"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not, however, to be supposed," said the August Aunt, opening her snuff-bottle of painted crystal, "that the minds of our deplorable and unattractive sex are wholly incapable of forming opinions. But speech is a grave matter for women, naturally slow-witted and feeble-minded as they are. This unenlightened person recalls ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... incapable of remorse, is, of all men, most capable of fear. His villany had, to all appearance, reached the goal; for he felt sure that all Rosa's struggles would, sooner or later, succumb to her sense of gratitude and his strong will and patient temper. But when the victory was ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... possibly correct and complete one? Is the kind, unselfish man necessarily a villain because he does not always succeed in suppressing his natural instincts? Is the narrow-hearted, sour-souled man, incapable of a generous thought or act, necessarily a saint because he has none? Have we not—we unco guid—arrived at a wrong method of estimating our frailer brothers and sisters? We judge them, as critics judge books, not by the good ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... himself to be at the end of his resources, and that the enfeebled mind was incapable of response to any appeal to head or heart. "I will ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... may, for they who have prattled of your engagement, have done so principally because they are incapable of maintaining a conversation on any thing else. But, all this time, I fear I stand accused in your mind, of having given advice unasked, and of feeling an alarm in an affair that affected others, instead of myself, which is the very sin that we lay at the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... did the Mendicant Orders, instituted at a later date purposely to supply what the older Orders, as well as the secular clergy, seemed to have grown incapable of furnishing, any longer satisfy the reason of their being. In the fourteenth century the Dominicans or Black Friars, who at London dwelt in such magnificence that king and Parliament often preferred a sojourn with them to abiding at Westminster, had in general grown accustomed ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... as they were gone he began to reflect upon his present situation, which, indeed, was melancholy enough, for he had no provisions, was beset on every side, quite incapable of judging what to undertake, or what course to steer: however, he at last resolved to steer farther into the woods, which he accordingly did, and got up into another tree: here he sat all the succeeding day, without a morsel of food; but was ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... determining in my own mind the course that other women would pursue in exceptionally difficult circumstances; many of them would doubtless display an amount of principle of which I should be quite incapable; and so I am glad that L—— thinks, as I do, that Jane Eyre's safest course would have been to have left Thornfield without ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... by the formation of the republic the fundamental problem of the country has been left unsolved. In this wise it happens that the situation is something like this. Whilst the country is governed by an able president, the people enjoy peace and prosperity. But once an incapable man assumes the presidency, chaos will become the order of the day, a state of affairs which will finally lead to the overthrow of the president himself and the destruction of the country. In such circumstances, how can you devise a general policy for the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... been more insensible to the impressions of a life thus passed among the ensigns of mortality. His mind was closed against all general considerations. He was incapable of interest in the fate and fortunes of another, the slave of his own desires and low ambitions. Cold, light, and selfish in the last resort, he had that modicum of prudence, miscalled morality, which keeps a man from inconvenient drunkenness or punishable theft. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talented, clever, gifted, efficient; effective, cogent, telling, potent. Antonyms: unable, incompetent, incapable, inefficient ineffective, impotent. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... first part of the prediction was fulfilled. And what should prevent the latter from being so? To add to his distress, he was laboring at this time under a grievous malady, the result of early excesses, which shattered his constitution, and made him incapable alike of mental ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... it seems, that the wretched defendant in this momentous issue should be subjected to the jurisdiction of a judge unknown to the Constitution, holding his office by a prohibited tenure, incapable of being impeached, and bribed to decide in favor of the plaintiff by the promise of double fees, but the very trial allowed him must be a burlesque on all the forms and principles of juridical justice. The plaintiff, without notice ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... never taught at all, those who acquire their knowledge only through accidental sources—usually incapable, and too often vicious—their case could not be worse. They are unprepared for one of the tests and demands for ...
— Every Girl's Book • George F. Butler
... Company's affairs, more might be said to his prejudice—not in respect of his integrity, for, I believe him to have been a most honourable man, and incapable of any meanness—but in regard to his management. Although, as the original projector of the Canada Company, he evinced much cleverness, and afterwards displayed considerable judgment in the choice of the best situations for building towns and villages, yet he committed some ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... artificial needs, to the satisfaction of ambitions, grudges, and whims? The man who gives himself up entirely to the service of his appetites, makes them grow and multiply so well that they become stronger than he; and once their slave, he loses his moral sense, loses his energy, and becomes incapable of discerning and practicing the good. He has surrendered himself to the inner anarchy of desire, which in the end gives birth to outer anarchy. In the moral life we govern ourselves. In the immoral life we are ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... me mad? You think me incapable of perfecting this plan about whose details you have not even yet been informed! You would show me the door as though you were a king and I a slave—when kings and slaves vanished from the earth millenniums ago! Then listen ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... I know what you think of me as clearly as if you had spoken. Let me say what I think of you. You are a gallant gentleman, full of the ideas of the past, and incapable of changing; you will be a loyal servant to your own cause, and it will be beaten. To you I owe my life. Possibly it might have been better for you to have let me fall by the sword of one of Conde's dragoons, but we are all in the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... notable men went out with the Earl, his personal following did not exceed seventy in all. Then followed the march which ended so disastrously in pitiful surrender at Preston that fatal November day. However gallant personally, Forster was an incapable soldier, no leader of men, and General Wills had but to spread wide his net to sweep in the bulk of the insurgents—Forster, Derwentwater, Kenmure, Nithsdale, Carwath, Wintoun, and men less exalted ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... would show warm and rich to the eye of poet and painter. Most of the farmers there, however, would have felt a little insulted by being asked to admire them at any time: whatever their colour or shape or product, they were incapable of yielding crops and money! In truth many a man who now admires, would be unable to do so, if, like those farmers, he had to struggle with nature for little more than a bare living. The struggle there, what with early, long-lasting, and bitter winters, and the barrenness ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... This must mean that the payment shall be continued until the slave recovers from his ill-treatment. Light is thrown upon it by a later Babylonian law, according to which, if the services of a slave have been hired by a second person and the slave falls ill or is otherwise rendered incapable of work, the hirer is fined for as long a time as the illness or incapacity continues. The object of the law is clear. It was intended to prevent the slave from being overworked by one who had not, as it were, a family interest in him. ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... startling revelation. It was so to the pirate on this occasion. The idea of judgment took such a hold of him that he shrank from death with far more fear than he ever had, with courage, faced it in days gone by. Trembling, terrified, abject he sat there, incapable of consecutive thought or ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... was a gentle, patient soul, living for her family, wholly unselfish and incapable of complaint. She was placid and cheerful, courageous and trusting. I had four fine aunts, two of whom were then unmarried and devoted to the small boy. One was a veritable ray of sunshine; the other, gifted of mind and nearest ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... so anxious to encourage marriage, that they punished unmarried persons by rendering them incapable of receiving any legacy, or inheritance by will, except from near relatives. And those who were married, and had not any children, could take no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... laboured not to omit the slightest shade, or the most petty line in your portrait. Here there was no other task incumbent on me but to copy; there was no need to exaggerate or overlook, in order to produce a more unexceptionable pattern. Here was a combination of harmonies and graces, incapable of diminution or accession without injury ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... doctor would have sooner sent into the grave, and who is dying more slowly under the hands of another. If friendship ever was a mockery, it was so on this occasion. But it is part of Napoleon's plans to exhaust Germany to such an extent as to render her incapable of becoming dangerous for him even in the most remote future. He selected several highly effective expedients for this purpose. Dynasties, the ancestors of which date back to the most remote ages, and one of which ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... shall have to make my hero a 'two-gun' man," she said. "That is decided. Now, the next thing to do is to give some attention to his character. I think he ought to be absolutely fearless and honest and incapable of committing a dishonorable deed. ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... strength at present to proceed; but I hope I shall soon be enabled to do so. Your Lordships cannot, I am sure, calculate from your own youth and strength; for I have done the best I can, and find myself incapable just at this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the rich brother-in-law, who had tried to kill the girl he deceived, another. But before he gave voice to his thoughts he recognized them as springing only from panic. They were of a part with the acts of men driven by sudden fear, and of which acts in their sane moments they would be incapable. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... would find it difficult to resist, and therefore cannot, I presume, be willing to encounter."[1] But he added, "There is here an opinion, which many do not hesitate to avow, that the United States are, by the nature of their Government, incapable of any great, vigorous, or persevering exertion."[125] This impression, for which it must sorrowfully be confessed there was much seeming ground in contemporary events, and the idiosyncrasies of Jefferson and Madison, in their ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... pages, with lazy looks and shabby dresses; and among them, sunning himself sulkily on a bench, a poor old fat, wrinkled, dismal white eunuch, with little fat white hands, and a great head sunk into his chest, and two sprawling little legs that seemed incapable to hold up his bloated old body. He squeaked out some surly reply to my friend the dragoman, who, softened and sweetened by the tarts he had just been devouring, was, no doubt, anxious to be polite: and the poor worthy fellow walked away rather crestfallen at this return of his ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... certain indolence of intellect, that arose in part from undervaluing books, and although later a great reader, he was never a learned man. His manners were rude though kind; he had wonderful personal popularity, and was the freest possible from cant, pretence, or any sort of demagogueism. He was as incapable of a mean thought as of uttering the slightest approach to an untruth, or practising a possible insincerity. He was a favorite with the young lawyers and students, who imitated his rude manner and strong language; was a dangerous advocate, and had much influence with courts. In all these ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... or imaginary sciences, which make no signs of progress and have no definite sphere, tends to interfere with the prosecution of living ones. The study of them is apt to blind the judgment and to render men incapable of seeing the value of evidence, and even of appreciating the nature of truth. Nor should we allow the living science to become confused with the dead by an ambiguity of language. The term logic has two different meanings, an ancient and a modern one, and we vainly try to bridge the ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... George a Minister, and why does not Mr. Redmond take office? Isn't there something called an ordnance department, and why is there a separate ministry of munitions? Can Mr. Lloyd George remove an incapable general?..." ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... in England, she found that her school had suffered considerably in her absence. It can be little reproach to any one, to say that they were found incapable of supplying her place. She not only excelled in the management of the children, but had also the talent of being attentive and obliging to the ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... Chauvelin decisively. "In his present state he is incapable of it, even if he would, which also ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... divisible.[Footnote: Bergson in Matter and Memory examines Zeno's four puzzles: "The Dichotomy," "Achilles and the Tortoise," "The Arrow" and "The Stadium."] If movement is not everything, it is nothing, and if we postulate, to begin with, that the motionless is real, then we shall be incapable of grasping reality. The philosophies of Plato, of Aristotle, and of Plotinus were developed from the thesis that there is more in the immutable than in the moving, and that it is by way of diminution that we pass from the stable ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... long pause.] Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing. Nobody is incapable of doing ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... all nonsense this morning. Mr Dallas is wounded, and incapable. I am senior officer, and the captain's orders must be carried out. Call the men together, and I'll have those guns up ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... rare thing for loving sisters who have to resign their brothers to others' keeping to think so. But Amelie knew that Angelique des Meloises was incapable of that true love which only finds its own in the happiness of another. She was vain, selfish, ambitious, and—what Amelie did not yet know—possessed of neither scruple nor delicacy in attaining ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... principles are right,—the wrong lies in that human instinct which finds itself incapable of living up to its best standard. I believed that my success had been due to a recognition of my principle, when in reality it came from the simplest possible expression of self-interest. If we go on, the Companies' ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... this once proud and energetic, but now worn-out and enfeebled, oligarchy: so incapable was that hoary polity of contending with the youthful ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... with a living warmth of color upon hill, and valley, and plain. The myriad tints shine in perfect harmony, for Nature is incapable of discord whether in her reign of beauty or her moments of terror. Discord belongs to the imperfect human eye, the human brain, the human heart. Thus must the most perfect human creation be ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... must!" she cried. "I know him better than you do. I know him to be incapable of the tiniest speck of dishonour. I swear that he is innocent! I swear ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... the highest importance were then given; and a very favourable specimen; for Mulgrave, though he wanted experience, wanted neither parts nor courage. Others were promoted in the same way who not only were not good officers, but who were intellectually and morally incapable of ever becoming good officers, and whose only recommendation was that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which allured these men into the service was the profit of conveying bullion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in that nauseating place of peril, confronting the grisly thing that might have hurled him outward into space with one wing-blow had it not been clogged with human flesh and incapable, that McKay reached for the remnants of the dead Hun's clothing and, facing the feathered horror, searched for evidence ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... Lord. Considerable progress has already been made in this country. The marriage of insane persons, persons absolutely non compos, was, of course, always void at the common law, and the church law as well. They are incapable of contract. The marriage of impotent persons was void also, but by recent laws the marriage of epileptics is forbidden and made void, the marriage of persons addicted to intoxicating liquors or drugs, the marriage of persons who have been infected by certain ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Not that she was positively angry, but merely acting on the principle—perhaps untrue, or not the only truth, though as high a one as Mother Rigby could be expected to attain—that feeble and torpid natures, being incapable of better inspiration, must be stirred up by fear. But here was the crisis. Should she fail in what she now sought to effect, it was her ruthless purpose to scatter the miserable ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... individuals, as he ought, he charges all his disappointments to public supineness, and looks upon the country, I believe, as void of honor and honesty. We have frequent disputes on this head, which are maintained with warmth on both sides, especially on his, who is incapable of arguing with or giving up any point he asserts, let it be ever so incompatible with ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... also tired of ranch life, the social triumphs of her sister making her a little restless. She was incapable of feeling jealous, but material ambitions made her anxious that her children should not bring up the rear of the procession in which the other grandchildren were cutting such a ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that which I look'd for at first. For as for this Blood, how often have I lost a great deal of it in my Skirmishes with the Wild Beasts, and yet it never did me any considerable harm, nor rendred me incapable of performing any Action of Life, and therefore what I look for is not in this Cavity. Now as for the Cavity on the left side, I find 'tis altogether empty, and I have no reason in the World to think that it was made in vain, because I find every part appointed for such and ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... to the testimony of the father. I find myself incapable of speaking of him or his testimony with severity. Unfortunate old man! Another Lear, in the conduct of his children; another Lear, I apprehend, in the effect of his distress upon his mind and understanding. He is brought here to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... her departure he stood in the hall, staring before him. A new jealousy, a horrible constriction of the heart, had begun to torture him. He went and walked about in the library, but could not dispel his suffering. Vain to keep repeating that Monica was incapable of baseness. Of that he was persuaded, but none the less a hideous image returned upon his mental vision—a ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... a good deal more, and she said a lot of lovely things that I shall remember all my life. It was as though she were giving over the charge of Will into my hands, and they are such hasty incapable hands that they need all the guiding they can get. She told, me all about him as she had known him all these years—his good qualities, which I was to encourage; his weaknesses, which I was to discourage; his faults, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a large, handsome girl of about three-and-twenty. What was her reason for journeying unattended to Cairo we know not. Whether she ever reached her destination we are still in doubt, for a more complacently incapable damsel never went a-voyaging. The Saracen maiden who followed her English lover from the Holy Land by crying "London" and "A Becket" was scarce so impotent as Placidia; for any information the Saracen maiden ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... ascertained is the ability of each citizen to pay. In some states a uniform POLL TAX is assessed upon every adult citizen. This is a tax upon the PERSON and usually amounts to about two dollars. Only those are exempt who are incapable of self-support. But the chief reliance is upon a property tax. State and local governments depend principally upon a GENERAL PROPERTY TAX, for which purpose property is divided into two kinds: REAL ESTATE, which includes land and buildings, ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... large observation, considerable dramatic skill, a sweet and humane spirit, and an easy command of language. His style, indeed, is singularly simple, pure, clear, and straightforward; but it conveys the impression of a mind so diffused as almost to be characterless, and incapable of flashing its thoughts through the images of imaginative passion. He is more prosaic, closer to ordinary life and character, than his contemporaries. Two of his plays, and the best of them all, "A Woman killed with Kindness," and "The English ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... marriage. The lady he chose, or suffered to be chosen for him, was a Miss M——, a scion of one of those extensive families, not now so common as formerly, which by repeated intermarriage and always settling together develop a spirit of clanship, so exclusive as to make them almost incapable of any feeling of interest outside of their own name and connection, and render them liable to regard any person of different blood, who may happen to intermarry among them, as an intruder. In some parts of the Union these clans may still be found flourishing in considerable purity and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting on them. Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now, for the first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... heavy and white.... What happened afterward I do not remember.... I do not remember! It was like death, like murder.... When that terrible fog dispersed at last—when I ... my friend recovered her senses, there was no one in the room. Again—and for a long time—she was incapable of crying out, but she did shriek at last ... ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... himself. To this emotion there is no contrary. For no one thinks too meanly of himself because of self—hatred; I say that no one thinks too meanly of himself, in so far as he conceives that he is incapable of doing this or that. For whatsoever a man imagines that he is incapable of doing, he imagines this of necessity, and by that notion he is so disposed, that he really cannot do that which he conceives that he cannot do. For, so long as he conceives that he cannot do it, so long ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... not wish to take up the cudgels for the Jews in this pamphlet. It would be useless. Everything rational and everything sentimental that can possibly be said in their defence has been said already. If one's hearers are incapable of comprehending them, one is a preacher in a desert. And if one's hearers are broad and high-minded enough to have grasped them already, then the sermon is superfluous. I believe in the ascent of man to higher and yet higher grades of civilization; but I ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... Borneo, and looked in at Sarawak, a province which the talent, the energy, the perseverance, and the philanthropy of Sir James Brooke, have brought from the depths of barbarism and disorder to a high state of civilisation. Those who are incapable of appreciating his noble qualities seem inclined to allow it to return to the same condition in which he found it. I heard Captain Frankland speak very strongly on the subject, and he said it would be a disgrace to England, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... intended no harm—quite the contrary! After an instinctive recoil, he leaned against a table and wiped his forehead, breathing in gasps, incapable ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... or law upon an incapable and merely real man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of sympathy govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put at the head. We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep insist on in a leader. With men who are too high intellectually, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... been her sensations while with Raoul, that in her joy she was incapable of desiring anything else, of dreaming of aught save the renewal ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... of the necessity of actual grace we must avoid two extremes. The first is that mere nature is absolutely incapable of doing any thing good. This error was held by the early Protestants and the followers of Baius and Jansenius. The second is that nature is able to perform supernatural acts by its own power. This was taught by ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... records of battles and skirmishes through the monotonous pages of history, or by the catalogues of libraries stretching over a dozen measured miles, could not be erased, but arrayed itself in endless files incapable of obliteration, as often as the eyes of our human memory happened to throw back their gaze in that direction! Heaven be praised, I have forgotten everything; all the earthly trophies of skill or curious research; even the erolithes, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is possessed by this large way of conceiving a life in its manifold relations to the service of the world, that is the secret of Harriet Martineau's firm, clear, calm, and almost neutral way of judging both her own work and character and those of others. By calm we do not mean that she was incapable of strong and direct censure. Many of her judgments, both here and in her Biographic Sketches, are stern; and some—like that on Macaulay, for instance—may even pass for harsh. But they are never the product of mere anger or heatedness, and it is a great blunder to suppose that reasoned ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... humiliate you unnecessarily in the presence of my father," she said. "You have managed to deceive him into believing that you are what you claim to be. Mr. Bince has known from the start that you are incompetent and incapable of accomplishing the results father thinks you are accomplishing. Now that you know that I know you to be an impostor, what ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beauty of the world and the beauty of art, of which they chatter without having really discovered it, or even believing in it, for they are ignorant of the intoxication of tasting the joys of life and of intelligence. They are incapable of attaching themselves in anything to that degree that existence is illumined by the happiness ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... against his sisters, but the vicar remained neutral. He saw that though at times Herbert was a little impatient at the domination of his sisters, and a chance word showed that he nourished a feeling of resentment toward them, he was actually incapable of nerving himself to the necessary effort required to shake off their influence altogether, and to request them ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... disintegration and ruin—such a capitulation to slavery, would have been base and cowardly. It would have justly merited for us the scorn of the present, the contempt of the future, the denunciation of history, and the execration of mankind. Despots would have exultingly announced that 'man is incapable of self-government;' while the heroes and patriots in other countries, who, cheered and guided by the light of our example, had struggled in the cause of popular liberty, would have sunk despairingly from the conflict. This is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Christ, he told them, was born among the Jews; still, it was not the Jewish religion which he taught; neither was it the religion of the Pagan neighbourhood; but, a religion infinitely superior to both. One sees in it the most striking marks of divinity. The Christians, who followed, were incapable of imagining any thing so beautiful. Add to this, that the Christian religion is so excellently calculated for the good of society, that, if we did not derive so great a present from heaven, the good and safety of men would absolutely demand from ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... between earth and heaven, between the ideal and the real, between the aim set before man and a world condemned to anathema by the fall, and incapable, through the imperfection of its finite elements, of affording him the means of realizing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... to hate, he thought. Love is hard, and because it is, the tough humans who can't achieve it and have the patience to manipulate it must scorn it. The truly weak ones, they're incapable of the stern and brutal self-discipline required of one who loves ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... concessions had been made, they were not disposed to return to the condition of inferiority in which they had been held during the last century, or to submit to rulers who proved themselves as cruel and vindictive in moments of victory as they were incapable of understanding the needs of the time. The struggle accordingly continued. Regiment after regiment was sent from Spain, to perish of fever, of forced marches, or on the field. The Government of King Ferdinand, despairing of its own resources, looked around for help ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... age with boys. When younger, they tyrannize over their little sisters, when older they may again take pleasure in girls' society; but there is an age, in every boy's life, when he is inclined to think girls a nuisance, as creatures incapable of joining in games, and as being apt to get ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... minds of those who recorded them, neither machines nor angels, but fallible creatures, with human passions and prejudices. Tacitus and Thucydides were perhaps the ablest men who ever gave themselves to writing history; the ablest, and also the most incapable of conscious falsehood. Yet even now, after all these centuries, the truth of what they relate is called in question. Good reasons can be given to show that neither of them can be confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the brow betrayed the existence of a feeling, indefinable indeed by the observer, but certainly unallied to softness. Still was she beautiful—coldly, classically, beautiful—eminently calculated to inspire passion, but seemingly incapable of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... shunned us we might have had mercy, but he met us openly, quietly, and with all the indifference of one who cannot measure feeling, because he is incapable of experiencing it himself. His first sentence evinced this. 'Spare yourselves, spare me all useless recriminations. The girl is dead; I cannot call her back again. Enjoy your life, your eating ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... and Mildred are at once too timid and too audacious, too tremulous in their consciousness of guilt, too hardy and reckless in their mutual devotion, to carry through so difficult a game. Mertoun falters and stammers in his suit to Tresham; Mildred stands mute at her brother's charge, incapable of evasion, only resolute not to betray. Yet these same two children in the arts of politic self-defence are found recklessly courting the peril of midnight meetings in Mildred's chamber with the aid of all the approved resources and ruses of romance—the disguise, the convenient tree, the signal ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... her policy taught her to endure whatever Miss Debby might choose to inflict. So she leaned back hopelessly in her chair, while the old lady snapped and cracked a plate of candied fruits with a vigor of which her teeth looked incapable. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Seventy."[14] Thus the theory proposed in these pages will account not only for the undeniable parallels existing between the Vegetation cults and the Grail romances, but also for the Heterodox colouring of the latter, two elements which at first sight would appear to be wholly unconnected, and quite incapable of relation to ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... together, after which the subordinate, approaching the captain of the guard, said: "Captain, I come to offer myself in the place of my poor brother, who, having been wounded in the arm, is helpless, and incapable of removing the smallest ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... no notion of the uses to which they ultimately contribute. Now that the time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press, addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are needed to destroy and incapable of reconstructing, the time has also arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and rank of the man in whom you take so gracious an interest. In vain you have pressed him to do so before; till now he had not amassed together, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... powers were equal to. Mrs. Douglass went off into fits, which rendered her incapable of speaking, and left the unlucky chicken-bearer to tell his story his own way, but all he brought forth was, "Du tell! ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Antiochus Philopappus, that all men pardon the man who acknowledges that he is excessively fond of himself, but that there is among many other defects this very grave one in self-love, that by it a man becomes incapable of being a just and impartial judge about himself, for love is blind in regard to the loved object, unless a person has learnt and accustomed himself to honour and pursue what is noble rather than his own selfish interests. This gives a great field for the flatterer in friendship, who finds a ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... then, may be said against them for being too avaricious or too destitute of fellow-feeling, should rather reflect on ourselves, who have been so much better favoured, yet have neglected to teach them, than on those who, whilst they are sinning, know not what they are doing. To say a negro is incapable of instruction, is a mere absurdity; for those few boys who have been educated in our schools have proved themselves even quicker than our own at learning; whilst, amongst themselves, the deepness of their cunning and their power of repartee are quite surprising, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Martineau, is it not true that she has admitted her wreck story to have no proof? Surely she has. Surely she said that the evidence was incapable, at this point of time, of justification to the exoteric, and that the question had sunk now to one of character, to which her opponent answered that it had always been one of character. And you must admit that the direct and unmitigated manner of depreciating the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... misanthropic. If I did not love all my species, it was because I saw nothing lovely in any body; but I did not hate them. I felt that I was an insignificant, an unnoticeable drop in the great world; that it was my misfortune to be so constituted as to be incapable of uniting closely and mingling with other drops; and that, without offending my neighbors, it would be my duty and pleasure to keep myself distinct from the rest, and hidden in some obscure corner. In one word, the prevailing feeling was, that nobody cared for me, and I ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... Captain Cameron in a state of distraction that rendered him incapable of either coherent thought or speech. "What now, Rae? Where have you been? What news have you? My God, this thing is driving me mad! Penal servitude! Think of it, man, for my son! Oh, the scandal of it! It will kill me and kill his sister. What's your report? Come, out with it! Have you ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... "It stands good, according to the proverb,—a rotten branch will be found in every tree. My father's greatest misfortune evidently was that he had such ill luck in producing sons that at last he produced one incapable of acting, and without any resemblance to our race, and whom in truth I never would have called brother, if it were not that it would have been to my ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... passions forms the bridge over which its author passes from psychology to ethics. No soul is so weak as to be incapable of completely mastering its passions, and of so directing them that from them all there will result that joyous temper advantageous to the reason. The freedom of the will is unlimited. Although a direct influence on the passions is denied it,—it can neither annul them ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... followed each other he knew that two boats were at hand. Then the hatch was suddenly lifted, and as Harry raised his head above water there was a loud cheer, and he saw Adolphe and Pierre, one on each side, stretch out their arms to him. The girls were first lifted into Pierre's boat, for Jeanne was as incapable of movement as her sister, then Harry was dragged in, the rough sailors shaking his hand and patting him on the shoulder, while the tears ran down ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... is the form of the bill now before us, that if it should pass into a statute, it would, in my opinion, put a stop to all future inquiry, by making those incapable of giving evidence, who have had most opportunities of knowing those transactions, which have given the chief occasion of suspicion, and from whom, therefore, the most important information must ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... so. Who is it that considers the helpless situation of our sex, that does not see that we each moment stand in need of a protector, and that a brave one too? [Formed of the more delicate materials of nature, endowed only with the softer passions, incapable, from our ignorance of the world, to guard against the wiles of mankind, our security for happiness often depends upon their generosity and courage:—Alas! how little of the former do we find!] How inconsistent! that man should be leagued to destroy that honour upon which solely ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... be a language he had invented for himself, and quite incapable of being understood, or even deciphered, by any but a thorough-going disciple, such as Dr., now Sir John, Bowring, James Mill, the author of "British India," John Stuart Mill, the two Austins, or George Grote, the banker ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... no answer, but burst into a flood of tears. She seemed incapable of decision, or even of thought. I felt suddenly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Helvetii were terrified in the face 68 of danger. At the first alarm they had chosen Claudius Severus general, but they knew nothing of fighting or discipline and were incapable of combined action. An engagement with the Roman veterans would be disastrous; and the walls, dilapidated by time, could not stand a siege. They found themselves between Caecina and his powerful army on the one side, and on the other the Raetian auxiliaries, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... trivial little reason was at once so plain to me. From that moment all my sympathy with Mary was spilled, and I searched for some means of exulting over her until I found it. It was this. I decided, unknown even to David, to write the book "The Little White Bird," of which she had proved herself incapable, and then when, in the fulness of time, she held her baby on high, implying that she had done a big thing, I was to hold up the book. I venture to think that such a devilish revenge was never before planned and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... be essential qualifications for this office; for though the human intellect is so great, that it can dive as it were into the ocean and discover the laws of fluids, and rise again up to heaven, and measure the celestial motions, yet it is incapable of itself of penetrating into divine things, so as spiritually to know them; while, on the other hand, illiterate men appear often to have more knowledge on these subjects than the most learned. Indeed the Quakers have no notion ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... why Suleyman had kept him in strict order on the journey; for my English friends were quite incapable of seeing any fun in such a character. Nor did I ever tell them of the great adventure of that journey, in which their cook was very ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... This cannot be permitted to continue very much longer; for we are running short of provisions and coal, while the ships' bottoms are getting so foul that, should the need for fast steaming arise, we should find that the vessels are incapable of making their top speed by at least two or three knots. If we are compelled to raise the blockade of the place so that we may put ourselves in order, the Peruvians will naturally avail themselves of the opportunity ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... is not the work of a blind destiny. While civilisation in the East succumbed and died out before the advance of races incapable of culture, it was welcomed in the West by races possessing the requisite capacity, which by their inborn force gave it new forms and indestructible bases for its outward existence. Nor have the nations and kingdoms arisen each from its mother earth, as it were in obedience to some inward impulse ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... WOLFE understands his business he has only to receive my first fire, give a volley in return, and then charge; when my Canadians—undisciplined, deaf to the sound of the drum, and thrown into confusion by his onset—would be incapable of resuming their ranks. Moreover, as they have no bayonets with which to oppose those of the enemy, nothing would remain for them but flight; and then— behold me ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... this earth must have solidity and hardness to resist the sudden changes which its moving fluids would occasion, it must be made subject to decay and, waste upon the surface exposed to the atmosphere; for, such an earth as were made incapable of change, or not subject to decay, could not afford that fertile soil which is required in the system of this world, a soil on which depends the growth of plants and life of animals,—the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... of the Iroquois ownership of, in common severalty of Village Indians, rights in tenure of, among ancient Mexicans Languages, stock, number of great number of, among American aborigines verbal, incapable of permanence Lapham, J. A. Las Casas, B. de, cited Latin and Sabine gentes, coalescence of Lewis and Clark, cited Lintels of Pueblos of Mexico wood and stone Lolsel Long-House of the Iroquois described Onondaga described symbol of the ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... the outside end of the return envelope is a line left for the original signature of the elector to whom the ballot is mailed, whereon he must either subscribe his signature in ink, or if he be an incapable voter, and is assisted, must have his own name subscribed thereon, together with the names of two freeholders in that precinct, who assisted him in voting. Upon receipt of the envelope containing his ballot, the voter marks a cross (X) at the names of the candidates for whom ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... doubt about the utility of attempting to educate people of color, who were incapable of elevation. This subject occa- sioned a lengthy discussion in the family. Mr. Bellmont, Jane and Jack arguing for Frado's education; Mary and her mother objecting. At last Mr. Bellmont declared ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... here the reason why the tyranny is broken: for the enemies of the Kingdom of God shall entirely and for ever be rendered incapable of carrying on warfare. If the noisy war-shoes, and their blood-stained garments are to be burned, they themselves must, of course, have been previously destroyed. But, if that be the case, then all war and tyranny are come to an end, "for ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... horrors of my situation chilled my soul, and annihilated all my courage. How I retained, by the energies of despair, unaided by reason, my half pendulous position, I cannot explain. I was, for a time after consciousness returned, incapable of reflection; my mind, a chaos of fear and horror. I felt wet to the skin, from the thin spray, which fell upon and enveloped me like a cloud; a profuse sweat stood upon my forehead, and rolling down in large drops, made my eyes smart. I grasped something that sustained me, yet ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... elicit no positive reply. Mary, in fact, was half in love with the General and the Commandant, and wholly in love with the Lieutenant, and was quite incapable of deciding ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... one might perhaps conclude that the absolutely existing being is incapable of any mental activity or consciousness. We have no authority for assuming that Melissus came to this conclusion; but there is a curious remark of Aristotle's respecting this and previous philosophers of the school which ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... those who love and honour me think if they saw their friend in this dotage and distraction? I reflect at such times on the great hurt our original sin has done us. For it is from our first fall that all this has come to us that we so wander from God, and are so often utterly incapable of God. But it is not so much Adam's sin as my own that works in me all this alienation and inability and aridity. Methinks I love God; but my actions, and the endless imperfections I see in myself, cause me great fear, and deep and ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... appointed to introduce them, and explain it to them. They think, in fact, that it brings bad luck if any one touches the threshold. Howbeit, they are not expected to stick at this in going forth again, for at that time some are like to be the worse for liquor, and incapable of looking to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... upon the house which had, in popular belief at least, the guilt of his brother's blood upon it as well as that of his own long confinement. Walter Stewart, whose only other appearance in history is that of a rebellious and undutiful son whom his father was incapable of keeping in subjection, was arrested in Edinburgh Castle about a year after James's restoration, and after an interval of several months his arrest was followed by that of Duke Murdoch and his son Alexander, both ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... sharply into Don Caesar's grave face. He seemed to be incapable of any double meaning. However, as he had no serious reason for awakening Don Caesar's jealousy, and very little desire to become an embarrassing third in this conversation, and possibly a burden to the young lady, he proceeded to take ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... never let a chance go by them. And though they may meet many rebuffs, they sometimes make a successful venture. Impudence sometimes attains to a pitch of sublimity; and at that point it has produced a very great impression upon many men. The incapable person who started for a professorship has sometimes got it. The man who, amid the derision of the county, published his address to the electors, has occasionally got into the House of Commons. The vulgar half-educated preacher, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes; As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indu'd Unto that element: but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... communicated to the troops, who understood at once. The men exchanged jests and promises of fabulous exploits. They had already forgotten the fatigues of the fortnight's retreat. What did they care if their horses could hardly carry them further, and if many of them would be incapable of galloping? ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... as I called him, was in a serious mood for another reason. After more than twelve years of life as an actor, he had decided to quit the stage, something the player is traditionally supposed to be incapable of doing, and he had come to me for aid and encouragement. "I have a good opportunity to go into the management of a rubber plantation," he explained, "and I'd like to have you buy out my share in the Homestead in order to give me a little money ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... long as I was at peace I had no fault to find with my lot after my son's death; but when the Assyrian persuaded me to march against you I encountered every danger. Yet I was saved, I came to no harm. Once again, therefore, I have no charge to bring against the god: when I knew myself incapable of warring against you, he came to my help and saved mine and me. [23] But afterwards, intoxicated by my wealth, cajoled by those who begged me to be their leader, tempted by the gifts they showered on me, flattered by all who said that if ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon |
