"Incompetent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in order to get rid of so incompetent an officer, and at the same time punish the insubordination of the men, it was resolved to disband the company. Thus was afforded to Frank the opportunity, which seemed to him almost providential, of joining ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... Miss Tita had followed me, and I supposed that as her aunt had neglected to suggest that I should take a look at my quarters it was her purpose to repair the omission. But she made no such suggestion; she only stood there with a dim, though not a languid smile, and with an effect of irresponsible, incompetent youth which was almost comically at variance with the faded facts of her person. She was not infirm, like her aunt, but she struck me as still more helpless, because her inefficiency was spiritual, which was not the case with Miss Bordereau's. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... practical and is actually so, as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept them, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... ashamed, although I was quite alone, of the nonsense I was uttering.' 'It is not a speech that I want,' said my friend, 'I can talk for three hours without hesitating, but I want an address to circulate through the county, and I find myself utterly incompetent to put one together; do oblige me by writing one for me, I know you can; and, if at any time you want a person to speak for you, you may command me not for three but for six hours. Good morning; to-morrow I will breakfast with you.' In the morning he came ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... old man trying to subdue a Jersey bull, good-natured though that bull might be. The same thought struck Judge Tiffany. Antonio, the Portuguese, lolling half-asleep against the dashboard, was worse than useless; the nearest visible help was a Chinaman, incompetent against horned ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... in this time of war to the working people have the tendency to clear the environment of the suggestion that common labor, that is the wage earning class (as distinguished from salaried people, employers and the profiteers pure and simple) are incompetent to play a responsible part in the work of wealth production. A responsible part does not mean merely doing well a detached and technical job; it means facing the risks and sharing in the experimental experience of productive enterprise as it serves the promotion ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... voice whatever in the discussion which followed, for they were regarded as incompetent judges, under the circumstances. It was finally decreed by the council that the man's life should be spared, but that he must be exposed to the indignity of a public whipping, and resign all his earthly possessions to the parents of his victim. ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the first very great opposition to the marriage of Nunez and Medina-sarote; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be. The young ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and blood. But Sir Walter had called it a matter of life and death, and I had told him that I was out to serve my country. He could not give me orders, but was I not under orders—higher orders than my Brigadier's? I thought myself incompetent, but cleverer men than me thought me competent, or at least competent enough for a sporting chance. I knew in my soul that if I declined I should never be quite at peace in the world again. And yet Sir Walter had called the scheme madness, and ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the methods of Biology—methods which are obviously identical with those of all other sciences, and therefore wholly incompetent to form the ground of any distinction between it and ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... of honesty and fair play. It was she who championed the servants, or insisted, young as she was, on bills being paid, when it would have been more agreeable to buy frocks and go to London for a theatre. She was a great power in the house, and both her languid, incompetent mother, and her pretty sister were often afraid of her. Nora was a "Home Student," and had just begun to work seriously for English Literature Honours. Alice on the other hand was the domestic and social daughter. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for any sort of wages from me," interrupted Timothy Robinson decidedly. "I tell you plainly that I won't hire you. You're the wrong man's son for that. Your father was lazy and incompetent and, worst of all, untrustworthy. I did try to help him once, and all I got was loss and ingratitude. I want none of his kind around my place. I don't believe in you, so you may as well take yourself off, Ellis. I've no ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... while at the same time the armies of Radetzky and Windischgraetz were stamping out every trace of (p. 455) insurrection in Lombardo-Venetia, in Bohemia, and eventually in Vienna itself. December 2, 1848, the easy-going, incompetent Emperor Ferdinand was induced by the reactionaries to abdicate. His brother, Francis Charles, the heir-presumptive, renounced his claim to the throne, and the crown devolved upon the late Emperor's youthful nephew, Francis Joseph I., whose phenomenally prolonged reign ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... would-be actors (male and female), vain and incompetent managers, flippant and unequal critics, puffed and translating authors, in short, of all before and behind the curtain who have injured, or may injuro, the legitimate drama. Let the theatres, like our trade, be free, and monopoly thrive not, and for their success the Spirit will ever pray; at ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... multiplex personalities, and, most startling of all, vivid intensities of mental action when the brain, that should be the generator of thought, was reduced to a comatose state. Fact after fact came hurtling in upon me, demanding explanation I was incompetent to give. I studied the obscurer sides of consciousness, dreams, hallucinations, illusions, insanity. Into the darkness shot a ray of light—A.P. Sinnett's "Occult World," with its wonderfully suggestive letters, expounding ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... as this painful interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. He settled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute and wanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highly incompetent; and he went off to four other practitioners in succession, with a view to the establishment of this intuition. But to guard against surprises he kept that little prescription in his pocket. With each he began by expressing his grave doubts ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... happened to have anything to eat, which was not always. There were no provision shops on Lochaweside; Inverary was at some distance in one direction and Oban in the other, and as I had never given a thought to feeding before, I was an utterly incompetent provider. The consequence was that we fasted like monks, except that our abstinence was not on any regular principle; in fact, sometimes we had so little to eat for days together that we began to feel quite weak. This gave us no anxiety, and we only ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... apparent and not real. But see to what such an admission commits us: if we have no grounds for saying that evil is evil, we can have no grounds either for saying that good is good; if our faculties are incompetent to diagnose the one kind of phenomena accurately, they cannot be any more competent to diagnose and deliver reliable verdicts upon the other kind. It is quite a mistake to think that by getting rid of the reality of evil we ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the scene of my real labors, I discovered how incompetent a conspirator Kossuth was. He had given me the name of his correspondent in Pesth and his residence, in the Karolyisches Haus, as if that were his ordinary residence, without warning me, though he knew it, that he was really in hiding from the police, and probably ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... miscellaneous—Aberdeen pale ale—the enormities of Warren Hastings' government—the late James Prinsep and the moral precepts of the Rajah Piyadasee—and a most incomprehensible rhapsody about "a red mustached member of the Bengal civil service," of which we profess ourselves utterly incompetent to make either head or tail, and strongly recommend the colonel to expunge it if the work reaches another edition. The voyage presents no incidents but the usual ones of pelicans, alligators, and porpoises: and on January 15, he arrived at Dhacca, "the once famous city of muslins." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... favorites. From being a mere dancer he had risen in the course of a few years to the highest dignities. His name was Theocritus, and although he was distinguished by great personal beauty and exceptional cleverness, his unbridled greed had made him hated, and he had proved equally incompetent as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... honey out of sand as to get good or evil out of the blank nature. There can be no fruit of good or evil where there is no seed of good or bad nature. Thus we find no satisfactory solution of the problem at issue in these four theories proposed by the Chinese scholars—the first theory being incompetent to explain the problem of human depravity; the second breaking down at the origin of morality; the third failing to explain the possibility of moral culture; the fourth ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... in the little town, whether under that name or not, I forget. But I can testify from experience, acquired some forty years afterwards, that Mr. and Mrs. Clemow now keep there one of the best inns of its class, that I, no incompetent expert in such matters, know in ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... liter of sljivovica and a water tumbler, to his left. Red of eye, he pored over endless reports from his agents, occasionally taking time out to growl a command into his desk mike. Tired he was, from the long sleepless hours he was putting in, but Number One was in his element. As he had told that incompetent, Kardelj, he had been through this thing before. It was no mistake that he ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... days of Clovis to the days of Charles Martel and Charlemagne the history of the Frankish realm, so far as its kingship is concerned, is almost a blank. It was an era of several centuries of incompetent and sluggish monarchs, of whom we can say little more than that they were born and died; they can scarcely be said to have reigned. But from the midst of this dull interregnum of Merovingian sluggards comes ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... be necessary for the long extract which we are about to give, to any person who will read it with attention. It is from a lecture on Agricultural Science, by Dr. Madden, and we confess ourselves incompetent to condense or improve the language of the ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... amount of regularity, attentive obedience, respect for others: obtained by fear, if the master be incompetent or foolish; by love and reverence, if ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... don't trust you," Lord Henry replied. "That must be the reason. They have learned not to trust the mature adult. British parents are either too indolent, or too incompetent to do the thing properly. And the consequence is young people have been trained by tradition to believe that, in the matter of choosing their mates, concerning which they know literally nothing, and are taught less, they must be left to their ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Hazel reached the top of the chapel that the congregation observed Foxy, a small red figure, trotting willingly in Hazel's wake—a loving though incompetent bridesmaid. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... this planet to be nothing but a howling wilderness, inhabited by us poor savages and wild beasts, shall take formal possession of it, in the name of his most gracious and philosophic excellency, the Man in the Moon. Finding however that their numbers are incompetent to hold it in complete subjection, on account of the ferocious barbarity of its inhabitants, they shall take our worthy President, the King of England, the Emperor of Hayti, the mighty Bonaparte, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... made a serious blunder and were blaming each other, hating each other for it. Neale was conscious of anger. This section of line came under his survey, and he had been proud to be given such important and difficult work. Incompetent or careless engineers had bungled Number Ten. Neale strode on among the idle and sleeping laborers, between the tents, and then past the blacksmith's shop and the feed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... high over one ear like a cavalier's, was softened by drooping white ostrich feathers; her lace parasol had a knot of yellow ribbon at one side, to match the tint of her sash. Her long tan gloves and the Marechal Niel roses at her neck were finishing touches of the picture which Sydney was incompetent to grasp in detail, although he felt its charm on a whole. The sweet, delicate face, with its refined features and great dark eyes, was one which might well cause a man to barter all the world for love; ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... thought of Ahulah, but some of those well-intentioned friends that everyone possesses had told of the misadventure to her husband, and the latter, cruel as a woman, had spat upon her, and now through the suburbs she wandered, distraught, incompetent to aid. Her brother occurred to her. It was on him she could rely. His devotion was surpassed only by her own. Thereupon she sought him out, instructed him in his duty, and sent him ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... have shown himself more helpless, useless, incompetent, than Arthur Delaine since the accident? Yet he was still on the spot. She realised, indeed, that it was hardly possible for their old friend to desert them under the circumstances. But he merely represented ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in possession of London bureau are incompetent to establish guilty connivance of either Lanier in any crime except those assaults ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... smaller, on those of the Adirondacks and of many lower chains. The quantity of water which, in great rains or sudden thaws, rushes down the steep declivities of the Alps, is so vast that the channels of the Swiss and Italian rivers would be totally incompetent to carry it off as rapidly as it would pour into them, were it not absorbed by the capacious basins which nature has scooped out for its reception, freed from the transported material which adds immensely both to the volume and to the force ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... our mission work it may be affirmed that no sooner did a chapel open its doors than a hospital was opened by its side for the relief of bodily ailments with which the rude quackery of the Chinese was incompetent to deal. Nor is there at this day a mission station in any part of China that does not in this way set forth the practical charity of the Good Samaritan. This glorious crusade against disease and death began, so far as Protestants are ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless. That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid advocacy. To denizens of the midworld the word ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Dorth had scarcely entered upon his duties when he fell into an ambush of native levies near San Salvador and was killed. His successor, Willem Schouten, was incompetent and dissolute; and, when the fleet set sail on its homeward voyage at the end of July, the garrison soon found itself practically besieged by bodies of Portuguese troops with Indian auxiliaries, who occupied the neighbouring woods ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Christian religion, appoint a time, and hear me." The proconsul said: "Persuade the people." The martyr replied: "I addressed my discourse to you; for we are taught to give due honor to princes as far as is consistent with religion. But the populace is an incompetent judge to justify myself before." Indeed, rage rendered them incapable ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... soldier was so unwilling to submit to the orders of incompetent people, he never liked to be under the direct command of Washington, and, if it were possible to do so, he managed to be concerned in operations not under the immediate eye of the commander in chief. In fact, he was very jealous indeed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... is said that you cite causes between two Romans, even against their will, before your tribunal. If you are conscious that this has been done by you, do not so presume in future, lest while seeking the office of Judge, for which you are incompetent, you wake up to find yourself a culprit. You, of all men, ought to be mindful of the Edictum, since you insist on its being followed by others. If not, if this rule is not observed by you, your whole power of decreeing shall be taken from you. Let the administration of the laws ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church will survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even that vulgar pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators which ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... be like without the churches, faulty or incompetent as we may know some of them to be, what that life would lose and miss without them is precisely, and perhaps in larger degree, what the family life misses without its own institution of regular ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... old friends, and remembering every detail of their circumstances, opinions, and conduct. Concerning the latter, he did not fail to remind them of any failings he had taken note of. Those who were frauds, incompetent, or lazy, he never spared, and often such conversations were a source of much amusement to me. On the other hand, those who had been true to him, and had not veered round with the tide of public opinion after 1896, were ever remembered and rewarded. It was ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... thing essential to be regarded. On the dissolution of the late constitution in France, by removing so integral a part of it as the King, the National Assembly, to whom a part only of the public authority had been delegated, appear to have considered themselves as incompetent to transact the affairs of the nation legitimately. They invited their fellow-citizens, therefore, to appoint a National Convention. In conformity with this their idea of the defective state of the national authority, you were ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... before the husband was released on probation. This was done apparently in the hope that it would influence the court in the disposition of the case. After a study of the situation had been made by the probation officer, it was found that the wife was totally incompetent as a housekeeper, that she possessed an antagonistic disposition, had a violent temper, and that no sincere attachment for each other existed between the couple. Before any constructive measures ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... Proposals for an Historical Account of that most universally celebrated as well as useful Art of Typography. The work, which was also to contain a history of bookbinding, paper-making, etc., was, however, never published, and it has been often stated that Bagford was quite incompetent to carry out such an undertaking. This may possibly have been the case, for although he was certainly a man of much ability, and possessed an extensive knowledge of books, he had received but little education. ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... The difficulties with which he had to struggle were, of course, very great. On the other hand, he seems to have been deficient both in strength of character and in military capacity; and his ill-health made still more difficult a task for which he was fundamentally incompetent. The comparative failure of this, Cromwell's pet enterprise, was a bitter blow to the Protector. For a whole day he shut himself up in his room, brooding over the disaster for which he, more than any other, was responsible. ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... Henry IV by a crazed fanatic in 1610 threatened for a time to nullify the effects of his labors, for supreme power passed to his widow, Marie de' Medici, an ambitious but incompetent woman, who dismissed Sully and undertook to act as regent for her nine- year-old son, Louis XIII. The queen-regent was surrounded by worthless favorites and was hated by the Huguenots, who feared her rigid Catholicism, and by the nobles, Catholic ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... there was mystification. The one woman—notorious as she was—who knew the truth had been rendered mentally incompetent by an assassin's bullet, while he, himself, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... case was prosecuted in the interest of Ward. If so, this would exclude his testimony wholly. This was in the dark legal days, when not only were parties excluded from giving evidence, but a pecuniary interest in the result of the suit to the value of one mill, would render a man incompetent as a witness. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Governor-General and Council on the college at Calcutta. There is nothing so important as to preserve young men, who are to govern an Empire, from idleness, dissipation, and debt. This must be done. The Governor-General's own superintendence may effect much. The suspension of the incompetent may do more; but while the habits of expense are given at Hayleybury, and continued by their residence without any control in the midst of a dissipated capital, nothing will reform ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... And when I add that the injured husband has been married before and that his first wife, honestly supposed to be dead, returns to threaten his happiness, you will see that Mrs. Woods sets forth upon a path trodden by many hundreds of thousands of incompetent feet. To start with such a situation almost suggests bravado. If it be bravado, it is entirely justified as the tale proceeds: for amid the crowd of failures Mrs. Woods's solution wears the singular distinction of truth. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the adjoining counties, and the establishment of a line of forts and block-houses, dispersed along a considerable extent of country, and occupied by detachments of British colonial troops, or by militiamen. All these were utterly incompetent to effect security; partly from the circumstances of the case, and somewhat from the entire want of discipline, and the absence of that subordination which is absolutely necessary to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... wars, and Lord Holland, commanding the Royalist troops, conceived the idea of a rising near London. There was to be a horse-race on Banstead Downs, to draw the people together, and he was to lead them. Unhappily for his followers, he was a thoroughly incompetent soldier. He hoisted his standard at Kingston, and marched through Dorking to Reigate, where he held the castle and posted his vedettes on Red Hill. Sir Michael Livesey, commanding some Kentish horse for the Parliament, was ordered up from Sevenoaks to meet ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... began a slow and bloody siege of the defences of the Dardanelles, clambering up to the surprise landing of a fresh British army in Suvla Bay in August, and its failure in the battle of Anafarta, through incompetent commanders and a general sloppiness of leading, to cut off and capture Maidos and the Narrows defences.... Meanwhile the Russian hosts, which had reached their high-water mark in the capture of Przemysl, were being forced back first in the south and then in the north. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... also spoken of the fact that, when Grant was re-nominated for President in 1872, a large section of the party, believing him incompetent, broke away from the party and named a candidate of their own. The party they formed was called the Liberal Republican, and their candidate was Horace Greeley. They managed to secure for him the support of the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the colour of his hair. Also the boots he ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... vast accumulation of capital made it possible for a man to purchase his way to power, in spite of repeated attempts to check the evil by legislation, the old principle of honourable association was used to help the small man to make a living by choosing the unprincipled and often the incompetent to undertake the government ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... to succour the Lazi, II. xxix. 10; with Goubazes besieges Petra, II. xxix. 11 ff.; sends an insufficient force to guard the pass into Lazica, II. xxix. 33-34; his incompetent conduct of the siege of Petra, II. xxix. 34 ff.; deceived by Mirranes, II. xxx. 7; abandons Petra, II. xxx. 11; with Phoubelis attacks Mermeroes, II. xxx. 22; with Goubazes attacks and almost annihilates the Persians, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... to weariness, I write down my opinion, that Liberia is firmly planted, and is destined to increase and prosper. This it will do, though all further support from the United States be discontinued. A large part of the present population, it is true, are ignorant, and incompetent to place a just estimate on freedom, or even to comprehend what freedom really is. But they are generally improving in this respect; and there is already a sufficient intermixture of intelligent, enterprising and ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... incompetent fools! Don't expect me to tell you your business. Why do I pay you? Why indeed? Nothing you have done has been of the very slightest use; on the contrary, through your beastly mismanagement I have been dragged into this degrading position, held up to ridicule and contempt before ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... judgment, the court condemns Jerome Morel to pay to Pierre Petit-Jean, merchant,[Footnote: The crafty notary incompetent to proceed in his own name, had got from the unfortunate Morel a blank acceptance, and had introduced a third party's name.] by all his goods, and even with his body, the sum of thirteen hundred francs, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... kill Grouse. At least I can't. I sometimes suspect there are others of the population equally incompetent, and perhaps still less interested in battues; though the Twelfth figures in everybody's calendar like a Church festival, and the newspapers devote leaders to it, and the comic papers have pictures, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... truly said of Decatur: "He was one of the most chivalric men of any age or country." He was one of the little band of naval commanders who by heroic exploits at sea did so much to redeem the American name from the humiliation and disgrace caused by incompetent generalship upon land, in our second war with Great Britain. His encounters with the enemy were of frequent occurrence, and in each instance added new laurels to our little navy. If Commodore Decatur had rendered no other service to his country, that ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... situation by insisting that she would put on the kettle, and Mr. Murdoch, in a burst of almost divine inspiration, insisted that his wife was quite incompetent to light the gas alone at that hour of the night. When the old folks had shuffled into the kitchen Grant found himself ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... extend the franchise any farther for fear that universal suffrage will result in the corruption of national politics, which is now comparatively pure. They prefer the present restrictions, which give the ballot only to women who pay taxes, because it deprives ignorant and incompetent women of a voice in the government, and avoids the dangers that often attend the participation of the masses in elections. They prefer to direct their efforts to securing an increase in women's wages, so that they may receive the same compensation as men for the same work, and hope to accomplish ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... assigned to poverty are both subjective and objective, or individual and social. It was formerly customary to throw most of the blame on the poor themselves, to charge them with being lazy, intemperate, vicious, and generally incompetent, and it is useless to deny that these appear to be the direct causes in great numbers of instances, but as much of the negro and poor white trash in the South was found to be due to hookworm infection, so very many of the faults of the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... up; but she was not to be diverted. Suddenly she turned, and caught him by the arms. "Thyrsis!" she cried. "Tell me! Do you blame me as she does? Do you think I'm weak and incompetent?" ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the spot. Such saws as, "The pot must not call the kettle black," "One swallow does not make a Spring," "Nought is never in danger," "Out of sight, out of mind," often give employment to an otherwise freightless tongue, and serve as excusing makeshifts for a mind incompetent, from ignorance, indolence, or fatigue, to discharge the duty of furnishing its own thought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... inability to do so. Privately, she was not at all sure what he meant, but dread of Miss Hardy's wrath should she be returned to the office marked "Incompetent" forced her to ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... bit that way, myself; and I think,' said poor Milly, making an effort, and growing very red; she quite lost her head at that point, and was incompetent to finish the sentiment ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... sloth that hastened the fall of the Roman Empire. Owing to the gradual exhaustion of the supply of slaves its economic basis was crumbling away. The ruling class was content to administer and enjoy rather than to govern: unwilling or incompetent to grapple with the new order of things.[19] For centuries the Gauls had been untrained in arms and habituated to look to the imperial legions for defence against the half-savage races of men, giants in stature and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and peasantry that it was all true, that the Emperor would be in Paris again very shortly and that once more there would be an end to tyranny and oppression, to the rule of the aristocrats and a number of incompetent and fatuous princes. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... with the most perfect information, an unqualified, inexperienced, or unprepared military commander may not win except with extraordinary luck or an incompetent foe. And, we repeat that there are cases where NO military force may be able to succeed if the objectives are unobtainable. The match of the entrepreneurial individual with the potential of the technology base is key. Optimizing ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... crisis at which experience had taught one to expect a crass sentimentality. The fairy-tale was well told, with some excellent characterization, and very well played. Indeed, Mr. Frank Craven's rendering of the incompetent clerk was a masterly and unforgettable piece of comedy. I enjoyed "Bought and Paid For," and it is on the faith of such plays, imperfect and timid as they are, that I establish my prophecy of a more glorious hereafter ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Mr. Laurence Fairfax had Master Justus on his lap when his father unexpectedly walked into his garden. There was a lady in blue amongst the flowers who vanished; and the incompetent Sally, with something in her arms, who also hastily retired, but not unseen, either her or her burden. Master Justus held his ground with baby audacity, and the old squire recognized a strong young shoot of the Fairfax stock. One or two sharp exclamations and ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... no longer owned the forests, nor the salt marshes, nor the vineyards; for I had heard them say that she had sold them one at a time to put the money into investments upon the mainland; and that an incompetent notary by his bad investments had greatly ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... denunciation had arisen from the Opposition when he had been raised to the peerage some months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera, and how, that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward, but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity of the war in England, knew that the Government—ignorant of what he was so laboriously preparing—was chafing at his inactivity of the past few months, so that a member of the Cabinet wrote ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... moved by a beneficent purpose to the acts which have inspired them. The sun is a symbol of this creative power—by many even imagined to be its reality. But that mighty orb is unconscious of the feelings it may inspire; and the Divine Omnipotence, which it symbolizes, must be no less incompetent to earn them. For purpose is the negation of power, implying something which power has not attained; and would imply deficiency in an existence which presents itself to our intelligence as complete. Reason therefore tells us that God can have ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... suddenly assert her starved abilities, and make him become far greater than anything Trudy had ever been able to do! It would cause such a jolly row and excitement and pep everyone up. Pet and flatter him and show Trudy that after all she had only been an incompetent ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... parties of two over the plains, which the antelope invariably prefers to the woodlands, and to which it always retreats if by accident it is found straggling in the hills, confiding no doubt in its wonderful fleetness. We also killed a few young geese, but as this game is small and very incompetent to the subsistence of the party, we have forbidden the men any longer to waste their ammunition on them. About four and a half miles above Gass's creek, the valley in which we have been travelling ceases, the high craggy cliffs again approach the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... safety valve, declared in his desperation, that "either she or he should go." At length the machinery was set in motion, on which, as Jonathan Foster described to the author "she flew all to pieces, and it was the biggest wonder i' the world that we were not all blewn up." The incompetent and useless engine was declared to be a failure; it was shortly after dismounted and sold; and Mr. Blackett's praiseworthy efforts thus far proved ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... seen too much of incompetent labor to be satisfied with anything but the best. Although his ideas were not as yet formulated, he hoped to be able to pick up a crew of first-class men from those who had come down with the advance, or "jam," of the spring's drive. They should have finished their orgies by now, and, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... of the atoms is not available by any of our mechanical appliances. The process of radio-activity involves the expulsion of atoms of helium with a velocity three hundred times greater than that ever previously known for any material mass or particle, and this power we are incompetent to use. The atoms remain unchanged amid the heat and pressure of the laboratory of nature. Iron and oxygen and so forth remain the same in the sun as here on ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Owen Roe—an honourable and gallant man, who had served with much distinction upon the Continent, landed in Donegal, accompanied by about a hundred French-Irish officers. He instantly took the command of the disorganized and fast-dissolving northern levies; superseded the incompetent Sir Phelim, who from that moment fell away into contempt and impotence; suppressed all disorders, and punished, as far as possible, those who had been foremost in the work of blood, expressing at the same time his utter detestation of the horrors which ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... clergy are backward to perceive. The consequences of this backwardness are very hurtful to their interests. Because of this, we have an indefinite amount of puerile and undignified complaint from disappointed men, of disingenuous misrepresentation from incompetent men, who have entered upon labors they were never fitted to accomplish. Such men undertake their labors in ways that want and must want the Divine sanction; and they are tempted to ward off a just verdict of unsuitableness and of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to jeer at their helplessness; soon they learnt to disregard them as if they were not there. From having believed himself to be the wisest of living creatures the Man discovered himself to be the most incompetent. Often and often he would creep to the gold-locked gates and peer between the bars, hoping to see God walking there as formerly. But God walked no more. As He had climbed back into Heaven, He had destroyed the sky-blue stairs behind Him. There was no way in which the Man could reach Him ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... week passed in a blind confusion. She did not know how to teach, and she felt she never would know. Mr. Harby came down every now and then to her class, to see what she was doing. She felt so incompetent as he stood by, bullying and threatening, so unreal, that she wavered, became neutral and non-existent. But he stood there watching with the listening-genial smile of the eyes, that was really threatening; he said nothing, he made ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... manipulations must necessarily contaminate the site of operation; for this reason and others as well women who attempt to perform an abortion upon themselves imperil their lives. The danger is scarcely less when abortion is induced unlawfully by incompetent operators; for lack of skill, the need of secrecy, and the desire of haste all interfere with necessary aseptic technique. Everyone knows that sad accidents befall those who submit to such operations; but it is not generally ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... this work,) a brief but most important statute (6 and 7 Vict. c. 85) was enacted, "for improving the Law of Evidence"—the chief object of which was, to remove all such difficulties as that which formed the subject of Mr. Parkinson's inquiries. Witnesses are now no longer "incompetent" to give evidence by reason of crime or of any interest which they may have in, or in respect of, the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a picture of what passes every day at Florence—in Pisa, on the contrary, all is stagnation and repose—even the presence of the sovereign, who usually passes a part of the winter here, is incompetent to give a momentary liveliness to the place. The city is nearly as large as Florence, with not a third of its population; the number of strangers is few; most of them are invalids, and the rest are the quietest people in the world. The rattle of carriages is rarely heard in ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... who can look through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... ignorant of its nature or opposed to its precepts engaged in its administration. While an irreligious or immoral governor would pervert the course of justice in the administration of laws truly excellent, he would be utterly incompetent to the improvement of those that might be defective. The acts of the best of civil governments—even those founded upon the statutes of Divine truth—from the very nature of society, require frequently to be modified. And, since the modelling and increase of laws, as well as their dispensation, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... Mr. Alfred Percy—he seemed to grow in an instant several feet in their estimation: but he shrunk again when he acknowledged that he had merely met Count Altenberg accidentally at Greenwich—that he knew nothing of the count's estate in Yorkshire, or of his foreign possessions, and was utterly incompetent to decide whether he had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... with great spirit. He would not, he said, disobey the King by objecting to a measure an which his Majesty was determined to hear no argument; but he would most earnestly entreat his Majesty, if the present Council was incompetent to give advice, to dissolve it and select another; for it was absurd to have counsellors who did not counsel, and who were summoned only to be silent witnesses of the acts of others. The King listened courteously. But the members of the Cabinet resented ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... millions of people not organised as they should be, not educated as they should be, not simply prevented from but incapable of nearly every sort of beauty, mostly kindly and well meaning, mostly incompetent, mostly obstinate, and easily humbugged and easily diverted. Even the tragic and inspiring idea of Marx, that the poor were nearing a limit of painful experience, and awakening to a sense of intolerable wrongs, began to develop into the more appalling ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Pitt to the ministry the whole course of events was changed because of the great statesman's wonderful personality. The teacher who wishes to make such a dramatic circumstance really vital to his class must have more information with which to work. A picture of the coarse, vulgar England with its incompetent army and navy, apathetic church, and corrupt government, followed by a stirring character sketch of the great Pitt, will cost but a few minutes of the recitation and will metamorphose a moribund attention to a ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... to be remembered, that the plot failed because a man unauthorized and incompetent, William Paul, undertook to make enlistments on his own account. He happened on one of precisely that class of men,—favored house-servants,—whom his leaders had expressly reserved for more skilful manipulations. He being thus detected, one would have supposed that the discovery of many ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... brewing. Her expertness, perhaps, never reached a high level, but at all events she made a gallant effort. But that was long, long ago, before the new enlightenment rescued her. Today, in her average incarnation, she is not only incompetent (alack, as I have argued, rather beyond her control); she is also filled with the notion that a conscientious discharge of her few remaining duties is, in some vague way, discreditable and degrading. To call her a good cook, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... by Philip to make ready to take in hand the affairs of Flanders, sadly disorganized under the incompetent rule of Alva. It occurred to him that if he were to issue victoriously from that enterprise—and so far victory had waited upon his every venture—if he were to succeed in restoring peace and Spanish ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... it be objected to me, that, being a layman, I ought not to have concerned myself with speculations which belong to the profession of divinity; I could answer, that perhaps laymen, with equal advantages of parts and knowledge, are not the most incompetent judges of sacred things; but in the due sense of my own weakness and want of learning, I plead not this: I pretend not to make myself a judge of faith in others, but only to make a confession of my own. I lay no unhallowed hand upon the ark, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... vigorous prosecution of the war in America. General John Forbes was sent, in 1758, with about nine thousand men to reduce Fort Duquesne. The illness which caused his death in the following year may be fairly accepted in excuse and explanation of the incompetent management of the expedition, and its almost fatal delays. Fortunately the French appeared to have lost the vigor and daring which they had displayed in the defeat of Braddock, and the sullen roar of an explosion, when the British troops were within a few miles ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of his authority. The law fixes the age of majority, when the child is completely emancipated; and even during his nonage, takes him from the father and places him under guardians, in case the father is incompetent to fulfil or grossly abuses his trust. This is proper, because society contributes to the life of the child, and has a right as well as an interest in him. Society, again, must suffer if the child is allowed to grow up a worthless vagabond or ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... mysterious affairs of Monday night, including the views and theories of well-known citizens. It also took occasion to "lambast" Constable Foss with great severity. The Constable, being a Republican, (and not a subscriber to the Sun), was described as about the most incompetent official Windomville had ever known, and that it would have been quite possible for the miscreant or miscreants to have poisoned every dog in town, in broad daylight, accompanied by a brass band, without Bill ever ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... had been brutally contemptuous of the city and its inhabitants. "They can't even put up the names of the streets so that people can read them," he said to John Marsh soon after he arrived in Dublin. "They're so damned incompetent!" And Marsh had told him to control his Ulster blood. "You're right to be proud of Ulster," he had said, "but you oughtn't to go about talking as if the rest of Ireland were inhabited ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the Laconian capital, Themistocles demanded no public audience, avoided all occasions of opening the questions in dispute, and screened the policy of delay beneath the excuse that his colleagues were not yet arrived—that he was incompetent to treat without their counsel and concurrence—and that doubtless they would speedily appear ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rises full in vision. The poet flings forth his melody, and to the gross ear it seems a mere tinkle of inanity. That is simply because the crowd who worship at the shrine of the Sminthean Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos also, is ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... her lot, because of the error of her incompetent heart, to take charge of this flotsam. That was so evident that she had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a big city where Sam got a chance to travel for a grocery store, and Jane Olive opened a inteligence office, where for an ample consideration she furnished incompetent help to distracted housekeepers, receivin' pay from both victims, and they laid up money fast. Then he went into pork and first we knew Sam wuz a very rich man, lived in great style, kep' his carriage, but wuz awful mean, so we heard, hadn't no morals at all to speak on so fur as wimmen wuz concerned, ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... of them, been degraded in rank. Many of them had been retired on pittances which were not paid. Those who were lucky enough to be retained in active service were superseded by superannuated, often incompetent old officers of the old royal army before the revolution, or by young scions of nobility with no knowledge or fitness to command veterans, to whom the gross-bodied, uninspiring, gouty old King did not appeal. Again, the regimental names and associations had ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... chin-deep through flattery and loving attentions. Then, after the judging is over, he is about as popular with those same exhibitors as a typhoid germ. No one can say bad enough things about him. He's 'incompetent,' he's 'a grafter,—'he's 'afraid of the big kennels,'—he's 'drunk.' He's any of these things; or all of them put together. Nobody's satisfied. Everybody has had a raw deal. Everybody's hammer is out for the poor slob of a judge. Well, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... was very sharp for a time. I seemed to have lost M. Paul's affection; he treated me strangely. In his most unjust moments he would insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, what he called "faible"—that is incompetent; he said I had feigned a false incapacity. Again, he would turn suddenly round and accuse me of the most far-fetched imitations and impossible plagiarisms, asserting that I had extracted the pith out of books I had not so much as heard of— and over ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... any legislative interposition, on whatever plea of humanity, between workmen and capitalist? Because it will fail of its humane intention. We should heartily rejoice—who would not?—if a reasonable minimum of wages could be established and secured. But it cannot. Is the legislature equally incompetent when it steps in to prevent children and very young persons from being overworked; from being so employed that the health and vigour of ensuing generations may be seriously impaired, (which would be a grave mistake even in the economy of labour;) from being so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the new commander-in-chief, from whom he expected vigor and improvement. Unfortunately he was destined to have only fresh disappointment from the new general, for Lord Loudon was merely one more incompetent man added to the existing confusion. He paid no heed to the South, matters continued to go badly in the North, and Virginia was left helpless. So Washington toiled on with much discouragement, and the disagreeable attacks upon him increased. That it should have been so is not surprising, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of letters. Languages, ancient and modern, were housed within his brain, and, to use the words of his epitaph, 'he first penetrated the obscurity which had veiled for ages the hieroglyphics of Egypt.' It fell to the lot of this man to discover facts in optics which Newton's theory was incompetent to explain, and his mind roamed in search of a sufficient theory. He had made himself acquainted with all the phenomena of wave-motion; with all the phenomena of sound; working successfully in this domain as an original discoverer. Thus informed and disciplined, he was prepared to detect ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... journal: Our pilot proved incompetent, and we narrowly escaped shipwreck in consequence at Martin Garcia Bar, a bad spot in the River Plate. A small schooner captain, observing that we needlessly followed in his track, and being anything but a sailor in principle, wantonly meditated ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum |
