"Fitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jaw made me burst out into such an exclamation that all the salle-a-manger heard me! I saw the fitness of the thing at once. The foramen and the shape of the condyle ought to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... they interrupted public meetings, smashed winows, assaulted members of the Cabinet, and, in one case, tried to destroy the ballots at the polls,—in short, they broke the laws in order to convince the country of their fitness to take part in making them. Over six hundred of these offenders were put in prison, not because they asked for "Votes for Women," but because they deliberately, persistently, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... her shrewdly: "There is no reason why you should not be both, Miss Fairfax. A woman of sense considers the fitness of things. And at Abbotsmead none ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our intellectual discernment; and—more than that—as it is probable that fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily organization, it is also probable that just coloring ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... states 'the unanimous opinion of the Board to have exculpated Dr Jackson from all improper treatment of diseases in the sick,' and the commander-in-chief's gratification, 'that an opportunity has thus been given to that most zealous officer of proving his fitness for the important situation in which he is placed.' The result of this wretched intrigue, however, was that Jackson, disgusted with the whole affair, requested to be placed on half-pay, to which request the Duke of York, with marked reluctance, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... transition was somewhat sudden; to a wasp or two that had come foraging on Daisy's window-sill. But Dr. Sandford was at home there; and so explained the wasp's work and manner of life, with his structure and fitness for what he had to do, that Daisy was in utter delight; though her eyes sometimes opened upon Dr. Sandford with a grave wistful wonder in them, that he should know all this so well and yet never acknowledge the hand that had given the wasp the tools and ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... far forth as it is corporeal, has a natural fitness for resting in every place where it may be situated by itself beyond the sphere of influence of a body cognate with it. Gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... their code and feels the spur of their ideals of achievement. But what the world expects of him he has yet to find out, and it works, when he has discovered it, a veritable revolution in his ways both of thought and of action. He finds a new sort of fitness demanded of him, executive, thoroughgoing, careful of details, full of drudgery and obedience to orders. Everybody is ahead of him. Just now he was a senior, at the top of a world he knew and reigned in, a finished product and pattern of good form. Of a sudden he is a novice ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... grace of God. Those who desire to become teacher-deaconesses must, in addition, present certain educational certificates, and be able to sing. All must pass some months at the mother-house, taking care of children and assisting in housework, so that their fitness for the office can be proven. A great deal of care is taken to test the efficiency of the candidates, and only about one half the probationers finally become deaconesses in full connection. The teachers have, further, a seminary course of one year for ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... out that the man who offers the bribe is acting still more immorally than the man who accepts it. He is not only causing others to act immorally, but, as no man can be a proper judge of his own competency, he is attempting to thrust himself into an office of trust without any regard to his fitness to fill it. Intimidation, on the part of the man who practises it, is on the same ethical level as bribery, with respect to the two points just mentioned; but, as it appeals to the fears of men instead of their love of gain, and costs nothing to him who employs it, it is more odious, and ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... discussion of so intricate a subject, I will first endeavor to establish the underlying principles of good architecture, using the word style in its broadest sense, expressive of elegance, fitness, and artistic truth,—style proper and style as defined by the antiquarian being two distinct things. It has been argued, and with some show of reason, that the origin of all beauty is in utility; but in architecture, which has other objects besides the gratification ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... which this is true, and there is a sense in which it is false. If the Cross is set forth as the cursed tree on which the Lord of Glory hung and suffered, to satisfy the demands of Eternal Justice, then indeed there is fitness in the preaching to produce the sense of guilt. But this is to preach the law, in its fullest extent, and the most tremendous energy of its claims. Such discourse as this must necessarily analyze law, define it, enforce it, and apply it in the most cogent manner. For, only ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... will question my fitness for the part, I fear. Well, if I teach expression, in a girls' school, I must take the consequences, and be willing to express anything ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... no doubt that Washington hated ceremony as much as the Democrats, and yielded to it only from his sense of fitness and the opinions of those about him. Jefferson and Madison both relate how such unnecessary form was used at the first levee by the master of ceremonies as to make it ridiculous, and Washington, appreciating this, is quoted ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... nately. When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father- Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to [15] a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the "river of His pleasure," the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,— even that joy which finds ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... good taste. On the contrary, when the building is of such a class, that it can neither astonish by its beauty, nor impress by its sublimity, and when it is likewise placed in a situation so uninteresting as to render something more than mere fitness or propriety necessary, and to compel the eye to expect something from the building itself, a gentle contrast of feeling in that building is exceedingly desirable; and if possible, a sense that something has passed away, the presence of which would have ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... blew and beat upon that house, it fell, and great was the fall of it." They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. If they have not done this, and so attained fitness of character to dwell with God, it matters not what their sorrow has been, nor their intentions, they will not ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... his Majesty's will that the fitness and approval of the said religious in regard to curas must be to the satisfaction of the bishops, which he says to be thus advisable for the discharge of his royal conscience and that of the said bishops, it is clear ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... of May, and a month had elapsed since the terrible difficulty about the Queen's Government had been solved. A month had elapsed, and things had shaken themselves into their places with more of ease and apparent fitness than men had given them credit for possessing. Mr. Mildmay, Mr. Gresham, and Mr. Monk were the best friends in the world, swearing by each other in their own house, and supported in the other by as gallant a phalanx of Whig peers as ever were got together to fight ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... her also, fixed, with a frowning face, Judging the woman's fitness to mother a warlike race. Broad of shoulder, ample of girdle, long in the thigh, Deep of bosom she was, and bravely supported ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pretty accurate guess as to value, yet she could not see or understand the intolerable disgust and irritation which her ridiculous conduct excited. In a weak mind egotism and selfishness, beyond a certain point, pass into practical insanity. All sense of delicacy, of the fitness of things, is lost; even the power to consider the rights and feelings of others is wanting. Unlike poor Holcroft, Mrs. Mumpson had few misgivings in regard to coming years. As she rocked unceasingly before the parlor fire, she ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... and not men who oppose their bigoted ignorance to everything like change or improvement, who can see no difference between science and abstract ideas. It would seem that the only question to be asked with regard to the fitness of a man for being a director is—Is he rich and respectable? If he has these qualities, and is pretty stupid withal, he is in a fair line for election. We tell our railway-readers, that, if they desire to make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a great gathering of favourers of the Huguenot cause on that day; gentlemen came from all parts to consult with Henry of Navarre, and Madame de Quinet had too much sense of the fitness of things to allow Madame de Ribaumont to appear at the ensuing banquet in her shabby, rusty black serge, and tight white borderless cap. The whole wardrobe of the poor young Duchess de Quinet was placed at her service, and though, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Burton's axiom, "Nothing sooner dejects a man than clothes out of fashion," is as true now as it was three hundred years ago. Fashion sways the shape of a collar, and the infinitesimal gradations of a hat-brim; but the sense of fitness, and the power of interpreting life, which ennobled fashion in Burton's day, have disappeared in ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of her brother, would naturally interpret every proof of her darling son's attachment to his uncle's person, his conversation, or even any of his professional habiliments, as well as each appearance of spirited resolution which he occasionally displayed, into an inclination, as well as fitness, for the service. She, like the Holy Mary, "kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart:" but, she lived not to behold the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... the loneliness in my life was depressing me; it was in a sense work without hope—only the hope of being rich. While I could not doubt Abigail's fitness as a mate for me, and though I was in desperate need of a companion, Dorothy would not out of my mind and my heart. My indomitable will had asserted itself in the pursuit of Dorothy. Even if my judgment had ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... brick, and never ask us to imagine a brown-stone value to painted sheet-iron. There is, too, a deeper honesty than mere truth-telling in material; a conscientiousness of purpose, an artistic spiritual sense of the eternal fitness, without which there can be no worthy ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... idea tinged mistily with superstitious fancy forced itself upon him. Might he not after all have misunderstood the Nazarene? Might not that person by patient waiting be covering silent preparation, and proving his fitness for the glorious task before him? How much better this time for the movement than that other when, by Gennesaret, the Galileans would have forced assumption of the crown? Then the support would have been limited to a few thousands; ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... church-bell in Chester village rung merrily in the clear morning air of a bright summer's day. It was to call the people together, and they all obeyed its summons—for who among the aged, middle-aged, or the young, did not wish to fitness the marriage ceremonies of their favourite, Ellen Lawton? Ere the tolling of the bell had ceased, the gray-haired man was leaning on the finger-worn ball of his staff, in the corner of his antiquated pew; the hale, healthy farmer came next; ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... to others the knowledge that I possess has always been my taste and my delight; and few, who know anything of my progress through life, will be disposed to question my fitness for the task. Talk of rocks and breakers and quagmires and quicksands, who has ever escaped from amidst so many as I have! Thrown (by my own will, indeed) on the wide world at a very early age, not ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... her, and came every day to 'sit alone' thinking good thoughts, and praying the dear God to preserve her sister. Esther had given her a rosary of black beads with a silver cross, but Amy hung it up and did not use it, feeling doubtful as to its fitness for ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... males, the political influence of the female was completely shattered. At a certain point in history women became an unfree class, precisely as slaves became an unfree class—because neither class showed a superior fitness on the motor side; and each class is regaining its freedom because the race is substituting other forms of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... affairs. It is believed that the merit system has been greatly strengthened and its permanence assured. It will be my constant aim in the administration of government in our new possessions to make fitness, character, and merit essential to appointment to office, and to give to the capable and deserving ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... office, I have endeavored, as far as my own knowledge extended, or information could be obtained, to make fitness of character my ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... with his mind full of such thoughts, and joined a group of students round the door of one of the examination-halls. It did not shock his sense of fitness that some of his fellow-students in the great science wore shabby clothes, or that others scorned the use of a razor. Bred as he had been at home, he felt no incongruity between dirty collars and the study of divinity. It was not until he caught scraps of conversation that he experienced an ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... a great movement of non-cooperation under the leadership of Aurobindo Ghose against the British Government in Bengal. Ghose wanted independence and freedom from foreign tribute. He called upon the people to demonstrate their fitness for self-government by establishing hygienic conditions, founding schools, building roads and developing agriculture. But Ghose had the experience Gandhi was to have later. The people became impatient and fell back on violence; and the ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... Civil Service of the United States." Under the provisions of this act, the President appoints three commissioners, only two of whom may be of the same political party, to administer the act. It is one of the duties of this Commission to provide examinations for testing the fitness of applicants for public service. Appointments in those branches of the government coming under this act can only be made from persons who have passed the civil service examination successfully. Adherence to one or the other political ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... his fitness for the struggle of life lies in the fact that he is unafraid of man. He is wary of man; by which I mean he will quickly fly up from in front of man's feet. It is exceedingly difficult to catch a sparrow in one's ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... lowest, with invention in the grouping of the figures, and extravagance of attitude both in the males and in the females; and by variety in the buildings, by perspectives, and by having likewise shown a sense of fitness in the gracious expressions of each sex throughout the whole work, giving to the old gravity, and to the young elegance and grace. And it may be said, in truth, that this work is in every way perfect, and that it is the most beautiful ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... is good we need not much concern ourselves about the form of the pulpit. But sermons cannot always be good; and I believe that the temper in which the congregation set themselves to listen may be in some degree modified by their perception of fitness or unfitness, impressiveness or vulgarity, in the disposition of the place appointed for the speaker,—not to the same degree, but somewhat in the same way, that they may be influenced by his own gestures or expression, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... are able to record the varying speeds of impulse transmission in the nerves of different individuals. If you were picking out a bad man, would you select one who, on the machine, showed a dilatory nerve response? Hardly. The relative fitness for a man to be "bad," to become extraordinarily quick and skillful with weapons, could, without doubt, be predetermined largely by these scientific measurements. Of course, having no thought-machines in the early West, they got at the matter by experimenting, and so, very often, by a graveyard ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... aided in his suit by the Earl of Essex and others of his friends in Essex's party. Sir Robert Cecil, while encouraging Sidney and professing friendship, secretly aided Lord Cobham for the post. Sidney's military fitness for so responsible a charge was constantly urged against Cobham's lack of martial experience, but the Queen, after a long delay, during which much heat developed between the contestants and their friends, finally decided in favour of her relative, Lord Cobham. The Earl of Southampton was one ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... this girl's life which was to alloy her young womanhood—disturbing factors, all, which before twelve caused much emotional disequilibrium. She now lived with her uncle in New York City and her summers were spent in Canada. The sense of fitness was so strong that during the next two vitally important, developing years she avoided any physical expression of her natural exuberance of spirits; and habits now formed which were, for years, to deny her any right use ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... informed him that the request could not have come at a more opportune moment, as he had a vacancy to fill and had been on the point of calling a public examination of young men in his district for the purpose of selecting a candidate; but in view of the evident fitness of his nephew, he would alter his plans and offer him the place without further ceremony. He wished only that Sam would do credit to the ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... beautiful to other appearances or qualities than these, is either false or metaphorical, as, for instance, to the splendor of a discovery, the fitness of a proportion, the coherence of a chain of reasoning, or the power of bestowing pleasure which objects receive from association, a power confessedly great, and interfering, as we shall presently ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... it out; and even if he were not, his mere man's pride must writhe to see himself abandoned. And you, too, have had your lesson, my poor Karen, and have seen that romance is a treacherous sand to build one's life upon. Dignity, fitness, one's rightful place in life have their claims. You are one, as I told you, to work out your destiny in the world, not in the wilderness. What do you say, Karen? I would not write without consulting you. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... became Jeddak of the First Born. He had been a dator, or prince, until Issus had degraded him, so that his fitness for the high ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... beautiful American potteries. In addition to these exquisite home products The Dedham and Paul Revere potteries made near Boston should be mentioned, for although of less costly type they are doing much to set a standard of perfection of form, choiceness of coloring, and fitness of design. All these wares are distinct contributions to the art world. Of course certain wares are made by a modification of this throwing process. Large pieces, for example, frequently have to be thrown in several parts, fastened together, and afterward finished. ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... examinations. The constituents then turned their attention to the Congressman, and the result was that in the long run we obtained sufficient money to enable us to do our work. On the whole, the most prominent leaders favored us. Any man who is the head of a big department, if he has any fitness at all, wishes to see that department run well; and a very little practical experience shows him that it cannot be run well if he must make his appointments to please spoilsmongering politicians. As with almost every reform that I have ever undertaken, most of the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... great deal more. He perceived a richness of effect which he could not have formulated better than to say, "It was all fine." He had expected things to be costly and gay of color, but this mysterious fitness of everything was a marvel to one like himself, used only to the meager ornaments of the homes in Rock River, or the threadbare poverty of the ranches and the squalid hotels of the cow country. The house was a large new frame building, not so much different ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... The fact that in this dwelling Mr. Manton thought it expedient one night some ten years ago to rise and cut the throats of his wife and two small children, removing at once to another part of the country, has no doubt done its share in directing public attention to the fitness of the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... were placed eagerly at her disposal. Respectful persons, obedient to her most faintly-expressed desire, displayed garments as wonderful as those the New York trunks had revealed. She was besought to consider the fitness of articles whose exquisiteness she was almost afraid to look at. Her thin little body was wonderfully fitted, managed, encouraged to make the most ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of troublous possibilities, calling for very careful and diplomatic handling; the four "Spirits," therefore, having seated themselves in deck-chairs, invited each chief to step forward, in turn, and state briefly, first, the grounds upon which he based his belief in his own fitness for the post of king, and, secondly, the lines upon which he would govern, and the course of conduct which he would observe generally in the event of his nomination. To each man was accorded a certain number of good and also of bad marks corresponding to the nature ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the most famous of Shakespeare's successors. But if not his work, we may be sure it was his model; a model which he often approached, which he often studied, but which he never attained. It is never for absolute truth and fitness of expression, it is always for eloquence and sweetness, for fluency and fancy, that we find the tragic scenes of Fletcher most praiseworthy; and the motive or mainspring of interest is usually anything but natural or simple. Now the motive here is as simple, the emotion ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... fitness, as the contest goes forward, the relative position of the speakers begins to change. Hitherto Job only had been passionate; and his friends temperate and collected. Now, however, shocked at his obstinacy, and disappointed wholly in the result of their homilies, they stray ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... its vagaries astonished no one so much as its owner, but he joined in the singing. "Let all the people praise Thee" was a command not to be lightly set aside for worldly considerations of harmony and fitness, and so Laban sang, his callow and ill-adjusted soul divided between fears that the people would hear him and that ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... succession of well-meaning governesses and a plentiful supply of moralising aunts on both sides of her family, had impressed on her young mind the theoretical fact that wealth is a great responsibility. The consciousness of her responsibility set her continually wondering, not as to her own fitness to discharge her "stewardship," but as to the motives and merits of people with whom she came in contact. The knowledge that there was so much in the world that she could buy, invited speculation as to how much there was that was worth buying. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... true beginning, the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must understand the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light; and out of chaos ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... one company were set on foot. General Stager warmly favored such a consolidation on equitable terms and set to work vigorously to promote it. On its consummation, and the organization of the Western Union Telegraph Company his services in that respect and his general fitness as a telegraph manager, were recognized by his appointment as general superintendent of the consolidated company. The position was, even then, one of great responsibility and difficulty, the vast net work of lines extending like a spider's web over the face of the country requiring a clear ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... not. He got the fisheries, but he spent his profits freely, and one of the first of his benefactions was the construction of a market that had no superior in beauty and fitness elsewhere ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... to a stranger without its being mentioned that he was the most perfectly dressed man in London. He rather detested the idea though he was aware that the truth was unimpeachable. The perfection of his accompaniments had arisen in his youth from a secret feeling for fitness and harmony. Texture and colour gave him almost abnormal pleasure. His expression of this as a masculine creature had its limits which resulted in a concentration on perfection. Even at five-and-twenty however he had never been called a dandy and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... upon the building of the fort, others were set at work preparing ground for cultivation. Cartier himself, in his report, bore ample testimony to the excellent qualities of the soil, as well as the general fitness of the country ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... once assumed command, and his companions felt his perfect fitness. There was no doubt from the first as to what the Indians meant; but even if there had been it would have soon vanished; for in less than three minutes twenty-one savages were swiftly and silently forming a circle inclosing the spot where the three white men, who ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... corral beside the river, although with this he was aware of a peculiar gain. His sense of hearing now was most acute, and he could hear the least faint sounds—sounds which, before his taking to the open, he could not have heard. So he was enjoying it all, feeling real comfort, a kind of fitness, as if he belonged here and would better remain here for ever. Then, with a generous supply of alfalfa tossed to him, as to the other horses, he became convinced that he should remain in this little ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... existence. The end was foreseen from the beginning; the tragedy being implicit in the subject. The tragic motive lay deeper than the death of the heroine, who might have been allowed to live, if that last symbolic pageantry had not had its dramatic fitness. Given the characters and the circumstances, the end is the absolutely ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... manufacture of their paddles, and in the spring and lightness of their oars, they have never been surpassed; and, while often imitated, many a skillful white artisan has had to admit that after all his efforts there was a something of completeness and exact fitness for the work required about the Indians' production that he felt was in some way lacking in ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... lameness, which was a cause of lifelong misery to him, aggravated by the knowledge that with proper care it might have been cured. After the departure of his f. his mother went to Aberdeen, where she lived on a small salvage from her fortune. She was a capricious woman of violent temper, with no fitness for guiding her volcanic son, and altogether the circumstances of his early life explain, if they do not excuse, the spirit of revolt which was his lifelong characteristic. In 1794, on the death of a cousin, he became heir-presumptive to the title ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... "Choosing a foreman or clerk, guiding the education of children, settling my judgment of men in public or private life, estimating a wife or husband, and their fitness for each other, or endeavoring to understand myself and to select the right occupation, there is no advice of which I so often feel the need as that of a thoroughly able, scientific, ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... strong very speedy, that I have power to guard Mine Own Maid again, and to go forward with our journeying, that I have the Maid unto the safeness of the Mighty Pyramid; and surely, now that I had my tablets whole, I to feel that I did grow near unto fitness again; and moreover, they did satisfy my hunger the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the Selection of a Companion.—Judicious Views of the Nature and Responsibilities of the Marriage Institution. Our Forefathers. Reciprocal Affection. Paley. True Love. Adaptation of Character and Position. Fitness of Circumstances, Means, and Age. Religious Equality and Adaptation. Only in the Lord. The Sad Effect of Inequality. Should Persons Marry Outside of their Own Branch of the Church? Sin and Curse of Disobedience to the Law of Religious Equality. Duty of Parents in reference ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... with Betty and the sick nurse. We were stopped at the station while the officials examined our handbags for cannon. This delay would have been irritating, but the men were so universally good-natured—little dull-witted, with no appreciation of fitness, but good-natured. We drove at once to the Grand Hotel, and I went to bed that I might look rested when I saw my husband on the morrow. Lady de Wet and Dr. Messum, the prison physician, called to tell me the four men had been ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... rainy night in November. In his possession remained not a single article that he might have pawned for a morsel of food. And he had already stripped his body of every shred of clothing except the few garments he was compelled by an inborn sense of the fitness of things to retain. Bodily starvation, as a consequence, was added to hunger, and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... miniature buzz-saws had disappeared, and there was an array of pallid faces bent over another array of books—many of the latter were upside down, but the effect was unbroken. Even Estella, moved by some sudden divine sense of the fitness of things, had ceased her desultory wanderings about the room with the tin dipper, and, not having had time to procure a book, was working out imaginary problems on her fingers with the air of a Herschel, and I became slowly ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... deciding how practically to carry out the principles of artistic composition, we may derive help by bearing in mind a fact already pointed out—the fitness of certain verbal arrangements for certain kinds of thought. That constant variety in the mode of presenting ideas which the theory demands, will in a great degree result from a skilful adaptation of the form to the matter. We saw how the direct or inverted sentence is spontaneously used by excited ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... it is from this look of natural fitness that a windmill is always such an appropriate object by the sea-shore. It is simply a four-masted schooner, stranded on a hill-top, and adapting itself to a new sphere of duty. It can have needed but a slight stretch of invention ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... life, merely seemed to disclose her unfitness. She could not then know that, even for the squarest peg, the right hole may ultimately be found; seeming unfitness prove to be only another aspect of a peculiar and special fitness. But, of the after years, and what they brought her, it is not the purport of this little book to tell. It is enough to say: many a day came and went before she grasped that, oftentimes, just those mortals who feel cramped and unsure in the conduct of everyday life, will ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the Rice Lake, in allusion to the rapidity with which fires run over the dry herbage, the Lake of the Burning Plains. Certainly, there is much poetical fitness and beauty in many of the Indian names, approximating very closely to the figurative imagery of the language of the East; such is "Mad-wa-osh," the music of ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... power, too, is elsewhere conceded by the multitude to their rulers generally for some especial fitness, real or imaginary, for the office they have assumed. Some services of their own or of their ancestors to the state, some superiority, natural or acquired, of parts or skill, at least some specialty of high culture and elegant breeding, a quick sense of honor, a jealousy of insult to the public, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... masterful way made arrangements, becoming but economical, for the funeral; and when it was over came back to the vicarage with Philip. The will was in his charge, and with a due sense of the fitness of things he read it to Philip over an early cup of tea. It was written on half a sheet of paper and left everything Mr. Carey had to his nephew. There was the furniture, about eighty pounds at the bank, twenty ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... is a book. But take for example the plow. Compare the form in use to-day on a first-rate farm with that which is pictured on ancient stones long hid in Egypt—ages old. See how the idea of the plow has grown, and bear in mind that its graceful curves, it fitness for a special soil, or for a special crop, its labor-saving shape, came not by chance, but by thought. Indeed, a plow is made up from the thoughts and toils of generations of plowmen. Look at a Collins ax; it is also the record of man's thought. Lay it side by side with the hatchet ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... custom, they met to choose a leader. There were two competitors for the place, Williamson, who commanded at the massacre, being one; and he was beaten by only five votes. His successful opponent, Colonel William Crawford, was a fairly good officer, a just and upright man, but with no special fitness for such a task as that he had undertaken. Nor were the troops he led of very good stuff [Footnote: A minute and exhaustive account of Crawford's campaign is given by Mr. C. W. Butterfield in his "Expedition ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... emotional rapture. But let an engagement be long enough for their love to settle down into a more normal state, where their reasoning faculties will be able to work—then they will gain a clearer estimate of their mutual fitness, and may learn a good ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... They live, and they never rise above their degradation. They had not brains or courage enough to keep them out of gaol, and they have not pluck or brains enough to succeed—afterwards. Your friend Anson was quite gentlemanly in his action at the last. He had some sense of the fitness of things. He could not find a place in the world without making other people uncomfortable, and causing trouble. If he had lived, he would always have added to the blight on his wife's career, and have been an arrow—not a thorn—in her side. Very likely he would have created a scandal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... inside with a man, the arch enemy of all wolves. Breed whirled and fled. He ran blindly and at high-pressure speed as if he fled before an actual enemy. All his sense of balance was thrown out of gear, the fitness of things upset, and he felt his reason tottering. For his ear, attuned to receive the meaning of all animal sounds, could detect the least tremor of menace in any animal note; when a range bull bellowed ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... another tribunal than the law. "The public never choose schoolbooks to please compilers." They stated that to place themselves entirely in the right and remove every cause for cavil or complaint they had expunged everything claimed as original, and substituted other matter, which, both for its fitness and variety would add to the value of the Eclectic Readers. Throughout this preface, after stating the facts regarding the suit, there was a strong claim for the support of ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination; but I could not persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot: but when I came to the place, first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts; secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... festival in a year, and one circus. Flaminius added another festival, and another circus. In the year 550 of the city, there were five festivals. The candidates for the consulship spent large sums on these games, the splendor of which became the standard by which the electoral body measured the fitness of candidates. A gladiatorial show cost seven hundred and twenty thousand sesterces, or thirty-six ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... natives. They have been described as the lowest in the scale of humanity, yet I found those who accompanied me superior in penetration and judgment to the white men composing my party. Their means of subsistence and their habits, are both extremely simple; but they are adjusted with admirable fitness to the few resources afforded by such a country, in its wild state. What these resources are, and how they are economised by the natives, can only be learnt by an extensive acquaintance with the interior; and the knowledge of a few simple facts, bearing ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... Harlan, he felt the man's greatness—his especial fitness for the career he had adopted. Harlan was the ideal outlaw. He was cool, deep, subtle. He was indomitable; he felt no fear; his will was inflexible, adamant. Haydon felt it. The fear he had experienced at his first ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... it long before our little party came under this strange influence. My own sense of the eternal fitness of things is so highly developed that I was under the tense strain of nervous excitement which always wrecks me after reading a strong novel or witnessing a tragic play. I was afraid to see the Passion Play ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... replied that he was quite jolly, and ready for anything; and, by way of proving his fitness for exertion, began to crawl over the rocks ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... than he was. He had a vivacity of motion, a readiness to turn on his heel, a free swing of the shoulders, and an erect carriage of the head, which all marked him a man of action: one that speculated on his calling would immediately have had his sense of fitness satisfied when he heard that he was the commander of an English gun-boat, which he was now on his way to Genoa to join. He was young—within the twenties, though looking two or three and thirty, his face was so browned by sun and wind. His features were regular and attractive, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Story of a Great Life. Showing the inner growth, special training and peculiar fitness of the Man for his work. By William O. Stoddard. Illustrated. 1 vol. octavo, pp. 508. New York: Fords, Howard ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... it had cost him a larger area of ground. The white man's mode of running lines and of measuring land, he did not comprehend or appreciate. But when the line was made by a creek, river, or mountain, he understood it, and it harmonized better with his views of fitness, in dividing up the surface of this great earth. He was utterly unschooled in the art of computing by acres and roods. But the water's edge he had traversed with his light canoe, and with every point and islet on the lakes he was familiar. He had followed the rivers ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... pecuniary sense, while the successful solution of the important question of free black labor would be embarrassed, deferred, and possibly defeated, inasmuch as it would be placed thereby in the hands of men who are avowedly suspicious of the negro, and have no confidence in his fitness for freedom, or his willingness to work; who regard the abolition of slavery as a great sectional calamity, and who, under the semblance and even the protection of the law, and without violating the letter of the emancipation proclamation, would have it in their power to impose burdens upon the ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... faith of any man. Early then, in the ninth year of his reign, and in the twenty-third of his life, three years, be it borne in mind, before he had come under the influence of either of the two illustrious brothers, Faizi and Abulfazl, he, prompted by his own sense of the eternal fitness of things, issued an edict abolishing the jizya. Thenceforth all were equal in matters of faith before the ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... The world is on his side; and, perhaps, he is right. He knows nothing of my trials and difficulties and why should he? I do not blame him for demanding that his future wife shall not be intimate with a woman who is supposed to have lost her fitness for ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... more difficult persons to identify than a huntsman in undress, and of all queer ones perhaps old Tom Towler was the queerest. Tom in his person furnished an apt illustration of the right appropriation of talent and the fitness of things, for he would neither have made a groom, nor a coachman, nor a postillion, nor a footman, nor a ploughman, nor a mechanic, nor anything we know of, and yet he was first-rate as a huntsman. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... secret may really be simple enough. The complete success of such a book as 'Robinson' implies, it may be, the precise adaptation of the key to every ward of the lock. The felicitous choice of situation to which Lamb refers gave just the required fitness; and it is of little use to plead that 'Roxana,' 'Colonel Jack,' and others might have done the same trick if only they had received a little filing, or some slight change in shape: a shoemaker might as well argue that if you had only one toe less ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... belonging to the poet of beauty and loveliness: it is the tendency to be fascinated by what is ugly and revolting, so that he cannot withdraw his thoughts from it till he has described it in language, powerful, it is true, and poetic, when considered as to its fitness for the desired end, but, in force of these very excellences in the means, nearly as revolting as the objects themselves. Associated with this is the tendency to discover strangely unpleasant likenesses between things; which likenesses he is not content with seeing, but seems compelled, ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... morning, like a porcupine, all curls in the afternoon, like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, and more lovers than curls. Miss Phoebe is fitter for town than country; and to do her justice, she has a consciousness of that fitness, and turns her steps townward as often as she can. She is gone to B—— to-day with her last and principal lover, a recruiting sergeant—a man as tall as Sergeant Kite, and as impudent. Some day or other he will carry ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... this rule was almost universally observed by dramatists, and that there is an inherent convenience and fitness in the number five is evident from the fact that Shakespeare, who refused to be trammelled by merely arbitrary rules, adopts it in all his plays. Some critics have laid down rules as to the part each act should sustain in the development of the plot, but these ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen, to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing. I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure of my drama; its scheme is none of mine. Often enough, in those days, I found a fitness in ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Bordeaux for ambulance service the twentieth, mother. I was the fourth accepted with my qualifications—driving my own car and—and physical fitness. I'm going to France, mother, among the first to do my bit. I know a fellow got over there before we were in the war and worked himself into the air-fleet. That's what I want, mother, air service! They're giving us fellows credit ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... could bring out and make visible his inner exaltation. Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of an older world. "The spheres and all are set to harmony!" he said. "I would have fitness. Great things throughout! Diamonds and rubies without flaw in the crown.—We will talk no more about ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... do not suit the age or occupations of the wearer, or which indicate an expenditure unsuited to her means, are inappropriate, and, therefore, destitute of one of the essential elements of beauty. Propriety, or fitness, lies at the foundation of all good taste in dressing; and to this test should be brought a variety of particulars, too numerous to be mentioned, but which may be thus illustrated: The dress that would be very ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... availing himself of the effect of contrasts, which enable him at one time to produce calm repose, profound contemplation, and even the self-abandoned indifference of exhaustion, or at another, the most tumultuous emotions, the most violent storm of the passions. With respect to theatrical fitness, however, it must not be forgotten that much must always depend on the capacities and humours of the audience, and, consequently, on the national character in general, and the particular degree of mental culture. Of all kinds of poetry the dramatic is, in a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to slap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating of their lives—bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hard blows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them, mauled and prone, in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers a sense of the everlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice and allowed them—two freeborn, sovereign whites—to be licked ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... might assist you in finding an answer to a very difficult question. Still, like Moodie, I have great faith in race, and in the fitness of climates to races. There is something enervating to a northern race in these subtropical climates. While the powers of enjoyment remain unimpaired, or are even stimulated, the energy of action is rapidly sapped. We know that the Gothic conquerors ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... conducted themselves with as much tact, sound judgment, and good sense as the men. While it would be claiming more than the facts justify, to say that this experiment, in a limited field, has demonstrated beyond a doubt the perfect fitness of woman, at all times and under all circumstances, for taking a part in the government, it furnishes at least reasonable presumptive evidence in her favor, and she has a right to claim that, so long as none ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... In time his future wife Nambi happened to spy the stolen cow among her father's herds and she told Kintu, who came to heaven to seek and recover the lost animal. His future father-in-law Gulu, Lord of Heaven, obliged him to submit to many tests designed to prove his fitness for marriage with the daughter of so exalted a being as the Lord of Heaven. All these tests Kintu successfully passed through. At last Gulu was satisfied, gave him his daughter Nambi to wife, and allowed him to return to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... it came to him that perhaps Joan was to be tested and proved here, even as he was being tested in Tim Sullivan's balance for his fitness to become a master over sheep. Here were two fair samples of men out of the world's assorted stock—himself and Reid. One of them, deliberate, calm, assured of his way, but with little in his hand; the other a grig that could reel and ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... regard to the humorist, who seeks a present reward, and must be in unison with the characters of those he has to amuse. He depends much on hitting the current fancies of men by small and subtle allusions, and he must have a natural perception of fitness, of the direction in which he must go, and the limits he must not transgress. The literature of an epoch exhibits the taste of the readers, as well as that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... except the resolution of Congress, and warn me of a rock on which I should most certainly have split. The vote plainly points out an agent, only leaving it to my discretion to substitute another. My judgment concurs with that of Congress as to his fitness. But I shall inquire for the surest banker at Copenhagen to receive the money, not because I should have had any doubts, but because I am informed others have them. Against the failure of a banker, were such an accident, or any similar one to happen, I cannot be held accountable in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... upon the brow of Philibert as in his mind he measured the important business of the council with the fitness of the men whom he summoned to attend it. He declined the offer of wine, and stepped backward from the table, with a bow to the Intendant and the company, and was about to depart, when a loud voice on the further side of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... development of instrumental music as a basis, and freeing it from the fetters which conventionality had imposed, in the shape of set forms, accepted arrangements, and traditional concessions to a style of singing now happily almost extinct. The one canon was to be dramatic fitness. In this "Art Work of the Future," as he called it, the interest of the drama is to depend not entirely on the music, but also on the poem and on the acting and staging as well. It will be seen that Wagner's theory is not new. All or most ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... car-warrior should have a car-warrior for his antagonist; he on the neck of an elephant should have a similar combatant for his foe; a horse should be met by a horse, and a foot-soldier, O Bharata, should be met by a foot-soldier. Guided by considerations of fitness, willingness, daring and might, one should strike another, giving notice. No one should strike another that is unprepared[8] or panic-struck. One engaged with another, one seeking quarter, one retreating, one whose weapon is rendered unfit, uncased ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... reasons let me urge you, when you are looking for stories to tell little children, to apply this threefold test as a kind of touchstone to their quality of fitness: Are they full of action, in close natural sequence? Are their images simple without being humdrum? Are they repetitive? The last quality is not an absolute requisite; but it is at least very often an attribute ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... possible that they reigned, not by right of birth, but in virtue of their supposed divinity as representatives or embodiments of a god, and that as such they mated with a goddess, and had to prove their fitness from time to time to discharge their divine functions by engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may often have proved fatal to them, leaving the crown to their victorious adversary. Our knowledge of the Roman kingship is far too scanty ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... sorry that Tennyson, who spoke with such fitness of all the others in his "Dream of fair Women," has not of Iphigenia. Of her alone he has not made a fit picture, but only of the circumstances of the sacrifice. He can never have taken to heart this work of Euripides, yet he was ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in this character, rather than in any mere political position, that the fitness of Mr. Lincoln to stand forth in the struggle of the two American natures really lay. We are told that he did not come to the Presidential chair pledged to the abolition of Slavery. When will we learn that ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... seen to rush wildly towards the dentist's door, then pause for a moment, stricken by a sudden terror, and anon feebly pull the handle of an inflexible bell. Cabs had been heard to approach that fatal door—generally on wet days; for there seems to be a kind of fitness in the choice of damp and dismal weather for the extraction of teeth. Elderly ladies and gentlemen had been known to come many times to the Fitzgeorgian mansion. There was a legend of an old lady who had been seen to arrive in a brougham, especially weird and nut-crackery of aspect, and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... constantly introduced, generally in the possessive case; examples are "Santa Ana's house," "Santa Maria's umbrella," "San Jose's canes." Less commonly the names of other Bible worthies occur; thus "Adam's hair." There is not always any evident fitness in the selection of the Saint in the connection established. San Jose's connection with rain is suitable enough. One would need to know a good deal regarding local and popular hagiography in order to see to what degree the ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... of an Indian. She lived up to an austere standard herself, and woe betide those who fell one whit behind her. She was one of those just persons who would have cast the first stone at the dictates of conscience and with a sort of holy joy in her own fitness to do so. For years she had been the richest woman in Middleborough, the head of everything charitable and religious, the mainstay of ministers, the court of final appeal in the case of sinners and backsliders. Now, in a moment, through no fault of her own, the whole fabric ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... before were imprisoned or in expectation of imprisonment, but now—to save their own interests in Lisbon—sought to set His Majesty's decrees and my instructions alike at defiance, inspired me with deep distrust of their fitness for the Government of the province—it being evident that if the flagship quitted the port, they would construe the functions of Government in favour of their own private purposes. I accordingly wrote to ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... life and culture of the times and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to their diversion merely and permit to be crowded out of their minds by the next pleasant or unpleasant shock ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... pilgrimage of emotions. Nauseating disgust at the absurdity of the situation, dread of the fate that could play such a vile trick on a man, awe at the remote consequences of an apparently insignificant and ridiculous event in his past, doubt of his own fitness to conduct his existence and mistrust of his best sentiments—for what the devil did he want to go to Fouche for?—he knew them all in turn. "I am an idiot, neither more nor less," he thought. "A sensitive idiot. Because ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... days or a fortnight. The steady tramp of sixteen to twenty miles a day did the women good; the food en route was abundant and eaten with tremendous appetite. The pilgrims on arrival in London were a justification in physical fitness of Woman's claim to equal ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... I advocated the division of the newly acquired territory by an extension to the Pacific Ocean of the Missouri Compromise line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude. This was not because of any inherent merit or fitness in that line, but because it had been accepted by the country as a settlement of the sectional question which, thirty years before, had threatened a rupture of the Union, and it had acquired in the public mind a prescriptive respect which it seemed unwise to disregard. A majority, however, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... man, is a gift which she can never, with impunity, decline. When piety presents its claims to the sterner sex, they raise doubts, and questionings, and comparisons with other goods. But woman may not hesitate for a moment. So does instinct teach us the fitness of female piety, that even the irreligious of our sex expect, and require, it ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody; but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially, just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race; and if, through untoward circumstances—which Heaven forbid—I should lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out in the "Herald" under "Situations ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... though it was not in accord with her civilized sense of fitness, she knew that what he proposed was the common sense solution. She was tired and worn out, and she could see that his ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Fitness, which in a batsman exhibits itself mainly in an increased power of seeing the ball, is one of the most inexplicable things connected with cricket. It has nothing, or very little, to do with actual health. A man may ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... spiritual growth arising out of his people as a young oak out of the soil. Had she been familiar with the Greek idea, she might have called him a Kentucky autochthon. It was the first time also that she had ever encountered in a Kentuckian the type of student mind—that fitness and taste for scholarship which sometimes moves so unobtrusively and rises so high among that people, but is usually unobserved unless discovered pre-eminent and commanding far from the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... her. It was rather in retrospect, in his memory of her sweet and earnest face, the tones of her voice, the shine of her hair. He gave her such small gifts as he might within the restraints of social propriety. It would have consisted with his notion of the fitness of things to give her everything he had and leave ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... we are so continually reminded as that we must not pretend to judge of the reasonableness and fitness of the Divine dispensations, and there may therefore be good cause for the San Gennaro affair, though we cannot fathom it. Still, as the generality of people of education have given it up, one wonders at the orthodox ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... observation. I had selected purposely a pair of mended gloves, and I am convinced the finger ends were at once under his inspection. He was a man who thought no details beneath him, but would bring his masculine intellect even to the point of discovering the fitness of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... a sense of the fitness of things?" the Prime Minister replied,—"a sense of proportion, perhaps? Notwithstanding his extraordinary speeches in America, I believe that to some extent Maraton possesses it. Anyhow, it seemed to me to be worth trying. One couldn't face the idea of letting him ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... already referred to, of the school of Sidney and Milton, lovers of civil and religious liberty, saw in Boston and Massachusetts a state of things far removed from rebellion and anarchy. They looked upon the spectacle of a people in general raised by mental and moral culture into fitness for self-government and an appreciation of the higher aims of life, as a result at which good men the world over ought to rejoice, a result honorable to the common humanity. They pronounced the late Parliamentary acts affecting such a people to be grievances, the course of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... are different but does not feel that man is superior to woman. Discussions of the differences between man and woman sometimes occur in Occidental countries as was the case in the late disputes in England as to woman's fitness for politics. There was no implication that man was an animal superior to woman. In Occidentalism woman and man are considered equal before the law and in the eyes of God, while in Orientalism women are often little better ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... "combination fence." What this latter might be we had wondered, but relied upon knowing it when we saw it,—and we did: it was a fence of laths held together by wires woven between them, and we recognized the fitness of the name instantly. Then on through the big gate, down a long lane where we ran the gauntlet of the family cows; over or under bars, where awaited us a tribe of colts with their anxious mammas; and at last to the tree and the nest. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... other, and with an eagerness chastened by the most refined delicacy for the feelings of her victim, and with the air of Velpeau redivivus, drives through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and injured tissues, a many-bladed lancet of marvellous fineness, of wonderful complexity and fitness. While engorging herself with our blood, we will examine under the microscope the mosquito's mouth. The head (Fig. 61) is rounded, with the two eyes occupying a large part of the surface, and nearly meeting on the top of the head. Out ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... necessary to preserve it from the corrupt and mercenary attacks made upon it from all points by corporate trusts and monopolies. Equal suffrage can not fail to encourage purity in both private and public life, and to elevate the official standard of fitness. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... mountain's top itself,—these produce a never-ceasing and ever-increasing sense of joy, which naturally grows into love. There would seem to be no beauty except as associated with human life and connected with a sense of fitness for human happiness. Natural beauty is but the type of spiritual beauty. Enjoyed a very refreshing swim in the Lake this afternoon. The water is much less cold than that of Lake Tenaya or the Tuolumne River, or even the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Treasury during the presidential campaign, had by that time finished the work which carried the financial burdens of the Civil War and provided party texts for another generation. He had come to his task without special fitness, but had speedily mastered the essentials of war finance. In his reports he outlined the policy which Congress followed, more or less closely. Taxes ought to be increased, he urged, to meet all the costs of civil administration, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... naturally with a hardy peasantry, and not naturally, perhaps, but artificially, with the rich and great. But deer cannot coexist with a population composed of what we call "People of Moderate Means." It is not in the eternal fitness of things ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... of the Water Goats had been selected with the utmost care, combining in the choice practical politics with a sense of fitness. Timothy Fagan was used to animals—for years he had driven a dumpcart. He was used to children—he had ten or eleven of his own. And he controlled several votes in the Fourth Ward. His elevation from the dump-cart of the street cleaning department ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... republicanism was like the sincerity of his conduct—an affair of time and place, a consistency with conditions and not with abstractions. He knew the Italian mob, and faithfully described it in his letters as dull, ignorant, and unreliable, without preparation or fitness for self-government. He was willing to establish the forms of constitutional administration; but in spite of hearty support from many disciples of the Revolution, he found those forms likely, if not certain, to crumble under their own weight, and was convinced that the real sovereignty must for ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... battery current destroys its sensitiveness, may we not suppose that another kind might increase its sensitiveness? Although the Leclanche has operated well, some other may operate still better, and by its special fitness for use on selenium cells may intensify their actions, and so bring to light other properties yet unthought of. Is not here a promising field for experiment, in testing the various forms of battery already known, or even devising some new form especially adapted to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... fight, and in ten days or so has either lost or won. The germ of syphilis, on the other hand, secures its place in the body without exciting very strenuous or wide-spread opposition. The body does not come to its own defense so well as with a more active enemy. The fitness of the germ of syphilis for long-continued life in the body, and the difficulty of marshaling a sufficient defense against it, is what makes it impossible to cure the disease by any ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... him. Dick was sure he had begun by begging for the privilege. Betty cherished the idea that her gift was unsought and quite spontaneous. At all events, once the thing was decided, nobody concerned doubted for a moment the fitness of it. Betty's own arrangements may have had something to do with it. For the Master and the Mistress had set their hearts upon Betty having a season in London and a month or two on the Continent, in part with ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... is, in a word, that the following doctrines are perhaps less reactionary than the ardent suffragette might suppose, compatible as they are with an earnest belief in the fitness and the urgent desirability of women of later ages even as Members of Parliament. It may be added that, on this very point, there is a ridiculous argument against woman suffrage—that it is the precursor of a demand to enter Parliament, which would mean (it is assumed), women being numerically ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... as privates, now wear the officers' epaulettes. The elasticity of our regulations regarding promotion in war time, the absence of the spirit of caste, and the friendly welcome extended by all officers to those of their military inferiors who have shown under fire their fitness to command, have enabled us to meet ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... demands made upon the skin as an organ of perspiration, and this strain it is in many cases unable to stand—hence the trouble referred to. To prevent this, the skin must be brought into a better state of health and fitness for any extra work, so that it can bear without injury even very great changes of air and temperature. This may be done by regular application of soap lather (see Lather and Soap) to the entire skin each evening ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... materials; but it can hardly be doubted, from internal evidence, that he had the command of some genuine text of the Nights, similar to, if not identical with, that of Galland, which he probably "arranged" to suit his own (and his century's) distorted ideas of literary fitness. The discovery of the interpolated tales contained in this MS. (which has thus presumably lain unnoticed for a whole century, under, as one may say, the very noses of the many students of Arabic literature who would have rejoiced in such ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... dark and quiet time. Her tutor was surprised at the bounds by which she surmounted obstacles, the quick perception and ready adaptation of truths and first principles, and her immediate sense of the fitness of things. Her delight in what was strong and beautiful called out her master's sympathy; but, most of all, he admired the complete unconsciousness of uncommon power, or unusual progress. It was less of a wonder than he considered it to be, it is true, for she never ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... seems too strong. Only the work is not proving as good as I originally expected. For the head we both used a model—you will see—whose fitness could not be surpassed. But the body! Myrtilus knows how earnestly I laboured, and, without looking to the right or the left, devoted all my powers to the task of creation. True, the models did not remain. But even had a magic spell doubled my ability, the toil would still have been futile. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unnecessary moment did Mr. Kramer lose with his stripping. He was ready in almost record time, presenting, bared, a man of about Mr. Spurlock's proportions, weight and general muscular fitness. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... Beast linked to beast—what need of priest in the fierce mating of such creatures of the dusk? He was hers, and she his by all laws of nature, and in the eternal fitness of things vast and savage. They must live and breed in the half-light of forests; they must perish as the sun follows the falling trees, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... people's life—the light, the meaning, the guidance. They have no longer a civilization, but only some derelict habits left from that which has gone. And it is no wonder if some of those habits seem now stupid, ignorant, objectionable; for the fitness has departed from them, and left them naked. They were acquired under a different set of circumstances—a set of circumstances whose disappearance dates from, and was caused by, the enclosure of ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... heart gave a great throb. For a moment he hardly knew how to take this—how it would fit into his new philosophy. But surely it was all right for him to take a job. Yes, he had earned it. Even if some one else had to be turned out—even so, he had proven his fitness. He had won in the struggle. He had a place among the successful, and he could help Sophie ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... Mrs Wilfer. 'I make false statements, it appears? So be it. If my daughter flies in my face, surely my husband may. The one thing is not more unnatural than the other. There seems a fitness in the arrangement. By all means!' Assuming, with a shiver of resignation, a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... their creatures the lawgivers of the commonwealth about to be created. So outrageous were the crimes of these miscreants at this and subsequent periods, that even the very creatures of Pierce and Buchanan, chosen especially for their supposed fitness to assist in these villanies, turned away, one after another, sickened at the sight of them, and forfeited forever the favor of their masters by shrinking from an unqualified ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various |
