"Inaptitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first lesson a trial. Millicent was quick and precise; she gave her instructions almost sharply, and made little allowance for Jenny's ignorance and inaptitude. ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... and society, but certainly not clever either in the arts or sciences,—his company is pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [Entre nous, I always read ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... But at Rome, we feel, the spoken tongue had a difficulty to overcome, and the mellifluously prolonged rhetoric of Cicero, delightful as it may be, scarcely seems to reveal to us the genius of the Latin tongue. The inaptitude of English for the purposes of speech is even more conspicuous, and is again well illustrated in our oratory. Gladstone was an orator of acknowledged eloquence, but the extreme looseness and redundancy into which his ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... houses, give them tea for themselves, and forage for their horses, and cajole them in every conceivable way. The Mongols take all they hear to be perfectly genuine, and congratulate themselves—conscious, as they are, of their inaptitude for business—upon their good-fortune in thus meeting with brothers Ahaton, as they say, in whom they can place full confidence, and who will undertake to manage their whole business for them. A good dinner, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... inaptitude for such studies as political economy is found in his fancy, by no means 'rich and rare,' but meagre and trite, that taxes can never injure public prosperity by mere excess of quantity; if they injure, we ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... The goaded fibre, l. 339. Old age consists in the inaptitude to motion from the inirritability of the system, and the consequent want of fibrous contraction; see ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the Navy service of the United States shall be discharged therefrom prior to the completion of his term of enlistment, except for one of the following causes: Undesirability, inaptitude, physical or mental ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... at what periods woodcocks used to be sluggish or alert when I was a sportsman; but, upon my mentioning this circumstance to a friend, he thinks he has observed them to be remarkably listless against snowy foul weather: if this should be the case, then the inaptitude for flying arises only from an eagerness for food; as sheep are observed to be very intent on grazing ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of "every man for himself." The idea of perfection as an harmonious expansion of human nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense [16] energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country, and its preachers have, ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... near ancestor having written a Latin poem in the Harvard Gratulatio on the accession of George the Third. Suffice it to say, that, whether not satisfied with such limited approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,—that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... attempt to try their capacities with quibbles and silly puzzles. Children, who are expert at answering these, have rarely been well educated: the extreme simplicity of sensible children, will surprise those who have not been accustomed to it, and many will be provoked by their inaptitude to understand the common-place wit ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... instances of some, who could not distinguish certain colours; and yet whose eyes, in other respects, were not imperfect. Philos. Transact. Which seems to have been owing to the want of irritability, or the inaptitude to action, of some classes of fibres which compose the retina. Other permanent defects depend on the diseased state of the external organ. Class I. 1. 3. 14. I. 2. 3. 25. IV. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of quadrilles and country dances or contredanses, the inaptitude of nine-tenths of mankind for dancing was still more eminently demonstrated in the murders of the minuet. For (as Morall, the dancing-master of Marie Antoinette, used passionately to exclaim)—que de choses dans un minuet! What worlds of modest dignity—of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... slaved at "footer," and displayed a curious inaptitude for squash racquets. At all games Caesar and Scaife were precociously proficient. John's clumsiness annoyed them. Often the Caterpillar joined him and Fluff, giving them to understand that this must be regarded as an act ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... either the discharged servants of the Hudson Bay Company or the relatives of persons still in the employment of the Company. In contradistinction to this latter class they bear the name of "free men" and if freedom from all restraint, general inaptitude for settled employment, and love for the pursuits of hunting be the characteristics of free men, then they are eminently entitled to the name they bear. With very few exceptions, they have preferred adopting the exciting but precarious ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... day of December, Dan Dalzell's name was formally reported by the Academic Board in a report to the superintendent which recommended that Midshipman Dalzell be dropped from the rolls for "inaptitude in his studies." ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock |
