"Fitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man in whose own judgment his predecessor was the fittest person to execute his office. From that moment there was no more question of Sir Spencer Compton as prime-minister. He was created an earl, soon received the garter, and became president of that council, at the head of which he was much fitter to sit than to direct. Fourteen years afterwards, he was again nominated by the same Prince to replace Sir Robert as first lord of the treasury on the latter's forced resignation, but not -.is prime-minister; the conduct of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... you be at, you woman fitter for the swarthy monsters? Why do you send tokens, why billet-doux to me, and not to some vigorous youth, and of a taste not nice? For I am one who discerns a polypus, or fetid ramminess, however concealed, more quickly than the keenest dog the covert of the boar. What sweatiness, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... it must—for in bashfulness the spirits do a little go and come—but with bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay; like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir: but this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. This is well to be weighed, that boldness is ever blind, for it seeth not dangers and inconveniences: therefore it is ill in counsel, good in execution; so that the right use of bold persons is, that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... touched at in the foregoing part of this chapter refers to one bank royal to preside, as it were, over the whole cash of the kingdom: but because some people do suppose this work fitter for many banks than for one, I must a little consider that head. And first, allowing those many banks could, without clashing, maintain a constant correspondence with one another, in passing each other's bills as current from one to another, I know not but it might be better performed by ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... fling by the spade: Leave in its track the toiling plough; The rifle and the bayonet-blade For arms like yours were fitter now; And let the hands that ply the pen Quit the light task, and learn to wield The horseman's crooked brand, and rein The charger on ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... two or three centuries, might find time and opportunities sufficient to settle in North Britain, though we can neither assign the period nor causes of that revolution. Their barbarous manner of life rendered them much fitter than the Romans for subduing these mountaineers. And, in a word, it is clear from the language of the two countries, that the Highlanders and the Irish are the same people, and that the one are a colony from the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... indeed, but he was strong and well grown, and much fitter for service than many of those who would be sent. If the young fellow stopped here he would always be a trouble, and a bone of contention between himself and his wife. Besides, for Alice's sake, it was clearly his duty to get the fellow out of the way. Girls, Mr. Anthony considered, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... to reach us from our brave troops in the field that they "never felt fitter," are "in the best ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... square quarters, the muscular fullness of the upper limbs, so perfectly "let down," the clear, sinewy legs, without a curb-mark or windfall to tell tales of fearfully fast work and hard training—and you will wonder less how the championship was won. They say that the Queen was never fitter than now; yet since her zenith she has seldom rested, and is now long past the equine climacteric, and far advanced ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... fate—I have deserved it all, and more. I have been weak and wicked—you shall not find me ungrateful. Go, queenly spirit! go, soul of tenderness, pity, and most unselfish faith, that ever folded its wings in human breast! go, and find a fitter mate! For me, the world is wide, I shall ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... never wronged her with the shadow of a doubt. Directly, that same day, I wrote to her to fix our meeting elsewhere, that we might renew our broken plans in some fitter shape for the altered times. She sent me a few lines of grave refusal, Sir; and the ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... Seventh's time, is kept on in the yeomen of the guard; not without a good and politic view, because they look a foot taller, and a foot and an half broader: besides that the cap leaves the face expanded, and consequently more terrible, and fitter to stand ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... at the old, inexplicable seesaw. It must appear desirable in order to be desired; it must be desired in order to appear desirable: the perception must precede the desire, and the desire must precede the perception. These are foolish subtilties, but all the fitter for their purpose. Our motive-mongering friends should understand that they can explain no farther than their neighbors,—that by enslaving the will they only shift the difficulty, not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... under discussion involved a question of ecclesiastical law, Curran interposed with: "I refer your lordship to a high authority behind me, who was once intended for the Church, though in my opinion he was fitter ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... read;" I say to you, read doggedly; the snare of a free life is desultory reading. Make any plan of stiff reading you like, and stick to it for one year, writing out notes of what you read, and you will be fitter for real work if it comes, as come ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... already doffed Some prejudices.—Well—what says my vow? As templar I am dead, was dead to that From the same hour which made me prisoner To Saladin. But is the head he gave me My old one? No. It knows no word of what Was prated into yon, of what had bound it. It is a better; for its patrial sky Fitter than yon. I feel—I'm conscious of it, With this I now begin to think, as here My father must have thought; if tales of him Have not been told untruly. Tales—why tales? They're credible—more credible than ever ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... art of Nauigation, with the time that they be enioyned to bee his auditors, and some part of the questions that they are to answere vnto. Which if they finde good and beneficial for our seamen, I hope they wil gladly imbrace and imitate, or finding out some fitter course of their owne, will seeke to bring such as are of that calling vnto better gouernment and more perfection in that most laudable and needfull vocation. To leaue this point, I was once minded to haue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... circumstance convenient to be done; our Christian liberty consists in this, that we have leave to do them. And, indeed, it is so far from being a sin, that it would be so to refuse so to do.' Could the state have selected a fitter tool ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and respect the inhabitants bear to your honour's person, and with what passionate desire they wish for a continuance of your gentle and good administration; and since we, who are instructed with, and are the assertors of their rights and liberties, are unanimously of opinion, that no person is fitter to govern so loyal and obedient a people to his sacred majesty King George, so we most earnestly desire and intreat your honour, to take upon you the government of this province, in his majesty's name, till his pleasure shall be known; by ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... murder committed there by night. The grass on which they stood, had once been dyed with gore; and the blood of the murdered man had run down, drop by drop, into the hollow which gives the place its name. 'The Devil's Bowl,' thought Nicholas, as he looked into the void, 'never held fitter ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... shone down on fair Eliza's face, And made it beautiful. No fitter place Could she have chosen for her gracious smile; For as she sat there in the languid light, Methought I'd found a soul as free from guile As ever came from God. Oh, favored Night! Oh, mild, impassioned moon and starry spheres! To gaze upon her through the silent ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... noblest view, Disinterested plans pursue, For trembling worth the ladder raise, And mark out the ascent to praise; Of arts and sciences, where meet, Sublime, profound, and all complete, A set[223] (whom at some fitter time The Muse shall consecrate in rhyme) Who, humble artists to out-do, A far more liberal plan pursue, 270 And let their well-judged premiums fall On those who have no worth at all; Of sign-post exhibitions, raised For laughter more than to be praised, (Though, by the way, we cannot see Why Praise ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... queer questions, Hetty! Your heart is good, child, and fitter for the settlements than for the woods; while your reason is fitter for the woods than for ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... delivered yourself to your own care, and says, 'I had no fitter one to intrust him to than yourself; keep him for me such as he is by nature, modest, faithful, erect, unterrified, free ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... take Rachel to London—partly to relieve her mind by a complete change, partly to try what may be done by consulting the best medical advice. Can I ask you to meet us in town? My dear Franklin, you, in your way, must imitate my patience, and wait, as I do, for a fitter time. The valuable assistance which you rendered to the inquiry after the lost jewel is still an unpardoned offence, in the present dreadful state of Rachel's mind. Moving blindfold in this matter, you have added to the burden of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... all, though this might woo a Greeke, To wantonize with princely Mahomet, Much more by loues inuention could I speake, By which the coldest temper might be heate: But I must hence, a fitter time I'le set, To conquer thee, Bashawes these spare or spill, Saue Mustapha this maid, since her we like, Conduct vnto our Tent, now warre ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... Constantinople Tunis was forgotten and Minorca alone called to mind: instead of the title of Beglerbeg of Algiers, the Sultan saluted him as Capudan Pasha or High Admiral of the Ottoman fleets. There was work to be done in the Adriatic, and none was fitter to do it than the great Corsair. Kheyr-ed-d[i]n had acquired an added influence at Stambol since the execution of the Grand Vez[i]r Ibrah[i]m,[33] and he used it in exactly the opposite direction. Ibrah[i]m, a Dalmatian by birth, had always ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... in Norwich as prisoners....for badness of belief. This Rookwood is a papist of kind, newly crept out of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was lodged at his house, Euston, far unmeet for her highness, but fitter for the black guard; nevertheless, (the gentleman brought into her majesty's presence by like device) her excellent majesty gave to Rookwood ordinary thanks for his bad house, and her fair hand to kiss; after which it was braved at. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... place where news could be had more readily than beyond the sea in Fife. The solitary castle, high perched upon its hill, whence messengers could be seen approaching, or, better still, the King's banners coming back, was a fitter home for an anxious wife than the palace over the Firth among its woods. How long she remained there we are not told, and there are now unhappily no articulate remains at all of the old stronghold which must have risen ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... means of seeing.' A godless century, looking back on centuries that were godly, produces portraitures more miraculous than any other. All was inane discord in the Past; brute Force bore rule everywhere; Stupidity, savage Unreason, fitter for Bedlam than for a human World! Whereby indeed it becomes sufficiently natural that the like qualities, in new sleeker habiliments, should continue in our time to rule. Millions enchanted in Bastille ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... to the Presbytery," said Steenie, "and tell them all I have seen last night, whilk are things fitter for them to judge of than ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... an intelligent gas-fitter of Sociological tastes. He classes Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Kidd, and Lombroso as light literature. He also helps us with our young criminals. I should like ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... receiving her accustomed homage, and had ready all her sweetest smiles, and most engaging complaisance, as she saw Lionel approach the spot where she was seated. She found, however, that she might as well have reserved them for a fitter occasion, for he passed her without notice, and with a graceful bow, and look that bespoke respect and esteem, laid his trophy at the feet of Ethelinde. Amaranthe had no strength of mind to command herself on such a trial, ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... patient, considerate, careful of his people, and merciful to his enemies; ever submissive to the will of heaven, quo fata trahunt, retrahuntque, sequamur. I could please myself with enlarging on this subject, but am forced to defer it to a fitter time. From all I have said I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer being more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. One warms you by degrees; the other ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... past. All is arranged. I yield to your earlier, and therefore better, claim. Mr. Beaufort consents to your union. He will tell you, at some fitter time, that our birthright is at last made clear, and that there is no blot on the name we shall hereafter bear. Sidney, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ere we go, regard this dying prince, The valiant Duke of Bedford. Come, my lord, We will bestow you in some better place, Fitter for sickness ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... Sylvia, and ordered her to give her attendance on the treasure of his life; he bid her prepare all things as magnificent as she could in that apartment he designed her, which was very rich and gay, and towards a fine garden. The hangings and beds all glorious, and fitter for a monarch than a subject; the finest pictures the world afforded, flowers in-laid with silver and ivory, gilded roofs, carved wainscot, tables of plate, with all the rest of the movables in the ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... took a turn at the excavations of the mound of Nimroud. Then I became a working engineer on the new desert line between Alexandria and Suez; and by-and-by I worked my passage out to Bombay, and took service as an engine fitter on one of the great Indian railways. I stayed a long time in India; that is to say, I stayed nearly two years, which was a long time for me; and I might not even have left so soon, but for the war that was declared just then with Russia. That tempted me. For I loved ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if ever you're bitten—and it's the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—don't follow a flag, be independent, keep a free vote; remember how I've been tied, and hold foot against Manchester. Do it blindfold; you don't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ones too much like flowers, Training them, in blind selfishness, to deck Sticks of our poor setting, when they might, If left to clamber where themselves incline, Find nobler props to cling to, fitter place, And sweeter air to bloom in. It is wrong— Thou striv'st to sow with feelings all thine own, With thoughts and hopes, anxieties and aims, Born of thine own peculiar self, and fed Upon a certain round of circumstance, A soul as different and distinct ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... "Some fitter way express Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, The ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... blessed and immortal nature; and yet, in the meanwhile, affirm that the gods themselves are full of trouble and enmity and anger and other passions, which no way become or belong to even men that have any understanding. But this will, perhaps, seem a subject fitter for some other consideration, and that ought to be treated of in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... herself, the crature, now they've gone and put her two sons into gaol. I wonder what the counthry 'll be the better for all them boys being crammed into gaol. I wish they'd kept that Ussher down in the north when he was there; he's fitter for that place ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... man of that profession here, sirr," he reported, after scanning the document. "But," he added optimistically, "there is a machine-fitter and a glass-blower. Will I warn ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... a child to get by heart a long scroll of phrases without any ideas, is a practice fitter for a jackdaw than for anything that wears ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... walls of Mycenae, on the hillock over against you. Close behind this is a dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow. We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier which he had passed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... was summoned, and all who could bear arms were called to hear the glad news and to form fresh plans for the further defence of the town. Shrewd and cautious advice was sorely needed, and none was fitter to give it than stout old Karl Sneider, the keeper of the water-gate. So to-night he was not in his place in the little watch-tower that looked out over the broad river that flowed by the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... restrain your curiosity for a short time, Mr Castleton, we will have the chest carried up to Downside, and examine it there," said Mr Shallard. "It will be a fitter spot than the ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... the First French Revolution, Joseph Leopold Sigisbert Hugo, son of a joiner at Nancy, and an officer risen from the ranks in the Republican army, married Sophie Trebuchet, daughter of a Nantes fitter-out of privateers, a ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... my princess such a durgen wed? One fitter for your pocket than your bed! Advised by me, the worthless baby shun, Or you will ne'er be brought to bed of one. Oh take me to thy arms, and never flinch, Who am a man, by Jupiter! every inch. [1]Then, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... of the Roman Empire, when church and state were scarcely yet dual, and when Christianity was coextensive with one united empire. At Constance all the ideas, religious and political, of the Middle Ages seem to be put upon their trial. If that trial had ended in condemnation, there could be no fitter point to mark the division between mediaeval and modern history. But the verdict was acquittal, or at least a partial aquittal; and the old system was allowed, under modified conditions, a lease of life for another century. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... soon found that this trial was likely to be protracted to an unusual length. The Managers of the Commons, feeling this, went up to their constituents to procure from them the means of reducing it within a compass fitter for their management and for your Lordships' judgment. Being furnished with this power, a second selection was made upon the principles of the first: not upon the idea that what we left could be less clearly sustained, but because we thought a selection should be made ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not, my son, be fitter That you should enjoy those plaudits In the fresh and blooming spring-time Of your life, and to hereafter Leave the ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... high repute among the vulgar and among those whose chief delight is to make the vulgar gape in awe. He therefore had no science, that is, no knowledge—outside his profession—but only what is called learning, though tommyrot would be a fitter name for it. He had only the most meager acquaintance with that great fundamental of a sound and sane education, embryology. He knew nothing of what science had already done to destroy all the still current notions about the ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... wrote B. to A., "We should both keep fitter (the doctors say)," And, A. agreeing, they humbly prayed The great War ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... moderate value of our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore; Yet why should hallow'd vestals' sacred shrine Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be Than a few embers, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Radish of solid Gold; and 'tis said of Moschius, that he wrote a whole Volume in their praise. Notwithstanding all which, I am sure, the great [40]Hippocrates utterly condemns them, as Vitiosoe, innatantes ac aegre concoctiles. And the Naturalist calls it Cibus Illiberalis, fitter for Rustics than Gentlemens Tables. And indeed (besides that they decay the Teeth) experience tells us, that as the Prince of Physicians writes, It is hard of Digestion, Inimicous to the Stomach, causing nauseous Eructations, and sometimes Vomiting, tho' ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... which are a feature of Italian medievalism. Nowadays it is hardly proper that neighbouring townsmen, aided and abetted by their respective saints, should sally forth to cut each others' throats. The Madonna, as cosmopolitan Nike, is a fitter patroness for ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... fear of God." He has proclaimed himself to be, as did Frederick the Great and his grandfather before him, the servant of his people. Certainly no one in the German Empire works harder, and what is far more difficult and far more self-denying, no one keeps himself fitter for his duties than he. He eats no red meat, drinks almost no alcohol, smokes very little, takes a very light meal at night, goes to bed early and gets up early. He rides, walks, shoots, plays tennis, and is as much in the open air as his ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Dark and Bloody Ground, Ye must not slumber there, Where stranger steps and tongues resound Along the heedless air. Your own proud land's heroic soil Shall be your fitter grave: She claims from war his richest spoil— The ashes of ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... their ingenuity, are not very apt at comprehending the madness of contemplative minds, have caricatured the shade of poor Petrarch most woefully, and[35] the Abbe Delille (peace to his ashes!) has teazed the innocent trees of Vaucluse with embarrassing questions, fitter for the mouths of Susanna's elders. Under such blighting influence, the stern rocks of Vaucluse are transformed into a sentimental tea-garden, the high-minded and melancholy Petrarch into a more ingenious Piercie Shafton, and the virtuous ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... let you go but for a time," Nevil answered, firmly. "Later, I shall send for you and Robin to some fitter lodging." He turned to Drake. "Frank—Frank Drake, I but give again to all our sick the man to whom, under God, is owed this abatement of the fever. I pray you to await me here while I myself deliver him to the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... observes, the court being poor, and having no revenue, made things slower than they would otherwise be: "however," he adds, "we make the best of the slender means we possess. I own, my dear lord, myself much fitter for the actor than the counsellor, of proper measures to be pursued in this very critical situation of public affairs; but, at least, their Sicilian Majesties are satisfied that my poor opinion is an honest one. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... great recommendation if he has served his time to any mechanical art, especially as a Fitter of Locomotive Engines; and, if possible, he should produce testimonials stating his qualifications ...
— Practical Rules for the Management of a Locomotive Engine - in the Station, on the Road, and in cases of Accident • Charles Hutton Gregory
... because in deede they foresaw, that men would yeeld no credite to those things as being too well knowen, though they should haue feined them to haue beene the flames of hell: but they thought the burning of Hecla (the rumour whereof came more slowly to their eares) to be fitter for the establishing of this fond fable. But get ye packing, your fraud is found out: leaue off for shame hereafter to perswade any simple man, that there is a hel in mount Hecla. For nature hath taught both vs & others (maugre your opinion) ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... young man clasped his hands together in horror and disgust, but could not resolve whether it were fitter to declare the whole matter to her Highness instantly or not. Clara, however, was of opinion that her Grace would derive great comfort from the information, because when the Prince found how Sidonia had betrayed him, he would give up the creature of his own accord. To which Marcus ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... has said: "It is a strange thing in sea voyages, when there is nothing to be seen but sea and sky, that men should make diaries, and omit them in land travel, as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation." Now I have made my diary, both at sea and on shore, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... and vengeance too, in her turn, as the better born? and that she wanted but the power, to shew the like unrelenting temper, by which she had so grievously suffered? And might not this have given him room to think me (and to have resumed and prosecuted his purposes accordingly) fitter for an arrogant kept mistress, than an humble ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... who recognized him by his official scarf. "Ah! so much the better—he could not have come at a fitter moment." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... shadow at all, save that as the Heaven is lighter than the earth, so must that little shadow that was from the earth; this her Majesty's curious Demand hath greatly bettered my Judgement, besides divers other like questions in Art by her most excellent Majesty, which to speak or write of were fitter for some better clerk. This matter only of the light let me perfect that no wise man longer remain in Error of praising much shadows in pictures which are to be viewed in hand; great pictures high or far off Require hard shadows to become the better then nearer in story ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... he had a curious way of catching her up and presenting her to the giver. Whether this was a shape his thanks took, whether Mary was to him an incorporate gratitude, or whether he meant to imply that she was the fitter on whom to shower favour, it were hard to say. His mother observed, and in her mind put the two things together, that he did not seem to prize much any mere possession. He looked pleased with a new suit of ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... so young, he wondered at her eloquence, and turning to Abu al-Husn, said, "I will summon those who shall discuss with her all she claimeth to know; if she answer correctly, I will give thee the price thou askest for her and more; and if not, thou art fitter to have her than I." "With gladness and goodly gree, O Commander of the Faithful," replied Abu al-Husn. So the Caliph wrote to the Viceroy of Bassorah, to send him Ibrahim bin Siyyr the prosodist, who was the first man of his day in argument and eloquence and poetry and logic, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... do it), it seemed to Mr. Esmond that they would have had the right-divine just as much as any Plantagenet, or Tudor, or Stuart. But the desire of the country being unquestionably for an hereditary monarchy, Esmond thought an English king out of St. Germains was better and fitter than a German prince from Herrenhausen, and that if he failed to satisfy the nation, some other Englishman might be found to take his place; and so, though with no frantic enthusiasm, or worship of that monstrous pedigree which the Tories chose to consider divine, he was ready ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after discolorations of such a nature should have disappeared? Perhaps imagination may have had its effect, and made the impressions indelible. But if there is any truth in old-world stories, few places fitter for such horrors can be found than was that drear waste of sand, destitute of all signs of man's proximity, bounded on one side by a blackened forest, on the other by the sailless sea, and containing only the whitened ribs of a long-forgotten wreck. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the reply, in tones of the greatest contempt. "I would not be as lazy as you are, Oaklands, for any money. You are fitter to lounge about in some old woman's drawing-room, than to handle an oar." "Well, I don't know," answered Oaklands, quietly, "but I think I can pull as long as ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... manuscript writing and marketing, though it be only a description of a shop window for a dry goods trade paper, or an interview with a boss plumber for the Gas Fitter's Gazette, will furnish you with experience in your own trade, and set you ahead a step on the long road that leads to the most desirable acceptances. The one thing to watch zealously is your own development, to make sure that ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... "are, above all men, the man who is needed." And she began praising Hereward's valor, his fame, his eloquence, his skill as a general and engineer; and when he suggested, smiling, that he was an exile and an outlaw, she insisted that he was all the fitter from that very fact. He had no enemies among the nobles. He had been mixed up in none of the civil wars and blood feuds of the last fifteen years. He was known only as that which he was, the ablest captain of his day,—the only man who could cope with William, the only man whom all parties in England ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... part of this new company consisted of unruly sparks, packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home. And the rest were chiefly made up of poor gentlemen, broken tradesmen, rakes, and libertines, footmen, and such others as were much fitter to spoil or ruin a commonwealth, than to help to raise ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... clothed in his uniform, a proof that he had resumed active military duty. Zulma was seemingly in her usual health, and as she stood with her grey felt Montespan hat and azure plume, and brilliant cashmere shawl tightly drawn across her shoulders, her beauty shone in its queenliest aspects. No fitter companion for a soldier could well be pictured. Cary evidently felt this, as his frequent glances of admiration testified, and there were moments when to the observer he would have appeared as making the most ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... sort. And truly a goodly honour would you confer upon me, obedient as I have ever been to you, if after making me your king and your lawgiver, you were to refuse to discourse of the theme which I prescribe. Away, then, with this scruple fitter for low minds than yours, and let each study how she may give us a goodly story, and Fortune prosper ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... probably, I may still add, that there may be yet a bond between us closer even than that of friendship; perhaps there may be the bond of crime; for we four, we once did condemn, judge and slay a human being whom we had not any right to cut off from this world, although apparently fitter for hell than for this life. D'Artagnan, I have always loved you as my son; Porthos, we slept six years side by side; Aramis is your brother as well as mine, and Aramis has once loved you, as I love you now and as I have ever loved you. What can Cardinal Mazarin be to us, ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be considered here. Under the present system, if the weakest and least fit were as strong and fit as the best, and the best were correspondingly stronger and fitter, the same condition would obtain. There would be the same army of employed labor, the same army of surplus labor. The whole thing is relative. There is ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... temperance; she had it in her heart to press this reformation onward in a religious spirit; she had avoided all disputes on petty points of order, and now wished to address herself earnestly to the momentous theme. Had she not a perfect right to do so? And what fitter occasion could occur? The very topic was of a kind to banish personalities and hush low passions. Your delegate was invited by the President to take the platform; she did so with quiet dignity, but scarcely had she reached the stand when all around her on ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... adapted to this plant; the climate, mild and regular, favored its growth and hastened its perfection. The best seed was procured from Connecticut, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida, and Cuba. But for many years the product was rank, coarse, and fitter for sheep-wash than for any ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... C.F. attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every regiment in the British ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... you now, most dear, and most worthy to be most dear, lady, this idle work of mine; which, I fear, like the spider's web, will be thought fitter to be swept away than wove to any other purpose. For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I could well find in my heart to cast out in some desert of forgetfulness ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man—a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist says, "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art, compared with a fine, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... English parentage, was a professional burglar, a confirmed recidivist, and—since he habitually carried firearms—a potential homicide. His general intelligence appears to have been of a low order, his manual skill very imperfect (he was a gas-fitter by trade but never regularly employed). He was nearly illiterate and occasionally but ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... stout Folker the fiddler, "These knights dare not confront us, I ween. I have heard that they hate us. They could not have a fitter time to ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... has taken him. He was fitter for heaven than any of us; he was too gentle for this rough world of ours. We shall mourn for him, but with him ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... to America.[1] A London trading company, which was sending out an expedition for fish and furs, agreed to furnish the Pilgrims passage by the Mayflower, though on terms so hard that the poor exiles said the "conditions were fitter for thieves and bondslaves than ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... than a trading colony like the colony of the "Emperor's Men," or Easterlings. But with the Conquest their number greatly increased. "Many of the citizens of Rouen and Caen passed over thither, preferring to be dwellers in this city, inasmuch as it was fitter for their trading and better stored with the merchandise in which they were wont to traffic." The status of these traders indeed had wholly changed. They could no longer be looked upon as strangers in ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... tried for six years," continued the captain, "to reform you and hold you to the manhood I once knew in you; but I give you up. You are not fit to live, and will never be fitter to die than this morning, when the chance comes to you to die fighting for your country. But I want you to die fighting. Do you wish to see the surgeon ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... call this place?" said Ralph, looking the fellow in the face. "Hellbank would be a fitter name." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... of study, by which her mind has been broadened and deepened. If some prophetic instinct had acquainted her with the high position which the future had in store for her, she could have taken no fitter course to prepare herself to fulfil with credit the duties which, twenty years after, were to devolve upon her as the wife of the ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... figured on their coffins; and with the thought that not only were their portraits there, but their bodies also—for the Egyptian was a firm believer in immortality, and piously preserved the body in a fitter state, as he thought, for reunion with the soul, than if ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... some time for your advice to work out, if it ever does," Coolidge said. "Meanwhile, the more good sleep I get the fitter I shall be ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... manner, and, I trust, the modesty and purity of mind that should grace such beauty. But how will it be six months hence? Her situation is absolutely improper. Lord Strathern has shown himself no more fit to bring up such a daughter, or even to take charge of her, after some fitter person has brought her up, than he is to say mass." For here L'Isle's eye fell on a fat priest, toiling up the hill beside him. "Though he may be as fit for that as some of these gentry. No more fit," continued he, struggling after another simile, "than ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... singled out these Men from the Women and Children, made an Harangue to 'em, of the Miseries and Ignominies of Slavery; counting up all their Toils and Sufferings, under such Loads, Burdens and Drudgeries, as were fitter for Beasts than Men; senseless Brutes, than human Souls. He told 'em, it was not for Days, Months or Years, but for Eternity; there was no End to be of their Misfortunes: They suffer'd not like Men, who might find a Glory and Fortitude in Oppression; but like Dogs, that lov'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... a little peasant; now I stood a jewelled queen— Fitter that a calmer presence in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... worked the mine for the boys, so that money will just do for their preparation for the army, for they're fitter for ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... I will go up to bed at once, if you don't mind, John. I shall be fitter to talk in ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... entered, who at once relieved him of all his difficulties—a precious, an estimable man, who was on intimate terms with Mr. Langley, and had been lately staying at Langley Hall. To this friend all the lover's cares and anxieties were at once confided; and a fitter depositary for such secrets of the heart could hardly have been found. He made no jokes—for he was not a bachelor; he abstained from shaking his head and recommending prudence—for he was not a seasoned husband, or an experienced widower; what he really ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... you laugh? I thought that you never laughed, Erema. At any rate, if you ever do indulge, you might choose a fitter opportunity, I think. You have spoiled his demonstration altogether—see, he does not understand such unkindness—and it is the very first he has uttered since ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... opportunity of laying deep the foundations for a ripe education, and while going on with my work I am going to keep training myself, educating myself, so that year by year, decade by decade, instead of standing still I shall go forward, and grow constantly fitter, and do ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt |
