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Insufficient   /ɪnsəfˈɪʃənt/   Listen
Insufficient

adjective
1.
Of a quantity not able to fulfill a need or requirement.  Synonym: deficient.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Insufficient" Quotes from Famous Books



... time Grotius began to grow tired at Paris: his pension was ill paid, and his revenue insufficient to keep him decently with a wife and a numerous family. July 12, 1623, he writes to his brother, "Pensions are no longer paid here, which embarrasses me greatly. If any Prince, such as the King of Denmark or the Elector of Saxony, would employ me, and offer me a handsome salary, it would be ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... women could make. But soldiers' shoes and cartridge-boxes must be had; leather was also needed for artillery-harness and for cavalry-saddles; and, as the amount of leather which the country could furnish was quite insufficient for all these purposes, it was perforce apportioned among them. Soldiers' shoes were the prime necessity. Therefore, a scale was established, by which first shoes and then cartridge-boxes had the preference; ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... on the previous night He and the women had reached the British lines in safety, and shortly afterwards the Police also arrived. The Fort, however, was most uncomfortable. There were about six hundred men, women, and children all huddled together in the insufficient barrack buildings. After waiting for a few hours, Jacques began to wonder what was delaying the others, and to think that something must have gone wrong. He was not the sort to remain inactive if he knew his services might be required, so he evaded ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... might therefore avail little to frustrate Lucretia's indirect contamination, if not her positive control. Besides, where guardians are appointed, money must be left; and Braddell knew that at his death his assets would be found insufficient for his debts. Who would be guardian to a penniless infant? He resolved, therefore, to send his child from his roof to some place where, if reared humbly, it might at least be brought up in the right faith,—some place which ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... case, it becomes necessary to depress the instrument to a greater extent than is otherwise required, so that its point may surmount the obstacle. But since the suspensory ligament of the penis, 10, and the perinaeal structures prevent the handle being depressed beyond a certain degree, which is insufficient for the object to be attained, the instrument should possess the prostatic curve, c c, ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... later he had lighted the cheap lamp and the room stood revealed in all its bareness. A small table, three wooden chairs, the little bed, a trunk in the corner, and a washstand, were insufficient to make it look ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the timber. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... position, and his obvious love and respect for his university, be insufficient to convince the outside world that language so severe is yet no more than just, the authority of the Commissioners who reported on the University of Oxford in 1850 is open to ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... through which the Cupari flows, into the broad Tapajos, and breathed freely again. How I enjoyed the extensive view after being so long pent up: the mountainous coasts, the grey distance, the dark waters tossed by a refreshing breeze! Heat, mosquitoes, insufficient and bad food, hard work and anxiety, had brought me to a very low state of health; and I was now anxious to make ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... pot on the range to warm up the cup that will stop that "gone" feeling so common after a near-breakfast. The man at work might once have found solace in a glass of beer; now, perhaps, he smokes an extra cigarette. It is well understood that children grow listless and dull before noon, when an insufficient breakfast is eaten. One who has breakfast leisurely at nine o'clock may be satisfied with a roll and a cup of hot drink, but a commuter with a trip ahead to office or shop, and the farmer who must make an early start in the day, cannot rely ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... life in Lizard Town. I longed to go with Tom; in London, too, I thought I should be free to follow the purpose of my life. But the question was, how should I find the money? For I knew that the sum obtained by the sale of Lantrig was miserably insufficient. So I sat with idle hands and waited for destiny; nor did I realise my helplessness until I stood in the room where Uncle ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... poetical compositions, and political and historical questions, jotting down ideas upon loose slips of paper as they came to him, night or day, forming the basis of his poems. He spent his evenings in a saloon, retiring early. The average daily quantity of stimulants or beer taken by him was insufficient to produce intoxication. He also states that in 1902 and 1903, for a period of nearly 2 years, he drank no ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey

... troops of the Army of the Potomac greatly crippled for lack of transportation on their return from the peninsula, but we were able to give rations to the Ninth Army Corps after the battle of Antietam, when the transportation of the other divisions proved entirely insufficient to keep up ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... again to shore in a South American port; proved his capacity and made money, although still a child; fell among thieves and was robbed; worked back a passage to the States, and knocked one morning at the door of an old lady whose orchard he had often robbed. The introduction appears insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal, touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "I always had a fancy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the end of the last long march of the upward journey. Yet with the Pole actually in sight I was too weary to take the last few steps. The accumulated weariness of all those days and nights of forced marches and insufficient sleep, constant peril and anxiety, seemed to roll across me all at once. I was actually too exhausted to realize at the moment that my life's purpose had been achieved. As soon as our igloos had been completed ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... jurisprudence, my companion abruptly turned upon me, whilst at the shore of the Mediterranean, and said, in his fascinating Arabic, "Behold this great sea! were all its water turned into ink, it would be insufficient to describe the villany of the individual you ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various

... which was called Cellelager, we found we had come to one which was not in the same class as Giessen. The sleeping-accommodations were insufficient for the crowd of men, and there was one bunk above the other. There was one canteen for the whole camp (instead of one in each hut as we had in Giessen), and here we could buy cakes, needles, thread, and buttons, also apples. The food was the same, except that we had ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... that canned foods may be rendered unfit for use by improper handling of the product before packing and that decomposition may occur after canning, owing to insufficient processing, improper sealing or the use of leaky containers. This condition, however, is no more likely to be encountered in foods put up in tin than in products canned in other types of containers. You run no more danger of poison from your own tin-canned products ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... in Asia, the foreigner who does not wish to be ill will exercise reasonable care. It looks smart to take insufficient sleep, snatch a hurried meal out of a tin can, drink unboiled water and walk or ride in the sun without a pith hat or an umbrella. Some foreigners who ought to know better are careless about these things and good-naturedly chaff one who is more particular. But while one should not be unnecessarily ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... not be long. It was not very easy to satisfy myself and Mr. Hartley—who was a severe critic—but when the book of 120 pages was completed he was satisfied. A preface I wrote for the second edition—the first 5,000 copies being insufficient for the requirements of the schools—will give some idea of the plan of the work:—"In writing this little book, I have aimed less at symmetrical perfection than at simplicity of diction, and such arrangement as would lead from the known to the unknown, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence

... Of this native psychological power many men show traces, but very few indeed are possessed of as much as criminalists intrinsically require. In the colleges and pre-professional schools we jurists may acquire a little scientific psychology as a "philosophical propaedeutic,'' but we all know how insufficient it is and how little of it endures in the business of life. And we had rather not reckon up the number of criminalists who, seeing this insufficiency, pursue serious ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... repute would probably have felt it imperative to maintain. But perhaps this was premature: the omnipotent Miss Power's character—practical or ideal, politic or impulsive—he as yet knew nothing of; and giving over reasoning from insufficient data ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... country, to become the working slaves of a manufacturing syndicate in the city. Indeed! Why should they? Why should these co-operators, or any one with the opportunity to become such, go to the city to accept an insufficient and uncertain wage; to be compelled to pay five prices for food, when a better and more abundant supply, could be raised on lands of their own, with less than one-half the exertion? Having good homes of their own, why should these people pay ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... face a heavy burden in seeking to have the regulations invalidated as facially unconstitutional. . . . The fact that the regulations might operate unconstitutionally under some conceivable set of circumstances is insufficient to ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... was as if the idea prevailed that, if this American force now here could be defeated, the United States would give the matter up, instead of sending more troops to the assistance of their first insufficient battalions. ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard

... not the slightest attempt to look over the parapet, much less to use his rifle. There is this much of excuse for him, that on the very instant that they reached the cover of the trench a bursting high-explosive had caught the four men next in line to him. The excuse may be insufficient for those who have never witnessed at very close hand the instant and terrible destruction of four companions with whom they have eaten and slept and talked and moved and had their intimate being for many months; but ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... money to buy a candle, writing poems and short stories by night, he was gaining that experience in the school of life of which he was later to make such splendid use. Meantime his wretchedness was deep. A miserable lodging in a garret, insufficient food, inadequate clothing, and complete absence of fire may be an incentive to high endeavour, but do not render easy the pathway of fame. The position had become all but untenable when Zola received an appointment in the publishing house of M. Hachette, of Paris, at a salary ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... at last laid in her own bed, listening again to the ripple of the waters beneath her, Miss Silence sitting on one side looking as sympathetic as her insufficient nature allowed her to look; the Irishwoman uncertain between delight at Myrtle's return and sorrow for her condition; and Miss Cynthia Badlam occupying herself about house-matters, not unwilling to avoid the necessity ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in the doorway, and in the insufficient light the rascals could not see whether he had a weapon ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... for our comfort, and we were congratulating ourselves on having found a haven in our distress, when, lo! the seams above opened, and down upon our devoted heads poured such a flood, that even umbrellas were an insufficient protection. There was nothing left for the ladies and children but to betake ourselves to the berths, which, in this apartment, fortunately remained dry; and here we continued ensconced the livelong day. Our dinner was served up to us on our pillows. The gentlemen chose the dryest spots, raised ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... might be spared, if only Greif married Hilda. Until he had realised what issues were at stake, Rex had been satisfied with the suggestion he had made to Greif, believing that it would ultimately bear fruit in the desired result. Now, however, it seemed insufficient and wholly inadequate to the importance of the case. Greif must marry Hilda, and the letter must not be destroyed, for it might prove a valuable instrument with which to hasten or direct the march of events. After all—were the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... modern pedagogics, we see how enormously the field of reactive conduct has been extended by the introduction of all those methods of concrete object teaching which are the glory of our contemporary schools. Verbal reactions, useful as they are, are insufficient. The pupil's words may be right, but the conceptions corresponding to them are often direfully wrong. In a modern school, therefore, they form only a small part of what the pupil is required to do. He must keep ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... flights, we find a Portuguese widow, with four little girls, the eldest fifteen, the next thirteen, and the younger ones three and six, respectively; they are all dwarfed by hardship and insufficient food, so that the one who is fifteen is not larger than an average girl of twelve. The mother is sick, and the girls are trying to keep the wolf from the door by carrying on the sewing. They are all hard at work; they carry the ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... to relieve the physicians of much of the administrative work which requires little or no medical supervision and direction. Special provision for the training of such executives has, however, received insufficient attention. This question might, with great advantage, be taken up by the hospitals and colleges. Nothing would add more to the quality of the service which the hospitals render than to supplement the work of the physicians by that of ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... a doctrine that they call 'blood-atonement,'" replied Edward. "Daring to teach, contrary to the express declarations of Scripture, that the blood of Christ is insufficient to atone for all sin, they assert that for some sins the blood of the sinner himself must be shed or he will never attain to eternal life, and that therefore it is a worthy deed ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... back more invincibly voluble than ever. Everyone had expected him to return apostate, but he brought back an invigorated faith, a propaganda unashamed. From some source he had derived strength and conviction afresh. Even the rhetorical Smithers availed nothing. There was a joined battle over the insufficient tea-cups, and the elderly young assistant demonstrator hovered on the verge of the discussion, rejoicing, it is supposed, over the entanglements of Smithers. For at the outset Smithers displayed an overweening confidence and civility, and at ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... bacteria in one way or another. Thus the influence of the acidity developed in the curds is felt throughout the whole life of the cheese, an over-development of lactic-acid bacteria producing a sour condition that leaves its impress not only on flavor but texture. An insufficient development of acid fails to soften the curd-particles so as to permit of close matting, the consequence being that the body of the cheese remains loose and open, a condition favorable to the development ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... nipped in the bud, however, by Annie herself. Annie Forest was nothing if she was not frank and fearlessly matter-of-fact. She quickly discovered how hollow and insufficient poor Nora's attempts to maintain a worldly conversation really were. She crushed her by telling her that she had never been in society herself in the whole course of her life, that she knew nothing whatever of it or its ways, ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... outrages was communicated to the police, and the needful investigations were pursued, I believe, with great energy. The authorities held that a robbery had been planned, on insufficient information received by the thieves. They had been plainly not sure whether Mr. Luker had, or had not, trusted the transmission of his precious gem to another person; and poor polite Mr. Godfrey had paid the penalty of having been seen accidentally ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... man are of insufficient strength to bear him in the air, it has been found possible, by using a motor engine, to give to man the power of flight which his ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... army marched. Always before it lay a land bare and dumb. The vast Russian army could never be found. In endless succession the French crossed plains on which the grass grew, thin and bare, splendid for the grazing of cattle, but utterly insufficient for a hundred thousand horses, now reduced to seventy thousand. Ahead of the soldiers, every day, the sun rose red upon an empty land, every night it set, red, behind them, upon a land equally bare and empty. Day after ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... to hear him, had to be without hurry or violence. The strange characters, her handiwork, on whom he sheds his light, delight me. She has enabled me to carry out an old thought for which my own knowledge is insufficient and to commingle the ancient phantasies of poetry with the rough, vivid, ever-contemporaneous tumult of the roadside; to create for a moment a form that otherwise I could but dream of, though I do that always, an art that prophesies though with worn and failing ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... as Quicksand—was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours. Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy; my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, especially, was wont to express his ennui according to ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... around the room for something with which to fight the man. She seized an iron frying-pan and struck him with all the force she could summon, but the blow was insufficient. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock

... past year. It is gratifying to perceive that while the war with Mexico has rendered it necessary to employ an unusual number of our armed vessels on her coasts, the protection due to our commerce in other quarters of the world has not proved insufficient. No means will be spared to give efficiency to the naval service in the prosecution of the war; and I am happy to know that the officers and men anxiously desire to devote themselves to the service ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... doubt that he went further, to find, as we do, that upon that brief gladness there follows a certain sorrow,—the little light of awakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of the unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do more than illuminate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspirations that cannot be realized, of man's own nature. But in this sadness, this consciousness of the limitation of man, this ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... oppressive. The minister sort of squirmed around and began the service over. At the last word he made another effort to immerse the sinner. Again his strength was insufficient, both men ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... King or for the preservation of the country. He condemned the situation as being commanded on one side by an island at the distance of a pistol shot, and on the other by a height at the distance only of a hundred and odd fathoms (toises), and with a very insufficient water supply. He therefore caused the fortifications to be razed, demolished the houses, and carried away the guns and everything else of a portable character to Port Royal. The inhabitants living on the River St. John were left without protection and they seem ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... say," returned Nino, "that I venture to consider your reasons insufficient, though I do not question your decision. Baron Benoni was ennobled for a loan made to a Government in difficulties; he was, by his own account, a shoemaker by early occupation, and a strolling musician—a great artist if you like—by the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... damped at beholding the pale faces and squalid figures of the captives across the bars of its strongly-grated windows. Some years after the date of this history, an immense ventilator was placed at the top of the Gate, with the view of purifying the prison, which, owing to its insufficient space and constantly-crowded state, was never free from that dreadful and contagious disorder, now happily unknown, the jail-fever. So frightful, indeed, were the ravages of this malady, to which debtors and felons were alike exposed, that its miserable victims were frequently carried out by cart-loads, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... disdain the consideration of all evils necessary to attain it. Had not your own hearts borne testimony to this truth, you might have learned it from the annals of your own history; for in those annals instances of this kind at least are not unprecedented. But should those instances be insufficient, we pray you to read the unconquered mind ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... non-fulfilment of promise fulfils it in a deeper way. The account we have given already, were it to end there, would be insufficient to excuse the failure of life's promise; by saying that it allures us would be really to charge God with deception. Now life is not deception, but illusion. We distinguish between illusion and delusion. We may paint wood so as to be ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... income being the immediate cause of misery, it is fitting that we should know why, misfortune and malevolence aside, the workingman's income is insufficient. It is still the same question of inequality of fortunes, which has made such a stir for a century past, and which, by a strange fatality, continually reappears in academic programmes, as if there lay the real ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... succumb to the rulers of Xibalba, the darksome powers of death. Their bodies are burned, but their bones are ground in a mill and thrown in the waters, lest they should come to life. Even this precaution is insufficient—"for these ashes did not go far; they sank to the bottom of the stream, where, in the twinkling of an eye, they were changed into handsome youths, and their very same features appeared anew. On the fifth day they displayed themselves anew, and were seen in the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... insufficient, though she remembered that his haphazard carelessness had once appealed to her. Now, however, she realised that to undertake a thing light-heartedly was a very different matter from carrying it out successfully. Then it ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... models examined, which were the property of the factory, one hundred and twenty were rejected. In fact, only twenty were designated as truly fit for production, not falling under the epithets "anti-republican, fanatic or insufficient." The latter description was applied to all those exquisite fantasies of art that make the periods Louis XV and Louis XVI a source of transcendent delight to the lover of dainty intellectual design, and include particularly ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... on the occasion of his fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done; cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on the western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to be entertained, a young man difficult ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... determined and established ought not to be gainsaid by private persons but upon very clear evidence of the falsehood or unlawfulness of it; nor is the peace and unity of the Church to be violated upon every scruple and frivolous pretence.' (4) There are a great many who, from ignorance or insufficient capacity, are incompetent to judge of any controverted question. 'Such persons ought not to engage in disputes of religion; but to beg God's direction and to rely upon their teachers; and above all ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Carson saw that while he cursed softly in his corner; Melvin saw it and watched for the end, wondering just how it would come. Trevors should swing for the point of the jaw, put all that was in him into a final, smashing blow, beat through an insufficient guard, do it now, quickly. For both Carson and Melvin saw another thing, a thing which both had sensed at the outset: Bud Lee was harder than Bayne Trevors. Lee, slipping away at every step was getting something back which had nearly gone from him; ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... miles from its easterly shore. Its waters are conveyed by tunnel, flume, etc., over the mountains, the Washoe Valley and up the mountain again to Virginia City. Originally the only supply of water available for Virginia City was from a few springs and mining tunnels. This supply soon became insufficient and many tunnels were run into hills both north and south from Virginia for the express purpose of tapping water. These soon failed and it became necessary to look for a permanent supply to the main range of the Sierra Nevada twenty-five or more miles away. Accordingly the Virginia ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... directed, or reenforced in men and supplies, was confirmed. Governor Dinwiddie's notion that raw volunteers would suffice to overcome trained soldiers had been proved a delusion. The inadequate pay and provisions of the officers irritated Washington, not only because they were insufficient, but also because they fell far short of those ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... to obstruct the advance of the Romans the Rhodian fleet helped it. Hannibal, in his exile, saw the necessity of being strong on the sea if the East was to be saved from the grasp of his hereditary foe; but the resources of Antiochus, even with the mighty cooperation of Hannibal, were insufficient. In a later and more often-quoted struggle between East and West—that which was decided at Actium—sea-power was again seen to 'have the casting vote.' When the whole of the Mediterranean coasts became part of a single state the importance of the navy was naturally diminished; but ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... is anticipating the end of my tale. Where was I? Oh! Beaudenord came back. When he took up his abode on the Quai Malaquais, it came to pass that a thousand francs over and above his needs was altogether insufficient to keep up his share of a box at the Italiens and the Opera properly. When he lost twenty-five or thirty louis at play at one swoop, naturally he paid; when he won, he spent the money; so should we if we were fools enough to be drawn into a bet. Beaudenord, feeling pinched with his eighteen ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... human life is frail, And genius trembles at the lofty theme, I little confidence in either place; But let my tender wail There, where it ought, deserved attention claim, That wail which e'en in silence we may trace. O beauteous eyes, where Love doth nestling stay! To you I turn my insufficient lay, Unapt to flow; but passion's goad I feel: And he of you who sings Such courteous habit by the strain is taught, That, borne on amorous wings, He soars above the reach of vulgar thought: Exalted thus, I venture to reveal ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... we are playing for a penny than when we are playing for a thousand pounds, as that a form of trial which is sufficient for the purposes of justice, in a matter affecting liberty and property, is insufficient in a matter affecting life. Nay, if a mode of proceeding be too lax for capital cases, it is, a fortiori, too lax for all others; for in capital cases, the principles of human nature will always afford considerable security. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thousand pounds as compensation for his loss in this respect. For his house at Formiae they gave him half as much. We hear of his rebuilding the house. He had advertised the contract, he tells us in the same letter in which he complains of the insufficient compensation. Some of his valuables he recovered, but we hear no more of collecting. He had lost heart for it, as men will when such a disaster has happened to them. He was growing older too, and ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... the Oude troops is about one- third of the strength of the powder used by our troops. His authority is despised by all the tallookdars of the district, many of whom refuse to pay any rent, defy the Government, and plunder the country, as all their rents are insufficient to pay the armed bands which they keep up. All his numerous applications to Court, for more and better troops and establishments, are disregarded, and he is helpless. He cannot collect the revenue, or coerce the refractory landholders and robbers, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... actually in Italy, at Siena, he wrote the greater part of one of his very finest performances; the study of Charles Dickens, of which he corrected the proofs 'at a little town in Calabria.' It is an insufficient tribute to Gissing to say that his study of Dickens is by far the best extant. I have even heard it maintained that it is better in its way than any single volume in the 'Man of Letters'; and Mr. Chesterton, who speaks from ample knowledge on this ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... such aspirations." And, prompted by the benevolence of my mood, and the anticipations of a wise forecast, I collected in front of me whatever edibles remained on the table, that, if the supply of our hospitality should prove insufficient, the exhibition of its spirit should at ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... learn you O first. That's the first letter I learned;" and he made a phenomenally large and round O in the upper left-hand corner of the sheet. The paper, finding insufficient resting-place upon the bony knee, took occasion to flap idly in the gentle southerly breeze; upon which the child took hold of it with a quaint air of ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... fathers, that they were only blacks. There can be no doubt that the larger group consisted of a number of slaves captured by the Sultan of Fezzan, during a late expedition he had made into Soudan. His troops, having left Bornou with an insufficient supply of provisions, allowed their unhappy captives to perish, while they made their escape with the food intended ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... rejoice with in all their triumphs; she had never been aunt, never, indeed, even so much as the milder "auntie" to them; she had been "Joyce," only, from the very commencement of their acquaintance. The united commands of both father and mother (feebly enforced) had been insufficient to compel them to address this most charming specimen of girlhood by any grown up title. To them their aunt was just such an one as themselves—only, perhaps, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... meet her sheep at a feeding station a few miles outside of Omaha, but the violence of the storm had changed her plans and she had remained to spend many tedious hours waiting on side-tracks, and this, together with the work of unloading to feed and water, and insufficient sleep, had brought her as near exhaustion as ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... increased, as time passed on. I could not venture to attack with insufficient force a monstrous and formidable serpent concealed in dense thickets amidst dangerous swamps; yet it was dreadful to live in a state of blockade, cut off from all the important duties in which we were engaged, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... And that insufficient colloquy was the beginning of a prolonged estrangement between us. It was characteristic of our relations that we never reopened the discussion. The thing had been in the air for some time; we had recognised it ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... the sole supervision of primary schools. Hence comes the proverb, to play truant (faire l'ecole buissonniere—to go to hedge school). All the resources of French civil jurisdiction appeared to be insufficient against the Reformers. Henry II. asked the pope for a bull, transplanting into France the Spanish Inquisition, the only real means of extirpating the root of the errors." It was the characteristic of this Inquisition, that it was completely in the hands ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... more and more burdensome as time goes on. To meet a higher income tax there will be pressure to increase salaries paid by the Government and all public authorities. An official salary fixed at L5,000 a year when income tax was one shilling and sixpence, may be thought insufficient when it is nearly ten shillings including super-tax. Persons have incurred liabilities for rent and other fixed payments which they are not able to reduce. All along the line there will be claims for higher payments for services rendered or goods supplied. On the ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... was somewhat hastily assumed, bring down severe retribution on their heads. It was alleged that they had communicated to the German military authorities important telegraphic messages intercepted on their way from the Allies. But the evidence adduced was deemed insufficient to bear out this indictment. The other charge was that they had regularly handed on the confidential bulletin of the Swiss General Staff to the military attaches of the Central Empires in Berne and only to them. And the count was proven to the satisfaction of the tribunal. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... mushroom-shaped hat, and a holland apron with two deep pockets in virtue of her office; for Mademoiselle Lesage has an enterprising spirit. She found herself at thirty years old left alone in the world with an ugly face and with an insufficient "dot." Mademoiselle Lesage is ambitious: she does not care to marry a very poor man, and she has managed to give the town council of Aubette such security that it allows her to farm the market yearly for some hundreds ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... Insufficient food, lack of sleep, and poisonous water from the buffalo wallows brought nausea and weakness to the faithful men making their way across the hostile land to bring help to us in our dire extremity. It is all recorded in history how these two men fared in that hazardous undertaking. No hundred ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter

... light on my tour; but little seems known by foreigners of northern Japan, and a Government department, on being applied to, returned an itinerary, leaving out 140 miles of the route that I dream of taking, on the ground of "insufficient information," on which Sir Harry cheerily remarked, "You will have to get your information as you go along, and that will be all the more interesting." Ah! but how? ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... that these are but two versions of one incident; and although there is no objection in principle to admitting the possibility of that explanation, yet in fact it appears to me insufficient and unnecessary. For each event is appropriate in its own place. In each there is a distinct difference in tone. The incident recorded in the present chapter has our Lord's commentary, 'Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise'; in that recorded ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... in the peroration which he added to Origen's Comment on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, strongly and painfully exhibits to us how little dependence can safely be placed on such translations whenever the original is lost; how utterly insufficient and unsatisfactory is any evidence drawn from them, as to the real genuine sentiments and expressions of the author. Ruffinus informs us, that with regard to many of the various works of Origen, he changed the preacher's ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... in my power to make a contribution of permanent value to the "Great Servant Question." But, having given instances of insufficient qualification in people seeking to be employed, I now turn to the opposite side of the account, and, after perusing what follows, would respectfully ask, Who ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... the conception of this atrocity the editor is not responsible; for its adoption he is. A thousand years of purgatorial fire would be insufficient expiation for the criminal on whose deaf and desperate head must rest the original guilt of defacing the text of Shelley with ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... combustible material such as paper, straw, and dry cloth, upon the instantaneous radiation of heat from the nuclear explosion. The presence of large amounts of unburnt combustible materials near X, however, indicated that even though the heat of the blast was very intense, its duration was insufficient to raise the temperature of many materials to the kindling point except in cases where conditions were ideal. The majority of the fires were of secondary origin starting from the usual electrical short-circuits, broken gas lines, overturned ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... arguments full of unwarrantable passion, and with references to reports affecting merely his own personal power and consideration, which reports were not proved, nor attempted to be proved, and, if proved, furnishing reasons insufficient for his purpose, and indecent in any public proceedings. That the said Hastings did cause the said sums of money to be rigorously exacted, although no such regular battalions as he pretended to establish, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... cooked food, containing much water be freely used, and there be little perspiration, it is possible to do without drinking; but there is danger of taking insufficient water to hold freely in solution the waste products excreted by ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan

... dogma, though a malformation has to be admitted for the middle ages;[42] and therefore the formation of dogma is almost everywhere justified as the testimony of the Church represented as completely hypostatised, and the outlook on the history of the time is put into the background. But narrow and insufficient as the complete view here is, the excellences of the work in details are great, in respect of exemplary clearness of presentation, and the discriminating knowledge and keen comprehension of the author for religious problems. The most important work done by Thomasius is contained ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... one. Now, if, in giving a variety of proof for one and the same theorem, we flatter ourselves that the multitude of reasons will compensate the lack of weight in each taken separately, this is a very unphilosophical resource, since it betrays trickery and dishonesty; for several insufficient proofs placed beside one another do not produce certainty, nor even probability. They should advance as reason and consequence in a series, up to the sufficient reason, and it is only in this way that they can have the force ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant

... as well as one can expect, for the rations are insufficient. Our men have been helping to get ready a rest camp near us, and have been filling mattresses with hay. Every fatigue party comes back from the hospital, their jackets bulging with hay for the horses. Two bales were condemned as too musty to put into ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... of the transaction would come forward, and testify to what had taken place. He could issue no warrant on my word, against white persons; and, if I had been killed in the presence of a thousand blacks, their testimony, combined would have been insufficient to arrest a single murderer. Master Hugh, for once, was compelled to say, that this state of things was too bad; and he left the office ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... the scene is deliberately described with reference to the poet or the reader, not as something in itself, but as something seen by him, and grouped and subordinated exactly as it would strike his eye and mind. But even this is insufficient. The heart of man demands more, and so arises a craving after the old nature-mythology of Greece, the old fairy legends of the Middle Age. The great poets of the Renaissance both in England and in Italy had ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... a snow-shoe track. I went down on my knees to examine it, but the light was insufficient to make it out clearly. What would I not have given for a match at that moment! However, as the size of the shoe-print seemed to my feeling the same with that of the shoe I wore, I concluded that it must certainly be my own track out from home—all ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... Century Progress, quite heedless of the possibility of ending in a cul-de-sac. The first locomotives, apart from the heavy tradition of their ancestry, were, like all experimental machinery, needlessly clumsy and heavy, and their inventors, being men of insufficient faith, instead of working for lightness and smoothness of motion, took the easier course of placing them upon the tramways that were already in existence—chiefly for the transit of heavy goods over soft roads. And from ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... junta of Navarre busied in providing new clothing for a part of the troops. The taxes levied in the districts in which the Carlists operated, and those duties on goods passing the frontier which they were able to collect, must at that period have been of very trifling amount, and insufficient to meet the expenses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... containing some of the most brilliant passages in the book, brought up in arms against him both Catholics and Presbyterians. Trained scientists blamed him for encroaching on their domains with an insufficient knowledge of the phenomena of the natural world, whence resulted a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... 1832-4 two volumes of Recherches pour servir a l'histoire naturelle du littoral de la France. After Audouin's early death A. de Quatrefages was associated with Milne-Edwards in this pioneer work, and their valiant struggles with insufficient equipment and lack of all laboratory accommodation, and the rich harvest they reaped, may be read of in Quatrefage's fascinating account of their journeyings.[300] Note that though they called themselves ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... with good ground that muscular effort applied without mechanism is insufficient for human flight, but he states that if an aeronautical boat were constructed so that a man could sit in it in the same manner as when rowing, such a man would be able to bring into play his whole bodily strength for the purpose of flight, and at the same time would be able to get ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... all in a single day, a curious and startling pageant. The Modoc, who had gone bareheaded through the winter, assumed hers as a turban of impressive altitude, while the diminutive Carietta and the infant Sophronia appeared but as vagrant telescopes on insufficient pegs. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... his most important suggestion for the improvement of Negro schools in the State, the establishment of a Normal School for the training of Negro teachers. He gave five reasons why such a school should be supported by the State: first, the number of teachers were insufficient to supply the rapidly increasing demand; second, the character of the teaching in a large proportion of the Negro schools needed elevating as white teachers of high qualifications could usually do better in white schools and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... I had occasion frequently to prescribe in a syphilitic ward, which being situated directly under the roof, in a large garret, was liable, in the summer season, to become very much heated. As the patients were numerous, and the windows insufficient to admit of proper ventilation, the air became much contaminated; and the consequence was, that bowel complaints were very frequent and troublesome. I have often entered the ward on a summer's morning, and found ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... now, Nina, I suppose we may starve," said her father, whom she found sitting close to the stove in the kitchen, while Souchey was kneeling before it, putting in at the little open door morsels of fuel which were lamentably insufficient for the poor man's purpose of raising a fire. The weather, indeed, was as yet warm—so warm that in the middle of the day the heat was matter of complaint to Josef Balatka; but in the evening he would become chill; and as there existed some small necessity for cooking, he would beg that ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... all the while stood by the plant to aid in its uprooting should the strength of the animal prove insufficient, then rushes forward, and, detaching it from the body of the dead hound, grasps it firmly in both hands. He then wraps it up carefully in a silken cloth, first, however, washing it well in red wine, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... improvements:—"That troublesome appendage the fly-wheel, as I have observed, Mr. Gurney has rendered unnecessary. The danger to be apprehended in going over rough pitching, from too rapid a generation of steam, he avoids by a curious application of springs; and should these be insufficient, one or two safety valves afford the ultimatum of security. He ensures an easy descent down the steepest declivity by his 'shoe-drags,' and the power of reversing the action of the engines. His hands direct, and his foot literally pinches ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various



Words linked to "Insufficient" :   inadequate, shy, meagerly, insufficiency, lean, sufficient, scrimpy, stingy, poor, quantity, scant, meagre, skimpy, depleted, low, short, light, meager, deficient



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