"Incapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself to with extreme facility. So remarkable a change was not, in that age, to be accounted for but by a miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat, almost despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he had not ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... and thirty years since, and have continued to enjoy its teachings, in a greater or less degree, to the present moment. The disappearance from among our colored people, of the savage condition of the human mind—the incapacity to comprehend religious truths—and its continued existence among those of Jamaica, can now be understood. The opportunities enjoyed by the former, for advancement, over the latter, have been six to one. With these facts before ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... in half a century the French population will be so swallowed up by the English, as to be remembered but on record. If, again, we put the claims of British loyalty against the treason of the French—the English energy, activity, and capital, in opposition to the supineness, ignorance, and incapacity of the French population,—it is evident, that not only in justice and gratitude, but with a due regard to our own interests, the French Canadians must now be wholly deprived of any share of that power which they have abused, and that confidence of which they have proved themselves so ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... up one's clothing was by stealing mealsacks. The meal furnished as rations was brought in in white cotton sacks. Sergeants of detachments were required to return these when the rations were issued the next day. I have before alluded to the general incapacity of the Rebels to deal accurately with even simple numbers. It was never very difficult for a shrewd Sergeant to make nine sacks count as ten. After awhile the Rebels began to see through this sleight of hand manipulation, and to check it. Then the Sergeants resorted to the device of tearing ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... his eyes, 'and that is one reason why I am quite determined not to precipitate matters. We can't afford to have revolution after revolution in a poor and struggling place like Gloria, and so I want these people to give the full measure of their incapacity and their baseness so that when they fall they may fall like Lucifer! Hamilton would be rather for rushing things—I ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... cheers of his own faction shook the old tapestried walls. A man who has no sympathy with the public must commit many and fatal indiscretions when the public, as well as his audience, is to be his judge. Lord Vargrave's utter incapacity to comprehend political morality, his contempt for all the objects of social benevolence, frequently led him into the avowal of doctrines, which, if they did not startle the men of the world whom he addressed (smoothed away, as such doctrines were, by speciousness of manner and delivery), ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... so far as his authority was concerned, and he expressed his regret that he had entered upon the discharge of his judicial functions without having previously acquainted himself with the state of the law. He added that he had felt it to be his imperative duty to declare his opinion as to the incapacity of the Court to legally proceed with the business before it; and that, holding that opinion, he had resolved to decline to sit any longer upon the bench, though he would remain at hand to attend to any functions which he ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... She felt that it was a fine thing to be acquainted with "aristocratics" like the Kayes; yet in her heart she was rather ashamed of Amy's plain attire, the simplicity of which seemed to Gwendolyn a proof of Mrs. Kaye's incapacity to "shop"; and its being white—though of soft warm wool—of her want of taste. She supposed, also, that any girl who could, would buy gum, and decided that her new acquaintance must be ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... disgusted with pavements and crowds are willing to take counsel of common-sense and learn the business practically and thoroughly, why should they not succeed? But let no one imagine that horticulture is the final resort of ignorance, indolence, or incapacity, physical or mental. Impostors palm themselves off on the world daily; a credulous public takes poisonous nostrums by the ton and butt; but Nature recognizes error every time, and quietly thwarts those who try to wrong her, either wilfully ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... in this case, generally becomes more severe, and certainly more obnoxious. The broken spirit of the people makes submission a matter of course, so that there is no effectual resistance made to its power. Incapacity to pay comes at last, and defeats the end; but, between incapacity and resistance, the ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... must have been mad to place that drunkard at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, it is that man's incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thou mayst live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the place itself calls up certain associations. There is, perhaps, more interest attaching to the name of Laigle and to the lords of Laigle than to Laigle itself. Its name supplies us with the crowning instance of the singular incapacity of so many in England to understand that these Norman towns and castles are real places. They give surnames to a crowd of men who figure in the English history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; but, as we have said before, hardly anybody seems ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... day being Sunday, with no need to be up and stirring before high mass, if it was a moonlight night and warm, then, instead of taking us home at once, my father, in his thirst for personal distinction, would lead us on a long walk round by the Calvary, which my mother's utter incapacity for taking her bearings, or even for knowing which road she might be on, made her regard as a triumph of his strategic genius. Sometimes we would go as far as the viaduct, which began to stride on its long legs of stone at the railway station, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... better, the everlasting Covenant. It is placed here in the largest and most decisive contrast over against the old covenant, the compact of Sinai, "written and engraven in stones" (2 Cor. iii. 7). That compact had done its mysterious work, in convincing man of his sinful incapacity to meet the will of God. Now emerges its wonderful antithesis, in which man is first entirely pardoned, with a pardon which means acceptance, peace, re-instatement into the home and family of God, and then and ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... had not been favourable to his recovery, irrespectively of the excitement and restlessness which it occasioned; for she was an absorbent rather than a diffuser of life. Her own unsatisfied nature, her excitableness, her openness to all influences from the external world, and her incapacity for supplying her needs in any approximate degree from inward resources; her consequent changeableness, moodiness, and dependency—were all unfavourable influences upon an invalid ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Seraphina herself, whose charms one would imagine should infuse alacrity into the limbs of a cripple sooner than the Bath waters, was to offer herself for his partner, he would answer he never danced, even though the ladies lost their ball by it. Nor doth this denial arise from incapacity, for he was in his youth an excellent dancer, and still retains sufficient knowledge of the art, and sufficient abilities in his limbs to practise it, but from an affectation of gravity which he will not sacrifice to the eagerest desire of others. Dyskolus hath the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... business. I believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, besides this, formed part of Mr. Luxmore's property: I have found them seven white elephants. The greed of tenants, the dishonesty of solicitors, and the incapacity that sits upon the bench, have combined together to make these houses the burthen of my life. I had no sooner, indeed, begun to look into these matters for myself, than I discovered so many injustices ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... we receive from God. Truth is truth always and ever. We may not be able to comprehend what is revealed to us, and little the wonder. Our intelligence is not infinite, and God's is. Many things that men tell us we believe without understanding; God deserves our trust more than men. Our incapacity for understanding all that faith teaches us proves one thing: that there are limits to our powers, which may be surprising to some, but is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... waste time amid sordid surroundings come from refined homes; but music and books and the quiet pleasant talk of mothers and sisters are tame after the delirious rattle of the bar, and thus bright lads go home with-their wits dulled and with a complete incapacity for coherent speech. Now let it be remembered that no real friendships are contracted in those odious drinking-shops—something in the very atmosphere of the place seems to induce selfishness, and a drinker who goes wrong is never pitied; when evil days come, the smart ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Sometimes, I used to think that this desperate stupidity was a stratagem of the poor rascal's, and that he shammed dulness, so that he might be degraded into Miss Raby's class—if she would teach ME, I know, before George, I would put on a pinafore and a little jacket—but no, it is a natural incapacity for the Latin Grammar. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to me, or why it was necessary to commit to memory the cases of nouns and the tenses of verbs. I know not whether this was owing to the unwillingness of my instructor to give himself the trouble, or to my supposed incapacity to apprehend the explanation. The last of these I do not admit. My docility however came to my aid, and I did not for a moment harbour any repugnance to the doing what was required of me. At first, and unassisted in the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... circumstances, of unavoidable impediment to his receiving the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood 'that he nevertheless doth eat and drink Christ's Body and Blood,' must be understood to mean that physical incapacity to eat and drink does not cut off the sick man from the benefits of Holy Communion. But this rubric does not justify any wilful or habitual neglect of receiving ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... Alps, the Balkan, and the mountains of Carpathia. (Feeble applause and murmurs.) A citizen begs the audience to have patience with the Citizen Strassnowski, who is a worthy man and a volunteer; but the citizen then reproaches the worthy man for having attempted to defend a Government whose incapacity is a matter of notoriety. Come now, Citizen Strassnowski, he says, what has the Government done to merit your praise? It has armed us and exercised us; but why? To deliver us over with our guns and our cannons to the Prussians after we have all caught cold on the ramparts. Has it tried ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... objected to having this little inconvenience remedied, because it gave her notice when anyone was coming. She was not, however, troubled with companions like her own Mrs. Allen in 'Northanger Abbey,' whose 'vacancy of mind and incapacity for thinking were such that, as she never talked a great deal, so she could never be entirely silent; and therefore, while she sat at work, if she lost her needle, or broke her thread, or saw a speck of dirt on her gown, she must observe it, whether there were any one at ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... said. 'I doubt not your valor. It was but in forgetfulness that I spoke. I meant it not for a taunt.' And in truth she had not so meant it. It was but the inadvertent expression of a feeling which the sight of his feeble and boyish figure unwittingly made upon her—an incapacity to connect deeds of valor with apparent physical weakness. But this very inability to judge of his true nature by the soul that strove to look into her own rather than by material impressions was perhaps no slight proof of the little unison between ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... that he ought to be beaten himself. What he did say was, that those who were useful neither in word nor deed, who were incapable of rendering assistance in time of need to the army or the state or the people itself, be they never so wealthy, ought to be restrained, and especially if to incapacity they ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... while remaining on earth, coming into conscious possession and use of this heavenly body. And inasmuch as heaven is not far away from us, but surrounds us on every side, and we are only shut out from it by our incapacity to feel its vibrations, not by their absence; inasmuch as those vibrations are playing upon us at every moment of our lives; all that is needed to be in Heaven is to become conscious of those vibrations. We become conscious ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... with great practical incapacity. The house was never clean nor tidy, but always being frightfully disarranged for cleaning or tidying up, and she cooked because food had to be cooked and with a sound moralist's entire disregard of the quality of the consequences. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... ideas that, duly impressed with a sense of my incapacity and youth, I presume to submit to your better judgment, and, if you should think favourably of them, to the various modifications to which you may conceive them liable; I am certain, at least, that ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... An incapacity of relying on oneself and a faith in others are precisely the conditions that compel brutes to congregate and live in herds; and, again, it is essential to their safety in a country infested by large carnivora, that they should keep closely together ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... Capitol, much in the same misty mental condition that he recalled as marking his railway journey to London on May 13, 1861; he felt in himself what Gladstone bewailed so sadly, "the incapacity of viewing things all round." He knew, without absolutely saying it, that Grant had cut short the life which Adams had laid out for himself in the future. After such a miscarriage, no thought of effectual reform could revive for at least one generation, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... man's incapacity. No errors were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can't prevent a loss of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one can withstand the laws ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... cause of his recall by Delane[326]. In fact Russell's letters added nothing in humiliating description to the outpourings of the Northern press, itself greedily quoted by pro-Southern foreign papers. The impression of Northern military incapacity was not confined to Great Britain—it was general throughout Europe, and for the remainder of 1861 there were few who ventured to assert a Northern success in ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... family. This was a bitter pill to Gamaliel, who, through a long course of years, was so habituated to Trunnion's company, that he could as easily have parted with a limb as have relinquished the club all at once. He therefore ventured to represent his own incapacity to follow her advice, and begged that he might, at least, be allowed to drop the connection gradually, protesting that he would do his endeavour to give her all ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... they delivered to the people. Such of them as were not totally destitute of genius, composed out of the writings of Augustine and Gregory a certain number of insipid homilies, which they divided between themselves, and their stupid colleagues, that they might not be obliged through incapacity to discontinue preaching the doctrines of Christianity to their people" (p. 159). "The progress of vice among the subordinate rulers and ministers of the Church was, at this time, truly deplorable.... In those very places, that were consecrated ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... to stand in the rear of the Old World races. Both the geology and zoology of the continent were arrested in their development. Vegetable life alone has been favored. "The aboriginal American (wrote Von Martius) is at once in the incapacity of infancy and unpliancy of old age; he unites the opposite poles ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... first two points were mere quibbles, and that the moment when he intended that his uncle, the Grand Almoner, should bless his marriage with Marie Louise, was, to say the least, a singular one to choose for denouncing his incapacity for consecrating his union with Josephine. As to the absence of witnesses, that is to be explained as due to a special dispensation of the Pope, who wished to avoid the scandal of announcing to the whole ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... from the conduct of the lady during the journey—her long fits of profound silence, the irresolution and uncertainty which seemed to pervade all her movements, and the obvious incapacity of thinking and acting for herself under which she seemed to labour—Wayland had formed the not improbable opinion that the difficulties of her situation had in some ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... these phenomena as having been brought about by variation and natural selection, we start with the fact that white varieties frequently occur, and when protected from enemies show no incapacity for continued existence and increase. We know, further, that varieties of many other tints occasionally occur; and as "the survival of the fittest" must inevitably weed out those whose colours are prejudicial ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Chamber of Peers, a distinct demand on the part of this ancient leadership,—the leadership of 'the honoured number,' the honourable and right honourable few, that this mass of ignorance, and stupidity, and blind custom, and incapacity for rule,—this combination of mere instinctive force, which the physical majority in unlearned times constitutes, which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and passivity, and in its passionate admiration of heroism ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... should ask: "What can he do?" The young man may have the advantage of years but the older one has the advantage of experience and knowledge. Now if this older man could carry along with him that spirit of youth which actuated his earlier activities he would be prepared against incapacity. Our fate hangs on how we conduct ourselves in youth. The world has great need of the sober, thoughtful men above the fifty line. By right of experience and knowledge they should become our leaders in the shaping of our policies. It is all a matter of how a man comes through, mentally, ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... moved the Address in a very short speech, not adverting to the regency. Lord Grey followed and declared his opinion of the incapacity of Government as exhibited in their measures during the last five months. Goderich said 'nothing had been done,' and was for going on with the business. Lord Harrowby wished a short Regency Bill to be passed, giving the regency to the Queen for six weeks, to provide for the case of pregnancy. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... Pope's[9] opinion, fit only to make verses, and less qualified for business than Addison himself. This was, surely, said without consideration. Addison, exalted to a high place, was forced into degradation by the sense of his own incapacity; Prior, who was employed by men very capable of estimating his value, having been secretary to one embassy, had, when great abilities were again wanted, the same office another time; and was, after so much experience ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of other, and, perhaps, minor instances as the times go (but still enormous instances as older morals went) of the same thing. They have shown the incapacity and falsehood of the great capitalist newspapers during these few months of white-hot crisis in ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... to a friend to show to Lord Glenelg. My only object was the vindication of my character. I have never had the least expectation of obtaining justice or redress from the Colonial office. There seems in that department utter incapacity. The very persons they select for the Government of Upper Canada are enough to prove this. And yet I believe that Lord Glenelg is an able, as well as amiable, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... that the value of Fascism, as an intellectual movement, baffles the minds of many of its followers and supporters and is denied outright by its enemies. There is no malice in this denial, as I see it, but rather an incapacity to comprehend. The liberal-democratic-socialistic ideology has so completely and for so long a time dominated Italian culture that in the minds of the majority of people trained by it, it has assumed the value of an absolute truth, almost the authority of a natural ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... pursued by Louis the Sixteenth could have averted a great convulsion. But we are sure that, if there was such a course, it was the course recommended by M. Turgot. The church and the aristocracy, with that blindness to danger, that incapacity of believing that anything can be except what has been, which the long possession of power seldom fails to generate, mocked at the counsel which might have saved them. They would not have reform; and they had revolution. They would not pay a small contribution ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... when I reached Venice on my honeymoon, did I discover that this explanation was incorrect. The King, who had recognized me in the theatre, commanded me on the following day to an audience and to dinner; and so unexpected was this to me that my light travelling luggage and the incapacity of the local tailor did not admit of my appearing in correct costume. My reception was so kindly, and the conversation, even on political subjects, of such a nature as to enable me to infer that my attitude in the Diet met with his encouraging approval. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... incapacitated to give evidence in our courts of law. I have frequently had to deplore, when applied to by the Aborigines for justice in cases of aggression committed on them by white men, or by those of their own race, my inability to do so in consequence of their legal incapacity to give evidence. It were unreasonable, therefore, under such circumstances, to expect the Aborigines would respect, or repose trust and confidence in the Protectors, or submit to the governance of a department unable efficiently to protect or afford ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... 1565, and Bothwell came at her call from France. The Queen had new advisers—Riccio, Balfour, Bothwell, the eldest son of the late Huntly, and Lennox, till the wretched Darnley in a few weeks proved his incapacity. Lethington, rather neglected, hung about the Court, as he remained with Mary of Guise long after he ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... violets upon the green and grateful bank. It seems to them as if the whole strong tide is thrust fiercely and violently back, and hurled into a new channel, chasmed in the rough, rent granite. It is impossible to calculate the waste of grief and pathos which this incapacity causes. Fanny's doll aforesaid is left too near the fire, and waxy tears roll down her ruddy cheeks, to the utter ruin of her pretty face and her gay frock; and anon poor Fanny breaks her little heart ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... melancholy, than to hear of persons of talents dying without having their chance. A failure is nothing; it may be deserved, or it may be remedied. In the first instance, it brings self-knowledge; in the second, it develops a new combination usually triumphant. But incapacity, from not, having a chance of being capable, is a bitter lot, which Sidonia was ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the immediate tyranny of John. However, after the death of my grandfather, when our band degraded itself to exploits of a different nature, I fell back under his odious sway. I was by no means fitted for lying and fraud. I displayed not only aversion but also incapacity for this new industry. Consequently my uncle looked upon me as useless, and began to maltreat me again. They would have driven me away had they not been afraid that I might make my peace with society, and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... carried the face of his niggling little buttresses flush with the massive walls of the great towers. I wished I could have had M. Viollet-le-Duc there by both his ears and knocked his head against the abomination he has created. He had a splendid opportunity, and through incapacity he lost it. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... his hand on the flaxen hair of the boy and passing his eyes down from Ishmael's broad forehead and thin cheeks to his slender figure. "Never do for the army or navy, sir! be rejected by both upon account of physical incapacity, sir. Eh?" he ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... working-class families quite beyond any provision which their utmost unaided industry and courage could secure for them. Left to themselves, left absolutely to themselves, they must be smashed to pieces, if any exceptional disaster or accident, like recurring sickness, like the death or incapacity of the breadwinner, or prolonged or protracted unemployment, fall ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... scourge of talent,—of artists, inventors, and philosophers. Eminent spiritualists shall have an incapacity of putting their act or word aloof from them, and seeing it bravely for the nothing it is. Beware of the man who says, "I am on the eve of a revelation!" It is speedily punished, inasmuch as this habit invites men to humor it, and, by treating the patient tenderly, to shut him up in a narrower ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... we can begin to discern in his letters the outline of his character—his passionate absorption in study, his moodiness, his fits of despondency, his intense irritability; his incapacity to master his own tongue and temper. In happy moments he shows great tenderness of feeling for those whom he loves or pities; but this alternates with inconsiderate clamour and loud complaints deafening ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... form of stripes or larger segments, or as whole flowers or fruit of two kinds borne on the same plant; and in this case the appearance of the two colours cannot strictly be said to be due to reversion, but to some incapacity of fusion, leading to their {394} segregation. When, however, the later flowers or fruit, produced during the same season or during a succeeding year or generation, become striped or half-in-half, &c., the segregation of the two colours is strictly ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... he said, "that your namesake Mr Powell, the Shipping Master, had done you much harm. Such was hardly his intention. And even if it had been he would not have had the power. He was but a man, and the incapacity to achieve anything distinctly good or evil is inherent in our earthly condition. Mediocrity is our mark. And perhaps it's just as well, since, for the most part, we cannot be certain of the effect ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the world, a sense, that is to say, of God's companionship. And wherein is the profoundest unhappiness? It is in the sense of remoteness from God, issuing into incurable restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity to make ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... assumed of talking nonsense with impunity. But there is, you say, a transition of images flowing on in great crowds in such a way that out of many some one at least must be perceived! I should be ashamed of my incapacity to understand this if you, who assert it, could comprehend it yourselves; for how do you prove that these images are continued in uninterrupted motion? Or, if uninterrupted, still how do you prove them to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... reasoners who frequently confound innocence with the mere incapacity of guilt; but he that never saw, or heard, or thought of strong liquors, cannot be proposed as a pattern ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... is that of a machine. When once he has been trained to any special kind of industry, no attempts to enlarge his sphere of activity can be attended with profit. The time given to the new acquisition is so much waste, and his mental incapacity and absence of any moral interest in his work almost necessarily limits him to a single task. Thus, as we have seen, the many attempts to develop varied forms of production in the Southern colonies all failed. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... would certainly become a prey to anarchy, and would probably be overrun by a Mahratta army. That the finances of Oude were embarrassed he admitted. But he contended, not without reason, that the embarrassment was to be attributed to the incapacity and vices of Asaph-ul-Dowlah himself, and that, if less were spent on the troops, the only effect would be that more would ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the other hand, the Anti-Parnellites showed no better disposition. It had been one of their main contentions that Parnell was not an indispensable leader and that he could be very well done without. They were to prove by their own conduct and incapacity what a hollow mockery this was and how feeble was even the best of them without the guidance of the master mind. They cut a pitiful figure in Parliament, where their internal bickerings and miserable squabbles reduced ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... at the moment of which we write our armies, so glorious during those epic campaigns of 1796 and 1797, thrown back for a time upon France by the incapacity of Scherer at Verona and Cassano, and by the defeat and death of Joubert at Novi, were beginning to resume the offensive. Moreau had defeated Souvarow at Bassignano; Brune had defeated the Duke of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... time to time that this remarkable girl uttered the highest thought in American politics in that crisis of our nation's history. While in camp and hospital she spoke words of tenderness and love to the sick and dying, she did not hesitate to rebuke the incapacity and iniquity of those in high places. She was among the first to distrust McClellan and Lincoln, and in a lecture, entitled "My Policy," to unveil his successor, Andrew Johnson, to the people. She saw the scepter of power grasped by the party of freedom, and the first gun ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that troubled him, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, "commanded to be called to him the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans" of his kingdom, and each time with similar success. They confessed their incapacity; and Daniel, the prophet of the Jews, expounded to the king that in which they had failed. Nebuchadnezzar in consequence promoted Daniel to be master of the magicians. A similar scene occurred in the court of Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, in ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Clara had been, without doubt, a disagreeable child; and as a young girl she had been only a little softer: self-willed, hot-tempered, vain, she had not got on particularly well with her father, whom she despised for his drunkenness and incapacity. He was conscious of this and did not pardon it in her. Her musical faculties showed themselves at an early age; her father repressed them, recognising painting as the sole art,—wherein he himself had had so little ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... elsewhere lamented the absence from society of a machinery for facilitating the descent of incapacity. "Administrative Nihilism." Collected Essays, vol. i. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... different departments of a prison, in which debtors were confined according to their ability or incapacity to pay for their accommodations: all three are pretty accurately described by Fennor in "The Compter's ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... frequented the houses of the latter most, in order not to attract attention to his intercourse with his compatriots. He spoke Russian fluently, but feigned total ignorance both of that and his own language, and even affected an incapacity for learning them when urged to do so by his scholars. Among the risks to which this exposed him was the temptation of cutting short a difficult explanation in his lessons by a single word, which would have made the whole matter clear. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... according to known law. The properties of law are, first, that it should be known; secondly, that it should be fixed, and not occasional. First, this power cannot be according to the first property of law; because no man does or can know it, nor do you yourselves know upon what grounds you will vote the incapacity of any man. No man in Westminster Hall, or in any court upon earth, will say that is law, upon which, if a man going to his counsel should say to him, "What is my tenure in law of this estate?" he would answer, "Truly, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sometimes be charged with tyranny by weak minds. And it is too certain that the calumny will be willingly believed and eagerly propagated by all those who would shun the presence of an eye keen in the detection of imposture, incapacity, and misconduct, and of a resolution as steady in their exposure. We soon hate the man whose qualities we dread, and thus have a double interest, an interest of passion as well as of policy, in decrying and defaming him. But good men ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... but one side of its body appears to be sometimes asleep whilst the other is vigilant and active; one will assume a green tinge whilst the opposite one is red; and it is said that the chameleon is utterly unable to swim, from the incapacity of the muscles of the two sides ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... whole animal world. We may, says he, from the make of an oyster, or cockle, conclude, that it has not so many nor so quick senses as a man, or several other animals: Nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity of transferring itself from one place to another, be bettered by them. What good would sight and hearing do to a creature that cannot move itself to or from the object, wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil? And would not quickness of sensation ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... waiting for a reply, now burst into complaints about the tiresome, oppressive duties of his office, the incapacity of the magistrates, the selfishness, malice and baseness of men. He lamented that Moor was a Netherlander, and not a Spaniard, called him the only friend he possessed among the rebellious crew in Holland and Flanders, and stopped him when he tried to intercede for his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Leslie called Jokes of the First Category, Aurora sought to enliven the hour for Gerald. He never omitted to laugh, without being able to enter enough into her fun to join her in the same species. An incapacity. Still, there was no disguising the basking enjoyment possessing him, his love of her gaiety, if not at all moments of the form ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... unoccupied or 'abandoned' farms in Delaware." The land is mostly held by descendants of the early settlers, who form a species of landed aristocracy. Lately, owing to the younger members of these families having become established in the newer states and on account of the death or incapacity of the older members left in possession, there has been a marked tendency to sell off these farms. However, "a large proportion of the farms in Delaware are not for sale at any price. Some of them have been in the same family for generations, and if put on the market would sell ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... ever-increasing numbers." To prevent these calamities it used to be the regular custom with the Shilluk to put the king to death whenever he showed signs of ill-health or failing strength. One of the fatal symptoms of decay was taken to be an incapacity to satisfy the sexual passions of his wives, of whom he has very many, distributed in a large number of houses at Fashoda. When this ominous weakness manifested itself, the wives reported it to the chiefs, who are popularly said ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... room with its silver and knick-knacks—its beautifully worked cushions and charming water-colours, its shining rows of complete editions and dainty china stood to him now for incapacity. Three weeks ago it had ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... several field of experience. And conversely, the weakness of the intellect lies in a greater or less failure to realise relations of fact in their logic; and the other faculties, in proportion as they fail to realize such relations in their own region, have a similar incapacity. Insanity, in the broad sense, is involuntary error in a nature incapable of effectual enlightenment, and hence abnormal or diseased; but the state of error, whether more or less, whether voluntary or involuntary, whether ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... The incapacity of some youths to receive instruction is always a source of vexation to the pedagogue. Saadi tells us of a vazir who sent his stupid son to a learned man, requesting him to impart some of his knowledge to the lad, hoping that his mind would be improved. After attempting to instruct ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... believe in the Unity of God as firmly as they believe in the Trinity. And they hold that there is no real contradiction in combining those two subjects of belief; because the difficulty of reconciling the Trinity with the Unity of the Godhead in reality proceeds simply from our human and necessary incapacity to comprehend the nature of the union. Therefore they cannot for a moment allow to disbelievers in the Trinity the title of Unitarians, so as to imply that the latter monopolise the grand truth that 'the Lord our God is one Lord.' They ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to the man, George, and see if he can change it." He couldn't resist a slight masculine touch of severity at her incapacity. "I wish you'd tend to these things at the time, Clytie, or let me know about them." He took the money when George returned. "Here's your dollar now, Mary—don't lose it again!—and your five, George. You might as well take another dollar ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... probably will be said that all rich women can not do what is here suggested, owing to multitudinous claims, or to incapacity of mind or body for carrying out such an attempt. It will also be said that there are many other ways for practicing self-denial besides selling our homes and taking a humbler style of living. This is all true. But we are ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Masters or Mistresses should be such as are approved or licensed by the Minister, and Vestry of the Parish, or Justices of the County; the Clerks of the Parishes being generally most proper for this Purpose; or (in Case of their Incapacity or Refusal) such others as can ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... no country in the world, other than ours, where an officer guilty of such conduct, whether it came from incapacity or cowardice, would not have been promptly cashiered and probably shot. This would have been true, as in the case of Admiral Keppel, if his fault had been merely a failure to attack. But Butler's fault was an express ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... serious task only to get out of its wrappers and open in two or three places, is on the whole of so good an average quality. The dead level of mediocrity is in these days a table-land, a good deal above the old sea-level of laboring incapacity. Sixty years ago verses made a local reputation, which verses, if offered today to any of our first-class magazines, would go straight into the waste-basket. To write "poetry" was an art and mystery in which only a few noted men and a woman or ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... in our own behalf, but for the benefit of others. If we discharge the obligations of our trusteeship, we shall enjoy present strength, usefulness, and length of days; but if we fail in their performance, then inefficiency, incapacity, and sickness, will follow, the sequel of which is pain and death. Let us, then, prove worthy of this generous commission, that we may enjoy the sweetest of all pleasures, the delicious fruitage of honest toil and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... her deference, merely muttered at the young man as she passed on, and said, 'Oh! he was a precious fellow'—leaving the young man, who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by the incident. But Mrs Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people; and her friends said who could wonder at it, after ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the slightest intention of imposing, or, if I could help it, allowing to be imposed, any heavier task on your purse. As it has come to this in spite of my exertions, I will not conceal from you the low ebb of my own money affairs in the present moment,—that is, my absolute incapacity of assisting ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... orders to prevent all egress, and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical shamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal, who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud godlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts of her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these early days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by love, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urges immediate flight. Her hands let ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... Caesar and Pompey, that during the absence of the former in Gaul, the latter should act with the popular party, and keep the nobility in the condition of impotence to which it had been reduced in the consulship of Caesar. Partly from jealousy of Caesar, partly from sheer incapacity, Pompey, after much vacillation and duplicity, finally allied himself with the nobles, thinking with their aid to crush his rival and thereafter to be supreme. The nobles, for their part, thought they would know how to deal with Pompey if once Caesar was out of the way. In ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... copyist, if you leave out the disposition to contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation. It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. But that didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition, it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After nagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him and they turned him inside out, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... others and distinguishing among our fellowmen between the good and the bad. The true lesson is the extreme fallibility of our moral judgments whenever we attempt to measure degrees of guilt. Sometimes men are even unjust to their own past from their incapacity in age of realising the force of the temptations they had experienced in youth. On the other hand, increased knowledge of the world tends to make us more sensible of the vast differences between the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... showing himself morally superior to them, should then fear their insolent remarks, or their unchristian judgment. We know it, each one for himself, that when we jibe or ridicule a good impulse in another, it is evidence of our weakness and incapacity to experience the same feeling ourselves, and it is the momentary hatred of envy that suggests a taunt or a mocking word on the firm resolution of our companion. But unless the conscience of youth be not obliterated now while it is so weak, the world fears there can be ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... restored to the Republic, as with me the Republic is itself restored, I will slacken nothing in my efforts at liberty; but, if it may be possible, will add something to my energy." In translating a word here and there as I have done, I feel at every expression my incapacity. There is no such thing as good translation. If you wish to drink the water, with its life and vigor in it, you must go to the ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the exercise [25] of meditative power. A vein of subjective philosophy, with the individual for its standard of all things, there would be always in his intellectual scheme of the world and of conduct, with a certain incapacity wholly to accept other men's valuations. And the generation of this peculiar element in his temper he could trace up to the days when his life had been so like the reading of a romance to him. Had the Romans a word for unworldly? The beautiful word umbratilis ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... support the burden of his maintenance, she placed him in the above-named convent of the Carmelites. Here, in proportion as he showed himself dexterous and ingenious in all works performed by hand, did he manifest the utmost dulness and incapacity in letters, to which he would never apply himself, nor would he take any pleasure in learning of any kind. The boy continued to be called by his worldly name of Filippo, *2* and being placed with others, who like himself were in the house of the novices, under the care ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... throne, but she had never thought much of it. When it now thus became a reality, her whole soul was overcome by it: she fell to the ground and burst into a flood of tears. Whether she had a full right to the throne, she could not judge: what she felt was her incapacity to rule. But whilst she uttered this, a different feeling passed through her, as she has told us herself: she prayed in the depths of her soul that, if the highest office belonged to her legally, God ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... aberration—a queer variety such as Nature will sometimes interpolate amid the most steady of strains; but young Ellington's moods, and tendencies, and capabilities reverted to the old line. Yet, despite his restless energy, despite his incapacity for that active thought which makes solitude bearable, he was crushed into the mould that the Squire had prepared for him. His distractions were few, and in his vigorous mind, with its longing for instant ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... to the office, where his chief's precious leniency allowed him to come in at about eleven o'clock. And, indeed, he did little enough, for his incapacity was ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the ruin of this man, because he hindered thee from taking forcible possession of the granddaughter of Rhodopis, and because thine own incapacity moved me to place him in thy room as commander of the troops. Ah! thou growest pale! Verily, I owe Phanes thanks for confiding to me your vile intentions, and so enabling me to bind my friends ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was the pit out of which I, of all men, was digged!" he said to himself. "Have I done something to restore the family balance in respect of right reason, or is the shame of incapacity upon me? Have I sacrificed myself, or cowardly have I merely shirked living? ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Dr. Beckler, and acted to the best of his judgment under the circumstances, with the means at his disposal. His confidence, too hastily bestowed, was repaid by ingratitude and contumely. Wright never spoke of his commander without using terms of disparagement, and dwelling on his incapacity. "He was gone to destruction," he said, "and would lose all who were with him." He repeated these words to me, and others even stronger, both in Melbourne and in Adelaide. McDonough, in his evidence before the Royal Commission, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... have assailed thee, now, or heretofore, Find, soon or late, their proper meed of shame; The more thy triumph, and our pride the more, When witling critics to the world proclaim, In lead, their own dolt incapacity. Matter it is of mirthful memory To think, when thou wert early in the field, How doughtily small Jeffrey ran at thee A-tilt, and broke a bulrush on thy shield. And now, a veteran in the lists of fame, I ween, old Friend! thou art not worse bested When with a maudlin eye and drunken aim, Dulness ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pressure and electric friction of town life, become to the sufferers peculiarly mysterious in their undeservedness, and frightful in their inevitableness. The power of all surroundings over them for evil; the incapacity of their own minds to refuse the pollution, and of their own wills to oppose the weight, of the staggering mass that chokes and crushes them into perdition, brings every law of healthy existence into question with them, and every alleged method of help and hope into doubt. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not inherited his father's incapacity for making money. In the twenty years that had passed since Thomas had been abroad he had built up a fortune, which he could not induce his father to share, but which that father was perfectly willing to see ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green |
