"Natural ability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about forty-five years of age—a short, thick-set man, with dark hair and heavy beard. He was a man of much natural ability, and exhibited singular contrasts in character and speech. The free and easy carriage, and quaint language of the "Leather-stocking," sat easily upon him; and yet, at times, he would express himself in words ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... modern society—and especially of a society like ours, in which recent legislation has placed sovereign authority in the hands of the masses, whenever they are united enough to wield their power—can doubt that every man of high natural ability, who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a danger to society as a rocket without a stick is to the people who fire it? Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Oliver's natural ability is small, and his acquired knowledge very limited; but his sense of right and wrong, his obedience to moral obligations, and his attachment to friends, are very remarkable.[24] He never willfully violates ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... heart of the young lady. He was, indeed, a man born to charm the imagination of the romantic, if not at that period of his youth, to rivet affection by esteem. In his boyhood, although he made some degree of progress in classical attainments, and even in philosophy and mathematics, thus proving that natural ability was not wanting, he was far more successful in attaining mere accomplishments, which add a powerful charm to comeliness and symmetry than in mastering more solid studies. He became an adept in fencing, in riding, in drawing, and also in music; and acquired the distinctive ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... of great natural ability, and for a time was regarded as the most eminent physician and astrologer among his contemporaries. But his mind was of a peculiar cast, and his temper most inconstant. He had, says Peter Bayle, in his "Historical Dictionary," a decided love of paradox, and of the marvellous, an infantine ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... that excites this feeling of resentment I have noted. The man of feeble natural powers may envy him of strong natural powers, but he can see that society, that law, is not responsible for that inequality. If one finds himself from lack of natural ability or adaptiveness unable to accomplish what others of superior ability or adaptiveness easily accomplish, and hence he fails to receive the prize they so easily win, he may feel great disappointment and regret, but if honest with himself ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... fat and marrow, to get at which they pound the bones with a stone." "The clothes of the Eskimos are made from the skins of the reindeer, seals, and birds, sewn together with sinews. For needles they use the bones of either birds or fishes." "The Eskimos have also a great natural ability for drawing. In many cases they have made rude maps for our officers, which have turned out to be substantially correct. Many of their bone implements are covered ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... and my uncle and aunt both unmarried. In addition, there was the district school-master who boarded with us. The "not unfeared, half-welcome guest" was Harriet Livermore, daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight control over her violent temper, which sometimes made her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you have not forgotten how our rulers were chosen; and the process of selection may be carried a step further:—As before, they must be constant and valiant, good-looking, and of noble manners, but now they must also have natural ability which education will improve; that is to say, they must be quick at learning, capable of mental toil, retentive, solid, diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral virtues; not lame and one-sided, diligent in bodily ...
— The Republic • Plato
... a family whose talents are well known, and his personality, no doubt, added much to his natural ability as ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... Mac, it ain't that. Nobody's doubtin' your natural ability to mop him up. But it ain't policy. You wasn't sore agin them cannibal savages, was you? You made Neils go back an' save 'em, an' it took us two days to beat up to the first inhabited island an' drop ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... born in Pennsylvania, of Quaker parentage. He inherited the simplicity, candor, and truthfulness of the sect. He had absolutely no guile in his nature. He had had but six months' common school education, but, possessing considerable natural ability, he had to some degree remedied his deficiencies in this particular. He wrote a fair hand, spelled well and conversed with some facility on ordinary topics, but was absolutely ignorant of any language but his native English, and had no knowledge whatever of scientific ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... The institution you endow might be called the Temple of Natural Ability Appraisement. There the poor in money, but the rich in ambition may come; there the fumblers, the indecisive, may come to be put to a test. Ah, yours can be ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... high a place during the examination, as to induce one of the gentlemen who assisted him to consider him entitled to one of the classical prizes; but the doctor added that Frank Digby's indifference and idleness during the term had made him so unwilling that he should, by mere force of natural ability, deprive his more industrious class-fellows of a hard-earned honor, that he had not felt himself justified in listening to the recommendation, but hoped that his talents would, the following term, be exerted from the beginning, in which case, he should have pleasure in ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... a little shrug to her slim shoulders as she smiled at me, and she seemed not a whit disturbed concerning the conversation with his Excellency. I wondered whether this were birth, or training, or both, or a natural ability to cope with affairs. The women of her order had long been used to intercede with sovereigns, to play a part in matters of state. Suddenly I became aware that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... arisen a new generation which cared nothing about craftsmanship or art, and everything for cheapness and profit. From this man and by laborious study and practice in his spare time, aided by a certain measure of natural ability, the boy acquired a knowledge of decorative painting and design, and graining ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Mr. Hulbert's appearance at that time. He stood in the neighborhood of six feet, and weighed close to 215 pounds. He had a stern expression of countenance and impressed one right from the start as being a self-reliant business man of great natural ability, and such he turned out to be. He was good-hearted and of a convivial nature when business hours were over, but as honest as the day was long, and would tolerate nothing that savored of crookedness in any shape or form. As an executive he had but few ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... proportion of violent men among them was larger than in the nation, for they were chosen in a time of excitement, when violence of thought and language was likely to be popular; yet the assembly comprised also most of the truly distinguished men in France. What was wanting was not natural ability, but ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... toward another conception. This is when he pauses to echo Rowe's preface to Shakespeare and Addison's famous Spectator no. 160. Then indeed he boasts that England has had many "Originals" who, "without the help of Learning, by the meer Force of natural Ability, have produc'd Works which were the Delight of their own Times, and have been the Wonder of Posterity." But when he doubts whether learning would have helped or "spoiled" them, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he is still poised on the horns of ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... good looks, Miss Cameron," said Mercedes, "added to my natural ability, I'd make Julia Marlowe look like an old-fashioned one-ring circus. Send Mr. Bacon to me, Mr. Barnes. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... teacher, to decipher the tastes, temper, and natural aptitudes of her children from their infancy. All home-bred children are distinguished by ease of manner and tact, two acquired qualities which may go far to supply the lack of natural ability, whereas no natural ability can atone for the loss of this early training. I have already learned to discriminate this difference of tone in the men whom I meet in society, and to trace the hand ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Babylon first besieged Jerusalem he carried away the finest of the princely families to serve him. They were the flower of Jerusalem—young men of noble face and form; well taught in the learning of the Jews, and skilfull in the sciences of that time. They were also chosen for their natural ability to learn the language and the ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... the world did not regard eloquence as simply an endowment of nature, but applied themselves diligently to cultivating their powers of expression. In many cases there was unusual natural ability, but such men knew that regular study and practise were essential to success ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... Miss Rennie had a pitying sort of liking for her, though sometimes Laura's airs were too much for her, and they would not speak to each other for a week at a time. She had just left school, having made all the progress which money without natural ability or any of the usual incentives to application could attain, and was to live at the Rennies', which she thought a very dull place. This large party was the brightest thing in her horizon at present, and she was looking her best, and took her place in the dance with ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence |
