"Unfitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concluded that it was unfitting for a democratic poet to be hampered by the verse forms of the Old World. He discarded rhyme almost entirely, but he did employ rhythm, which is determined by the tone of the ideas, not by the number of syllables. This rhythm is often not evident in a single ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... required. It has hardly seemed necessary to inquire how the learner would know when his work was finished, or to what extent he should pass judgment on thoughts presented, for her questions and other tests would insure proper thoroughness, and her presence would check unfitting boldness in judging. It has hardly seemed necessary to consider how far he should proceed in the mastery of a topic, or how he should avoid being dogmatic, for she would let him know when the endpoint was reached—if he did not stop too soon of his own accord—and she would reprove too ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... peace," said the Queen, "this is unfitting language; and, besides, I would speak," said she, recollecting herself, "with the Abbot of Saint Mary's—Nay, Douglas, I will not let you quit my ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... apparently, for he stopped, and asked leave to sit by me. I consented, while an incomprehensible feeling crept over me; and when once I had time to recollect myself, I shrunk from him, as a blood stained brute, with whom even in his extremity it was unfitting for me to hold any intercourse. When he noticed my repugnance to remain near him, he addressed me hastily, as if afraid that I would destroy the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... scattered on the floor, and the air filled with odor of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a religious brotherhood—or if this should not be conceded, at all events it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of the cloister; nor will ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... deprive their owners of them, but to be restored in this life "an hundredfold." How is it to be wished that these half measures were abandoned, and that if we have put our hand to the plough, we might not look back, as we so often have done, to the unfitting ourselves for that kingdom which is not only righteousness, but peace and joy. "That your joy may be full," is plainly the purpose of our Saviour towards His children; and yet how many, as Macaulay says, "have just enough religion to make them unhappy when they do wrong, and yet ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... mouthpiece of his government. The blame must fall, not on the intelligent servant, but on the feeble masters. Who can wonder if the daring and haughty spirit of Catharine scoffed at the remonstrances, and despised the interests of a country, whose cabinet adopted language so unfitting the dignity and real power of the mighty British empire? The expressions of this dialogue would have been humiliating to the smallest of the "square-league" sovereignties of the Continent. The answer of the empress was precisely what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... said. "He shan't be whipped any more, shall he, because Miss Grantly looks like a statue? And, Fanny, don't tell Mark to put me into a lunatic asylum. I also know a hawk from a heron, and that's why I don't like to see such a very unfitting marriage." There was then nothing more said on the subject, and in two minutes they arrived at the house of the Hogglestock clergyman. Mrs. Crawley had brought two children with her when she came from the Cornish curacy to Hogglestock, and two other babies had been added to her cares ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... new frock." She altered the "as if he had given me" which was upon her tongue because the proposition, even for purposes of illustration, that a nobleman could ever have offered her a new frock seemed to have in itself something of the scandalous and unfitting. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... too anxious to see his daughter married to listen to any excuses, and he declared that a dress must be put together somehow for the bride to wear. But when he went to look at the princess, she was such a figure that he agreed that it would be unfitting for her position to be seen in such a gown, and he ordered the ceremony and the banquet to be postponed for a few hours, so that the tailors might take the dress to pieces and ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... specially because shee embraced and kissed me sweetly. And when she was somewhat restored unto joy shee desired me that shee might first shut the chamber doore, least by the untemperance of her tongue, in uttering any unfitting words, there might grow further inconvenience. Wherewithall shee barred and propped the doore, and came to me againe, and embracing me lovingly about the neck with both her armes, spake with a soft voice and said, I doe greatly feare to discover ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... Terrible, yes, but—it struck her as very unfitting for the great man's plain little wife to find him ridiculous. And Felicite, as her husband always called her, saw ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... also a subject to which we are strongly attached, and gladly would we have a set chat with our readers upon it; but as the discussion for so broad a field as we should have to survey, would be in many points arbitrary, and unfitting to local information as to varieties, and particular cultivation, we refer the reader, with great pleasure, to the several treatises of Downing, and Thomas, and Barry, on this interesting topic, with which the public are fortunately in possession; ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... state of transition; the last discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic discovery to-morrow. Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go on side by side: one says, "We have not ships enough, no 'relief' ships, no NAVY, to tell the truth"; the other cry says, "We have all the wrong ships, all the wrong guns, and nothing but the wrong; ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... northern counties, the following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby, lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses, which he had sent with his letter, and which were to the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... of popular education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... doubt, no doubt! All very proper on your part, I am sure! But concerning this same image of which I came to speak,—it is most imperative that you should be brought to recognize it as a purely carnal object, unfitting a maiden's eyes to rest upon. The true followers of the Gospel are those who strive to forget the sufferings of our dear Lord as much as possible,—or to think of them only in spirit. The minds of sinners, alas! are easily influenced,—and it is ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... "Because I thought it unfitting that the passage to the women's apartments should be left open when so many in the palace know the way," she ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... family that of the five Cardinals who accompanied his corpse from Avignon, one was his brother, one his cousin, and three his nephews; and that the Huguenots who violated his tomb at La-Chaise-Dieu, should have used his skull as a wine-cup, seems an horrible, but not an unfitting mockery. It was in vain that Petrarch hotly wrote, "the Pope keeps the Church of Jesus Christ in shameful exile." The desire for return to Rome ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... was good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's protegee had been softened. She was a very pretty little ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the progressive weakening of my father's health and peace of mind during the previous year or so, may probably have influenced my attitude in all such matters, may have given a partly feminine quality to my affection for my father. I know it seemed to me unfitting that he should ever take any part in our domestic work on the Livorno, and very natural that I should attend to all such matters. Also I had felt, ever since the day in Richmond Park when, to some extent, he gave me his ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... needs are the same to all, and the means of satisfying them should be equally within the reach of all. Fit a man's education to his real self, not to what is no part of him. Do you not see that in striving to fit him merely for one station, you are unfitting him for anything else, so that some caprice of Fortune may make your work really harmful to him? What could be more absurd than a nobleman in rags, who carries with him into his poverty the prejudices of his birth? What is more despicable than ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... is unbecoming to consider that scene with any vulgar curiosity to know what it was that made Jesus so draw back from the drinking of his "cup." It is not unfitting, however, to recognize that in his cry, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove this cup from me" (Mark xiv. 36), an intense longing of his own soul's life had expression. There ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... one to whom it is proposed. For fitness is spoken of by way of relation; hence it depends on both extremes. And hence it is that taste, according as it is variously disposed, takes to a thing in various ways, as being fitting or unfitting. Wherefore as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 5): "According as a man is, such does the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... exalted of the maidens, "we have counsel for thee." "What may it be?" she inquired. "Go to the youth that is in the upper chamber, and offer to become his wife, or the lady of his love, if it seem well to him." "That were indeed unfitting," said she. "Hitherto I have not been the lady-love of any knight, and to make him such an offer before I am wooed by him, that, truly, can I not do." "By our confession to Heaven, unless thou actest thus, we will leave thee here to thy enemies, to do as they will with ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... and Grecian silks. Thy father accepted them and chose out from amongst the five girls Sophia, daughter of King Afridun; nor did we hear more of her till the beginning of this year, when her father wrote to my father in words unfitting for me to repeat, rebuking him with menaces and saying to him: Two years ago, you plundered a ship of ours which had been seized by a band of Frankish pirates in which was my daughter, Sophia, attended by her maidens numbering some threescore. Yet ye informed me not thereof by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... coldest of men, bent his knee and carried her hand to his lips. So on Birthnights he kissed the late Queen's hand, she standing before the Throne. Then stood very grave. "Madam, I entreat your pardon. I have shown you a side of a man's character very unfitting for your eyes and you but the child you are. Forgive me, and ere we part for ever, answer me one question, in token of your pardon. Had I been but James Hamilton, the lowest of my clan—could you have ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... which was devoted to Maimonides. The biography of Rashi is the second of the series. It is not for the author to endorse the order adopted, but he hazards the opinion that the readers will find the portrait of Rashi no unfitting companion-piece even to that of ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... business, instead of unfitting a cultivated mind for scientific or literary pursuits, are often the best training for them. Voltaire insisted with truth that the real spirit of business and literature are the same; the perfection of each being the union of energy and thoughtfulness, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles |
