"Inability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hundred and fifty city lots, now valued at a round $8,000,000, the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad has not paid a cent in rental or taxes since the act of 1887 was passed. On the island of Manhattan alone 70,000 poor families are every year evicted for inability to pay rent—a continuous and horribly tragic event well worth comparing with the preposterous facility with which the great possessing classes everywhere either buy or defy law, and confiscate when it suits them. So cunningly drafted was the act of 1887 that while New York City ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... were the family of the deceased chief, I was quite troubled at my inability to express, otherwise than by gestures, my participation ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... clasped her hands over her eyes and Thresk lived over again that evening in the tent upon the desert, but with a new understanding. His mind was illumined. He saw the world as a prison in which each living being is shut off from his neighbour by the impenetrable wall of an inability to understand. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... end of the street by this time. The sight of the misery about him, and the sense of his own utter inability to remedy it, weighed heavily on his spirits. He thought of the peaceful and prosperous life at Tadmor. Were his happy brethren of the Community and these miserable people about him creatures of the same all-merciful God? The terrible ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the Bantu the same child-like faith in all that is proclaimed by traditional authority about things supernatural, and I have found also among them the same hesitation or inability to believe without questioning in all that is laid down in the name of tradition that we see among ourselves. The will to believe is temperamental and general, but the unbeliever is found among the Bantu as ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... Pleasant Valley for he is a most unselfish fellow and enjoys nothing more than seeing other people as happy as he. He has one grave fault, however, that prevents him from being a very great help, and that is his inability to remain long in one place. He is so full of spry gaiety that he never can be quite content unless he is dancing with his relatives in the hollow near the swamp or darting about Farmer Green's lawn. His friends often give him advice as to how he may use the wonderful light which ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... they!" exclaimed Tommy, opening his eyes very wide, and rounding his mouth so as to express his utter inability to convey any idea of the terrific powers of bo'suns in that particular line. "But Bluenose beats 'em all. He'd chew oakum, I do believe, if he didn't get baccy, and yet he boasts of not drinkin'! Seems to me he's just as bad as the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... and strange portents. These are divine reprimands sent to recall him to a sense of duty. Thus, partial eclipses of the sun and moon are manifest warnings that the rod of empire is not wielded aright. Ever since WE ascended the throne, OUR inability to continue the glorious traditions of our departed ancestors and carry on the great work of civilization, has now culminated in a warning message from on high. It therefore behoves Us to issue commands for personal reformation, in order to avert ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... friends have remonstrated, but the oppressors have rarely condescended to reply. Even those of the same sex, who have large establishments and employ numbers of women, have seldom done so. This silence has been significant of inability, an admission ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... over the matter of the runaway with a brief word, saying that the pony had made up his mind to run, and she had lost the bridle, which of course explained her inability to control him. She made light of her ride, however, before her aunt, and told the whole story most briefly until she came to the canyon and the howl of the coyotes. She was most warm in praise of her rescuer, though here too she used few ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... glowing detestation which my feelings required. Were I to tell this new tale, incredibly atrocious as it was, what would men think, but that I was a general calumniator, a frantic egotist, and a man dangerous to society? The total inability that I felt in myself, to obtain ample and immediate justice, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... New York City might again come into a mastery of the trade with the West, as at the time when the Erie Canal was first completed and because of the inability of the railroads to meet the demands of traffic, the legislature of New York, in 1903, appropriated $100,000,000 for the enlargement of that waterway and the two branch canals, the Oswego and Champlain. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... men resent the burden and the discomfort and the expense of an ailing wife, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. It is a failing of the male species to be cursed with the inability to understand any type of nervousness in a wife. Being inexplicable to him he attributes the symptoms to an evil imagination or to a bad disposition. He believes he is being imposed upon and proceeds to ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... hill, where Father Fouchard's little farm was situated, but her heart and soul absent with Honore amid the dangers of the conflict, never once took her eyes from off Sedan, where the guns were roaring. The following day, moreover, her anxiety was even greater still, being increased by her inability to obtain any definite tidings, for the Prussians who were guarding the roads in the vicinity refused to answer questions, as much from reasons of policy as because they knew but very little themselves. The bright sun of the day before ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to Europeans. They were still a breech-cloth people, wearing this rag of barbarism as the unmistakable evidence of their condition; and the family was in the syndyasmian or pairing form, with separation at any moment at the option of either party. It was the weakness of the family, its inability to face alone the struggle of life, which led to the construction of joint-tenement houses throughout North and South America by the Indian tribes; and it was the gentile organization which led them to fill these houses, on the principle ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... many idealists have been willing to confess their inability to solve this problem. To quote a recent ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... build your house may be, in truth, a question quite as important as how to build it. I regret my inability to give you the advice you need. Dr. Bowditch has, I think, intimated that there is an elysian field not far from here of such rare sanitary virtue that if its locality were known there would scarcely be standing-room within its borders for those who would flock thither, or something to ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... for the free instruction of children whose parents can show that they are unable to pay for it, but fees can be enforced in all cases where inability to pay them has not been proved. Large grants have been made by the legislature for school buildings, teachers' salaries, etc., in order to efficiently aid in the development of a thorough and comprehensive system of education ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... roads about the gates, and staid four years." The tax returns afford curious documents. We have that of Massaccio:—"Declaration of the means of Tommaso di Giovanni, called Massaccio, and of his brother Giovanni, to the officers of the fisc, detailing their miserable means, inability, and liability—We live in the house of Andrea Macigni, for which we pay ten florins a-year." "The son of this Andrea bound himself apprentice in the studio of Nendi Bicci for two years, in 1458, aged seventeen, to have fifteen florins and a pair of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... would, he knew, pass muster well enough. A doctor can rarely be depended upon, socially, and when he was dressed he went downstairs with the intention of ringing up Cherry Orchard and regretting his inability to make a fourth at Mrs. Carstairs' ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... congregation had now rejected him as not up to their mark, turning him off to do his best with fifty pounds a year. He had himself heard the cheating butcher remark in the open street that it was quite enough, and more than ever his Master had. But all these things were as nothing in his eyes beside his inability to pay Mr. Jones's bill. He had outgrown his former self, but this kind of misery it would be but deeper degradation to outgrow. All before this had been but humiliation; this was shame. Now first he knew what poverty was! Had God forgotten him? That could not be! that which could ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... escape, and have fairly run off for shame.' He had indeed much better run off before he made so wretched a pun on the name of Gorgias. 'I dreaded,' says he, 'lest Agathon, measuring my discourse by the head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to stone for inability of utterance.' ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... have seen, Madge could not resume her old relations with Graydon Muir. Indeed, the turning-point in her life had been the impulse and decision to escape them by going away. She was also right in thinking that this inability would rather help than hinder her cause. If he had come back and realized his expectations, he would have bestowed unstintedly the placid affection of a brother, given her his confidence, his aid, anything she wished, except his thoughts. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... in passing, that the barrenness of incoherent ideas, and the sterility of widely distant species and genera of animals and plants, are one in principle—the sterility of hybrids being just as much due to inability to fuse widely unlike and unfamiliar ideas into a coherent whole, as barrenness of ideas is, and, indeed, resolving itself ultimately into neither more nor less than barrenness of ideas—that is to say, into inability to think at ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... in sound sleep, especially for nervous persons. Many of those who complain of an inability to sleep suffer more or less from congestion of blood in the brain; also they complain of cold feet or cold hands and feet. In such instances, warm feet will often bring a solution of the problem. In some instances drinking a half cup of hot ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... who, early in life, have formed some favourite plan of literary labour, which they have unremittingly pursued, till, sometimes near the close of life, they either discover their inability to terminate it, or begin to depreciate their own constant labour. The literary architect has grown gray over his edifice; and, as if the black wand of enchantment had waved over it, the colonnades become interminable, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in more than one ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... absolute and complete isolation of Russia from contact with all parts of the world except Germany, Austria, and Turkey. The question has often arisen as to the ability of Germany to prolong the war in the face of her inability to export goods to her usual customers. The complete cessation of manufacture in Germany would sooner or later bankrupt the country and bring her to her knees. The Germans point out that the isolation of Russia will have precisely the same effect ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... little force in the miracles of Christ, exclusive of the prophecies, that he does not hesitate to affirm their utter inability to support the Christian religion by themselves. [Lactan. Div. ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... sufficient testimony to Ben's inability to refrain from gibes at Shakspere's want of scholarship. Rowe, who had traditions of Davenant's, tells how, in conversation with Suckling, Davenant, Endymion Porter, and Hales of Eton, Ben harped on Will's want of learning; and how Hales snubbed him. Indeed, Ben could ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... Her inability to play up to the relationship in which she stood to Mama Therese in the manner prescribed by sentimentalists worried Sofia more than a little. She was as hungry to give affection as to receive it; and surely she ought to be fond of Mama Therese, who (Sofia was forever being reminded) ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... felt with a swelling heart that he was no longer a cat. No more of those undignified four legs, those tiresome pointed ears, so difficult to wash, that furry coat, that contemptible tail, and that terrible inability to express all one's feelings ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... intentions, an entire surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong (though even that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from her inability to resist a rising inclination [Footnote: Iago. Ay, too gentle. Othello. Nay, that's certain.]) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... the temple of his Deity. Twice in twenty-four hours he repaired hither, unaccompanied by any human being. Nothing but physical inability to move was allowed to obstruct or postpone this visit. He did not exact from his family compliance with his example. Few men, equally sincere in their faith, were as sparing in their censures and restrictions, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... dearly loved a joke may joke still, and he who thought he was collecting fine old pictures may still indulge his taste. Delusions! Not impossible or even unlikely. Kant demonstrated once for all our complete enslavement by phenomena and our inability to approach things-in-themselves. Spiritualistic interpretation of post-mortem conditions offers no exception. Imagination continues to master our souls. Spiritualism offends us by offering bread-and-butter when ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... ponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls. The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I have ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Expression.—Delicacy of expression is that quality in news writing which distinguishes the star reporter from the cub. It may be learned, but never taught. It is this elusive element in writing and the inability of instructors to impart it that make many journalists say news writing cannot be taught. Delicacy of expression is not effeminacy. It is originality; it is cleverness; it is nimbleness of wit and beauty of phrase; it is grace; it is simplicity; it is restraint; ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... period as the Lord Admiral's men is plainly apparent. It is not unlikely that their transfer to Henslowe's financial management became necessary because of Burbage's continued disfavour with Lord Burghley and the City authorities, as well as his financial inability adequately to provide for the needs of the new Court company, in 1591. In the defiance of Burghley's and the Mayor's orders by the Burbage portion of the company, and the subservience of the Alleyn element at this time, is foreshadowed their future political bias as independent ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... work which I take upon myself as an engagement will act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as three or four times I have, a school-boy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for a week together. The same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man's book, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... and took his hand. "Padre dear," she continued, "God is life—there is no death. God is eternal—there is no age. God is all good—there is no poverty, no lack, no loss. God is infinite, and He is mind—there is no inability to see the right and to do it. God is my mind, my spirit, my soul, my all. I have nothing to fear. Human mental concepts are not real. You, yourself, say so. I am not afraid of them. I look at God constantly, and strive always to see only Him. But He is ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... how to punish," she said after some minutes of awkward silence. There was commiseration in her tone. The situation was becoming ludicrous to Sir Edward, though there was a certain amount of annoyance at feeling his inability ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... NORTON said that Mr. Douglass's remarks left her to defend the Government from the inferred inability to grapple with the two questions at once. It legislates upon many questions at one and the same time, and it has the power to decide the woman question and the negro question at one and the same ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have borne too long with you from weakness and inability to speak, but depart now, or I recant my ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... being a matter of surprise, ought to be just the thing to be expected; because a clever fabricator, foreseeing that he would be suspected, and eager to foil detection, would know that the curious inquirer into a research of the present description would thus become baffled at every turn from inability, if not to discover it himself, at least, to explain to the satisfaction and conviction of others, the incompatibility of the workings of one spirit in one book with the workings of the other spirit in ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... desert, his gaze bespeaking the expectation of his father's return, though he never suggested it in his brief conversations with the Sheikh—brief from their difficulty, the old Arab confessing his inability to understand much ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... answers to some divinely instituted world-enigma? I expressed this view as clearly as I could in the second of these lectures. Certainly the restlessness of the actual theoretic situation, the value for some purposes of each thought- level, and the inability of either to expel the others decisively, suggest this pragmatistic view, which I hope that the next lectures may soon make entirely convincing. May there not after all be a possible ambiguity ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... no uneasiness, whatever, upon their own account—for they had before passed so easily, among the Prussian troops, that they felt quite confident in their disguise—but they were uncomfortable as to Tim, whose inability to answer questions would have at once betrayed them, had anyone addressed him. They had not ventured to bandage up his face, as if wounded; as he would have naturally, in that case, had a military pass. As the ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... ascertain the religious notions of the Arctic Highlanders, but these seem to have proved unsatisfactory; and, perhaps, from the inability of Sacheuse to question them on such a subject. They had a king, whom they represented to be a strong man, very good, and greatly beloved. His house was described to be of stone, and nearly as large as the ship; and they said that every man paid to him a portion of all which they caught ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... destroyed three attempts, and this, said he, is the best I can do, and I will destroy it. This Cumberland would not allow, and took possession of it, and an admirable performance it is. Soon another was done, and Collins took it to Sir Joshua, with many timid expressions and apologies for his inability, that he feared displeasure for having undertaken a work above him. Sir Joshua looked at it, declared it to be, as it was, a most excellent copy, and gave him more to do in the same way—telling him to go to his scrutoire, open a drawer, and he would find some guineas, and to take out twenty to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... differences of intonation and differences of stress may be included in the statement, but other elements are frequently no less marked, e.g. the pronunciation of t and d as real dentals, whereas the English sounds so described are really produced not against the teeth but against their sockets, the inability to produce the interdental th whether breathed as in thin or voiced as in this and its representation by d or z, the production of o as a uniform sound instead of one ending as in English in a slight u sound, or such dialect changes as lydy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he struggled with a strange inability to lay hold on the shadowy form he knew so well. He looked round the beautiful room that was but a setting to a lovely woman and then back at her. Why had she spoken of his mother? He again attempted to crystallise the thought of the dearly ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... indifference Barbican was far from participating. Not that he was not prepared to meet the future with a bold and manly heart. It was his inability to answer his own question that rendered him uneasy. What had switched them off? He would have given worlds for an answer, but his brain sorely puzzled sought ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... essential points of civilization. Indeed, the Egyptians considered it so heinous a crime to deprive a man of life, that to be the accidental witness of an attempt to murder, without endeavoring to prevent it, was a capital offense, which could only be palliated by bringing proofs of inability to act. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... jackals wriggle; as when the poet wrote to a correspondent, who had drawn his attention to certain abusive personalities in some review or newspaper: "Dear Sir—I am sure you mean very kindly, but I have had too long an experience of the inability of the human goose to do other than cackle when benevolent and hiss when malicious, and no amount of goose criticism shall make me lift a heel ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room. Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he shouted to her, "Wait a minute, I said." And with the inability to express himself, the incoherence that Konstantin knew so well, he began, with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother Kritsky's story: how he had been expelled from the university for starting a benefit society for the poor students and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... nearly converted to her side as the journey grew hotter and heavier, seeing her maintain her pace as well as himself, if not better, that he found himself stumbling every few yards sheerly through his inability to keep his eyes from her. He was bursting to talk; there was yet a problem unsolved in his mind; and when a stretch of level glade gave him back his breath, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... bread which our people stood in. One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weaknesses, and vows.' The wanderer ventured as far as the Missouri, and would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the swollen river. Cooperating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila, ascended the Colorado for two hundred and forty miles above its mouth, and visited the Grand Canon of the same river. Coronado at last returned, satisfied ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... hammered again on the door, and I set forth our pedigree and plight in as few words as possible. Reassured, perhaps, by my excellent Spanish—which could not, of course, be the tongue of the devil—and convinced by our pitiable condition of our inability to do him any harm, he at length reopened the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... dining-room, and was seen only when she went in or out, heavily veiled, for a walk. Lemuel heard very soon that she had suffered a shock from the death of her son on the cars; the other ladies made much of her inability to get over it, and said nothing would induce them to have a son of theirs go in ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... room voluntarily," returned Cleek; "that the bird brought him a message of such importance it was necessary to leave this house at once, and that, not wishing to leave it unlocked while he was absent, and not—because of the Captain's inability to get back upstairs afterward—having anybody to whom he could appeal to get up and lock it after him, he chose to get out of this window, and to go down by means of that wistaria. I think, too, we may decide that, as he left no note to explain his absence, he expected to return before ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... out, and was now carrying to Canton, where it was expected he would be severely punished for having permitted the ships to pass; and the commodore urging the unreasonableness of this procedure, from the inability of the forts to have done otherwise, explaining to the Chinese the great superiority his ships would have had over the forts, by the number and size of their guns, the Chinese seemed to acquiesce in his reasoning, and allowed that their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... in toward the shore. Dr. Bird gripped his pistol and waited. When the craft was less than twenty feet from shore it stopped and a guttural voice spoke. Dr. Bird started. He had expected the language to be Russian, but it came as a shock to him, nevertheless. He strained his ears and cursed his inability to make out the words. Dr. Bird had been assiduously studying Russian under the tutelage of his new secretary for some months, but he had not yet progressed to the stage where he could readily understand it. The gift of languages was one which ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... women, have been the more impelled to leave the Hill. Economic advantage had only to be as good elsewhere, and the man emigrated. I have not known those who have left the place, in my knowledge of it, to give as a reason inability to make a good living there; but always they have spoken most emphatically of the bareness and lack of interest in the social life of the Hill as their reason for emigrating to the city or ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Hicks defended you, Thor, and changed the boys' bitter condemnation to vast admiration, by telling of your life, your father's being a castaway, your mother's dying wish, your toil to get learning, and your inability to grasp college life. Then from gratitude to Mr. Hicks you started to play again—naturally, the students waxed enthusiastic, when you ripped the 'Varsity to pieces, but now you may be dropped by the coach, after tomorrow, because you don't play for old Bannister, and your indifference ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... several varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph is the worst; he uses his books but little himself, and allows others to use them not at all. On the other hand, a man may be a bibliotaph simply from inability to get at his books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon the face of the earth. He may keep his books in storage or accumulate them in the country, against the day when he shall have a town house ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... right to interfere in the choice of a pursuit, his interference should not be arbitrary, neither should it run counter to the will of the child unless for special moral and religious reasons, or on account of inability to gratify him. However, this is often done. Even though they acknowledge their unfitness for a profession, yet their misguided pride prompts them to drag their children into a calling which in after life ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... for all the benefits and favors that he has conferred, is like a spendthrift who has consumed his whole estate, and laments over an empty exchequer. He who requites my favors with ingratitude adds to, instead of diminishing, my wealth; and he who cannot return a favor is equally poor, whether his inability arises from poverty of spirit, sordidness of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... dissimulation, she instinctively held aloof from her and remained coldly unresponsive. Perhaps in the depths of Susan's past lurked something indefinable which threw its shadow between them, an inscrutable impediment; and her inability to penetrate the young actress' reserve, however she might wound her, awakened Susan's resentment. But she was too world-wise to display her irritation. She even smiled sweetly now, as confidante to confidante, and, turning to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... certainly a novel one, and could not in ordinary circumstances have been accepted. But it is also novel to charge an historian of the highest character and repute with inability to speak the truth, or to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman, signing himself "Mr. Froude's Saturday Reviewer," replied in The Pall Mall Gazette. The challenge he left to the editor of The Saturday, who contemptuously refused ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... as you are in possession of strong passes, you will be able to stop their progress and give us time to come up." On the 10th of May, he again writes to Gen. Moultrie, "We are making, and shall continue to make, every exertion for the relief of Charleston. The baggage will be left. The inability of the men only, will put a period to our daily marches. Our men are full of spirits. Do not give up, or suffer the people to despair." But the governor and council did despair already, for a majority of them had finally offered to capitulate, and ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... luncheon. She leaned back in her chair with a blank expression of face. The dwarf looked out of the window, and that same half-pleasant, half-sardonic smile remained upon her face. It was as if she regarded all nature with amused acquiescence and sarcasm, at its inability to harm her, although ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... been impossible, and perhaps it would not have been needed. Their story claims from us that sympathy which is the due of their exalted courage. But we cannot blame the government. Those who know what the condition of the country really was, must feel their inability to suggest, with any tolerable reasonableness, what else could have been done. They may regret so hard a necessity, but they will regret in silence. The king, too, was not without feeling. It was no matter of indifference to him that he found himself driven to such stern courses with his subjects; ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the failure of the crusades, three require special consideration. In the first place, there was the inability of eastern and western Europe to cooperate in supporting the holy wars. A united Christendom might well have been invincible. But the bitter antagonism between the Greek and Roman churches [19] effectually prevented all unity of action. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the day of the last and fiercest of the Gettysburg battles, Mrs. Husband, who had been, from inability to get permission to go to the front, passing a few anxious days at Philadelphia, started for Gettysburg, determined to go to the aid and relief of the soldier boys, who, she well knew, needed her services. She reached the battle-field on the morning of the 4th by way ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a trifle ridiculous by their innocence, and are amusing when they themselves least suspect it. Likewise, in his autobiography, he is continually exposing himself to ridicule by his naive candor, and his inability to adapt himself to the etiquette which prevails among grown-up people. Take as an instance his visit to the Brothers Grimm, when he asked the servant girl which of the brothers was the more learned, and when she answered ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... hopeful vein I fell asleep, with never a hint of a presentiment of what did actually lie before me. I suppose the chiefest boon that mortals enjoy is just that negative blessing: their total inability to see even so far into the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... called a large portion of ground in Southwark some years ago a plant, above all things. The ground was destined to the purposes of extensive commerce, but the appellation of a plant gave me much disturbance, from my inability to fathom the meaning of it. I have here found out, that the Lombards call many things a plant; and say of their cities, palaces, &c. in familiar discourse—che la pianta e buona, la pianta e cattiva[Footnote: The plant is a good or ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... people were too distinct from those of their successors to find much real sympathy. It has often been a matter of regret to me that I was shut out from the most peculiar field of American fiction by an inability to see any romance, or poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our literature ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... defective training of our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... that the most essential part in the education of children, and which is seldom regarded in the best families, is to make them sensible of their inability, weakness, and dependence, and, as my husband called it, the heavy yoke of that necessity which nature has imposed upon our species; and that, not only in order to show them how much is done to alleviate the burden of that yoke, but especially to instruct them ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... ways this historic narrative called forth admiration. One must admit Peter's great strength of character, his power of quick decision, and immediate achievement. Some held that his inability to retain the lady's affection in the first place argued a defect in his nature; but remembering the lady's youth and beauty (implied by the spirit of the whole poem), they could only reiterate their appreciation of the way he conquered circumstances, and ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... in his absence—from the identification of Waife with William Losely, to Lady Montfort's visit to Fawley, which had taken place two days before, and of which she had informed Lionel by a few hasty lines, stating her inability to soften Mr. Darrell's objections to the alliance between Lionel and Sophy; severely blaming herself that those objections had not more forcibly presented themselves to her own mind, and concluding with expressions ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lordship's opinion, to interpose my own judgement, and shall therefore endeavour to support what appears to me most consonant to grammar and reason. Ausonius thought that modesty forbade him to plead inability for a task to which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... described by Hammond in 1871, who gave it the name because it was mainly characterized by an inability to retain the fingers and toes in any position in which they might be planed, as well as by their continuous motion. According to Drewry "athetosis is a cerebral affection, presenting a combination of symptoms characterized ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... also, that grave moral consequences depend upon the habitual pleasure or pain which daily lessons produce. No one can compare the faces and manners of two boys—the one made happy by mastering interesting subjects, and the other made miserable by disgust with his studies, by consequent inability, by cold looks, by threats, by punishment—without seeing that the disposition of the one is being benefited and that of the other injured. Whoever has marked the effects of success and failure upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the body, will see that ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Nicaragua, the Government of that Republic having admitted its inability to protect American life and property against acts of sheer lawlessness on the part of the malcontents, and having requested this Government to assume that office, it became necessary to land over 2,000 marines and bluejackets in Nicaragua. Owing to their presence the constituted Government ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... migrations to the factory towns, and the already large ranks of the unemployed grew greater day by day. The poverty and wretchedness of the working class is painted vividly for us by Carlyle when he speaks of "half a million handloom weavers, working 15 hours a day, in perpetual inability to procure thereby enough of the coarsest food; Scotch farm-labourers, who 'in districts the half of whose husbandry is that of cows, taste no milk, can procure no milk' . . . the working-classes can no longer go on without government, without ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... exaltation of long-vanished lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to grapple with the difficulties of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... by counsel, that, not being capable of erring, the king must have the highest possible moral attributes, and consequently a memory, is unsound. The constitution says his majesty CAN do no wrong. This inability may proceed from a variety of causes. If he can do NOTHING, for instance, he can do no wrong. The constitution does not say that the sovereign WILL do no wrong—but, that he CAN do no wrong. Now, gentlemonikins, when a thing cannot be done, it becomes impossible; and it is, of course, beyond the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cannot inform you where she is," I answered, petulantly. "I scarcely think it was worth while to disturb me for the sake of asking me a question you must have known my inability to answer." ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... inquiry into the nature of justice we get little help from the wisdom of the ancients. They wrestled with the question but seem to have been as puzzled as we of today. Indeed, Plato represents the sage Socrates as frankly confessing his inability to answer satisfactorily the persistent question "What is justice?" The question comes up for discussion by Socrates and some friends at the home of Cephalus at the Piraeus. Socrates criticizes and punctures the definitions advanced by the others until Thrasymachus, apparently ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... a study as she received these hints. They represented the things she disliked most and could do least well. Yet they were hardly farther afield than her own suggestion of sewing. Charlotte's inability ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... intense ambition, his resolute desire—to use a phrase which we have heard him apply to himself—"to rise above the crowd, and stand when others fall," he chose for his wife a young provincial actress, whom he had once chided for her inattention or inability, but whose artlessness of manner, purity and sweetness of nature and aptness for improvement so enlisted his sympathies that he constituted himself her friend and guide until the death of her father and brother awakened a still warmer solicitude, bringing with it the discovery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... considerations but more particularly by the difficulty of securing labor for military purposes. In a country where the supply of fighting men was limited and the workers were a class apart, the Government had to employ the only available laborers or confess its inability to meet the industrial demands of war. But the available laborers were slaves. How could their services be secured? By purchase? Or by conscription? Or ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... leave business behind and travel in fancy wheresoever I wished that I was happy, and in those moments, Phil, I was full of aspiration to do those things for which nature had not fitted me, and to the extent that I recognized my inability to do those things I failed to be content. I should have liked to be a great writer, a poet, a great dramatist, a novelist—a little of everything in the literary world. I should have liked to know Shakespeare, to have been the friend of Milton; and ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... bewilderment, one thought tumbling over another, and when morning broke over the flats he had not advanced a single step in the determination of his future path. Nothing is more painful to a man of any energy than the inability to put things in order in himself— to place before himself what he has to do, and arrange the means for doing it. To be the passive victim of a rushing stream of disconnected impressions is torture, especially if the emergency be urgent. So when the sun came up Zachariah ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... hot game they were hunting down. There was not a man in the room, except Tom Cogit, who could have told you the name of the town in which they were living. There they sat, almost breathless, watching every turn with the fell look in their cannibal eyes which showed their total inability to sympathise with their fellow-beings. All forms of society had been long forgotten. There was no snuff-box handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch; no affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic but the all-engrossing one. Lord Castlefort rested with his arms ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... faces of the youth swelled to such a degree, that they were blind for a number of days. Such a disease they had never before been afflicted with. I had now an opportunity of most solemnly protesting my total inability to injure them in this way, and as the disease had as yet caused no death, I had a hope of being spared. I learned that a majority of the chiefs in council, were for putting me to death, but one of them in particular, ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... this time, my dear George, I hope your father and mother have reached Dublin. I long to hear of their safe arrival. A few days after they set sail, I received a letter from Skeys. He laments his inability to assist them, and dwells on his own embarrassments. How glad I am they are gone! My affairs are hastening to a crisis.... Some of my creditors cannot afford to wait for their money; as to leaving England in debt, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... with masterly skill. As for Claire, she had striven to match her moves, plotting in the darkness against her, and fighting desperately with such weak weapons as she possessed. It was characteristic that she did not blame herself for her failure; it was the baseness of van Tuiver, his inability to appreciate sincere devotion, his unworthiness of her love. And this, just after she had been naively telling me of her efforts to poison his mind against Sylvia while pretending to admire her! But I made allowances for Claire at this moment—realizing that the situation had ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... the Government suffered inconvenience and embarrassment enough during the war in consequence of the inability of manufacturers to use this patent, and that its further extension will operate prejudicially to its interest by compelling it to pay to parties already well paid a large royalty for altering its revolvers to use ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... "Inability to locate you until after somewhat exhaustive inquiries had been made explains the failure to notify you by wire in time to permit of your attending the funeral of your father and brother, which took place in this city on the ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... in cotton production, mainly in the irrigated western region, where the huge Karakumskiy Canal taps the Amu Darya. The general decline in national product accelerated in 1992, principally because of inability to obtain spare parts and disputes with customers over the price of natural gas. National product: GDP $NA National product real growth rate: -10% (1992 est.) National product per capita: $NA Inflation rate (consumer ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... could not have six hundred men by the time we should arrive at our destination. This, and the shocking situation of the men offered the more gloomy prospects, as the board of war have confessed their total inability to afford us relief. Under these circumstances, I have employed every personal exertion, and have the pleasure to inform you that desertion has, I hope, been put ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... of the task laid upon him. The girl's sense of time was accurate enough, but she was undeniably awkward and clumsy in her movements and there was an almost total absence of coordination of muscle and brain. She had, however, suffered too long and too keenly from her inability to join with the others in the dance to fail to make the best of her opportunity to relieve herself of this ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... about where I might get breakfast, but as most of the business houses were not yet open, I stood a poor chance. Into the saloons I would not go, as I could not have asked for what I wanted on account of my inability to speak French; my only hope, therefore, was to find a shop or store that displayed in the window what I wanted, so that I could make my purchase by gestures. I had provided myself with a Conversational Guide Book, in London, containing the French, Italian and German equivalents of English words ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... frequently urged to write upon this subject, and as often declining to do it, from apprehension of my own inability, I am at length compelled to take up the pen, however unqualified I may still feel myself for ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... that he was one of the first to point the way to original research—as opposed to the acceptance of an authority—though he himself still lacked the means of pursuing this path consistently. His inability to satisfy this impulse led to a sort of longing, which is expressed in the numerous passages in his works where he anticipates man's greater ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast he drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he said he had brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read; and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety was immediately blotted out. I then most earnestly pressed him not to trust to my judgment, but to take the opinion of persons better qualified to decide on dramatic ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... vouchsafed only to the poet and the seer. He had in him all the lift toward greatness of the visionary, without any of the visionary's fanaticism or egotism, without any of the visionary's narrow jealousy of the practical man and inability to strive in practical fashion for the realization of an ideal. He had the practical man's hard common sense and willingness to adapt means to ends; but there was in him none of that morbid growth of mind and soul which blinds so many practical men to the higher aims of life. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... at work, as we have already pointed out, in decorative art; in which 'a redundancy of useless or ridiculous ornament is called richness, and the inability to appreciate simple and beautiful, or grand and noble forms, receives the name of genius.' The connection is curious, likewise, between this ingenuity of poetry and that of the machinery which gives a distinguishing character ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... evident that their first conclusions regarding it were erroneous, and thereafter it was viewed by them with less disdain and spoken of more hopefully. One of the great objections by engineers to the use of the screw was their inability, at the time of its introduction, to construct properly a screw engine,—that is to say, a direct-acting horizontal engine, working at a speed of from sixty to one hundred revolutions per minute,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that the troops would more willingly fraternize with the multitude than oppose them. The sun went down, and the street lamps feebly glimmered through the darkness of the night. The palace was filled with armed men. The gentlemen surrounding the king were all conscious of their utter inability to protect him. They had come but to share the fate of their sovereign. The queen and the Princess Elizabeth ascended to an upper part of the palace, and stepped from a low window into the dark shadow of a balcony to look out upon the tumultuous ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... from school by illness; school work as affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation; any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect health and therefore ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... treasury have led to serious economic disarray, indeed near collapse. Tanker deliveries of crucial fuel supplies (including those for electrical generation) have become sporadic due to the government's inability to pay and attacks against ships. Telecommunications are threatened by the nonpayment of bills and by the lack of technical and maintenance staff many of whom have left the country. The disintegration of law and order left the economy in tatters ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... chance in the open field of debate. No belief has the right to draw the sword—no dogma the right to resort to force. The moment a church asks for the help of the State, it confesses its weakness, it confesses its inability to answer the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... effective. I implore you to observe that I but report his own words. I say nothing for myself." His lordship's unusual nervousness was steadily increasing. "He thought, then—so he told me—that my presence here had contributed to his inability to redeem himself in your sight; and unless he were so redeemed, then ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... ill, and was sitting huddled at her desk, with chilled feet and burning cheeks, she was sent for by old Mr. Baxter, and found Miss Emily Saunders in his office. The visitor was chatting with Peter and the old man, and gaily carried Susan off to luncheon, after Peter had regretted his inability to come too. They went to the Palace Hotel, and Susan thought everything, Miss Emily especially, very wonderful and delightful, and, warmed and sustained by a delicious lunch, congratulated herself all during the afternoon ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... become old or feeble, lest, with the diminishing vigour of the ruler, the cattle should sicken, and fail to bear increase, the crops should rot in the field and men die in ever growing numbers. One of the signs of failing energy is the King's inability to fulfil the desires of his wives, of whom he has a large number. When this occurs the wives report the fact to the chiefs, who condemn the King to death forthwith, communicating the sentence to him by spreading a white ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... neglected from August to December, 1864, to accede to Judge Ould's proposition to send transportation to Savannah and receive without equivalent from ten to fifteen thousand Federal prisoners, notwithstanding the fact that this offer was accompanied with a statement of the utter inability of the Confederacy to provide for these prisoners, and a detailed report of the monthly mortality at Andersonville, and that Judge Ould, again and again, urged ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... else besides the ordinary tribute paid by the natives of the said islands; or that it be moderated so that their conversion may not thereby be made difficult, and that those who once receive the faith be not obliged to abandon it by returning to their country because of their inability to pay so large a tribute—since the majority of those converted are poor laborers, who cannot earn that tribute. Having examined the matter in my royal Council of the Indias, I have considered it expedient to order this my decree ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... addressed himself took a pleasure in shewing him the way to Alla ad Deen's palace, and he got up and went thither instantly. When he came to the palace, and had examined it on all sides, he doubted not but that Alla ad Deen had made use of the lamp to build it. Without attending to the inability of a poor tailor's son, he knew that none but the genii, the slaves of the lamp, the attaining of which he had missed, could have performed such wonders; and piqued to the quick at Alla ad Deen's happiness and splendour, he returned to the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... she would choose; but we know the height which the wave of Germanophobia has attained in that country, a significant mark of the popular sentiment being the declaration of the Italian Socialists upon the reasons of their inability to oppose the war. An equal source of danger is the fact that the government feels that it no longer controls ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the business suffered was in the loss of consignments. Inability to make the required advances turned from the warehouse of Eldridge large lots of goods almost weekly, the profits on the sales of which would have been a handsome addition to his income. At the end of three months, the first note of a thousand dollars held by Dalton fell ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... patriot on national interests and aims; not quite, perhaps, because the discipline of use and wont and indoctrination is neither so rigorous nor so consistent in their case. But there is, after all, prevalent among them a sufficiently evident logical inability to understand and appreciate the paramount need of national, that is to say dynastic, ascendancy that actuates all German patriots; just as these same patriots are similarly unable to consider national interests in any other light than ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... waited until after dark before performing his ablutions. But finally his plans were more or less disturbed by certain rising youth, who timed his habits and awaited his disrobing with o'erripe tomatoes. The bombardment, and the inability to pursue the enemy, turned the genial current of the Baba's life awry until I put a bathroom in my house, with a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... setting to rise again of a heavenly body. The perfume of a flower, the sighing of the wind, suggesting some harmony or song, a full or crescent moon, recalled thoughts and associations of Sylvia. Everything seemed to bring out memory, and he realized the utter inability of absence to cure the heart of love. "If Sylvia should pass from my life as that moon has left my vision," his thoughts continued, "existence would be but sadness and memory would be its cause, for the most beautiful sounds entail sorrow; the most beautiful sights, intense pain. "Ah," he ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... costing the world more; has made so many enemies, and has so much hindered the forming of friendships as the inability to fully understand; hence the dove that brings world peace must fly on the wings of a common language, and the bright star in the east is world commerce, rising on rapidly developing railway and steamship lines, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... manly and well-bred to be guilty of any indiscretions, much more of any indecencies. He let Haydon tell his own story, nor assumed the function of a judge. And wisely, as we think; for, commonly, when men take it upon themselves uncalled, their inability to conceive the special weakness that is not theirs, (and which, perhaps, was but the negative of a strength equally alien to them.) their humanly narrow and often professionally back-attic view of character and circumstance, their easy after-dinner superiority to what was perhaps a loathing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... "You profess inability to pay, Madame," Sir Giles rejoined. "I cannot believe you; having some knowledge of your means. Nevertheless, I will acquaint you with a rule of law applicable to the contingency you put. 'Quod non habet in cere, luet in corpore' ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... before the Lord our God and earnest supplication for pardoning mercy through the blood of Christ and deep acknowledgement of our great unworthiness to be the Lord's Covenant People, also acknowledging our own inability to keep covenant with God or to perform any spiritual duty unless the Lord Jesus do enable us thereto by his spiritual dwelling in us, and being awfully sensible that it is a dreadful thing for sinful dust and ashes personally ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Bruncker to desire him to be there to-morrow, and so home, having taken up my wife at Unthanke's, full of trouble in mind to think what I shall be obliged to answer, that am neither fully fit, nor in any measure concerned to take the shame and trouble of this office upon me, but only from the inability and folly of the Comptroller that occasions it. When come home I to Sir W. Pen's, to his boy, for my book, and there find he hath it not, but delivered it to the doorekeeper of the Committee for me. This, added to my former disquiet, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... not answer that question, and her inability to solve the enigma tormented her all tea-time, as the stranger sat opposite to her, making a pretence of eating heartily, in accordance with Mr. Whitelaw's hospitable invitation, while that gentleman himself ploughed away with a steady persistence that made awful havoc with the ham, and reduced ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... language which is their speech-medium. This being so, most of the white men who live in the Protected Native States are somewhat apt to disregard the effect which their actions have upon the natives, and labour under the common European inability to view matters from the native standpoint. Moreover, we have become accustomed to existing conditions, and thus it is that few, perhaps, realise the precise nature of the work which the British in the Peninsula ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... not profess to know how he saw it. So far as I know, inability to make speeches does not show on a man's face, and Titherington had no other means of judging at that time except the appearance of my face. No one in fact, not even my mother, could have been sure then that I was a bad speaker. ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... give orders for and profit from such acts, and they must possess the motivation and psychology of criminals. We define people as criminals when they suffer from psychological aberrations of an antisocial character, usually paranoid—excessive egoism, disregard for the rights of others, inability to recognize the social necessity for mutual cooeperation and confidence. On Home Time Line, we have universal psychological testing, for the purpose of detecting and eliminating ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... was such, that naval officers of the greatest experience, confessed themselves unable to take such lunars; whilst other observers, long versed in the use of the transit instrument, avowed their inability to take such transits. Those who were conversant with pendulums, were at a loss how to make, even under more favourable circumstances, similarly concordant observations. The same opinion prevailed on the continent ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage |
