"Incapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his understanding was indifferent to him, but an affront to one's belle ame is beyond pardon. It was hard that a man who had prodigally thrown away the forces of his life for others should be charged with malignity of heart and an incapacity for friendship. This was the harder, because it was the moral fashion of that day to place friendliness, amiability, the desire to please and to serve, at the very head of all the virtues. The whole correspondence of the time is penetrated to an incomparable degree by a caressing ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... their labors. They had all seated them-selves, and were looking from one to the other of the more important members of the guild with an air which betokened the momentary expectation of a crisis. The only exception was the man who had the violin; with the persistent, untimely industry of incapacity, he twanged the strings, and tuned and retuned the instrument, each time producing a result more astonishingly ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... subject to the merits of the President as a statesman, and little by little as he spoke he became serious and his voice sank into low and confidential tones. He plainly said that the President's incapacity had now become notorious among his followers; that it was only with difficulty his Cabinet and friends could prevent him from making a fool of himself fifty times a day; that all the party leaders who had occasion to deal with him were so thoroughly disgusted that the Cabinet had to pass ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the disgrace of tyrannical and corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is trying now: that is, to combine the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... authority at 3000 miles' distance, when it cannot make itself be respected, or even be treated with common decency, at home.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 479. On the 30th of this month of April—four days after the conversation in the text—John Home recorded:—'Mr. Hume cannot give any reason for the incapacity and want of genius, civil and military, which marks this ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... received intelligence of these disorders, she took care to redress them; and she obliged all the partisans of England to fall into unanimity with Prince Maurice.[**] But though her good sense so far prevailed over her partiality to Leicester, she never could be made fully sensible of his vices and incapacity: the submissions which he made her restored him to her wonted favor; and Lord Buckhurst, who had accused him of misconduct in Holland, lost her confidence for some time, and was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by any affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination, for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality with which ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... Murat's incapacity were not, however, the only causes of this dispersion; the principal certainly was the severity of the winter, which at that moment became extreme. It aggravated every thing, and seemed to have planted itself completely between Wilna ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... last wave, disappear round the corner. The minister used to take a hasty survey lest they should become a sport to the barbarians in a land where for a father to kiss his boy was synonymous with mental incapacity, and then—it was a cat of a girl who oversaw the meeting—they hugged one another for the space of a whole minute, in which time it is wonderful what can be done if your heart is in it and your hat is allowed to go without care. Had ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... accomplishments Jung was eminently qualified for the post he now holds; but his literary acquirements were of a very low order, for upon becoming prime minister he could neither read nor write. Finding great inconvenience from his incapacity in these respects, he applied himself diligently to his alphabet, and was soon able to carry on all official correspondence of any importance to himself. The whole of the political, fiscal, and judicial communications are submitted to him, and the departments controlled by him, very little regard ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... his theory by examples, and only proved his own incapacity as a writer for the stage. His friend SEDAINE (1719-97) was more fortunate. Of the bourgeois drama of the eighteenth century, Le Philosophe sans le savoir alone survives. It is little more than a domestic anecdote rendered dramatic, but ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... yet in it is contained the Open Sesame which gives access to the hidden spirit-treasures of the world. In this unawareness of Reid's of the importance of what he thus had found we must see the reason for his incapacity to develop his philosophy beyond its first beginnings. This handicap arose from the fact that in all his thinking he was guided by a picture of the being of man which - as a child of his time, dominated by the contemporary religious outlook ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... uncommon phenomenon, and they demand explanation. Such occur conspicuously in the psychopathological syndrome so completely described by Janet under the term psychasthenia. Persons thus afflicted feeling an incapacity and an impediment to their free activity and not recognizing that they are sick, endeavour to interpret their feelings. Of course, the interpretation varies somewhat in accordance with the nature of the feelings, and with the person's information ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... only, but on our minds. Such is the privilege which you have assumed of talking nonsense with impunity. But there is, you say, a transition of images flowing on in great crowds in such a way that out of many some one at least must be perceived! I should be ashamed of my incapacity to understand this if you, who assert it, could comprehend it yourselves; for how do you prove that these images are continued in uninterrupted motion? Or, if uninterrupted, still how do you prove them to be ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... other. Your ears are accustomed to flattery, my brother. Daun did not flatter you, and you now see the consequences. But little hope remains. I shall commence the attack—if we do not conquer, we shall die together. I do not bewail the loss of your heart, but rather your utter incapacity and want of judgment. I tell you this plainly, for with one who has perhaps but a few days to live, there is no use of deception. I wish you more happiness than has fallen to my lot, and hope that your misfortunes and disappointments ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... qualities which he had, and the others each in one way or another lacked, are evident. On only one subject—religion—is his mouth almost closed; certainly, as the few utterances that touch it show, from no incapacity of dealing with it, and apparently from no other dislike than a dislike to meddle with anything outside of the purely human province of which he felt that he was universal master—in short from ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... interpretation is applied to the simplest events. Thus, Peter's celebration with allegorical figures and festivals of the beginning of the year on the first of January was due to his desire to restore the worship of false deities and "the old Roman idol Janus." These silly fables, and this incapacity of understanding how a pagan name or emblem can be used without falling back into paganism, betray one of the peculiar features of the Raskol—namely, the realistic nature, of its symbolism, and its matter-of-fact determination to fill images, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... summoneth his foes and fighteth with them fearlessly, is spoken of as a man. He, however, who, relying on the strength of others, summoneth his foes, is an infamous Kshatriya. In consequence of his incapacity, such a one is regarded as the lowest of men. Relying on the strength of others, thou (O Duryodhana), being a coward thyself, desirest yet, O fool, to rebuke thy foes. Having installed (Bhishma) the oldest of all the Kshatriyas, whose heart is ever bent in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the romance and poetry of her heart had been high and noble. How wrong the world is in connecting so closely as it does the capacity for feeling and the capacity for expression,—in thinking that capacity for the one implies capacity for the other, or incapacity for the one incapacity also for the other; in confusing the technical art of the man who sings with the unselfish tenderness of the man who feels! But the world does so connect them; and, consequently, those who express themselves badly are ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... important political consequences, which were to culminate in one of the most curious and interesting revolutions of modern history. In the first place, it marks the termination of the Adelsvaelde, or rule of the nobility. By their cowardice, incapacity, egotism and treachery during the crisis of the struggle, the Danish aristocracy had justly forfeited the respect of every other class of the community, and emerged from the war hopelessly discredited. On the other hand, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... great civil war between the partisans of Caesar and Pompey. After the fall of the latter. Caesar confirmed Hyrcanus in the high priesthood, and allowed him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. But Antipater, presuming on the incapacity of Hyrcanus, renewed his ambitious intrigues, and contrived to make his son, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem, and Herod, a second ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... warranted data to support them. On the whole then, one must say that this work fails to unravel some "knots in this tangled skein of human endeavor and error." When after a survey of the history of the Negro during the last fifty years an investigator concludes that the Negro has shown an incapacity for commerce and finance, and that he must not struggle to equip himself in the same way that the white man has, one must believe that the writer has not the situation thoroughly in hand. The great difficulty of the author ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... much should be given. This ordinance (about the gift of Dakshina) has not proceeded from motives connected with the distribution of wealth. The command of the ordinance, in consequence of the provision in cases of incapacity, is terrible. That command is blind to the competence of the sacrificer.[237] The audition occurs in the Vedas that a person should, with devotion, perform a sacrifice. But what can devotion do when the sacrificer ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... acts and duties of executive officers would be less than it now is? The reason of the thing would seem to be the other way. If the President may remove an incumbent when he becomes satisfied of his unfaithfulness and incapacity, there would appear to be less necessity to give him also a right of control, than there would be if ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... ineffectual, and ended in a painful twisting of the lips, accompanied by a glance at the corner. It would not do; he was weak, and was forced to submit to the humiliation of acknowledging the fact to himself. With a bitter scorn of his incapacity, he began to wonder whether he could ever get so far as to kill Paolo in the first instance. He foresaw that if he did kill him, he could never ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... see that. There was no doubt that Miss Hobson was superbly beautiful and would have shed lustre on any part which involved the minimum of words and the maximum of clothes: but in the pivotal role of a serious play, her very physical attributes only served to emphasize and point her hopeless incapacity. Sally remembered Mr. Faucitt's story of the lady who got the bird at Wigan. She did not see how history could fail to repeat itself. The theatrical public of America will endure much from youth and beauty, ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... Thus, after indicating frankly the aching malady under which the social slate is laboring, we have sought for the causes in the imperfection of the laws, in the irrational condition of our manners, in the incapacity of our minds, and in the contradictions which characterize our habits. A single point still claims our observation, and that is the first onslaught of the evil we ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... independence? Why do so, if thereby you lower and degrade the most Italian sovereignty of the whole peninsula? Why, more especially, do so now, in presence of all these unchained evil passions, and thereby give against the Holy See a sentence of incapacity, and thus, in the eyes of Christendom, insult that unarmed and oppressed Majesty? You say he will only lose the Romagna and the Legations. But allow me to ask you by what right you take them? And why not take all the rest, if you please? ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... Besides, the laziness and incapacity of the negro had been more than he could endure. With no ties of tradition or habits of life to bind him, he simply refused to tolerate them. In this feeling Elsie had grown early to sympathize. She discharged Aunt Cindy for feeding her children from the kitchen, and brought a cook and house ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... defects. But, in good truth, no man, now-a-days, composes verses for publication with a slovenly neglect of their language. It is a fine and laborious manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry; and the faults which it has, may, for the most part, be set down to bad taste or incapacity, rather than to carelessness or oversight. With Mr Wordsworth and his friends, it is plain that their peculiarities of diction are things of choice, and not of accident. They write as they do, upon principle and system; and it evidently costs them much pains to keep ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... geographical position, she bid for commercial supremacy. It is said of States, as of women, they are "fickle, coy and hard to please." For, changed and governed from England's Downing Street, "with all its red tape circumlocution," "Tile Barncal," incapacity, and "how-not-to-do-it" ability that attached to that venerable institution, its people were ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... March nearly all notables felt bound to be up at Montgomery helping to rock the Confederacy's cradle. Whence came back sad stories of the incapacity, negligence, and bickerings of misplaced men. It was "almost as bad as at Washington." Friends still in the city were tremendously busy; yet real business—Commerce—with scarce a moan of complaint, lay ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... ocean, of manoeuvring and of fighting under sail; to Drake the ship had become the fighting unit, to the Duke of Medina Sidonia a ship was simply a vehicle for soldiers, and a sea-fight was simply a land-fight on sea. The crowning illustration of Spain's incapacity to adapt itself to new conditions is perhaps the fact that only a marquis or duke could ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... please your honours, this poor fellow, on his own behalf, and on the part of his fellow—prisoners, complains of the incapacity of the sworn interpreter, and requests that I may be made the channel of communication ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... would imagine should infuse alacrity into the limbs of a cripple sooner than the Bath waters, was to offer herself for his partner, he would answer he never danced, even though the ladies lost their ball by it. Nor doth this denial arise from incapacity, for he was in his youth an excellent dancer, and still retains sufficient knowledge of the art, and sufficient abilities in his limbs to practise it, but from an affectation of gravity which he will not sacrifice to the eagerest desire of others. Dyskolus ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Ralegh knew nothing of it till after the trial, is extravagant. Even Hallam's reference to 'the hostility of Cecil, so insidious and implacable,' seems exaggerated and unjust. The Minister was conscious of no malice. He took no pleasure in the present prosecution. But moral cowardice and incapacity to dispense with power now, as formerly, explain an attitude, which, it must be admitted, is hardly to be distinguished from that of an inveterate enemy. He could not afford, having, after a struggle, clambered on board the new ship of State, to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... new service, for each offence; bishops were to be appointed only by the queen, and consecrated at her bidding. All officers and ministers, ecclesiastical or lay, were bound to take the oath of supremacy, under pain of forfeiture or incapacity; and any one who maintained the spiritual supremacy of the Pope was to forfeit, for his first offence, all his estates, real and personal, or be imprisoned for one year, if not worth twenty pounds; for the second offence, to be liable to praemunire; and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... you a proof of my incapacity," she said, turning her large luminous gaze upon her instructor, "in order to make you duly appreciate what you have undertaken. Now, tell me truly and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... stand in the rear of the Old World races. Both the geology and zoology of the continent were arrested in their development. Vegetable life alone has been favored. "The aboriginal American (wrote Von Martius) is at once in the incapacity of infancy and unpliancy of old age; he unites the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... position was that to which they would not give attention. It was not this or that thing which impeded their way, but they themselves stopped the way; and if they asked him what prevented the people from remaining obstruction, owing to the inherent incapacity and weakness of the people. But whence this weakness? Was it because they were deformed? because they were worse than other people? because they were too few and too insignificant to occupy the country? Those arguments did not weigh with him. They were not true; he did not consider them of ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... further, can you spend your time to better purpose than in family prayer? I think not. It is the best husbandry of time. Says Philip Henry to his children, "Prayer and provender hinder no man's journey." But another pleads incapacity. He has not the gift of speech, and cannot make an eloquent prayer. This is no excuse. Prayer is the gift of the Holy Spirit; and if you have the spirit of prayer, you will find words for its utterance. Besides, eloquence does not condition ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... things in themselves; for in that case it is, with all to which it serves as condition, a nonentity. But the foundation for this kind of idealism we have already destroyed in the transcendental aesthetic. Problematical idealism, which makes no such assertion, but only alleges our incapacity to prove the existence of anything besides ourselves by means of immediate experience, is a theory rational and evidencing a thorough and philosophical mode of thinking, for it observes the rule not to form a decisive judgement ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of avarice or meanness, with the sum comparatively inconsiderable of fifteen millions of francs a year, are marvellous, and expose his successors, and indeed all European Princes, to the reproach of negligence or incapacity. In this branch of his government he owed much to Duroc. It is said that they often visited the markets of Paris (les halles) dressed in plain clothes and early in the morning. When any great accounts were to be submitted to the Emperor, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... her courtesy to which the girl alluded. When, however, her boy in service was brought home ill, she had sent to ask for what she now required, on the very ground that it had been offered to her before. The misunderstanding had arisen from the total incapacity of Mrs Oldcastle to enter sympathetically into the feelings of one as superior to herself in character as she was ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... was hardly possible to find other ministers who to equal abilities would add equal subservience, it is not surprizing that the highest offices were constantly filled by men of notorious incapacity. Indeed, the King seemed to have an instinctive antipathy to everything great and noble. During the reign of George II the elder Pitt had won for himself a reputation which covered the world, and had carried to an unprecedented ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... litigant, Collantine, to whom Racine and Wycherley owe something, with the unlucky author "Charroselles"[259] and a subordinate judge, Belastre, who has been pitch-forked by interest into a place which he finally loses by his utter incapacity and misconduct. To understand it requires even more knowledge of old French law terms generally than parts of Balzac do of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... responsibilities and avocations when her own were embarrassing her sufficiently. Her household web had got warped and entangled in her careless, inexperienced hands, and vexed and mortified her with a sense of incapacity and failure—an oppression which she could not own to Hector Garret, because there was no common ground, and no mutual understanding between them. When Leslie came to Otter she found the housekeeping in the hands of an Irish follower ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... entreating, and pressing upon others than I. If I am so, and a degree beyond all modern example, 'tis no great wonder, so many parts of my manners contributing to it: a little natural pride, an impatience at being refused, the moderation of my desires and designs, my incapacity for business, and my most beloved qualities, idleness and freedom; by all these together I have conceived a mortal hatred to being obliged to any other, or by any other than myself. I leave no ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... very eyes. Of all these the wise man's words are true. They are vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. The thing which has been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun. Incapacity of progress; the same outward civilization repeating itself again and again; the same intrinsic certainty of decay and death;—these are the marks of all empire, which is not founded on that foundation which is ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... involved in its action; but he was, also, the first lawyer at the bar of the Supreme Court and was known as a ripe and cultivated scholar. So the people who shook their heads at him—and they were neither few nor far between—did it on other grounds than that of incapacity. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... were so weakened by the want and hardship of the winter that they were no longer in condition for effective labor. Some of the bosses who were in need of added hands were obliged to turn men away because of physical incapacity. One instance of this I shall not soon forget. It was when I overheard, early one morning at a factory gate, an interview between a would-be laborer and the boss. I knew the applicant for a Russian Jew, who had at home an ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... ingenuity has made still wilder work. From the time of Irenaeus and Origen down to the present day, there has not been a single generation in which great divines have not been led into the most absurd expositions of Scripture, by mere incapacity to distinguish analogies proper, to use the scholastic phrase, from analogies metaphorical. [See some interesting remarks on this subject in Bishop Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, Dialogue iv.] It is curious that Bacon has himself mentioned ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was not obliged to confirm him whom they might elect, making this declaration for the benefit of him who presumed to be most fit to be chosen. Although he was challenged and called upon to declare the impediment or incapacity of that man or of any other, he was not willing to do so, since in truth there was no such disability. As a result of this and other acts of tyranny, he forced a new election and new vote, to the great disgust and astonishment of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... sympathetic feelings. The better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people. Half the cruelty in the world is the direct result of stupid incapacity to put one's self in the other man's place. So closely inter-related are our intellectual and moral natures that the development of sympathy is very considerably determined by increasing width and variety of experience. From the simplest form of sympathy, such as the painful thrill ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... marriage she had no charms of person more remarkable than rosy comeliness and the symmetry of supple limb. As for the nurture of her mind, it had been intrusted to home-governesses of respectable incapacity. Martin Warricombe married her because she was one of a little circle of girls, much alike as to birth and fortune, with whom he had grown up in familiar communication. Timidity imposed restraints upon him which made his choice almost a matter of accident. As befalls often enough, the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the will, and had gone to London to "see about it," by which word poor Fanny expressed all the business that her maintenance depended on. If an old general wished to put a major in temptation, could he have found a better means of doing so? Rachel even thought that Fanny's incapacity to understand business had made her mistake the terms of the bequest, and that Sir Stephen must have secured his property to his children; but Fanny was absolutely certain that this was not the case, for she said the Major had made her at once sign a will dividing the property ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a good natured, indolent, blundering, empty-headed swell; the chief character in Tom Taylor's dramatic piece entitled Our American Cousin. He is greatly characterized by his admiration of "Brother Sam," for his incapacity to follow out the sequence of any train of thought, and for supposing all are insane who differ ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... begin with first principles; that the woman should decide for herself, without referring to her husband, what she should eat for dinner. But after some efforts to attain sufficient personal will, she confessed her incapacity, and I therefore proposed to the husband that she should be kept in her room until she had regained her will. They went away hopeful, but he called a few days after to tell me that the experiment had failed. For after striving for many hours to decide between soles ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the stolen notes. Here again I learnt that to refuse payment was impossible, and that all I could hope was that each note changed would give me a clue as to the whereabouts of the thief. Each forward step in the matter showed me more plainly the difficulties of the task I had undertaken, and my own incapacity for such work. Nothing is so good for a man's vanity as contact with ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... must have been mad to place that drunkard at their head; and mark my words, Fouquier, if the struggle come, it is that man's incapacity and cowardice that will destroy us. Yes, thou mayst live thyself to accuse thy beloved Robespierre, and to perish ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... may happen to be thrown in his path through life, no matter how high or how steep the mountain may be, but which often forsakes him the moment the summit is gained, the point of difficulty passed; and leaves him prostrated, with energies gone, nerves unstrung, and a feeling of incapacity pervading the entire frame that renders the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... they depend entirely on the extinction of intermediate species. Some naturalists, however, affirm that though driven from considering sterility as the characteristic of species, that an entire incapacity to propagate together is the best evidence of the existence of natural genera. Even if we put on one side the undoubted fact that some species of the same genus will not breed together, we cannot possibly admit the above rule, seeing ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... at length arrived, she was quite glad to get away from that kind, unobtrusive scrutiny of which she alone was aware. She went to her room, and sitting wearily on the bed she realised for the first time in her life the incapacity to think. It is a realisation which usually comes but once or twice in a lifetime, and we are therefore unable to get accustomed to it. She was conscious of intense pressure within her brain, of a hopeless weight upon her heart, but she could define neither. She ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the eaglet than of the full-grown eagle even to the last. He continues "mewing his mighty youth" a little too long. There is a tentativeness of manner which seems to come from a conscious aptitude for many poetic styles and an incapacity to determine which should be definitively adopted and cultivated to perfection. Hence one too often returns from any prolonged ramble through Coleridge's poetry with an unsatisfied feeling which does not trouble us on our ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... peace. But would it be wise, or would it not rather be the extreme of folly, to stop at this point, and to leave the government intrusted with the care of the national defense in a state of absolute incapacity to provide for the protection of the community against future invasions of the public peace, by foreign war or domestic convulsions? If, on the contrary, we ought to exceed this point, where can we stop, short of an indefinite power ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... business of theirs. However, Lebedeff had not lost heart, and went off to a clever lawyer,—a worthy and respectable man, whom he knew well. This old gentleman informed him that the thing was perfectly feasible if he could get hold of competent witnesses as to Muishkin's mental incapacity. Then, with the assistance of a few influential persons, he would soon see the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... case, generally becomes more severe, and certainly more obnoxious. The broken spirit of the people makes submission a matter of course, so that there is no effectual resistance made to its power. Incapacity to pay comes at last, and defeats the end; but, between incapacity and resistance, the difference is ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... their houses, modestly confessing, it may be presumed, their own incapacity, mainly trust to wax candles and upholstery. Gentlemen seem to rely on their white waistcoats. To these are added, for the delight of the more sensual, champagne and such good things of the table as fashion allows to be still considered as comestible. Even in this respect the world is deteriorating. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... and Saumur demanded "that there may be formed a plan of national education for the young"; the clergy of Lyons that education be restricted "to a teaching body whose members may not be removable except for negligence, misconduct, or incapacity; that it may no longer be conducted according to arbitrary principles, and that all public instructors be obliged to conform to a uniform plan adopted by the States- General"; the clergy of Blois that a system of colleges under church control be formed (R. 252); the nobility of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... incapacity of attending to the parts of time in our dreams, arises our ignorance of the length of the night; which, but from our constant experience to the contrary, we should conclude was but a few minutes, when our sleep is perfect. The same happens in our reveries; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... who gave this opinion were R. Gifford and Sir John Copley himself. I, being an ignorant person, next looked into Burn's Justice, and there I found that the penalties attached to a premunire, were attainder, forfeiture of goods, incapacity to bring an action, and liability to be slain by any one with impunity. As this was a matter touching life and fortune, therefore he could not be expected, after having acquired such knowledge, to go to the Pope of Rome; and yet to the pope they must go if they would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... can be had on an author of such a frame of mind, so removed from the scene of action, and so devoted to the Welsh intruder on the throne. Superadded to this incapacity and defects, he had prejudices or attachments of a private nature: he had singular affection for the Beauchamps, earls of Warwick, zealous Lancastrians, and had written their lives. One capital crime that he imputes to Richard is the imprisonment of his mother-in-law, ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... short-sighted policy against which we might declaim: for, setting aside the absence of punishment to a black, where confinement is accompanied with ease and regular dietary; to which he has not hitherto been accustomed (to say nothing of his incapacity to understand the nature of his crime, or the cause of his incarceration); the contamination he receives during his sojourn in those fearful sinks of infamy, complete his immoral training; and when he again breathes the fresh air of freedom, he is as accomplished a ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... incapacity plain. The execution of the King had filled them with alarm, and with hatred against the ruder and more robust party who had forced that startling act of vengeance upon them. Puny social disgusts prevented them from co-operating with Danton or with Robespierre. Prussia and Austria ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... and humor surprise is part of the technique and constitutes part of the pleasure. Surprise usually heightens the succeeding feeling, whether of joy, sorrow, anger, fear, pleasure or pain, or in any form. But sometimes the effect of surprise is so benumbing that an incapacity to feel, to realize, is the most marked result and it is only afterward that the proper emotion or ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... confined to the fields. The experiment of education, continued for more than one generation, has never been tried. The black is in many of his endowments inferior to the white; but until he and his children and his children's children have shown an incapacity to be raised by a suitable training, honestly given, to an intellectual and moral condition that shall fit them for self-dependence, we have no right to assert that slavery is a necessary condition, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... mainly come about through the occasional birth of individuals, who, without design on their own parts, nevertheless made them better or worse, and who, accordingly, either survived and transmitted their improvement, or perished, they and their incapacity together? ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... expected reinforcements. The battle of Canopa was fought on the 21st March under disadvantageous circumstances; and General Lanusse being killed in the action, General Reynier's disposition prevented his supplying his chief's incapacity. The battle, though remaining indecisive, left the English masters of the coast, and constantly revictualled ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... it possible for any one to be sceptical in matters of religion, who will deign to revert to its principles, and closely examine the notion of God, who serves as its basis? Doubt generally arises either from indolence, weakness, indifference, or incapacity. With many people, to doubt is to fear the trouble of examining things, which are thought uninteresting. But religion being presented to men as their most important concern in this and the future world, skepticism and doubt on this subject ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... empire in the East. The foundations of this empire were laid by your petitioners, at that time neither aided nor controlled by Parliament, at the same period at which a succession of administrations under the control of Parliament were losing, by their incapacity and rashness, another great empire on the ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... gorge had risen at these evidences of hopeless incapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence of Mrs. Reed—a soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried in her small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitterness and antagonism of the typical "Southern rights" woman; nor of her two daughters, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... what did become of him? (Postmaster General Barry) Why, the President immediately expressed his high disapprobation of his almost unequaled incapacity and corruption by appointing him to a foreign mission, with a salary and outfit of $18,000 a year! The party now attempt to throw Barry off, and to avoid the responsibility of his sins. Did not the President indorse those sins ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... does not for that reason lay claim to artistic beauty in the ideal sense. Judged by the standard of ideal beauty, even such correct representation will be defective. In this connection we may remark that the defects of a work of art are not to be considered simply as always due to the incapacity of the artist; defectiveness of form has also its root in defectiveness of content. Thus, for instance, the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, in their artistic objects, their representations of the gods, and their idols, adhered to formlessness, or to a vague and inarticulate ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... consent, and so is Allan too. Go on," resumed Neelie, looking over the reader's shoulder. "Never mind all that prosing of Blackstone's, about the husband being of years of discretion, and the wife under twelve. Abominable wretch! the wife under twelve! Skip to the third incapacity, if there is one." ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... negro looked their incapacity to answer that question. Just then the answer came in the form they least expected, for a sound of many voices in clamorous talk suddenly broke on their ears. The speakers, whoever they might be, were still distant, and the formation of the ground prevented ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... scene in which himself was acting, and considered the doom that seemed to brood upon the schooner, a horror that was almost superstitious fell upon him. And yet the strange thing was, he did not falter. He who had proved his incapacity in so many fields, being now falsely placed amid duties which he did not understand, without help, and it might be said without countenance, had hitherto surpassed expectation; and even the shameful misconduct and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... further observe, that the habit of pursuing any occupation, which requires no mental exertion, induces an indolence or incapacity of intellect. Mere artists are commonly as stupid as mere artificers, and these are little more ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... ought not merely to destroy his victim. He ought to try a bit to make him feel his error—perhaps not enough to convert him, but enough to give him a bad conscience and to weaken the energy of his defence. These violent caricatures of men's beliefs arouse only contempt for the incapacity of their authors to see the situations out of which the problems grow. To treat the negative character of one abstracted element as annulling all the positive features with which it coexists, is no way to change any ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... for his family, and for the nation; and in closing, for himself, that it might please God to avert his heavy calamity, or grant him resignation to bear it. Then he burst into tears, and his reason again fled.[1] In consequence of the incapacity of the King, his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, was appointed regent (1811), and on the King's death came to the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... government." The throne is hereditary, after the principle of the Salic Law; that is, it may be inherited only by and through males. Elaborate provision is made for the exercise of regal authority in the event of the minority or the incapacity of the sovereign. During a minority (which terminates with the close of the king's eighteenth year) the prince who stands next in the order of succession, provided he be twenty-one years of age, is authorized to act as regent. In the lack of male relatives ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... is an institution not to be had in its entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers. Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere you may have—for money—dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity. But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney—in figure, colour, texture, and smell, like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny; is only to be drawn at the fountain-head. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... soon forgotten, and is still circulating among the juniors of the law-courts. "Let me see," said his lordship, "you have been convicted before, haven't you?"—"Yes, sir," answered the man; "but it was due to the incapacity of my counsel rather than to any fault on my part."—"It always is," said Lord Avory, with a grim smile, "and you have my sincere sympathy."—"And I deserve it," retorted the man, "seeing that you were ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... man, black or white, fails to do, whether for good or evil, usually gives you a truer knowledge of the man than the things he succeeds in doing. When you fully realise this acuteness on one hand and this mechanical incapacity on the other which exist in the people you are studying, you can go ahead. Only, I beseech you, go ahead carefully. When you have found the easy key that opens the reason underlying a series of facts, as for example, these: a Benga spits on your hand as a greeting; you ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... truths we receive from God. Truth is truth always and ever. We may not be able to comprehend what is revealed to us, and little the wonder. Our intelligence is not infinite, and God's is. Many things that men tell us we believe without understanding; God deserves our trust more than men. Our incapacity for understanding all that faith teaches us proves one thing: that there are limits to our powers, which may be surprising to some, but ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... laid claim to the whole of Long Island, and commenced a settlement at its eastern extremity. In the meantime very bitter complaints were sent to Holland respecting the incapacity of the Director Van Twiller. It was said that he, neglecting the affairs of the colony, was directing all his energies to enriching himself. He had become, it was reported, the richest landholder in the province. Though sustained by very powerful ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... to make a priest of Endeavoring to hide my incapacity, I rarely fail to show it Endeavoring to rise too high we are in danger of falling Foresight with me has always embittered enjoyment Hat only fit to be carried under his arm Love of the marvellous is natural to the human heart ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau • David Widger
... rascal's, and that he shammed dulness, so that he might be degraded into Miss Raby's class—if she would teach ME, I know, before George, I would put on a pinafore and a little jacket—but no, it is a natural incapacity for the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by the political philosopher, seeing how it tends to the weakening and undermining of government; whereas the same considerations that make out government to be at all a boon and a necessity to human nature, argue incapacity and instability in the governing power to be a deplorable evil. We must add, that where the people keep in their hands any power to alter the polity, or transfer the administration to other hands, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... fortunate both for our safety and the safety of the Constitution, that these politico-sentimental gentlemen represent only a certain theory of the Constitution, and not the Constitution itself. Their leading defect is an incapacity to adjust their profound legal intellects to the altered circumstances of the country. Any child in political knowledge is competent to give them this important item of political information,—that by no constitution ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical shamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal, who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud godlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts of her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these early days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by love, the crouching murderers, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... exclamations of indignation and terror, they see plots on all sides, imagine invisible cords pulling in an opposite direction, and they call upon the people to cut them. With the full weight of their inexperience, incapacity, and improvidence, of their fears, credulity, and dogmatic obstinacy, they urge on popular attacks, and their newspaper articles or discourses are all summed up in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
