"Unfitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution, and to make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have contemplated such a position for himself as possible, is of itself a proof of his unfitness for it. The election day came. The noble lords and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain for demagogues, and meaning to read a lesson to sedition which it would ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... movement, and the holy merriment it carries. But in the former, note how the major key of gladness changes in the third stanza to the minor key of aspiration, which has always some sadness in it; a sadness which deepens to grief in the next stanza at the consciousness of unfitness for Christ's company, but is lifted by hope almost again ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... amid one of nature's greatest solitudes, awed by her silences, uplifted by the majesty of her mighty forces, with naught to do but humble oneself before the consciousness of his own littleness and unfitness, and study how to right the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... was in one of these that I formed an intimate and lasting connection with Mr. Deyverdun, a young man of an amiable temper and excellent understanding. In the arts of fencing and dancing, small indeed was my proficiency; and some months were idly wasted in the riding-school. My unfitness to bodily exercise reconciled me to a sedentary life, and the horse, the favourite of my countrymen, never contributed to the pleasures of ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... keep out of harm's way and watch who would get the better. It seems an absurd and foolish law which permits an heiress, if her lawful husband fail her, to take his nearest kinsman; yet some say this law was well contrived against those, who, conscious of their own unfitness, yet, for the sake of the portion, would match with heiresses, and make use of law to put a violence upon nature; for now, since she can quit him for whom she pleases, they would either abstain from such marriages, or continue them with ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... green uniform, and a military cap;" now did he wear a green uniform? They are at issue upon the dress then worn by him; if he had not this dress on, what other had he? And if he had the green one on, what true or probable reason existed for the change of that? the unfitness of appearing in it before his commanding officer, Lord Yarmouth, is negatived by Lord Yarmouth himself; supposing him to have appeared in any disguise, it is the conduct of an accomplice, to assist ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... since the encounter on Fifth Avenue, and her look at her husband relegated any private observations of hers at variance with it into the limbo, not of things forgotten, but of things undone, unsaid, dissolved by the sheer force of their unfitness to exist, into ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... habit and custom had given nearly the force of law with maidens of her condition, though her reason and judgment no less than her affections were both strongly enlisted on the other side. Indeed, with the single exception of the general unfitness of a union between two of unequal stations, there was nothing to discredit her choice, if that may be termed choice which, after all, was more the result of spontaneous feeling and secret sympathy than of any other cause, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... as with blue tiles; the walls were papered; the stainless floor was strewn with home-made hooked and braided rugs; and I felt the place so altogether too good for me that I pleaded to stay there for the transaction of my business, lest a sharper sense of my unfitness should await me in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of his unfitness for the sight of men, but gathering a little courage when he found the dining-room so dark. He descended to the basement and opened the door of the kitchen, looked in, and shut it again. "Yes, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... dilemma he would not have been slow to take it. As there was not, he fell back on the hope that he might be able to discharge his uncongenial duties for a brief period, and then seek some convenient opportunity of retiring. But as to his own real views of his mistake, and of his unfitness for the post, there never was any doubt, and they found expression when, in the midst of a family gathering, he exclaimed: "Up to this I have been an independent comet, now I shall ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... in her reply on the face of it of any particular consequence to Baruch. She might simply have intended that the beauty of the fair landscape extinguished her restlessness, or that she saw her own unfitness, but neither of these interpretations presented itself ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... historical facts with as much detail as possible, and setting forth finally the portrait of this new soldier. That this is a prodigious task is too evident to need assertion—a task worthy the most lofty talents; and in essaying it I humbly confess to a sense of unfitness; yet the work lies before me and duty orders me to enter upon it. A Major General writes: "I wish you every success in producing a work important both historically and for the credit of a race far more deserving than the world has acknowledged." ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... bombastic exaggeration of such tendencies, his characters are equally unbending. His villains die, like Macbeth and Iago, with their teeth set, and scorn even a deathbed repentance. Hamlet exhibits the unfitness for a world of action of the man who is foolish enough to see two sides to every question. So again, Chapman, the writer who in fulness and fire of thought approaches most nearly to Shakespeare, is an ardent worshipper ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... three questions which are implied when you ask, "Ought I to marry?" First, "Have I a right to marry?" Every young person should ask this question. Fitness includes several aspects, among which the first is physical. The most inexcusable unfitness is venereal disease. There is no meaner crime than for a young man to acquire venereal disease by reason of weakness of will, and then pass it on to an innocent girl and perhaps to unborn children. Physicians say that in spite of so-called modern prophylaxis and supposed ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... crisis was a desperately perilous move, but the President knew that the army had lost confidence in its leader since the battle of Chancellorsville and the fact that he could even think of resigning on the eve of a battle demonstrated his utter unfitness for the task at hand. It was, therefore, with something of relief that Lincoln ordered General Meade to take immediate charge of all the troops in the field, and the new commander assumed the responsibility in these words, "As ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... means of this long and patiently evolved and highly trained faculty that the race is still developing towards perfection with constant strain and effort—although the planet is far advanced in its decadence and within measurable distance of its unfitness for life of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... feelings in Wendell Phillips' mind, had Frederick Douglass and Robert Purvis been refused their seats in a convention of reformers under similar circumstances? and, had they listened one entire day to debates on their peculiar fitness for plantation life, and unfitness for the forum and public assemblies, and been rejected as delegates on the ground of color, could Wendell Phillips have so far mistaken their real feelings, and been so insensible to the insults offered ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... heroes, like buns, could be bought for a penny To regard all mankind as their haltered milch-cow, And just care for themselves. Well, God cares for the many; For somehow the poor old Earth blunders along, Each son of hers adding his mite of unfitness, And, choosing the sure way of coming out wrong, Gets to port as the next ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... was dying without her. Peter might know in his heart that he had done the best thing for the child, but like Harmony his early training was rising now to accuse him. He had separated mother and child. Who was he to have decided the mother's unfitness, to have played destiny? How lightly he had taken the lives of others in his hand, and to what end? Harmony, God knows where; the boy dying without his mother. Whatever that mother might be, her place that day was with her boy. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in convincing him that the strong inclination which he felt to bestow her on Julian Peveril, provided he could be brought over to his own political opinions, was a blameable compromise with his more severe principles. Late circumstances had taught him the incapacity and unfitness of Dame Debbitch for the sole charge of so dear a pledge; and he readily and thankfully embraced the kind offer of her maternal uncle, Christian, to place Alice under the protection of a lady of rank in London, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker, I knew equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... clear luminous perception of the nature and characteristics of that invisible world which is soon to receive them, would make them thoughtful and anxious for their souls; for they would become aware of their utter unfitness, their entire lack of preparation, to see God face to face. Still, live and act as sinful men may, eternity is over and around them all, even as the firmament is bent over the globe. If theirs were a penitent and a believing eye, they would look up with adoration into its serene ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... instigate the poor creatures to such shocking impiety, by every means that fantastic subtilty can suggest; thereby shewing in their own conduct, a more glaring proof of the same depravity, and, if there was any reason in the argument, a greater unfitness for the same precious enjoyment: for though some of the ignorant Africans may be thus corrupted by their intercourse with the baser of the European natives, and the use of strong liquors, this is ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... clear a proof of unfitness for greater and nobler actions, than a mind which is seriously ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... meetings, and the progress the Cause was making in the most fashionable circles of the middle west. Milly envied Hazel this new and exciting experience, and wished she might be in Chicago to witness the triumphs of the two missionaries. But she realized, nevertheless, more than ever before, her unfitness for the work. She no longer had a very ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... administer the province as long as they fulfil the conditions laid down in the Instrument of Transfer; that (2) the succession should devolve on the Maharajah's lineal descendant, whether by blood or adoption, except in the case of disqualification through manifest unfitness to rule; and that (3) the Maharajah and his successors shall at all times remain faithful in allegiance and subordination to the British Crown, and perform all the duties which, in virtue of such allegiance and subordination, may ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... have come. Had I guessed their unfitness I would have hindered it, but now alack it is too late, and I fear they have come to their death," said Carver in Bradford's ear, and indeed it was so. The brothers, never divided in body or soul since their birth, had ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... he had sent to Hartwell several drafts of proclamations, with none of which, he said, the King was satisfied. On allowing me the copy of the last of these drafts I frankly told him that I was quite of the King's opinion as to its unfitness. I observed that if the King should one day return to France and act as the general advised he would not keep possession of his throne six months. Driesen then requested me to dictate a draft of a proclamation conformably with ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of Mr. Gladstone's Parliamentary addresses. "Instead of speaking on the corporate conscience of the State and the endowments of the Church, the importance of Christian education and the theological unfitness of the Jews to sit in Parliament, he was solving business-like problems about foreign tariffs and the exportation of machinery; waxing eloquent over the regulation of railways and a graduated tax on corn; subtle on the momentary merits of half-farthings ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Mr. Wilson, who knows Mr. Lloyd George, who knows Mr. Clemenceau, nothing could be sillier than the chapters of Keynes and Dillon in which they undertake to picture the President's unfitness to cope with the European masters of diplomacy. Mr. Wilson for years had been playing with European masters of diplomacy as a cat plays with a mouse. To assume that Mr. Wilson was ever deceived by the transparent ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... the months that followed his defeat by Douglas cannot have contributed much to his surprising elevation, yet it illustrates well his strength and his weakness, his real fitness, now and then startlingly revealed, for the highest position, and the superficial unfitness which long hid his capacity from many ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... There is no action: there is being. The struggle is rooted in the deep divisions of men's souls, not in unwonted crime or plotting. And Anna Mahr, the free woman of a freer world, parts from Johannes because she recognises their human unfitness to take up the burden of tragic sorrow which any union between them must create. The time for such things has not come, and may never come. Thus Johannes is left desolate, powerless to face the unendurable emptiness and decay that lie before him, destroyed by the conflicting ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Why was Brutus chosen as the leader of the conspiracy? In what events of the play does he show his fitness as a leader? In what events does he show his unfitness? ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... time to think it out, the marvel of both the eagerness and the reluctance of Mr. and Mrs. Booth to plunge into this human Niagara will appear ever greater. As we look nowadays at the world-wide result of their resolve so to do, despite all their consciousness of ignorance and unfitness for the task, we cannot but see in the whole matter the hand of God Himself, fulfilling His great promise: "Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, the prey of the terrible shall be delivered, for I will contend with them that contend with thee, and I will ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... abstinence, poison and healthy food, the beginning, the middle, and the end, the result of all murderous acts, insolence, insanity, arrogance, pride, patience, policy, impolicy, powerlessness and power, respect, disrespect, decay and stability, humility, charity, fitness of time and unfitness of time, falsehood, wisdom, truth, belief, disbelief, impotence, trade, profit, loss, success, defeat, fierceness, mildness, death, acquisition and non-acquisition, agreement and disagreement, that which should be done and that which ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to be treated of, shall be the ways of Apothecaries creeping into practice, and their unfitness thereunto. As to the first, heretofore when they were Members of the Company of Grocers, and dispersed in place, as well as in counsel, they then were wholy subordinate to the Physicians, only keeping in their Shops, and faithfully making the prescriptions they received from the Physicians, ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... conceived, fit to live with such grand persons; but at the present moment, when she grudged herself even a new pair of gloves out of the money remaining to her, while she was still looking forward to a future life passed as a nurse in a hospital, she felt that there would be an absolute unfitness in such ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... weapon, the sword. Here, alas! I was doomed to a bitter disappointment. My father had given me a lesson now and then, but never enough to test me, and when I came into the hands of a Glasgow master my unfitness was soon manifest. Neither with broadsword nor small sword could I acquire any skill. My short arm lacked reach and vigour, and there seemed to be some stiffness in wrist and elbow and shoulder which compelled me to yield to smaller men. Here was a pretty business, for though gentleman ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... soul enjoyed that far more than her dinner, for she meant to ask Mr. Power to help her find the right sort of home for the stranger whose unfitness for her present place was every day made more apparent to the mind of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... far: Let me still take away the harms I fear, Not fear still to be taken: I know his heart. What he hath utter'd I have writ my sister: If she sustain him and his hundred knights, When I have show'd th' unfitness,— ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... unfit for the people to drink, but too often the men and women are unfit to drink it. On the other hand, it is their very unfitness that drives them to drink it. Ill-fed, suffering from innutrition and the evil effects of overcrowding and squalor, their constitutions develop a morbid craving for the drink, just as the sickly stomach ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... within the house, the judge showed embarrassment. He was conscious of its unfitness for their fastidious taste and yet he had not known how to improve matters. In his best days he had concerned himself very little with household affairs, and for the last few years he had not given a ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... no doubt dictated in reality by a perception of this; and by the discovery that, even if he got on shore, sympathisers with him would be practically non-existent. On reading the letters now made public, one is convinced of Hoche's unfitness for the leadership of such an enterprise. The adoration of mediocrities is confined to no one cult and to no one age. Hoche's canonisation, for he is a prominent saint in the Republican calendar, was due not so much to what he did as to what ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the desired promise very cheerfully; for he had completely wrought himself up into the belief that the man he so much esteemed himself must be acceptable to his daughter. He had married a woman much younger than himself, and he saw no unfitness in the respective years of the intended couple. Mabel was educated so much above him, too, that he was not aware of the difference which actually existed between the parent and child in this respect. It followed that Sergeant Dunham was not altogether qualified to appreciate his ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... boy, and unfitness, and some of these jossers, jest now, Who himitate 'ARRY's few letters with weekly slapdabs of bow-wow, 'Ave about as much "fit" in their "slang" as a slop-tailor's six-and-six bags. No, Yours Truly writes only to you, and don't spread hisself out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... as the ruler. They are discontented—the masses all over the earth—with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness—the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certain matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we of the popular party were agitating for reforms—when ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... that all apparently hard work to be on an equality of unfitness for women. Country work is generally healthful; though hard work it is restful to the nerves. Every kind of nerve-racking work as in factories, heavy weight-lifting, long standing, and the tending of machinery without any kind of human interest, must be ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... nearly all natives. When, therefore, these supervisors report the mass of the Christianized Filipinos as simple and superstitious, we may be sure that we have the truth; but we are also inevitably led to the conclusion of economic unfitness. As this matter of economic independence is one of the first importance in determining the future of the Islands, we must look for all the light possible on the question. A flood is thrown on it by an article entitled "Nulla est Redemptio," published ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... he had acquired absolutely nothing about political economy or about logic, and was therefore at the mercy of the first agreeable sophistry that might take his fancy by storm, his unfitness to commence the business of being a citizen ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend, that in both cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... happy child, what should I do? 'Love me,' answered my God. 'I do, I do,' I cried passionately. 'Come unto me,' called my Father. 'I will,' my heart panted. Did I stop to ask a single question? Not one. It never occurred to me to ask whether I was good enough, or to hesitate over my unfitness, or to find out what I thought of his church, or ... to wait until I should be satisfied. Satisfied! I was satisfied. Had I not found my God and my Father? Did he not love me? Had he not called me? Was there not a Church into which I might enter? ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... resembled a carte-de-visite in which one would fancy the skirt alone to have been charged for. Since Miss Arrowpoint was generally liked for the amiable unpretending way in which she wore her fortunes, and made a softening screen for the oddities of her mother, there seemed to be some unfitness in Gwendolen's looking so much more like a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... regret for my momentary loss of self-control, I cannot recede from the position I have taken up as regards the essential unfitness of Clarence's presence ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... of the apparent unfitness of many of the heavenly bodies for the reception of living inhabitants. But for all this these discoverers have a remedy. They remind us how unlike these inhabitants may be to ourselves, having other ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... in my native tongue and not in Latin; which by similitude one may term, of barley-meal and not of wheaten flour. And from this it is briefly excused by three reasons which moved me to choose the one rather than the other. One springs from the avoidance of inconvenient Unfitness: the second from the readiness of well-adjusted Liberality; the third from the natural Love for one's own Native Tongue. And these things, with the grounds for them, to the staying of all possible reproof, I mean in due order to reason out ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... Burnside completely lost his sense of propriety. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1863, when Henry W. Raymond, the powerful editor of the New York Times, was on a visit to the camp, Burnside took him into his tent and read him an order removing Hooker because of his unfitness "to hold a command in a cause where so much moderation, forbearance, and unselfish patriotism were required." Raymond, aghast, inquired what he would do if Hooker resisted, if he raised his troops in mutiny? ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... lessons; many hours were spent on these, while she was continually harassed by Phyllis's dulness, Ada's inattention, and the interruption of work to do for Emily, and often was she baffled by interference from Jane or Emily. She was conscious of her unfitness to teach the children, and often saw that her impatience, ignorance, and inefficiency, were doing mischief; but much as this pained her, she could not speak to her father without compromising her sister, and to argue with Emily herself was quite in vain. Emily ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... progress of the colony—as a colony, for the first twenty years of its existence, no element of progress was in it—but to show how certain naval officers, in spite of the difficulties of the penal settlement days, in spite very often of their own unfitness for this to them strange service, did their work well, not perhaps always governing wisely, but holding to ground won in such circumstances and by such poor means as men with more brains and less "grit" would have abandoned ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... thing opens the door to the one next it, so to all the rest. But as if these his assurances and promises and comfortings were not large enough; as if the mention of any condition whatever might discourage some humble man of heart with a sense of unfitness, with the fear, perhaps conviction that the promise was not for him; as if some one might say, 'Alas, I am proud, and neither poor in spirit nor meek; I am at times not at all hungry after righteousness; I ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... there are good reasons, also, why this superiority should not much longer continue. Europe is old,—America is young. Land has been cultivated for centuries in Europe, and often by the same family; its capacity tested, its fitness or unfitness for particular crops proved, the local and special effects of different fertilizers well known, and the experience of many generations has been preserved, so as to be equivalent to a like experience, in time and extent, by the ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... "You rave! I have no cause for anger. In every way I have been taught my weakness, my instability, and my unfitness for the world. I am a plexus of weaknesses, an impotent Prince, a doubtful gentleman; and you yourself, indulgent as you are, have twice reproved my levity. And shall I be angry? I may feel the unkindness, but I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seems as if such things, as they grow only for beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental—who can give the world nothing but flowers—should die young, and never be seen with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... began Durant saw a faint hope of release in his own stupidity, his obvious unfitness for the game. By a studied carelessness, an artful exaggeration of his deficiencies, he courted humiliation, ejection in favor of the dummy. But, as it happened, either his evil destiny had endowed him with her own detestable ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... to himself, and successful in its objects. I have, more than once, through the press, disclaimed any imputation upon his integrity, motives, or character; but with his recorded declaration of my "utter want of integrity," and my unfitness for social intercourse in private life, I feel that my own conduct towards him should be confined to official acts and official occasions; in which I shall treat him with as much cordiality as I would any other member of the English Conference. Had it not been ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... and William W. Brown, and their friends resolved that they should be exhibited under the world's huge glass case, in order that the world might form its opinion of the alleged mental inferiority of the African race, and their fitness or unfitness for freedom. A small party of anti-slavery friends was accordingly formed to accompany the fugitives through the Exhibition. Mr. and Mrs. Estlin, of Bristol, and a lady friend, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Webb, of Dublin, and a son and daughter, Mr. McDonnell, (a most influential member of the Executive ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... tea, after having invited them one by one to join me, slowly and with a fitting dignity, the empty stare, destitute of sense or sincerity, of these six upstanding Chinese gentry, sucking at tobacco-pipes as long as their own overfed bodies, forced upon me a sense of my unfitness for the unknown conditions of the life of the place, a sense of loneliness and social unshelteredness in the sterile waste of their fashionable life. They spoke to me subsequently, and I bravely threw at them a Chinese phrase or two; but ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... him thoroughly for his variable though severe criticisms, and stated, with some emotion, that the Board should be enlightened as to his unfitness, through his captious temper, for the delicate task of nourishing the tender sensibilities ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... When parents object to a lover on the mere ground of his poverty, or some personal prejudice, a girl may be excused for making her own choice when she is of age. If she binds herself secretly to a man whose moral unfitness is objected to, she is courting certain misery and ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... would not at all trouble an employer accustomed to free labor. I once had an argument with a Georgia planter who vociferously insisted that one of his negro laborers who had objected to a whipping had thereby furnished the most conclusive proof of his unfitness for freedom. And such statements were constantly reinforced by further assertion that they, the Southern whites, understood the negro and knew how to treat him, and that we of the North ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... alexandrines. It has not commended itself to modern poets, with one exception, for sustained work. Browning wrote his Fifine at the Fair (1872) in this measure; and while he succeeded in relieving it of some of its monotony, he only demonstrated again its unfitness, in English, for continuous use. A peculiar musical effect is obtained from it, however, by Mr. Siegfried Sassoon in ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... ye!" responded the Yankee. "Think you can climb it?" Far out at sea, swept ever by the Atlantic gales, a mere sand-bank, with scant surface soil to support vegetation, this island soon proved to its settlers its unfitness to maintain an agricultural people. There is a legend that an islander, weary perhaps with the effort of trying to wrest a livelihood from the unwilling soil, looked from a hilltop at the whales tumbling and spouting in the ocean. "There," he said, "is a green pasture where our ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to the proposition is the absolute unfitness of the negroes, as a class, for any such responsibility. They can neither read nor write. They have no knowledge whatever of law or government. They do not even know the meaning of the freedom that has been given them, and are much astonished when informed that ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... running three months, and on roof gardens; nor did they want a "cub" reporter when veterans were being "laid off" by the dozens. Nor were his services desired as a private secretary, a taxicab driver, an agent to sell real estate or automobiles or stocks. As no one gave him a chance to prove his unfitness for any of these callings, the fact that he knew nothing of any of them did not greatly matter. At these rebuffs Dolly was distinctly pleased. She argued they proved he was intended to pursue his ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... you I had written, by Lord Byron's desire, to La Guiccioli, to dissuade her and her family from Switzerland. Her answer is this moment arrived, and my representation seems to have reconciled them to the unfitness of the step. At the conclusion of a letter, full of all the fine things she says she has heard of me, is this request, which I transcribe:—'Signore, la vostra bonta mi fa ardita di chiedervi un favore, me lo accorderete voi? Non partite da ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... pang of separation entered like iron into his soul. Should he ever meet Russell again? What if he had died instead of Edwin, where would he have been? "Oh no! no!" he murmured aloud, as the terrible thought came over him of his own utter unfitness for death, and the possibility that he might never never again hear the beloved accents, or gaze on the cherished countenance ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... because their minds and bodies are not fitted for them. Therefore she accepts this, in the same way as she accepts physical inferiority, as a fact against which it is useless and silly to declaim, knowing that it is not men who keep her out, but her own unfitness. Moreover, she knows that it is made good to her in other ways, and thus the balance is redressed. You see, she knows her own strength and her own weakness. Can there be a more valuable ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... of Motiers made me think of quitting Switzerland, this desire was again strengthened by the hope of at length finding amongst these islanders the repose refused me in every other place. One thing only alarmed me, which was my unfitness for the active life to which I was going to be condemned, and the aversion I had always had to it. My disposition, proper for meditating at leisure and in solitude, was not so for speaking and acting, and treating of affairs with men. Nature, which had endowed me with the first talent, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... which were sure to have no effect whatsoever upon the fate of an incumbent or an aspirant. Scarcely any removals were made during his Administration, and every one of the few was based solely upon a proved unfitness of the official. As a consequence very few new appointments were made, and in every instance the appointee was, or was believed to be, the fittest man without regard to his political bias. This entire elimination of the question ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... selfish and silly details? I merely wish to assure you that it was not the frivolous forgetfulness of a mind, occupied by what is called pleasure (not in the true sense of Epicurus), that kept me away; but a perception of my, then, unfitness to share the society of those whom I value and wish not to displease. I hate being larmoyant, and making a serious face ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... ways, and his knowledge of Roman methods, above all, his possession of the confidence of the great mass of the Numidian people? Nay, it might be argued that Adherbal had by his weakness proved his unfitness to be an efficient agent of Rome. It might be asked whether such a man was likely to be an adequate representative of Roman interests in Africa, an adequate protector of the frontiers of the province. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the advocates of interference ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind. Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... also who, despite habits or inefficiency, slipped through even formal examination; commanders whose ships were run by their subordinates, lieutenants whose watch on deck kept their captains from sleeping, midshipmen whose unfitness made their retention unpardonable; for at their age to re-begin life was no hardship, much less injustice. Of one such the story ran that his captain, giving him the letter required by regulation, wrote, "Mr. So and So is a very excellent ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... regarded the new guardian with respect of a kind, but with distinct disapproval. The captain was, in his opinion, altogether too flippant and jolly. There was nothing humorous in the situation, as Graves saw it, and to laugh when one's brother's estate is in a tangle, indicated unfitness, if nothing worse. Kuhn was a sharp, quick-moving man, who had no time for ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... troutling, some time since,[12] Endeavour'd vainly to convince A hungry fisherman Of his unfitness for the frying-pan. That controversy made it plain That letting go a good secure, In hope of future gain, Is but imprudence pure. The fisherman had reason good— The troutling did the best he could— Both argued for their lives. Now, if my ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... intransitive verb must not, amount to nothing as directions to the composer; because the classification of verbs depends upon this very matter, whether they have, or have not, an object after them; and no general principle has been, or can be, furnished beforehand, by which their fitness or unfitness for taking such government can be determined. This must depend upon usage, and usage must conform to the sense intended. Very many verbs—probably a vast majority—govern an object sometimes, but not always: many that are ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... o' Haworth, wen I see before me so many smilin' faces an' so many distingwisht citizens, I awn I felt a pang as to my unfitness for appearin' afore yo on this occashun; but yor cummittee wor so urgent in thair appeal to me that I wur certainly induced to akcept th' honor o diggin' th' first sod o'th' Grand Trunk Railway, which will be ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... three or four generations if the colour is at all apparent. All licenses for the marriage of white people must be applied for personally, and signed in the presence of the Landdrost, who is very cautious lest half-castes or persons of colour should get one. Colour is evidently the only test of unfitness to claim recognition of the marriage contract by the ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... diminished through the operation of social conditions. For in all grades of civilization above the lowest, "there are so many kinds of superiorities which severally enable men to survive, notwithstanding accompanying inferiorities, that natural selection cannot by itself rectify any particular unfitness." In a race of inferior animals any maladjustment is quickly removed by natural selection, because, owing to the universal slaughter, the highest completeness of life possible to a given grade of organization ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... to be at the head of troops who were likely to be engaged with a well-disciplined army, commanded by experienced and able generals."[225] In the very middle of the period of his nominal military service, this opinion of his unfitness was still more strongly urged by the chairman of the Committee of Safety, who, on the 24th of December, 1775, said in ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... as we may 'Paradise Lost;' try as we may to admire 'Paradise Regained;' acknowledge as we must the splendour of the imagery and the stately march of the verse; there comes upon us irresistibly a sense of the unfitness of the subject for Milton's treatment of it. If the story which he tells us is true, it is too momentous to be played with in poetry. We prefer to hear it in plain prose, with a minimum of ornament and the utmost possible ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... blow, failed of its object, we find that there were a great many instances of emancipation by individuals in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when death or sickness overtook them, in which they declared the moral unfitness of slavery. (Wycliffe: "When Adam dalve and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?") Elizabeth liberated the last serfs of the crown. Compare 12 Charles II, ch. 24, 1660. Emancipation in the lowlands of Scotland was completed in 1574. (Tytler, Hist. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... must be highly paid. When we think of the qualifications required by those who are charged with the ordinary administration, the great expense to which they are put, the years they spend in laborious work in an exhausting climate, and their unfitness as a rule for work in England on their retirement, I do not think their income or pension can be to any large extent safely or justly reduced. The era of nabobs, returning with vast wealth to astonish the English people, has long since passed away. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... brilliance to her tawny hair. Perhaps she was over-richly dressed, for, like many girls who as a rule are not very interested in clothes, she was too interested in them at times, and inexperienced taste was apt to mislead her into an unfitness. Also her figure was too stiff and sturdy to favour elegance. But on this occasion the general effect of her was notably picturesque, and her face and hair, and the expression of her pose, atoned in their charm for the shortcomings and the luxuriance of the frock. She was no ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... are in store for you.' I answered, that I was deeply grateful for his many acts of confidence and kindness; and that I would at once assent to the plan he had proposed, only begging him to observe that I had mentioned my unfitness under a very strong sense of duty and of the facts, and not by any means as a mere matter of ceremony. I then added that I thought I should but ill respond to his confidence if I did not mention to him ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... absolute necessary prerequisite, without which heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed; and, by divine promise, such a mind shall never fail of attaining "everlasting life;" hence the impure, the deceiving, and the uncharitable extrude themselves from eternal bliss, by their unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme Being has put the immediate administration of all this, for wise and good ends known to himself, into the hands of Jesus Christ, a great personage, whose relation to him we cannot comprehend, but ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... works on Natural History to have been, till recently, very limited; this has probably arisen from their technical character, and consequent unfitness for the general reader. Mr. Loudon was, perhaps, the first to familiarize the study of Zoology, in originally making it a portion of his excellent Gardeners' Magazine. The formation of the Zoological Society next rendered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... Army and should under no circumstances be discontinued. If on these practise marches and in these maneuvers elderly officers prove unable to bear the strain, they should be retired at once, for the fact is conclusive as to their unfitness for war; that is, for the only purpose because of which they should be allowed to stay in the service. It is a real misfortune to have scores of small company or regimental posts scattered throughout the country; the Army should be gathered in a few brigade or division posts; and the generals ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a little more in detail, let us take his treatment of passion. How many forms, degrees, varieties of passion he has portrayed! Yet I am not aware that any instance of disproportion or unfitness has ever been successfully pointed out in his works. With but two or three exceptions at the most, so perfect is the correspondence between the passion and the character, and so freely and fitly does the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... directly after dinner that evening, on the plea of mailing a letter, had slipped from the house on one of her melancholy, soul-searching walks which she had become so fond of taking. Convinced that she was an utter failure, imbued with a daily growing sense of her own unfitness to be the friend of a girl like Marjorie Dean, Mary was plunged into the depths of humiliation and unhappiness. This alone had been the cause of the marked change in her that Marjorie had innocently attributed to Mignon's defection. In her sad little soul there was now no bitterness against ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... mistaking my man, is to send you back again to your old place in the fo'c's'le, where I think you'll find yourself far more at home than you were on the poop. Davis, you are no longer second mate of the Josephine! I disrate you on account of your unfitness for the post, and you will now return to your former rating, as I have restored your name to the list of the crew. You will be in Mr Marline's watch, and I hope you'll do your duty as well as you used ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... picture of the present Becky on the concert-stage flashed through Betty's usually hopeful mind. She felt a heartache, as she thought of her friend's unfitness and inevitable disappointment. Becky—plain, ungainly, honest Becky—felt it in her to do great things, yet she hardly knew what great things were. Persons of Betty's age never count upon having years of time in which to make themselves better. Everything ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... should be less willing to pass over lightly. The ruthless cruelty of the Spanish conquerors in the new world is a profoundly instructive illustration of the essential narrowness of the papal Christianity, its pitiful exclusiveness, its low and bad morality, and, above all, its incurable unfitness for dealing with the spirit and motives of men in face of the violent temptations with which the wealth of the new world now assailed and corrupted them. Catholicism had held triumphant possession of the conscience of Europe for a dozen centuries and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... to get agricultural employment; but the whiteness of his hands and the tone of his voice not merely suggested unfitness for labour, but generated suspicion as to the character of one who had evidently dropped from a rank so much higher, and was seeking admittance within the natural masonic boundaries and secrets and privileges of another. Disheartened somewhat, but hopeful, he journeyed ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... and whether they have any such thing peculiar in point of bigness, colour, shape, longaevity, fitness or unfitness to make good meat, &c. as may be rather adscribed to the peculiar nature of the place, than to the barrenness of the Soyl, or ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... floating ice making the labor incredible. Fortunately the storm was against our backs, "and consequently in the faces of our enemy." The march was kept up swiftly and quietly. In Sullivan's column some of the soldiers could not cover their muskets from the wet, and word was sent to Washington of the unfitness of their arms. Washington promptly sent word back by his aid, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel B. Webb, that if the men could not discharge their pieces they must use the bayonet, for the town must ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... youth of promise—born, like Jaffier, with "elegant desires"—one who does not agnize a prompt alacrity in carrying burdens—one, rather, who recognizes a moral and physical unfitness for such, and indeed all other dorsal and manual operations—one who has been born a Briton, and would not, therefore, sell his birthright for a mess of pottage; but, on the contrary, holds that his birthright entitles him to as many messes of pottage as there may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... exploded, killing 2 and wounding 11 of the gun's crew, besides injuring the gun. The Chillicothe was then withdrawn, after receiving another shot, which killed one of her ship's company, and showing her unfitness for action through scamped work put upon her. The stream was so narrow that two vessels could with difficulty act, and therefore a 30-pound rifled gun was landed from the Rattler on the 13th and an VIII-inch from the De Kalb on the 15th. ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... All the continental nations have boasted great native painters and architects, while these arts were long truly foreign to us. Theoretical critics, at a loss to account for this singularity, accused not only our climate, but even our diet, as the occult causes of our unfitness to cultivate them. Yet Montesquieu and Winkelmann might have observed that the air of fens and marshes had not deprived the gross feeders of Holland and Flanders of admirable artists. We have teen outrageously calumniated. So far from any national incapacity, or obtuse feelings, attaching to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... can be more shocking than the Tamtonian practice of openly soliciting political preferment and even paying money to assist in securing it. With us such immodesty would be taken as proof of the offender's unfitness to exercise the power which he asks for, or bear the dignity which, in soliciting it, he belittles. Yet no Tamtonian ever refused to take the hand of a man guilty of such conduct, and there have been instances of fathers giving these greedy ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... stumbling-block in another's path; but restrained as he will be by his secret pangs of conscience, he can scarcely be an active obstructionist. But a man who, having mistaken the field of his life's labor, yet remains amiably self-satisfied, and unconscious of his unfitness, may do more harm in his serene ignorance than he might have done good if he had chosen his proper sphere. Such a man as the last was the Reverend Harold. A good-natured, broad-shouldered, tactless, self-sufficient person, he had taken up his work with a complacent ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hampered and fettered himself, that he was forced to renounce all the glories of his station. Wealth almost unlimited was at his command,—and rank, and youth, and such personal gifts of appearance and disposition as best serve to win general love. He had talked to his brother of his unfitness for his earldom; but he could have blazoned it forth at Scroope and up in London, with the best of young lords, and have loved well to do so. But this adventure, as he had been wont to call it, had fallen upon him, and had broken him as it were in pieces. Thousands ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... the powers of hell prevail O'er our weakness and unfitness, Could we lift the fleshly veil, Could we for a moment witness Those unnumbered hosts that stand Calm and bright on ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... marriage, I mean the unfitness of the persons marrying to enter into this state, and that both with respect to age and the constitution of their bodies; and, therefore, those who design to enter into that condition ought to observe their ability ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... called it. His father, who was a prosperous banker in Wall Street, had sternly vetoed an artistic career for his only son. Alston had rebelled, then had given in for a time, and gone into Wall Street. Instead of proving his unfitness for a career he loathed, he showed a marked aptitude for business, inherited no doubt from his father. He could do well what he hated doing. This fact accentuated his father's wrath when he abruptly threw up business and finally decided that he would be a singer or nothing. The Wall ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... immaculate behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get employment and earn a livelihood. The case is different with the girls. They can only go to service, and are invariably rejected by families of respectability on account of their origin, and for the better reason of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest situations in a well-ordered English household. Their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precarious lives, and finally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... have found it in him, just then, to believe that her brother could be guilty of such treachery—especially when he had been the means of getting this particular brother out of an unpleasant row. So he sat at table, perturbed by his own unfitness and at the same time charmed by all that went on about him. For the first time he realized that eating was something more than a utilitarian function. He was unaware of what he ate. It was merely ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... times when his work was done and he could take entire rest; and his health is absolutely perfect. But I did not make any excuse for myself at the moment. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my utter unfitness to be a wife ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... the predominant one. That rapturous winged spirit which he calls Love Triumphant might just as easily be called Music or Song, and another allegory be attached to it without our feeling any more special fitness or unfitness in the explanation. I see a beautiful exultant figure, but I do not feel love as the fundamental mood in the painter, as I feel the religious mood is fundamental in the Angelus of Millet. I do not need to look for a title to that or for ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... bravery of Kit Carson, than the fact that he was at once selected to lead the party on its dangerous errand. While he was as modest as a woman and with a voice as gentle and persuasive, he could not be ignorant of his own capacities, and he assumed charge without any pretense of unfitness. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual day. It was the first warm day of that April, warmer already, with the goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot, but drying under your eyes in ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... the Moghul Darbar, from which, with his usual address, he contrived to obtain as a vote of the cabinet what was doubtless the suggestion of his own unprincipled ambition. "This Emperor," said the assembled nobles, "has shown his unfitness for rule. He is unable to cope with the Mahrattas: he is false and fickle towards his friends. Let him be deposed, and a worthier son of Timur raised to the throne." This resolution was immediately acted upon; the unfortunate monarch was blinded and consigned to the State prison ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... during the battle. For three days the Italian people were told that they had won a victory, then the bitter truth was known. The admiral, tried before the Senate, was deprived of his rank and command in the Italian navy. The politician who, when convinced of his unfitness, yet had not the nerve to remove him from his post, died, full of years and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... happened to the House of Lords especially. The most obvious instance is the judicial function. This is a function which no theorist would assign to a second chamber in a new Constitution, and which is matter of accident in ours. Gradually, indeed, the unfitness of the second chamber for judicial functions has made itself felt. Under our present arrangements this function is not entrusted to the House of Lords, but to a Committee of the House of Lords. On one occasion only, the trial of O'Connell, the whole House, or some few in the whole House, wished ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... in the chair in that wide emptiness, with the chief performer directing attention to me every other moment or so, for perhaps an hour. Let me hurry on to say that it did not happen. I dare say he realized my unfitness for the work, and the far greater appropriateness of conferring the honor on General Grant, for in the end he gave him the assignment, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... through was great. He must have so arranged his affairs as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his memory information on all subjects. When we remember the size of the books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study such as we cannot endure. Throughout his life his hours were early, but they must also have been late. Of his letters we have not a half, of his speeches not a half, of his treatises not ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... prospect of success before deciding to follow it, than that of the actor. And not the least advantage of a dramatic school lies in the fact that some of its pupils may learn to reconsider their determination to go on the stage, become convinced of their own unfitness, recognise in time that they will be wise to abandon a career which must always be hazardous and difficult even to those who are successful, and cruel to those who fail. Let it be something far sterner and stronger than mere fancy that decides you to ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... baggage from Daet to Cabusao in a schooner, I proceeded on foot, by the road to that place, to the coast on the west side of the Bay of San Miguel. We crossed the mouth of the river in a boat, which the horses swam after; but they were soon abandoned from unfitness. At the mouth of the next river, Sacavin, the water was so high that the bearers stripped themselves naked and carried the baggage over on their heads. In simple jacket and cotton hose, I found this precaution needless; indeed, according to my experience, it is ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... of these received canons of etiquette is to commit a decided solecism and to discover an utter unfitness for the desired social rank. Fortunately, there is no need, even for those not to the manor born, of displaying any ignorance in this matter when the simple consultation of a standard work on social etiquette will give the needed information and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... at last white, when strongly ignited for a long time; and is, like the true variety, decolourised by ignition in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas. At a high temperature, this effect is even produced by silica, whence the unfitness of ultramarine for painting on glass or porcelain; and simply by a prolonged red heat the blue is rendered white. Being unaffected by alkalis, it is eligible in mural decoration, and is particularly adapted to siliceous painting, on account of the silica and alumina which ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... almost a touch of genius in the remark. Its very vacuity told of the man's exceeding unfitness for the role thrust upon him by certain desperadoes in the far ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy |
