garrison to defend itself, should a serious attack be made from Ticonderoga; and of the great value to him of the corps under Captain Walsham, which was now thoroughly trained in forest fighting, induced him to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... taxes, must have gathered a formidable impression of road-clearing. And the few of us who, besides, have experienced the adventure of a drive over the same highway after the tax has been pronounced liquidated, must have indulged in varied reflections as to the inadequacy of the result. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... against the sky. I had not taken fifty steps before my face stiffened into a sort of mask, so that it hurt me to move the facial muscles. I came home on an undignified run, experiencing a lively sense of the inadequacy of two hands to protect two ears and a nose. Did the Creator intend ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the madness of Orlando was the delirium tremens of an habitual drunkard. Chesterton recognizing this truth makes the pagans of the White Horse behave like gentlemen. There is a beautiful little song put into the mouth of one of them, which is in its way a perfect expression of the inadequacy of false gods. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... frequently in the classroom than in secluded spots along the Calcutta bathing GHATS. The adjoining crematory grounds, especially gruesome at night, are considered highly attractive by the yogi. He who would find the Deathless Essence must not be dismayed by a few unadorned skulls. Human inadequacy becomes clear in the gloomy abode of miscellaneous bones. My midnight vigils were thus of a different ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... rods and cones in one's eyes was like the power of great music or some majestic passage in the Bible. You, who think my similes are overdone, search out in the nearest museum the dustiest of purple-throated cotingas,—Cotinga cayana,—and then, instead, berate me for inadequacy. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... had not been able to thus persist, the spirit had not reached far enough to know its aim and grasp it. He knew his weakness, his incapacity to cope with the larger odds of life, a watcher not an actor in the battle, and understanding that his failure had come from his own inadequacy he wished that ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties had permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... selection and election of our legislators and executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we vote?"—rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into office. The primary, however, we see, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... and if that mind is rooted in a view of the world which leaves no room for Christ and His work as Christian experience has realised them, then that view of the world must be appreciated by the evangelist, it must be undermined at its weak places, its inadequacy to interpret all that is present even in the mind which has accepted it—in other words, its inherent inconsistency—must be demonstrated; the attempt must be made to liberate the mind, so that it may be open to the impression ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... attack by external enemies, and the concessions contained in the Hortensian law,(10) restored peace to the community. It is, however, very unjust to reproach these earnest attempts to check the impoverishment of the middle class with their inadequacy. The belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully by baseness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd. On the contrary, we may ask whether ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... The inadequacy of the physiological theory of national character may be seen almost at a glance by a look at Japan. Were an Oriental necessarily and unchangeably Oriental, it would have been impossible for Japan to have come into such close and sympathetic ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault. She had not wished for more. Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt. But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come. Perhaps something might occur that very night. That would ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... brightening cricket, my friend Twyford has given me a new bat. I have always felt that, in my own case, it was the inadequacy of the weapon rather than of the man behind it which accounted for a certain monotony of low-scoring; with this new bat I hope to prove the correctness ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... of it. Undervaluing the intellect, they became slaves of a sect, instead of organs of the Spirit. This Unitarianism has had its place. There was a time for asserting "the dignity of human nature," and for explaining total depravity into temporary inadequacy,—a time to say that the truths of essence, if simplified at all in statement from their infinite variety of existence, should be spoken of as One, rather than Three, though that number, if they would ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the nearer approach to the main shore of vessels so large. The British authorities yet believed that the destination of this fleet was unknown to the Americans ashore; but in this they were mistaken, as they afterward admitted. The inadequacy of men and means and measures to properly meet and repel such an invading force, as mentioned before, was mainly due to the tardy negligence of the department at Washington. The sleepless vigilance and untiring energy of General ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... that uses the pupil's experience as a basis upon which to build has a value not to be overlooked. The fact that such expressions as those quoted above are so easily remembered proves the value of connecting new knowledge with the pupil's experience. But the inadequacy of this experience must be recognized and taken into account. The concepts of the average pupil are entirely too indefinite and limited to supply the necessary foundation for a science such as physiology. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... had not visited his mother; others, because they had neglected to pay him this compliment sooner. The true reason, however, of the haughty distance, at which, both now and afterwards, he stood apart from his more opulent neighbours, is to be found in his mortifying consciousness of the inadequacy of his own means to his rank, and the proud dread of being made to feel this inferiority by persons to whom, in every other respect, he knew himself superior. His friend, Mr. Becher, frequently expostulated with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... conviction. The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... that the actual beginning of the malady was unknown, and that the inability of the doctors to master the disease arose from the inadequacy of the means employed for its ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... hills and realized the enormous wastage of wood that had taken place. From this bird's-eye view he realized the monstrous confusion of their excited workings. It was a gigantic inadequacy. Each worked for himself, and the result was chaos. In this richest of diggings it cost out by their feverish, unthinking methods another dollar was left hopelessly in the earth. Given another year, and most of the claims ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... of the necessities of things, and we blame circumstances for the consequences of our own follies and vices; but there are faults which are not faults of will, but faults of mere inadequacy to some unforeseen position. Human nature is equal to much, but not to everything. It can rise to altitudes where it is alike unable to sustain itself or to retire from them to a safer elevation. Yet when the field is open it pushes forward, and moderation in ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the convicts to planters on the basis of peonage; denial of political rights; long continued persecution for political reasons; a system of cheating by landlords and storekeepers which rendered it impossible for tenants to make a living, and the inadequacy of school facilities.[2] Sworn public documents show that nearly 3,500 persons, most of whom were negroes, were killed between 1866 and 1879, and their murderers were never brought to trial or even arrested. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... could only think to myself, "Is this fear? It is NOT fear!" I strove to rise,—in vain; I felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to my volition,—that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond man's, which one may feel PHYSICALLY in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt MORALLY. Opposed to my will was another will, as far superior to its strength as storm, fire, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... whose service for their fellows would have been lost if the old-time barriers had been maintained, may be added the name of the late Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. Mary Putnam secured her preliminary medical education in the early '60's, and found herself keenly troubled and dissatisfied at the inadequacy of the facilities extended to women for the study of medicine. She insisted that if women practitioners were to be, as she expressed it, "turned loose" upon the community with license to practise, they should, not only as a matter of justice ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... history of Science, even under the guidance of the Inductive Method, is a history of Principles announced as firmly established, which a little later were found to be defective and had to be adjusted to the advanced stage of human Experience. The very nature of the Inductive Method indicates its inadequacy for the largest and most important purposes of Science. It gives certainty, where it does give it, only up to the point of the present, it can never afford complete certainty for the future. The logical and rigid testimony of this Method can never be more than this;—Observation and Experience ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... volume, besides containing a complete view of the German philosophy, will treat of the United States. But he will visit us before he writes. Although appreciating the great work of De Tocqueville, he complains of the general inadequacy of European criticism upon America. Gasparin's books, by the way, he has not seen. For his own part, he considers the subject too vast, he says, and the testimony too conflicting, to permit him to write upon it before he has seen the country; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... extravagant numbers to our army in Kentucky. Some estimates are as high as 150,000. I know, and Mr. Benjamin knows, that Gen. Johnston has not exceeding 29,000 effective men. And the Secretary knows that Gen. J. has given him timely notice of the inadequacy of his force to hold the position at Bowling Green. The Yankees are well aware of our weakness, but they intend to claim the astounding feat of routing 150,000 men with 100,000! And they suppose that by giving ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... consultation with section 107, the committee's attention has been directed to the unique educational needs and problems of the approximately 50,000 deaf and hearing-impaired students in the United States, and the inadequacy of both public and commercial television to serve their educational needs. It has been suggested that, as long as clear-cut constraints are imposed and enforced, the doctrine of fair use is broad enough to permit the making of an off-the-air fixation ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... the Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as an observer. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... only for the purpose of deposing him. To complete the quarrel, Amursana declared himself King of the Eleuths, and absolutely independent of China. But the energy and indignation of Keen Lung soon exposed the hollowness of these designs, and the inadequacy of Amursana's power and capacity to make good his pretensions. Keen Lung collected another army larger than that which had placed him on his throne, to hurl Amursana from the supremacy which had not satisfied him and which he ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... population in terms of stability and mobility runs head-on into the creation of new townships in the 1780's, the inability to establish death rates for this frontier, and the inadequacy of probate records. The result is that the data are intuitively rather than statistically sound. Chart 5 offers a comparison of tax lists over a period of nine years as the basis for some conclusions regarding the stability and mobility of the ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... inadequacy of spare land it is well to note that, of the two Republics, the Transvaal only possesses undeveloped Government reserve land. This is all situated in more or less low-lying and fever-stricken parts, large tracts being ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain unto it." In the presence of such a subject one feels one's mind ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... "that enchanting possibility seems to be more remotely positioned than ever. Again has the clay-souled Wang Ho, on the pretext that he can no longer make his in and out taels meet, sought to diminish the monthly inadequacy of cash with which he rewards this person's ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the difference between a fetish and a god of the community. The difference is the same in kind as that between a tribal god and the God of all mankind. The fetish and the tribal god are both inadequate ideas of God; and the inadequacy implies confusion—the confusion of conceiving that the god is there only to subserve the desires and to do the will of the individual worshipper or ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... The inadequacy of any one incarnation is here proclaimed, and the idea of constant communication with and impartation of himself to humanity through repeated descents is here inculcated. And it is a fundamental conception of Hinduism—a conception which differentiates it essentially ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... vanity of the world. Much of all this is inevitable from the constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in the best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all; and, although through a large tract of life "there comes one event to all, to the wise ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... me, Mr. President, to the consideration of the petition presented by the Senator from Kentucky, and to an examination of the views he has presented to the Senate on this highly important subject. Sir, I feel, I sensibly feel my inadequacy in entering into a controversy with that old and veteran Senator; but nothing high or low shall prevent me from an honest discharge of my duty here. If imperfectly done, it may be ascribed to the want of ability, not intention. If the power of my mind, and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... DIRA IV is so fearful present no danger to the galaxy. Their corporeal weakness, the poverty of their minds, the incredible isolation of each form, physically and mentally, from others of its kind, and, most strikingly, their mortality, point to the inadequacy of such beings in a contest of any dimension. This is no problem for the Colonial Board. It is a domestic concern. The life-forms of Earth are already developing a healthy autonomy. Their power was long ago established. ...
— The Demi-Urge • Thomas Michael Disch
... spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... readily explain the doubt he had had for many years: the ultimate unimportance of all events; or only the happenstance that important people often must croak because of a lack of appropriate nourishment and medicine... the inadequacy of women... The incurable nature of Tabes disease, the symptoms of which he believed he detected in himself... When Maria Mondmilch named her profession, he lit up. Syphilis and its consequences were mentioned. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... unassuming semi-invalidism passed. She made few complaints; she was evidently repressing expression of the recurring symptoms of her discomfort. But since her baby's death she had recovered little ability for effort. She tired quickly. She was living a life of quiet, sheltered, almost luxurious inadequacy. Dr. Corning was puzzled. Mrs. Evanson had appealed to his professional pride and sympathetic nature strongly. Was there something obscure, a lurking condition which he had overlooked? He would have his work reviewed by the celebrated New York internist. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... indifference to human nature. There is too much mechanical malice in their tragedies and too little of the passion that every man recognizes in his own breast. Even so good a play as The Duchess of Malfi is marred by inadequacy of motive on the part of the duchess's persecutors. Similarly, in Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, the villains are simply a dramatist's infernal machines. Shakespeare's own plays contain numerous examples of inadequacy of motive—the casting-off of Cordelia by her father, for instance, and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Whatever inadequacy or error there may be, throughout, in materials or modes of demonstration, I have no doubt of the truth and necessity of the main result; and though the reader may, perhaps, find me frequently hereafter showing other and better grounds for what is here affirmed, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... veterans' organization is not far to seek. Like the G.A.R., the Legion should maintain and develop the comradeship bred by the war. It can assist the unfortunate in its ranks; it can take care of the widows and orphans of soldiers, in so far as any inadequacy of public provision seems to make care necessary. The Legion can preserve the fame of soldiers and commanders, by erecting monuments, by seeing that histories are written, and by proceedings of its regular reunions. It can foster such a public recollection of the great deeds of ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... Star Chamber for the purpose of dealing with heretical or seditious plays and their authors, and indeed with all charges against theatrical entertainments except common police cases of indecency. The reason given is that for which the Star Chamber was created by Henry VII: that is, the inadequacy of the ordinary law. "We consider," says the report, "that the law which prevents or punishes indecency, blasphemy and libel in printed publications [it does not, by the way, except in the crudest police cases] would not be adequate for the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... compliment, but for once he was dumb; in all the oft-repeated phrases of his gallant experiences there was no sentiment to do justice to a moment like this. "I am delighted to meet you again," he said slowly, his mind confused with a sense of the inadequacy of the thing and the inexplicable feelings that crowded into him in the presence of a girl who, three years ago, would have no more disturbed him than would his sister. She was the first to recover from ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... it are complex. There were in this affair individual and collective failures, imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy, divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate retreats, a premature waste of men, and, finally, the inadequacy of certain of our troops and their leaders, both as regards the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... singer for the leading part, but remarked that on the whole it had gone fairly well. The reports sent me by Liszt were the most encouraging. He did not seem to think it worth while to allude to the inadequacy of the means at his command for such a bold undertaking, but preferred to dwell on the sympathetic spirit that prevailed in the company and the effect it produced on the influential personages he had invited to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me, Jane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... are falling into disrepair for want of plaster, paint and tools. Nor is it possible to substitute one thing for another, for Russia's industries all suffer alike from their dependence on the West, as well as from the inadequacy of the transport to bring to factories the material they need. People remind each other that during the war the Germans, when similarly hard put to it for clothes, made paper dresses, table-cloths, etc. In Russia ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... deplorable absurdities as the revelation of God, and how it happens that when religion appears upon the scene of their daily life, their common sense can so totally desert them. One need say nothing of the inadequacy of the judgment pronounced, the summary classification of the myriads of humanity as white sheep or black goats, or the character of the rewards and punishments allotted. The one redeeming point in the narrative is that whatever judgment is pronounced is decided, not on doctrinal grounds, about ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Editor, and the rest of us echoed 'Agreed.' And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink—and, above all, my own inadequacy—to express its quality. You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... said soberly, though he felt the inadequacy of the trite remark. "It's unnecessary. I ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... his own emotions, as he turned them from side to side, and prodded them, and shifted to a fresh viewpoint, only to find it no more favorable than the one relinquished: but he veiled the inadequacy of his emotions with very moving fervors. The tale does not record his conversations with Guenevere: for Jurgen now discoursed plain idiocy, as one purveys sweetmeats to a child in fond astonishment at the pet's appetite. And leisurely ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... American paper. He was going to publish an article—as big, as enormous, as all the rest of the business—about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her. Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. "I'm sure I don't know. I never asked him!" said Francie. "He ought to want ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... strangely isolated in their own atmosphere, and as if revealed. It is as if their vulnerable being was exposed and they have not the wit to cover it. There is a pathos of physical sensibility and mental inadequacy. Their mind is not sufficiently alert to run ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... which he had delivered that morning, no attempt had been made to deny the inadequacy of the Company's office organization to cope with the exceptional crop conditions of 1911 and 1912. The latter season particularly had been very trying owing to the lateness of the crop and the wet harvesting conditions. ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... We know the inadequacy of such hand-to-mouth criticism as that of a monthly reviewer must be upon works demanding so minute an examination as a dictionary deserves. For ourselves, we should wish to own both Webster and Worcester, but, if we could possess only one, we should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... of the subsidy advocates the law's failure to produce the anticipated results only proved its inadequacy in not providing enough subsidy. Accordingly, further measures were proposed ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... pp. x, xi shows the logical framework on which the book is constructed. Under the limitations of such a table, confined to a single term in every case, it is of course impossible to avoid the appearance of artificiality of form and inadequacy of treatment. This collection of dry bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a glance the conception of ethics as an organic whole of interrelated members: a conception it would be impossible to present in any other form without entering upon metaphysical ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the complete inadequacy of this arrangement, without knowing something of the rifle-grenade, and without knowing the extraordinary difficulty of training a man to become an instructor of others. However that was the best that could be made of the new orders at the moment. And so it fell to me to take a class ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... dear and the world beautiful. I often feel very impatient with the way in which writers, and particularly clerical writers, use the word spiritual; it often means, I feel, that they are only conscious of the entire inadequacy of the motives for conduct that they are themselves able to supply; but the moment that I set eyes upon Meyrick, I know what the word means, that it is the one great quality that, for all his virtue and strength, he misses. I do not know what the quality ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... always easy to comply with Meyer's tenets, however. The inadequacy of my working capital often forced me to have recourse to subterfuges that could not exactly be called honorable. One day, when we had some bills to meet two days before I could expect to obtain the cash, I ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... is a potent stimulus to reflexion, and may of itself give rise to systematic ethical enquiry. This is more particularly the case when a change of social conditions, or contact with alien modes of life, force into light the inadequacy of the conventional morality. In such a case the new ethical reflexion may have a disintegrating effect upon the traditional code, and give to the movement the character and importance of a revolution. ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... our heroine were again discussed that evening in another part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," he said. "It always happens that they catch the small fry, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Clear case of psychological reaction. After listening to the Canongate experts I was immediately conscious of an overwhelming and mortifying sense of inadequacy, of amateurishness; hence I quit. Besides, of course, the chief is making rather a point of uplifting the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... "Hamlet" the inadequacy of the stage is of another kind. It leads to a general displacement of motive, and change of focus, the hero's character being obscured in the attempt to make it effective. And for this to some extent the stage itself, as ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... would than have come to an end of the left bank of the Potomac River by the capture of Lee's army? If this be so, then Lee's undertaking was a hazard for which there could have been no justifying reason, and his escape from destruction was due to the inadequacy of the men in command of the Northern armies. Following this remark I ought to say that General Meade was a brave and patriotic officer, but he lacked the qualities which enable a man to act promptly and wisely in great exigencies. While General Lee was acting on the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... I said, realizing as I said it the miserable inadequacy of the English language. At a crisis when I would have given a month's income to have said something neat, epigrammatic, suggestive, yet withal courteous and respectful, I could only find a hackneyed, unenthusiastic phrase which I should have used in accepting ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... exhibit a plurality of sources. The book of Isaiah was written to record the sayings of at least two persons, both men of marvelous spiritual vision. The Song of Solomon was originally probably a Persian love-poem. The book of Job illustrates the human-mind problem of suffering, and the utter inadequacy of philosophy to heal it. It is a ringing protest against ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... noble but a very human and fallible system of ideas and motives, a system that grows and develops. He regards its spirit, its intimate substance as the most hopeful thing in human affairs at the present time, but he does also find it shares with all mundane concerns the qualities of inadequacy and error. It suffers from the common penalty of noble propositions; it is hampered by the insufficiency of its supporters and advocates, and by the superficial tarnish that necessarily falls in our atmosphere of greed and conflict darkest upon the brightest ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... appearance, suggested more the idea of an exquisite model in silver than anything else, the pair occupying very little more space than those of one of the larger Thames river steamers. The impression of diminutiveness and inadequacy of power passed away, however, when the professor informed his companions that the vapour would enter the high-pressure cylinder at the astounding pressure of five thousand pounds to the square inch, and that, though the engines ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... determined spirit and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and its essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me with no other discouragement than what springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties. If I do not sink under the weight of this deep conviction it is because I find some support in a consciousness of the purposes and a confidence in the principles which I bring with me into ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... impressed me; notwithstanding that he was ten years younger than myself, and I had seen him so lately in a lighter mood. I felt that his reputation had not belied him—that here was a great man; and reflecting with despair on the inadequacy of the tale I had to tell him, I paused to consider in what terms I should begin. He soon put an end to this, however. 'Come, sir,' he said with impatience. 'I have told you that you may speak out. You should have been here four days ago, as I take it. Now ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... condensed play, nor one "big" scene or a single act from a long play, is not a playlet should be apparent when you remember the impression of inadequacy left on your own mind by such a vehicle, even when a famous actor or actress has endowed it with all of his or her charm ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... been accustomed from his boyhood to connect them, but without ever raising the question, Is all this true? Does it really account for the existence and nature of the world? Once, however, the spell was broken, once the intellect was aroused, the inadequacy of the popular faith, on the speculative side, became apparent; and the mind turned aside altogether from religion to work out its problems on its own lines. We find accordingly, from early times, physical philosophers in Greece free from all theological preconceptions, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... charming" would seem a not unworthy compliment, but the Candy Man, as he resumed his place in the wagon, smiled scornfully at what he was pleased to consider its grotesque inadequacy. If he had anything better to offer, the Miser did not stay to hear it, but with a courteous "good evening" disappeared in his turn in the mist. An ambulance carried away the injured man, the crowd dispersed; the remains of the machine were towed away to a ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... metaphysically in connexion with his doctrine of "Ideas" as the art of analysing ideas in themselves and in relation to the ultimate idea of the Good (Repub. vii.). The special function of the so-called "Socratic dialectic" was to show the inadequacy of popular beliefs. Aristotle himself used "dialectic," as opposed to "science," for that department of mental activity which examines the presuppositions lying at the back of all the particular sciences. Each ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... necessary inadequacy of the finite mind to conceive of the Infinite that most tragically hides God from us. That inadequacy is compatible with true and sufficient knowledge of Him. Nor is it 'the veils of flesh and sense,' as we often hear it said, that hide ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... made her angry, Stella." Mary O'Gara had found her tongue at last. She had no idea of the inadequacy of what she said. Her thoughts had gone swiftly back to the days when she had trembled before Grace Comerford's cold rages. Her thoughts, as though they were too tired to consider the situation of the moment, went on to Terence. Poor Terence! She remembered him red and white ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... make considerable effort in his causal interpretation because of the sub-conscious influence of such similarities. The matter would not be so dangerous, all in all, because such mistakes may be easily corrected and the attention of people may be called to the inadequacy of such causation—but the reason for this kind of correlations is rarely discovered. Either people do not want to tell it because they instinctively perceive that their causal interpretation cannot be justified, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... bewildered anew by that. The monstrous inadequacy of it was too much for him. He had tricked her, certainly, and that wasn't a manly thing to do. He seemed to be trying to get his faculties adjusted. Yet the words he uttered finally were pathetically irrelevant, it would have seemed. He ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... in the wonder worker, the spoken word, is no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought, or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. The very fact that most people attend meetings ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... not to be too absolute in determining how much he will or will not "make gestures." The person whose impulse is not sufficiently strong from the center may do far better to arouse activity of the organism by more action than to allow any inadequacy of nervous energy to depress the power of vibration which determines the ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... and European. The first patent issued for an American electro-motor was in 1837, to a man named Thomas Davenport, of Brandon, Vt. He was a man far ahead of his times. He built the first electric railroad ever seen, at Springfield, Mass., in 1835, and considering the means, whose inadequacy is now better understood by any reader of these lines than it then was by the deepest student of electricity, this first railroad was a success. Davenport came as near to solving the problem of an electric motor ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... same object, the slow but sure destruction of a nuisance called the 'Celtic race.' This may be a delusion on their part; but it is the deep-rooted conviction of priests and people, and hence the utter inadequacy of any enactment which will not render such a policy impossible, by making the tenure of the occupiers independent of the will of the landlords. Until such time the peasantry will continue to offer a bloody resistance to the legal attempts to crush ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... political party secede from that party, when changes they cannot accept are welcomed to their programme, and henceforth refuse them their support at the polling-booth, would it not be proper that men, sensible of the utter inadequacy of the performances of both parties to meet the evils under which the nation lies, should stand aloof from both government and opposition? The leading Unionists in Ireland again and again declared that ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... the object of the following pages to assist the young physicist in making his first steps towards acquiring a working knowledge of "laboratory arts." However humble the ambition may be, no one can be more keenly alive than the writer to the inadequacy of his attempt; and it is only from a profound sense of the necessity which exists for some beginning to be made, that he has had the courage to air his views on matters about which there are probably hundreds or thousands of people ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that incompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a reflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially relevant to the subject under discussion: for if God's knowledge necessarily ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... know and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration. Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... a source of pleasure, nor find anything meritorious in a work of art merely because it is artificially composed. As for the claim which the French advance to set themselves up, in spite of all their one-sidedness and inadequacy of view, as the lawgivers of taste, it must be rejected with ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... well as myself, had to learn that I needed Hope with me to make my work more perfect. We must first feel our own inadequacy before our helpers can be fully appreciated. I think she came in the right ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... for them to Washington. Up to the surrender, the suffering from sickness had been exceedingly light. There was something stimulating about the nervous strain and excitement of the time which kept the men up to their work; but the inadequacy of the medical supplies on hand had been amply demonstrated by the 10th. and it had become fully apparent that the medical corps was unable to handle the number of patients on hand. The previous remark about the practicability of telegraphing to headquarters ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... floundered in the slough of inadequacy for several years, however, before the people were sufficiently impressed with the necessity of a federal government. When, finally, through the adroit maneuver of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the Constitutional ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... not in the least ungainly, about the Rangar's seat in the saddle that was not the ordinary, graceful native balance and yet was full of grace. King ascribed the difference to the fact that the Rangar had seen no military service, and before the inadequacy of that explanation had asserted itself he had already forgotten to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... listen; and He answers—not by referring to Job's particular case, still less to his sin, but by questions that suggest to Job His own power, wisdom, and love, and the ignorance and impotence of man, xxxviii., xxxix., xl. 2, 8-14. Job humbly recognizes the inadequacy of his criticism in the light of this vision of God, xl. 3-5, xlii. 2-6, and with this the poem comes to ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... hopelessly arid, such as the Karroo, have a soil of surprising fertility, which produces luxuriant crops when water is led on to it. Millions of acres might be made to wave with corn were great tanks, like those of India, constructed to hold the rains of the wet season, for it is not so much the inadequacy of the rainfall as the fact that it is confined to three or four months, that makes the country arid. Something might also be hoped from the digging of artesian wells dug like those which have lately been successfully bored in Algeria, and have proved so infinitely valuable to parts of Australia. ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... her these possessions. A government to be stable and efficient must possess adequate powers for the collection of its revenue. The miserable condition to which the old Confederation was reduced by reason of the inadequacy of its powers in this respect, has already been discussed. Says Fiske: "Between the old Continental Congress and the government under which we have lived since 1789, the differences were many; but by far the most essential difference was ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... as property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken. The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Chancellors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries depended upon customary gratuities for their revenues may be seen from the facts which show the degree of state which they were required to maintain, and the inadequacy of the ancient fees for the maintenance of that pomp. When Elizabeth pressed Hatton for payment of the sums which he owed her, the Chancellor lamented his inability to liquidate her just claims, and urged in excuse that the ancient fees were very inadequate to the expenses of the Chancellor's ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... reading was extended; and having begun more correctly to appreciate what I did read, the intention which I had sometimes entertained gathered strength: this was to make an effort to obtain a regular education. The consideration of the inadequacy of my means had hitherto bridled my ambition; but having herded as a regular shepherd nearly three years, during which I had no occasion to spend much of my income, my prospects behoved to be a little more favourable. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... described as an attempt to reclaim the world of art as a world of fixed laws, to show that the creative activity of genius and the simplest act of thought are but higher and lower products of the laws of a universal logic. Criticism, feeling its own inadequacy in dealing with the greater works of art, is sometimes tempted to make too much of those dark and capricious suggestions of genius, which even [75] the intellect possessed by them is unable to explain or recall. It has seemed due to the half-sacred ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the German civic community expresses the completion of the ancien regime, the completion of the pile driven into the flesh of the modern State, the status quo of German political science expresses the inadequacy of the modern State, the decay that is set ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... comes with the completion of every piece of work well and wisely done does not arise from the futility of the work, as the pessimists tell us, but from its inadequacy to express entirely the thought and force of the man who has striven to express himself completely in a material which, however masterfully used, can never give its ultimate form to a spiritual conception. It is not an evidence of failure, but ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... control or direct the civic affairs of the town. Thus, the development of the Gary system of education was a natural, rather than an artificial one. There was every opportunity for an altogether new departure, in view of the inadequacy of school facilities for the fast growing population. The new system was introduced into the Gary schools by William Wirt, who had already made some experiments in this direction before 1907 (when he was called to Gary) at Bluffton, Ind., where he had been in ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... "First Principles,"—a paragraph dealing with the hypothesis that consciousness may belong to the cosmic ether. This hypothesis has not been lightly dismissed by him; and even while proving its inadequacy, he seems to intimate that it may represent imperfectly some truth yet inapprehensible ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... as it does to things measurable by our senses, divergency makes the difference between truth and error; but where it is question of the substitution of one analogy or symbol for another, the more elegant is not necessarily the more truthful; nor when we consider the infinite inadequacy of even the noblest conceivable finite symbolism to bring God down to our level, need we pride ourselves much for being on a mountain whose height is perceptible from the plain but imperceptible ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... As observed by Fothergill, however, the kidney is not the starting-point, the new departure only taking place when the structural change on the kidney has reached that point that it is no longer equal to its function—the "renal inadequacy" of Sir Andrew Clarke. (J. Milner Fothergill, in the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... can lead us, there is only enough evidence of design to arouse serious attention to the question of it. In other words, as regards both, the attitude of pure reason ought to be that of pure agnosticism. (Observe that the inadequacy of teleology, or design in nature, to prove Theism has been expressly recognized by all the more intellectual Christians of all ages, although such recognition has become more general since Darwin. On this point I may refer to Pascal especially[76], and ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... the new conditions. We should learn from these facts that it is folly to brand as false and condemn as worthless the rules and formulas, and even religious thought, of the past when we find upon careful investigation and crucial tests their inadequacy to account for present conditions. They were true in their cycle, and applied to past conditions and states of mental development. But in this new era, upon whose threshold we now stand, the vibrations become more intense. Man's whole nature is ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... on the other hand, includes the employment of an existent propelling force. In consideration of my own inadequacy, I shall content myself with indicating the cogs and wheels of the machine to be constructed, and I shall rely on more skilled mechanicians than myself to put ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... deserved; only the men who saw planes come over, hover about, and were in consequence heavily and accurately shelled shortly afterwards, realized what the command of the air meant. The air tangle, and the inadequacy of the air service became such a scandal that Lord Derby and Lord Montague resigned from the air board as a protest against the way this branch of ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... reassurance did not quell a faint apprehension on our part; there was something distinctly formal in the occasion, and one felt that consciousness of inadequacy which is never easy for the humblest pride to bear. On the way I had torn my dress in an unexpected encounter with a little thornbush, and I could now imagine how it felt to be going to Court and forgetting one's ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the inadequacy of the German translation apparently urged Borrow to hasten on with Celebrated Trials. The Universal Review was dead, the German version of Proximate Causes {50b} had passed out of his hands. It was desirable, therefore, that the remaining undertaking should be completed as soon as possible, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... that if ever there was a time when conditions might have been expected to have halfway adjusted themselves to the pressure which by day brought out all too clearly the hopeless inadequacy of the facilities provided by the city to perform one of its most important and inevitable functions, it was at that early morning hour of our visit. Presumably preparation had been completed for the busy day about to open by setting all into ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... be, and there was a certain loose-jointedness in his figure which, as he moved toward her on his narrow and closely booted feet, gave him the sort of teetering motion of the elderly beau. His face, neutral and cold as ever, showed the signs of age less, yet Bettina felt that it masked the inadequacy of his soul as distinctively as his clothes masked that of ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... pointing out that Dante was able to travel the whole way toward absolute beauty, and to sublimate his perceptions to supersensual fineness without losing their poetic tone. Nineteenth and twentieth century writers may modestly assert that it is the fault of their inadequacy to represent poetry, and not a fault in the poetic character as such, that accounts for the tameness ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... attempt was something extraordinary. The inadequacy of the means for preventing it was a sufficient proof that it was considered impossible. The sanctuaries were protected by terror more than by their walls. Matho expected ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... first edition of "The Golden Dog" (Le Chien d'Or) was brought out in the United States, entirely without my knowledge or sanction. Owing to the inadequacy of the then existing copyright laws, I have been powerless to prevent its continued publication, which I understand to have been a successful and profitable undertaking for all concerned, except the author, the book having gone through ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... outside the official and military class. Protection of the non-combatant and his property comes at last—in theory at least—within a measurable distance of notice boards: "Combatants are requested to keep off the grass." This disposition I ascribe to a recognition of that obsolescence and inadequacy of the formal organization of States, which has already been discussed in this book. It was a disposition that was strongest perhaps in the earliest decades of the nineteenth century, and stronger now than, in the steady and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... poet's art consists of making a general moral representation of incidents and scenes, and embellishing it with elegant images. This had been accepted and acted upon by Pope and by all his followers. To have been the first to perceive the inadequacy and the falsity of a law which excluded all imagination, all enthusiasm, and all mystery, is to demand respectful attention from the historian of Romanticism, and this attention is due ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... must be not only inadequate but misleading, for instead of the two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with time added as a vital element, and, I dare say, a "fourth dimension" as well. Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a space divided into four strata. The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, the region of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of the universe, the unconditioned Absolute, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... contents himself by compassionating the inadequacy of my efforts for dealing with the miseries which they contemplate, with the remark that I don't go deep enough, that mine is a superficial operation, whereas they destroy poverty by dragging it up ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... highest mammals does the brain assert its right to supremacy. But once established on its throne the brain reigns supreme; its right is challenged by no other organ. The possibilities of all the other organs, as supreme rulers, have been exhausted. Each one has been thoroughly tested, and its inadequacy proven beyond doubt by actual experiment. These formerly supreme lower organs must serve the higher. The age of man's existence on the globe is, and must remain, the era of mind. For the mind alone has an inexhaustible store ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... intellectual relics which cannot be certainly known to answer to the most important and predominant experiences of the time. When, for example, we try to decide whether our school days were our happiest days, as is so often alleged, it is obvious that we are liable to fall into illusion through the inadequacy of memory to preserve characteristic or typical features, and none but these. We cannot easily recall the ordinary every-day level of feeling of a distant period of life, but rather think of exceptional moments of rejoicing or depression. The ordinary man's idea of the emotional experience ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and, for those of moderate means, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning the only home which they possessed. Lastly, the inadequacy of the means of transport, either because at this time heavy requisitions for the exigencies of the army had reduced the number of vehicles, or because they were too small, as it is customary to make ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... an intelligible manner the true nature and cause of disease, and to point out the inadequacy of the drug system of treatment to combat pathological conditions successfully (not from any lack of intention on the part of the drug practitioners: but from the unreliability of their methods), I shall now proceed to ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... was before, by showing him infinite things and his own abasement, till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against life, and the Author of life, than ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... return, and guiding all life by his teaching and spirit, they were cutting their moorings from the religion of their fathers. They remained loyal to the law, they were constant in the worship; but they had poured new wine into the bottles, and in time it proved the inadequacy of the old forms and revolutionized ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... for it is here evident, since it must guide us at every turn. The reason for education of judgment is also evident. Every person is bound to make many mistakes; but he will make far fewer when his ability to judge has been properly trained. The utter inadequacy of instruction that aims mainly at acquisition of facts is likewise evident; for the exercise of judgment involves the use or adaptation of knowledge to particular conditions, and the mere possession of facts bears ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... are still [62] remembered as among the most eloquent ever delivered in the House of Commons. The second reading passed by so narrow a majority that the Government thought it prudent to rally their reliable supporters, and meet just criticisms upon the inadequacy of their Bill, by bringing forward a redistribution measure and incorporating it with their franchise proposals. For a time this served to help them. By declaring that they would also stand or fall by the redistribution clauses of their Bill, they at any rate showed a ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... disposed originally to dissent from the theory of "Natural Selection," if only its difficulties could be solved, he has found each successive year that deeper consideration and more careful examination have more and more brought home to him the inadequacy of Mr. Darwin's theory to account for the preservation and intensification of incipient, specific, and generic characters. That minute, fortuitous, and indefinite variations could have brought about such special forms and modifications as have been enumerated in this chapter, seems to contradict ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... of the older children a tense, pained curiosity concerning their father's feeling on the subject, which no word of his had thus far served to relieve. There was a grave shyness among them concerning their deepest feelings, which was, perhaps, a sense of the inadequacy of expression rather than the austerity it seemed. Marg'et Ann would have liked to show her sympathy for her father, and no doubt it would have lightened the burdens of both; but any betrayal of filial tenderness beyond the dutiful care she gave him would have startled ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham |
