"Incompetent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasant things is this world, it requires to be felt to be appreciated; and, for that reason, it is a subject on which the unworthy chronicler is altogether incompetent to speak. The first words of the ceremony dropped from the prelate's urbane lips, and Sir Norman's heart danced a tarantella within him. "Wilt thou?" inquired the bishop, blandly, and slipped a plain gold ring on one pretty finger of Leoline's hand and all heard the old, old formula: ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... could make a settlement for the niece's contingent interest at his own expense. It took about six months but at last a settlement was reached through the courts. For about five hundred dollars paid to the guardian of the incompetent woman and an equal amount in court and lawyer's fees, he obtained a quit claim deed of her interest that satisfied the requirements of the corporation that was to insure the validity of the title. The day after the purchase was consummated, the new owner was offered a price for the property that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... invasion of the coast of Zealand, was about to be tried by the High Council of War, which is wholly dependent on the Prince, when the States of Holland solemnly signified to the Prince that he ought to cause prosecution to be stayed before this tribunal, as incompetent, and carry it up before the Court of Justice of Holland and Zealand. This High Council of War, is, besides, odious to the nation, and regarded ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... be infringed. The state shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office of public trust, or for any vote at any election; nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror on account of religious belief or the absence thereof. There shall be no union of church and state, nor shall any church dominate the state or interfere with its functions. No public ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... gentleman and lady cannot look like the genuine article. Mediocrity shows itself for what it is worth, no matter what temporary name it may have acquired. Ill-temper cannot hide itself under the simper of assumed amiability. The querulousness of incompetent complaining natures confesses itself almost as much as in the tones of the voice. The anxiety which strives to smooth its forehead cannot get rid of the telltale furrow. The weakness which belongs to the infirm of purpose and vacuous of thought is hardly to be disguised, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... gray horse, the General rode through the disorder, quietly directing the incompetent militia officers in their tasks of collecting their men; and behind him, splendidly horsed and caparisoned, cantered the tall Oneida, known as Thomas Spencer the Interpreter, calm, composed, inscrutable eyes fixed on his beloved ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... crept into their public administration during moments of relaxed vigilance. But even this was ascribed to weakness and cowardice. Latterly our people have been represented by influential statesmen and on hundreds of platforms in England as incompetent, uncivilised, dishonourable, untrustworthy, corrupt, bloodthirsty, treacherous, etc., etc., so that not only the British public, but nearly the whole world, began to believe that we stood on the same level as the wild beasts. In the face of these taunts ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... writer, and stabs in the dark have wounded good men's fame. Neither, again, those other instances where reviewers, not being omniscient, (yet is their knowledge most various and brilliant,) having been from want of specific information incompetent to judge of the matters in question, have striven to shroud their ignorance of the greater topic in clamorous attacks of its minor incidents; burrowing into a mound if they cannot force a breach through the rampart; and mystifying ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the views of these two naturalists, but it is clear that Darwin, although fully believing in the efficiency of protective resemblance and replying to St George Mivart's contention that Natural Selection was incompetent to produce it ("Origin" (6th edition) London, 1872, pages 181, 182; see also page 66.), never entirely agreed with Wallace's estimate of its importance. Thus the following extract from a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker, May ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... are doing a great business, and to all intents and purposes we are doing it on false business principles, and with an absolutely incompetent staff of clerks. What would you think of a merchant who dismissed all his book-keepers every four years, and engaged a set of shoemakers, or tailors, or artists, or musicians to fill ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... is said that you cite causes between two Romans, even against their will, before your tribunal. If you are conscious that this has been done by you, do not so presume in future, lest while seeking the office of Judge, for which you are incompetent, you wake up to find yourself a culprit. You, of all men, ought to be mindful of the Edictum, since you insist on its being followed by others. If not, if this rule is not observed by you, your whole power of decreeing shall be taken from you. Let the administration of the laws be preserved ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... and Bucks, examining his revolver, which he had all the time felt he was wretchedly incompetent to shoot, sat down beside Stanley, already fast asleep, to stand his watch. He had lost Sublette's rifle in falling into the wash-out. At least he had found no leisure to pick it up and save his hair in the same instant, ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... across the Borders on the West. The Warden was warned by his spies, but he had only a few hundreds to meet the thousands of Scots. But, if Norfolk's invasion was an empty parade, the Scots attempt was a fearful rout. Under their incompetent leader, Oliver Sinclair, they got entangled in Solway Moss; enormous numbers were slain or taken prisoners, and among them were some of the greatest men in Scotland. James died broken-hearted at the news, leaving his kingdom to the week-old infant, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... another interview; but my beloved, though pleased that the meeting had taken place, expressed no desire for its repetition. I was cruelly distressed ; the fear of doing wrong has been always the leading principle of my internal guidance, and here I felt incompetent to judge what was right. Overpowered, therefore, by my own inability to settle that point, and my terror lest I should mistake it, I ceased to resist ; and Dr. Elloi, while my patient was sleeping from opium, glided ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the authorities opened a school nearer us than the one I had been attending, but the teachers were usually very incompetent and ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... in 1895. The primitive virtue which had characterised the farmers broke down in the face of temptation. The country Boers were little affected, some of them not at all, but the Pretoria Government became a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and incompetent to the last degree. Officials and imported Hollanders handled the stream of gold which came in from the mines, while the unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the taxation was fleeced at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mind. As an administrator, as an Irwadian public servant in a touchy job, Garr Symm, a drunkard, was obviously grossly incompetent. What other qualifications did he have which gave him the top Irwadian Security job? Ramsey didn't know. He sighed. The Vegan girl's mouth formed a rictus of pain. Ramsey had a hunch he was going ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless. That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid advocacy. To denizens of the midworld the word ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... but there are none of those common sounds usually associated with the name to English ears. No braying of trumpets, clashing of cymbals, or hoarse groaning of gongs; no roaring through broad-mouthed horns, smacking of canvass, or pattering of incompetent rifles. All these vulgar noises belonging to a fair, are banished out of the gates of the city: which is itself deeply occupied with ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... La Barre, an old naval officer who had proved himself as capable at sea as he was now to show himself incompetent on land. He was the antithesis of his headstrong predecessor, weak in decision, without personal energy, without imagination, but likewise without any of Frontenac's skill in the art of making enemies. With La Barre came Meulles, an abler and more energetic colleague, who was to succeed ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... his recent support to the policy of complaisance to France. His appointment aroused anger and consternation; and General Kalckreuth expressed to Gentz the general opinion when he said that the Duke was quite incompetent for such a command: "His character is not strong enough, his mediocrity, irresolution, and untrustworthiness would ruin the best undertaking." The Duke himself was aware of his incompetence. Why then, we ask, did he accept the command? The answer is startling; but it rests on ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... are written by incompetent hacks for the dubious delectation of the lower middle class. The stories, in case you didn't know, are taken line by line from the works of various popular writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... of country life that he had acquired enabled him to devote with extraordinary profit to the general improvement of his estate. He replaced tumble-down old farm buildings with new constructions on the most approved principles; bought or pensioned off certain slovenly incompetent tenants; threw sundry petty holdings into large farms suited to the buildings he constructed; purchased here and there small bits of land, commodious to the farms they adjoined, and completing the integrity of his ring-fence; stubbed up profitless woods which diminished the value of neighbouring ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... respect to the acquisition, possession and transmission of property. Imprisonment for debt has been abolished. Exemptions from executions have been largely added to, and in most of the states homesteads are rendered incapable of seizure and sale upon forced process. Witnesses are no longer incompetent by reason of interest, even though they be parties to the litigation. Indictments have been simplified, and an indictment for the most serious of crimes is now the simplest of all. in several of the states ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Finn. The countries were made to run in harness. One is the complement of the other. The brainy dwellers of Hibernia know this, and stick like limpets to England. Only the visionary, the lazy, the ne'er-do weels, the incompetent, the disorderly, the ignorant, the ambitious, want Home Rule. The contemners of law and order want to flourish and grow fat. The Healys and Sextons and all of that ilk know that while under an Irish ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... clever enough—if he is not narrow, insolent, and unbalanced—he will usually contrive while pleasing himself to please the public, or a public. It is his business to do so. If he does not do so he proves himself incompetent. He is merely mumbling to himself. Just as the finite connotes the infinite, so an artist connotes a public. The artist who says he doesn't care a fig for the public is a liar. He may have many admirable virtues, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... no better? Can I do anything for you?—Let me do that," she added hastily, as she saw the success of the dinner put in jeopardy by an awkward movement of the incompetent cook. In another moment Shenac's black dress was pinned up, and soon the dinner was on the table, and the father and children were seated at it. To her husband's entreaty that she would try and eat something, ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... distinguished from the incompetent horde of romance-writers, whom Scott condemned, by the powerful eloquence of his style and by his ability to analyse emotion, to write as if he himself were swayed by the feeling he describes. His insane extravagances have at least the virtue that they come flaming hot ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... ignore the fact that the mere word "missionary" aroused suspicion in the average English unconventional mind—such as those of these clean, natural-minded boys—would be a great mistake. Unquestionably, as in the case of Dickens, a missionary was unpractical if not hypocritical, and mildly incompetent if not secretly vicious. I found myself always fighting against the idea that I was termed a missionary. The men I loved and admired, especially such men as those on our athletic teams, felt really strongly about it. Henry Martyn—as ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Incompetent men and hungry demagogues had clamored for high positions in the army. Their influence had been so great he had been forced to find berths for ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... murderer all in one. For in undertaking to do things for which he has no adequate training and skill, he pretends to be what he is not. He takes money for which he is unable to render a genuine equivalent. And by inducing people to trust their lives in his incompetent and unskilled hands he turns them aside from securing competent treatment, and so confirms disease ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the fussy and incompetent Earl of Loudon, 1756-57, whom Franklin likened to Saint George on the sign-posts, "always galloping but never advancing." He gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him from the attempt. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the thief needed things more than he did. Such a story is in strange contrast to the claims made for other kings, that theft was impossible in their dominions. Yet the two types of king are afterwards praised by the same people; and the really arresting fact is that the incompetent king is praised the more highly of the two. And exactly as in the case of the last Lancastrian, we find that the praise has really a very practical meaning in the long run. When we turn from the destructive to the constructive side of the Middle Ages we find ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... weak, but both are shining examples of goodness and bravery. The women of the tale are of course all beautiful and devoted members of their various households. The men of the tale vary between the competent and the incompetent; the lazy and idle, and the industrious; the cunning, and ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... fact that it has the tree-climbing foot, and is not well fitted for motion such as is required in running. To attain anything like speed in this exercise it is necessary to support the body on the tips of the toes. Every man who has gained any skill in this art knows full well how incompetent he is if he tries to run with rapidity in the flat-footed manner. The bear cannot essay this method of progression on the toe-tips because its loose-jointed feet cannot be made to support its heavy body. In this way arose the necessity of developing a peculiar kind of foot when ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... plausibility, argue that the vast intellectual chasm between the Ape and Man implies a corresponding structural chasm in the organs of the intellectual functions; so that, it is said, the non-discovery of such vast differences proves, not that they are absent, but that Science is incompetent to detect them. A very little consideration, however, will, I think, show the fallacy of this reasoning. Its validity hangs upon the assumption, that intellectual power depends altogether on the brain—whereas the brain is only one condition ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... himself passed on to the higher life of fire, which is the Palladian notion of beatitude, and in the peace and joy of Lucifer, the sovereign pontificate itself, after resting for a short period upon incompetent shoulders in the person of Albert George Mackey, was transferred to the Italian; the seat of the Dogmatic Directory was removed to Rome; a split in the camp ensued, inspired by a lady initiate, since famous under the name of Diana Vaughan, and to this we owe most of the ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... defence employed, were the militia of the adjoining counties, and the establishment of a line of forts and block-houses, dispersed along a considerable extent of country, and occupied by detachments of British colonial troops, or by militiamen. All these were utterly incompetent to effect security; partly from the circumstances of the case, and somewhat from the entire want of discipline, and the absence of that subordination which is absolutely necessary to render an ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... impertinence, for disobedience of orders, for laziness, for shirking, for cheating, or for theft. To do so is a social wrong. It is the wrong that lies back, not only of sinecures and spoils, but of employing incompetent and wasteful ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... at Estella with sang-froid and an unruffled good nature, while the Padre Concha, whose place it surely was to take the lead in such woman's work as this, slowly rubbed his bony hands together, at a loss and incompetent to meet the urgency of ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... be the violent opposition of the Anglo- Indian. It will be difficult to carry reform against the advice of The only class which seems competent to advise, viz., such Englishmen as have had experience of India. I hold such to be Totally incompetent as a class to take proper views of Indian problems—such men as Sir Richard Temple are the exception. His articles upon India seem to me most salutary and to denote a statesmanlike grasp of a subject of paramount importance to England. The reason why the Englishman in India is likely ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... dignity which our greatest masters cannot approach, and with a grace and appropriateness of gesture rivalling that of our best actors.... One of the girls who pronounced such discourses was but thirteen years and a half old; and most of them were utterly incompetent, in their natural state, thus to treat subjects far ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... air-ship, which he is this time making quite independent of Whinnie, whose last creation along that line betrayed a disheartening disability for flight. But even this second effort, I'm afraid, is doomed to failure, for more than once I've seen Dinkie back away and stand regarding his incompetent flier with a look of frustration on his face. He is always working over machinery—for he loves anything with wheels—and I'm pretty well persuaded that the twentieth-century mania of us grown-ups for picking ourselves to pieces is nothing ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... general scale. But we can take a more objective view of war today. What was so terrible about it? War had a profound selective value, perfectly in accord with the teachings of Darwin and Mendel and others. Without war the mass of useless, incompetent mankind, without training or intelligence, is permitted to grow and expand unchecked. War acted to reduce their numbers; like storms and earthquakes and droughts, it was nature's way of ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... he published his Proposals for an Historical Account of that most universally celebrated as well as useful Art of Typography. The work, which was also to contain a history of bookbinding, paper-making, etc., was, however, never published, and it has been often stated that Bagford was quite incompetent to carry out such an undertaking. This may possibly have been the case, for although he was certainly a man of much ability, and possessed an extensive knowledge of books, he had received but little education. Several of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... to realize that the 'One in Authority' was a miserable incompetent, incapable of recognizing merit when it was displayed before him. It took her five minutes to dress. It took her a minute to run downstairs and out to the news-stand on the corner of the street. Here, with a lavishness which charmed and exhilarated the proprietor, ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... another General.' And they nominate another; nominate Broglio, the fat choleric Marshal, of Italian breed and physiognomy, whom we saw at Strasburg last year, when Friedrich was there. Broglio will quit Strasburg too soon, and come. A man fierce in fighting, skilled too in tactics; totally incompetent in strategy, or the art of LEADING armies, and managing campaigns;—defective in intelligence indeed, not wise to discern; dim of vision, violent of temper; subject to sudden cranks, a headlong, very positive, loud, dull and angry ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Mesopotamian. chieftain, called Tayer or Thair, made an attack upon Otesiphon, took the city by storm, and captured a sister or aunt of the Persian monarch. The nobles, who, during Sapor's minority, guided the helm of the State, were quite incompetent to make head against these numerous enemies. For sixteen years the marauding bands had the advantage, and Persia found herself continually weaker, more impoverished, and less able to recover herself. The young prince is said to have shown extraordinary discretion and intelligence. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... An incompetent general, as above mentioned, had been sent at the instance of the eunuchs to supersede an officer who had been holding his own with considerable success, but who was not a persona grata at court. The new general at once decided that no territory outside ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... he was not sorry to part from him, for their walk together had left him feeling suddenly old and incompetent to battle with the problems of life. He knew that Cyrus, even though he liked him, considered him a bit of a fool, and with a humility which was unusual in him (for in his heart he was absolutely sure that his own convictions ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... behind would have as much. They were conscious, too, that the North, the sluggish North, which had been so long in putting forth its full strength, was now preparing for an effort far greater than any that had gone before. The incompetent generals, the tricksters and the sluggards were gone, and battle-tried armies led by real generals were coming in numbers that ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... by Joseph Heathfield his attorney says he is not guilty. 2. And for a further Plea the Deft, says that before and at the time of the alleged imprisonment Plt, was a person of unsound mind and incompetent to take care of himself and a proper person to be taken care of and detained and it was unfit unsafe improper and dangerous that he should be at large thereupon the Deft, being the uncle of the Plt. and a proper person to cause the Plt. to be taken charge of under due care and treatment ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... delay is often the best strategy, sire. The great Maurice, of Saxony, has said that fighting is an expedient by which incompetent commanders are accustomed to draw themselves out of difficult positions. When they are perplexed as to their next move, they are apt to stumble into a battle. I coincide with the great captain, although I well know that I shall ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the Parliamentary wars, and Lord Holland, commanding the Royalist troops, conceived the idea of a rising near London. There was to be a horse-race on Banstead Downs, to draw the people together, and he was to lead them. Unhappily for his followers, he was a thoroughly incompetent soldier. He hoisted his standard at Kingston, and marched through Dorking to Reigate, where he held the castle and posted his vedettes on Red Hill. Sir Michael Livesey, commanding some Kentish horse for the Parliament, was ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... back on Earth has been getting heavier and heavier. Jupiter Equilateral won the greatest fight in its history when they limited U.N. jurisdiction to Mars, and kept us out of the Belt. And now they hope to convince the lawmakers that we're incompetent to administer the Martian colonies and keep peace out here. If they succeed, we'll be called home in nothing flat; we've had to ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... themselves, satisfied in all humility to take their seat at the feet of those whose honor is brightened by the hoariness of time, and to wait for the period when the lustre of many departed days may accumulate on their own heads, in the radiance which culminates as it recedes. The envious and incompetent have usually been the leaders of attack, content if, like the foulness of the earth, they may attract to themselves notice by their noisomeness, or, like its insects, exalt themselves by virulence into visibility. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... construction of a scheme of optimism on a priori grounds which shall embrace a universe the larger portion of which is virtually beyond the field of observation. We are conscious of possessing some rational data and some mental equipment for the former task, but for the latter we feel utterly incompetent.[261] ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... on his iron cot. While for him who would fain revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still, after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good goads him on to his fierce misery once ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... vexations which she had carefully concealed from Catherine, lest they should make her unhappy. Thus she represented it to herself: the truth was, lest Catherine should make a point of Randall being parted with, an effort she knew herself quite incompetent to make. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing more outrageous than a little straight talk with ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... letter drawn up by the Bishop of Lincoln, so powerfully enforced by William de Powerie, their spokesman, that the exposure of the enormities permitted in England called up a deep blush on the face of Innocent, and he allowed that he had been wrong in thrusting in these incompetent Italians. There was one good effected at this council, namely, the appointment of Richard Wych to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, that the sabotage of business enterprise can be put aside by sufficiently heroic measures. And they are also showing that they are all aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry on business principles is incompetent to bring the largest practicable output of goods and services; incompetent to such a degree, indeed, as not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need, when the nation requires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man-power, regardless of the pecuniary ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... paid than it deserved; but I shall continue to cling tenaciously to that property until I am convinced that it will be applied for the benefit of every one; I should not think it just if it was taken from me for the benefit of the idle and incompetent; and I should be reluctant to part with it unless I felt sure that it would pass into the hands of those who are as just-minded and disinterested as myself, and be fairly administered. I should not think it just if it were taken ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... incompetent," remarked the Reverend Dr. Jones, slapping at midges with a hand that might have rocked all the cradles of the nation, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... children come one after another at short intervals—so fast indeed that no matter how hard he works, nor how many hours, he cannot keep pace with their needs—the lover whom all the world loves will have been converted into a disheartened, threadbare incompetent, whom all the world pities or despises. Instead of being the happy, competent father, supporting one or two children as they should be supported, he is the frantic struggler against the burden of five or six, with the tragic prospect ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... left school, look upon their amusements as the main business of life, give to them the industry and concentration which should be bestowed upon science, letters or industry, and swell the ranks of the amiable and incompetent amateur. It is argued that schools are converted into pleasant athletic clubs, and that boys, instead of learning there to work, merely learn to play. Now this is a serious indictment; it is a good thing to learn to play, but it is not the only ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... his daughter from the island of Cuba. They gave us very sad accounts of the desolate state of the island and the impoverished condition of the people. I had long felt that the United States should interfere in some way to end that cruel warfare, for Spain has proved that she is incompetent to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... including the views and theories of well-known citizens. It also took occasion to "lambast" Constable Foss with great severity. The Constable, being a Republican, (and not a subscriber to the Sun), was described as about the most incompetent official Windomville had ever known, and that it would have been quite possible for the miscreant or miscreants to have poisoned every dog in town, in broad daylight, accompanied by a brass band, without Bill ever "getting ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... work for any sort of wages from me," interrupted Timothy Robinson decidedly. "I tell you plainly that I won't hire you. You're the wrong man's son for that. Your father was lazy and incompetent and, worst of all, untrustworthy. I did try to help him once, and all I got was loss and ingratitude. I want none of his kind around my place. I don't believe in you, so you may as well take yourself off, Ellis. I've no ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... cried Mr. Pogson, using so dreadful an adjective that I dropped the gridiron. Paragot had trained me to a distaste of foul language. "You are a drunken incompetent thief." ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... as a trader was shorter and even more inglorious than that as a farmer. Within a month I was discharged as utterly incompetent. Although I resented this at the time, I am now convinced ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... rising above party to vindicate the civilization and ancient good name of the States over which he presides, by his rebuke to the Legislature for the election of corrupt and incompetent judges, as he has shown large statesmanship, integrity of purpose and courage of performance that command the respect and approval of all ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... ever saw Giddy. She never heard the drum of an airplane without getting a sick, gone feeling at the pit of her stomach. She knew, now, that there was more to the air service than a becoming uniform. She was doing some war work herself in an incompetent, frenzied sort of way. With Giddy soaring high and her foreign stocks and bonds falling low she might well be excused for the panic that shook her from the time she opened her eyes in the morning until she ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... from the Opposition when he had been raised to the peerage some months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera, and how, that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward, but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity of the war in England, knew that the Government—ignorant of what he was so laboriously preparing—was chafing at his inactivity of the past few months, so that ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... urge the Queen to aggressive measures. From this hasty resolution Marie was, however, with some difficulty, dissuaded by her Council, who represented to her the dangerous position in which she could not fail to place the young King; who, utterly unaccustomed to public business, must prove incompetent to maintain his interests at so perilous a crisis as that which now ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... experiment had been made, and the revelation had burst upon Edward that it had been a ghastly failure. Hal had not come to realise that labour was turbulent and lazy and incompetent, needing a strong hand to rule it; on the contrary, he had become one of these turbulent ones himself! A champion of the lazy and incompetent, an agitator, a fomenter of class-prejudice, an enemy of his own friends, and of his ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... sister, flaring up. "We spinsters, belonging, as we do, to the sisterhood of the Great Unloved, are quite incompetent to express an intelligent opinion on that or on any other matter. I grant that, but is Mr. Steell, a confirmed old bachelor, any ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... at home in the little cottage occupied by his father, who, however, has ceased to be a farmer, having been promoted to the post of superintendent of the factory, formerly occupied by Mr. Davis. For the first twelve months the post was filled by a new man, who proved to be incompetent, and then was offered to Captain Rushton, whose excellent executive talents were well known. He soon made himself familiar with his duties, and the post is likely to be his as long as he ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... undertake the composition of a history of philosophy. Nevertheless we must confess that we should hardly feel such regret, if we could see evidence to warrant Mr Mill's judgment (p. 554) that Sir W. Hamilton was 'indifferent to the [Greek: dihoti] of a man's opinions, and that he was incompetent to draw up an estimate of the opinions of any great thinker,' &c. Such incompetence, if proved to be frequent and considerable, would deprive an author of all chance of success in writing a history of philosophy. But the study of Sir William Hamilton's works does ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... neighbors, and welcomed their coming—could still mount his horse and cast his 'eye over his acres.' The progress of decline, in his case, was not of that humiliating kind, by which the faculties of the intellect are clouded, and the muscles of the body made feeble and incompetent. He spoke thoughtfully of the great concerns of life, of death, and of the future; declared himself a Christian, a humble believer in all the vital truths of religion. As of the future he entertained no doubt, so of the awful ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the early days were renewed. Nor was there any great difference from them. It was a pell-mell rush. Incompetent, harpy, "sharp" and the gold seeker of substance. It was a train of the northland flotsam, moving again without scruple or mercy. Kars watched its beginning. He understood. None could understand this sort of thing better. All ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... true that neither his personal appearance nor his extraction commanded respect: he was diminutive in stature, and he could boast of no noble blood running in his veins.[128] A more formidable hinderance in the path to distinction had been the barbarous instruction he had received from incompetent masters, both in the inferior schools and in the university itself. But all obstacles, physical, social, and intellectual, melted away before the ardor of an extraordinarily active mind. Rising steadily above the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... conception of human rights; nor could he conceive of a magnanimous project, or appreciate the value of civil liberty. His notions of government were despotic, and around him, for advisers, he preferred those as incompetent and as illiberal as himself. Such a king could not deal with a people who had learned freedom, and had the highest conceptions of human rights. The British parliament, composed almost entirely of the ruling ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Dublin—L5,686 on public libraries, and L4,100 on baths and workhouses, against L1,217 and L1,627 for like purposes in Dublin. "Therefore," say the Belfast men, "we will not have our affairs managed by these incompetent men, who, besides their demonstrated incapacity to deal with finance, are dependent for their position on the illiterates of the agricultural districts, who are to a man under the thumb of the priests, and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Further, as Pope Melchiades says (Ep. ad Episc. Hispan.) "after Baptism we are strengthened for the combat." But women are incompetent to combat, by reason of the frailty of their sex. Therefore neither ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... you," Lord Henry replied. "That must be the reason. They have learned not to trust the mature adult. British parents are either too indolent, or too incompetent to do the thing properly. And the consequence is young people have been trained by tradition to believe that, in the matter of choosing their mates, concerning which they know literally nothing, and are taught less, they must be left to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... himself a position before the world, and held it now for some years, to allow himself to be crushed at once because he had made a mistake. If the world, his world, chose to go to war with him, he would be ready for the fight. As for Butterwell,—Butterwell the incompetent, Butterwell the vapid,—for Butterwell, who in every little official difficulty had for years past come to him, he would let Butterwell know what it was to be thus disloyal to one who had condescended to be his friend. He would show them all at the Board that he ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... monarchy; but for the present, the wish to retain the supremacy which it had had while the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of a feeble and lingering opposition to David, headed by Saul's cousin Abner, and rallying round his incompetent son Ishbosheth.[Q] The chronology of this period is obscure. David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half, and as Ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of these years, and those evidently the last, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... the optic nerve embrace the entire range even of radiation. Some rays, when they reach it, are incompetent to evoke its power, while others never reach it at all, being absorbed by the humours of the eye. To all rays which, whether they reach the retina or not, fail to excite vision, we give the name of invisible or obscure rays. All non-luminous bodies emit ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... gentleman met me, a friend of mine, Lieutenant West, a naval officer, and made vain efforts to bring about peace or a duel with swords; at which Merton only laughed, saying that when he went "a-cat-fishing, he went a-cat-fishing," a piece of national wisdom which I found myself incompetent to make clear to my French friends. Aramis was easier to manage than his namesake. Meanwhile, our minister was very much troubled over the matter, and the count hardly less so. But Porthos was as inexorable as his namesake, and Merton merely obstinate. It was what the ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... and can distinguish themselves in their several professions in various ways; they can easily attain a position of wealth and influence, and so such men keep out of politics. It must not, however, be inferred from this that the government officials in America are incompetent. On the contrary I gladly testify from my personal experience that the work done by them is not only efficient, but that, taken as a whole, they compare most favorably with any other body of government officials in Europe. Still, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... of those times have told us that there was scarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to instruct and to delight. He had never travelled; and, in that age, an Englishman who had not travelled was generally thought incompetent to give an opinion on works of art. But connoisseurs familiar with the masterpieces of the Vatican and of the Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers in painting and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of his favourite pursuits. He had traversed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and to invent new arts, whereas the old logic strove only after dialectic victories and the discovery of new arguments. In method the difference is even more fundamental. Hitherto the mode of demonstration had been by the syllogism; but the syllogism is, in many respects, an incompetent weapon. It is compelled to accept its first principles on trust from the science in which it is employed; it cannot cope with the subtlety of nature; and it is radically vitiated by being founded on hastily and inaccurately abstracted notions of things. For a syllogism ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Every hour seems to widen the breach, to increase the distance that separates the dead from the living, and to complete the triumph of our mortal foe. All the powers of nature in combination would prove incompetent to produce life in the smallest particle—the most insignificant atom of dust; and hope naturally expires when animation ceases. When Christians, therefore, are required to part with their companions, or to die themselves, their only confidence must be in God; and whoever cannot receive ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... if forced to do so, underrate its value, or grossly misrepresent its operation. But we are convinced that this will not do. Proofs of their humbug and falsehood are, as it were, daily forcing themselves into the very stomachs of those whom once, when an incompetent Ministry was in power, these heartless impostors were able to delude. "A single shove of the bayonet," said Corporal Trim to Doctor Slop, "is worth all your fine discourses about the art of war;" and so the English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... anything to eat, which was not always. There were no provision shops on Lochaweside; Inverary was at some distance in one direction and Oban in the other, and as I had never given a thought to feeding before, I was an utterly incompetent provider. The consequence was that we fasted like monks, except that our abstinence was not on any regular principle; in fact, sometimes we had so little to eat for days together that we began to feel quite weak. This gave us no anxiety, and we only laughed ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... he charged in 1185 suits, and in the preparation of many legal papers out of court, and still have been seriously addicted to laziness. Indeed, if so much legal business could have been transacted within three years and a half, by a lawyer who, besides being young and incompetent, was also extremely lazy, and greatly preferred to go off to the woods and hunt for deer while his clients were left to hunt in vain for him, it becomes an interesting question just how much legal business we ought to expect to be done by a young lawyer who was not incompetent, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... to post the letter he passed Glass, still struggling with his own composition. That poor devil! A perfect type of incompetent. He was too slow and timid for the West—too old to learn the lessons of self-reliance and adaptability of a new land. However, that was his own affair. If he would work he could make a living, and that was all that he or those like him ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... in this chapter that men are incompetent to judge themselves, and need a scientific monitor of unquestionable authority, has long been recognized. The Catholic confessional is a recognition and application of the principles of great value. But the confessional ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... sex? My mother would not say things like that about schoolboys, though they are at least equally sentimental and most of them more priggish. She is extremely kind to people like Miss Battersby, although she regards them as pitiably incompetent when their cosmetics are used on stable-boys. Yet she would not despise me or regard it as my fault if some one took my shaving soap and washed a kitchen maid's ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... her mind from George—to be breaking in on that imaginative vision of him, and his life in the trenches, which while it tortured her, yet filled the blank of his absence. So Bridget did it all—corresponded peremptorily with their rather old and incompetent trustee, got all the signatures necessary out of Nelly, and carried the thing through. Again, on another and smaller occasion, Miss Martin had seen the two sisters confronted with a scandalous overcharge for the carriage of some heavy luggage ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is evident that, after the formation of the Federal Government by the adoption of the Constitution, the highest exertion of State power would be incompetent to bestow a character or status created by the Constitution, or conferred in virtue of its authority only. Upon those, therefore, who were not originally parties to the Federal compact, or who are not admitted and adopted as parties thereto, in the mode prescribed ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... wish to be misunderstood as representing that to-day the official classes and the leaders of the Bulgarian nation are generally unworthy or incompetent. That would be very far from the truth. But it is the truth that as yet Bulgaria has not a class sufficient in numbers and strong enough in tradition to supply her needs in leadership. How could it be otherwise, seeing that the nation is not much more than a generation old, and has ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... France undertaking not to conclude peace until the colonies were free. The success of the revolted colonies made the Revolution in France a certainty. The fall of Neckar and the setting up of the reckless and incompetent Calonne over the destinies of France brought the shout of the Democracy to the gardens of the king. Vigee Le Brun's picture of the dandified man certainly does not show him a leader of great enterprises. His reckless extravagance satisfied the nobles; it brought bankruptcy ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... undescribed object rises full in vision. The poet flings forth his melody, and to the gross ear it seems a mere tinkle of inanity. That is simply because the crowd who worship at the shrine of the Sminthean Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... awfully incompetent always to be waiting for other people," she returned, just laying her hand an instant on his shoulder to indicate that he alone was privileged ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... the plains, which the antelope invariably prefers to the woodlands, and to which it always retreats if by accident it is found straggling in the hills, confiding no doubt in its wonderful fleetness. We also killed a few young geese, but as this game is small and very incompetent to the subsistence of the party, we have forbidden the men any longer to waste their ammunition on them. About four and a half miles above Gass's creek, the valley in which we have been travelling ceases, the high craggy cliffs again approach the river, which now ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... people limit their families. Abundant statistics make it clear that the size of families has dropped greatly among all except two groups. One is a large group of less intelligent, isolated, shiftless, or incompetent people, among whom families of eight to fifteen children may still be found. The other is a small group of intelligent, high-minded, well-established, well-to-do families with many relatives and with a very assured position. ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... remained in the dilemma—creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other object than the attainment of truth was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... publication of this work,) a brief but most important statute (6 and 7 Vict. c. 85) was enacted, "for improving the Law of Evidence"—the chief object of which was, to remove all such difficulties as that which formed the subject of Mr. Parkinson's inquiries. Witnesses are now no longer "incompetent" to give evidence by reason of crime or of any interest which they may have in, or in respect of, the subject-matter ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... another sealskin coat, and he was at the crest of the prosperity which enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance. The house was the design of that most original artist, Edward Potter, who once, when hard pressed by incompetent curiosity for the name of his style in a certain church, proposed that it should be called the English violet order of architecture; and this house was so absolutely suited to the owner's humor that I suppose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... disaster, she allied herself with a Society for the Relief of Incompetent Parents, and later on took up the cause of Children's Rights and Wrongs. Quite palpably it was Mr. Bingle's dilemma that inspired her to interest herself in these hitherto neglected enterprises. She began her duties as a member and supporter of the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... are, this sorting continues: only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer—but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best—those who can carry a message ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... corruption of society which preceded the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, injustice, and wilful ignorance by which the theological idea had become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... when the Colonel pensioned Mr. Hood. But the Colonel had a will before which, when roused, even Mr. Hopper trembled. So that Eliphalet was always polite to Ephum, and careful never to say anything in the darkey's presence against incompetent clerks or favorite customers, who, by the charity of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... leagues from Maima, where we were. As the distance between the islands is about 90 leagues, and nothing in the way but one little island or rock, 8 leagues from Hispaniola, it was necessary to wait for calm weather in order to cross so great a sea in such incompetent vessels. This it pleased God soon to give; and every Indian having taken on board his calabash of water and a supply of carrabi as their provision, and the Christians armed with swords and targets and provided with the necessary sustenance, they put to sea. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... connection with that anniversary had been postponed until the morrow. However, this did not prevent my daughter from demanding (and obtaining) various special privileges of an unofficial character this hot Sunday morning. Consequently a spiritually willing but carnally incompetent band, consisting of one jovial but arthritic baronet, one docile but self-conscious warrior, one indulgent but overheated parent, and Dolly—Gerald stood scornfully aloof—were compelled to devote the next two hours to a series of games, stage-plays, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... wide ocean with a man ignorant of navigation; nay, he would not trust a bale of merchandise with him; and surely he will not abandon his bark of existence to the command of a charlatan, who knows nothing of the principles of the art he professes, and is altogether incompetent to steer clear of the numerous rocks and quicksands in the course of life; but a man of reflection and judgment is not a very common character; he is surrounded by hundreds who examine not for themselves; and are ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and moody, his heart bursting with the resentment of the mean and the incompetent for the man of brilliant parts. But the morrow ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... decay has commenced. Unless arrested by vigorous legislation, it must soon cease to be a self-sustaining institution, and either be cast on the treasury for support, or suffered to decline from year to year, till the system has become incompetent and useless. The last annual report of the Postmaster-General shows that, notwithstanding the heavy retrenchments he had made, the expenditures of the department, for the year ending June 30th, 1843, exceeded ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... presented to one of them, who still continued in the same employment with her faculties unimpaired, a recent edition of his Triumphs of Temper. His first instructor in the learned languages was a master in the same city, who appeared to be so incompetent to the task he had undertaken, that Mrs. Hayley removed her son to the school of a Mr. Woodeson, at Kingston. He had not been long here, when he was seized with a violent fit of illness, which obliged his mother, who had now fixed her residence in London, to take him home, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... music and gymnastics and all sorts of arts—in these respects they were on a level with the best—and had he no wish to make good men of them? Nay, he must have wished it. But virtue, as I suspect, could not be taught. And that you may not suppose the incompetent teachers to be only the meaner sort of Athenians and few in number, remember again that Thucydides had two sons, Melesias and Stephanus, whom, besides giving them a good education in other things, he trained ...
— Meno • Plato
... are of queer kinks, unexplained turnings and groundless likes and dislikes, the bland contentment that buoys up the incompetent is the most difficult of all vagaries to account for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass without examples of this exasperating weakness appearing on the surface of those shallows that commonplace people so ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... "I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on such important matters. My mother had a passion for every description of flower. I fancy I have some recollection of her scattering the flower you mention ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... so, as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept them, though it be as something ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... expected he'd come in person or have some one meet me, but I presume the message must have gone astray. At all events there was no one there for me and I had to come on alone. It's hardly been a pleasant experience; that incompetent tonga-wallah behaved precisely as though he had deliberately made up his mind to delay me.... And the tonga's nearly ready; I must ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... thinking is not only general with practitioners in politics, and with that very numerous class who (on a subject which no one, however ignorant, thinks himself incompetent to discuss) profess to guide themselves by common sense rather than by science; but is often countenanced by persons with greater pretensions to instruction—persons who, having sufficient acquaintance with books and with the current ideas to have heard that Bacon taught ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to the Indus, was composed of various nations which enjoyed a semi-independence. Under incompetent rulers, she saw portion after portion of her dominions fall from her. Thus arose ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... blooming matrons, spreading out in their pride, like the anxious clucking hen, over their numerous encircling offspring, who have borne them with a mother's throes, watched over them with a mother's anxious mind, and reared them with a mother's ardent love, are considered to be wholly incompetent, in the opinion of these dessicated and barren branches of Nature's stupendous, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... also the party of gay liberality with other people's money. In the matter of directing the destinies of this country towards a higher and better national existence, there is really nothing to choose between Republicanism and Democracy. Both are equally unwilling and incompetent, both, despite the prating of civil service snobs and snivellers are dominated by spoils, and the managers of both regard a campaign not as a battle for the betterment of America but as a battle for boodle. The McKinley administration has appointed some Negro ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... it is surprising that the Bayeux Tapestry expressly names Stigand (Lancelot: Description de Tapisserie de Bayeux, in Thierry, I). Yet Harold could not possibly have meant, by passing over the Archbishop of Canterbury, to declare him to be incompetent, since he had been appointed ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... relief. I'd a million times rather be at home; but what can I find to do? I am ashamed to think how incompetent I am! Here we are back again where we were three months ago, Dr Maclure, when I worried you and ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of dexterous leaders in every department of life. By the error, the ignorance, or the churlishness of the country managers, Mr. Cooper was excluded from any fair opportunity to redeem the credit he had lost in Edinburgh—they considered, or affected to consider him as wholly incompetent to any character of consequence: those which were vouchsafed him were of so inferior a rank that they denied scope to the exercise of his yet latent powers; for such a genius as that of Cooper could no more dilate in a meagre character, than Eclipse or Flying Childers could lay themselves ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... this painful interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. He settled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute and wanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highly incompetent; and he went off to four other practitioners in succession, with a view to the establishment of this intuition. But to guard against surprises he kept that little prescription in his pocket. With each he began by expressing his grave doubts of the first doctor's intelligence, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... this time, the king himself, with a flushed countenance and a very unsteady step, appeared on the stage. It was glaringly evident to all who were not in the same condition themselves, that the King of Judah was altogether incompetent for that important branch of business which, in despite of the kind remonstrances of his personal friends, ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... photography; but, from my acquaintance with the modern achromatic microscope, I venture to say that photography applied to this instrument will be of no farther use than as an assistant to the draughtsman. A reference to the plates alluded to will show how incompetent it is to produce pictures of microscopic objects: any one who has seen these objects under a good instrument will acknowledge that these specimens give but a very faint idea of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... barbarous. By setting these observances at defiance you insult their framers, act traitorously towards your sovereign, and assail the foundations of your House; for your attitude is a direct reflection upon others; and if you render such a tribute to one who is incompetent to receive it, how will you maintain a seemly balance when a greater ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... doctrine, after having prepared it in very brief and simple terms. Alas! what misery I beheld! The people, especially those who live in the villages, seem to have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are ignorant and incompetent teachers. And, nevertheless, they all maintain that they are Christians, that they have been baptized, and that they have received the Lord's Supper. Yet they cannot recite the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live as if they were irrational creatures, ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... desultory, pursued under several more or less incompetent masters, and was over at the age of sixteen. The teaching does not seem to have had much discipline or solidity; he studied Latin a few months, but made no other incursion into the classics. The handsome, tender-hearted, truthful, susceptible ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... Burnham," said our host. "I'll give you a start of three questions, and then you must be prepared to answer every reasonable question I put to you, or be branded publicly as an unreliable witness and an incompetent detective." ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... build; every Bulgar will tell you that he is full of admiration of the Serbian army, and the Serbs will speak in a similar strain of the Bulgars. Also the Serbs will tell you that, no matter what else they may be able to do, they are, as compared with the Bulgars, quite incompetent in the diffusion of propaganda; while the Bulgars will explain to you that in propaganda the Serbs are immensely their superiors. (Balkan propaganda does not confine itself to using, with violence, the sword and the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein |
