"Inadequacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came well enough from a man who was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr. Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now, and to watch his thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen was nettled. The aim of THEIR debates ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... America, lost her these possessions. A government to be stable and efficient must possess adequate powers for the collection of its revenue. The miserable condition to which the old Confederation was reduced by reason of the inadequacy of its powers in this respect, has already been discussed. Says Fiske: "Between the old Continental Congress and the government under which we have lived since 1789, the differences were many; but by far the most essential difference was that the new government could raise ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... to cry, and at a look from Suzette, Matt left them. As he walked along up toward the village in mechanical compliance with Adeline's crazy wish, he felt more and more the deepening tragedy of the case, and the inadequacy of all compromises and palliatives. There seemed indeed but one remedy for the trouble, and that was for Northwick to surrender himself, and for them all to meet the consequences together. He realized how desperately homesick the man must have been ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... insufficiency; inadequacy, inadequateness; incompetence &c (impotence) 158; deficiency &c (incompleteness) 53; imperfection &c 651; shortcoming &c 304; paucity; stint; scantiness &c (smallness) 32; none to spare, bare subsistence. scarcity, dearth; want, need, lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, starvation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the usual opposition to everything new, 115:1 the one great obstacle to the reception of that spiritual- ity, through which the understanding of Mind-science 115:3 comes, is the inadequacy of material terms for metaphysical statements, and the consequent difficulty of so expressing metaphysical ideas as to make 115:6 them comprehensible to any reader, who has not person- ally demonstrated Christian Science as brought forth ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Douglass' statement that women were not persecuted for endeavoring to obtain their rights, and depicted in glowing colors the wrongs of women and the inadequacy of the laws to redress them. Mrs. Stone also charged the Republican party as false to principle unless it protected women as well as colored men in the exercise of their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was known to have been hostile to the absorption and exportation by the Government of all the cotton. He had, moreover, recommended against any legislation by Congress to contract the currency and stop the issues. Now, therefore, the inflation and utter inadequacy of the paper money was laid at his door, as well as Mr. Memminger's; and the people, feeling there was no safety for them, began to distrust the good faith of such reckless issue. A system of barter was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... inadequacy of Jamestown remains and records, it is difficult to determine the purposes for which the various outbuildings were used. Doubtless, many outbuildings did exist for various purposes, and probably most of them were not substantial enough ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... his mother to her. These had given the poet the purest pleasure, and he intended making use of them for his Autobiography.[8] But, on the other hand, as soon as Bettina risked independent judgments on his creations, as in the case of the Elective Affinities (1809), her inadequacy and her presumption in claiming for herself the role of a better Ottilie were both painfully apparent. Her attitude toward the adored object was a combination of meekness and pretension, the latter predominating ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... a coward. That was the shame and the curse of his life. He did not think it had always been so, but believed it had come about gradually. At first he had not minded the whippings that other boys gave him because of his temper and his physical inadequacy, for he had invited the punishment; but when they all learned that his fighting spirit had weakened, that they could whip him easily, that they need not wait for provocation, and that he would never tell, they bullied and hounded and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Cooper's intellectual development in the way of accuracy of thought or of statement. It (p. 009) would not in all probability have added materially to his stock of knowledge. But with all its inefficiency and inadequacy, it would very certainly have had the effect of teaching him to aim far more than he did at perfection of form. He possibly gained more than he lost by being transferred at so early an age to other scenes. But the lack of certain qualities in his writings, which educated men ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... first, sent an order for the corps to be broken up, and the men to rejoin their respective regiments, and to accompany them on the expedition; but the earnest representations of Colonel Monro of the 35th Regiment, who was now in command, of the total inadequacy of the garrison to defend itself, should a serious attack be made from Ticonderoga; and of the great value to him of the corps under Captain Walsham, which was now thoroughly trained in forest fighting, induced ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... the Prussians that a new spirit reigned among the troops that opposed them; and on the 23rd, the French eagles were again advanced as far as Katzbach. Here pressing instances from Dresden reached him, of the imminent danger that threatened the city, and of the total inadequacy of St. Cyr's corps to resist it; and seeing that Blucher was in full retreat, he resolved to return on his steps. Marshal Macdonald was left with seventy or eighty thousand men to keep the Prussian general in check; while ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... hear that there was some cause for his silence unconnected with her own inadequacy. But anger rose with the relief; it must be some serious ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... unconscious humour I am infinitely indebted, dedicates his work to "the children of Chicago, who, if the Lord spares them until they shall have attained the allotted span of life, will see this city the greatest metropolis on the globe." That is a modest estimate, and it makes us feel the inadequacy of our poor speech to hymn the glories of Chicago. And if you suggest a fault, its panegyrists are always ready with a counterstroke. Having no taste for slaughter, I did not visit Packing Town, but, without admitting all the grave charges brought against Chicago's grandest ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... b. Officers elected by the people. c. Officers appointed by the mayor. d. The principle of well-defined responsibility. e. The appointment of certain boards by the mayor. f. The holding of the purse-strings. g. The inadequacy of the township elective system, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... to conceive great enterprises is not to perform them, and every after-step of John Brown reveals his lamentable weakness and utter inadequacy for the heroic role to which he fancied himself called. His first blunder was in divulging all his plans to Forbes, an utter stranger, while he was so careful in concealing them from others. Forbes, as ambitious and reckless as himself, of course soon quarreled with him, and left him, and endeavored ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... character and of the results of His appearance in loftier terms than this professed unbeliever in His Divine claims. But when the account is drawn out in detail, of a cause alleged to be sufficient to produce such effects, the apparent inadequacy of it is most startling. When we think of what Christianity is and has done, and that, in M. Renan's view, Christ, the Christ whom he imagines and describes, is all in all to Christianity, and then look to what he conceives to have been the original spring and creative impulse of its achievements, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... inadequacy of the intuitive theory comes when we observe that conscience is by no means always clear in its dictates. It often leaves us in the lurch. Developed in us as it has been by circumstance and suggestion, it helps us usually only in certain recognized types of situation. When new cases ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... and moral interests whose satisfaction lies above the plane of material desire. There is indeed some evidence that the meagre and wholly rudimentary education given to our town-dwellers is, by reason of its inadequacy, a direct feeder of town vices. The lower forms of music-hall entertainment, the dominant popular vice of gambling, the more degraded kinds of printed matter, owe their existence and their financial success to a public policy ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... and Marco Carra, director of music to the Marquis in 1503, 1514 and 1525, are among the names unearthed from the archives of Mantua by their keeper at the request of Mr. Vander Straeten. These papers contained the names of a few other singers, players and directors, but their inadequacy was demonstrated by the fact that they contained no mention of Jacques de Wert, a composer of great activity and talent, to whom Vander Straeten devotes some fifteen pages ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... amount of punishment due to each description of offence, and, from time to time, to increase or diminish, as occasion seems to require, the severity of the existing code. The considerations by which, at least in our own time, these reforms are determined are such as these: the adequacy or inadequacy of the punishment to deter men from the commission of the offence, the tendency of excessive punishment to produce a reaction of sentiment in favour of the criminal, and a reluctance on the part of the judge or jury to convict, the superfluous suffering inflicted by that part of the punishment ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... from this measure, think the alarm greater than it is. The step is principally founded on the total inadequacy of our military force to ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... 3, 1613. On June 1, 1615, he embarked with Admiral Verhagen for the Moluccas. He played an important part in the establishment of Batavia in 1619, and in the troubles with the English and Javanese. The truth of the inadequacy of the natives against the more progressive races was proved again, as it had previously been proved by the experiences of Portuguese and Spanish. A siege of Batavia in 1629, by the Javanese failed in its purpose. Van den ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... actual words was the accent running through words and tone and gesture—the accent of irreparableness, as of something dismally done and finished. What did it all mean? For what had he brought her there? She sat stunned, realising with awful force the feebleness, the inadequacy, of her ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in a hundred ways. The nice little company-dinner reminded her of it; the solitary little roast fowl and the preserves and puddings; but the company-dinners at Downport had always been detracted from by the sharp annoyance in Pam's face, and the general domestic bustle, and the total inadequacy of gravy and stuffing to the wants of the boys. She was particularly reminded of it by the ceremonious repairing to the fire in the front parlor, where everything was so orderly, and even the family portraits had the appearance of family portraits roused from a ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him to another see. He is frequently assailed in the famous Marprelate Tracts, and is characterized as "Morrell," the bad shepherd, in Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar (July). His reputation as a scholar hardly balances his inadequacy as a bishop in the transition time in which he lived. He died in June 1594. His Life was written by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... honorable person graciously forgive the inadequacy of the insignificant service and permit this humbled slave of the wire to inform him that the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... done," Leonard answered, and instantly feeling the awkwardness of the words, blushed so painfully that Miss Bartram felt the inadequacy of her social tact to relieve so manifest a case of distress. But she did, instinctively, what was really best: she gave Leonard the check for her trunk, divided her satchels with Betty, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... was no coward, but she was not young and she had a sense of physical inadequacy. About Anne there was playing the very spirit of tragic anger, none of it for effect, not in the least gauged by any idea of its efficiency. Those slender hands, gripping each other until the knuckles blanched, were ready ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... shoulder he could feel Dolly's chin; it rested there tenderly, with wistfulness, in prayer. Mixed with his excitement was a vague sadness, a sadness, somehow, as though he were saying farewell to someone. But he had already gone through the crisis; to Dolly's heart-rending cry upon the dietary inadequacy of pine-nuts, he had yielded his whole being in supreme sacrifice. An exultation possessed him at the thought, a madness of self-gift. He straightened to his full height; "I'll sign!" he ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... With exhaustive analysis Le Verrier investigated every possible known source of disturbance. The influences of the older planets were estimated once more with every precision, but only to confirm the conclusion already arrived at as to their inadequacy to account for the perturbations. Le Verrier then commenced the search for the unknown planet by the aid of mathematical investigation, in complete ignorance of the labours of Adams. In November, 1845, and again on the 1st of June, 1846, portions of the French astronomer's results ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... receive ideas of power, therefore not the best to illustrate them. He proceeds to "ideas of power, as they are dependent on execution." There are six legitimate sources of pleasure in execution—truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, velocity. "Decision" we should think involved in "truth;" as so involved, not necessarily different from velocity. Mystery and inadequacy require explanation. "Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; and art is always likest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... secede from that party, when changes they cannot accept are welcomed to their programme, and henceforth refuse them their support at the polling-booth, would it not be proper that men, sensible of the utter inadequacy of the performances of both parties to meet the evils under which the nation lies, should stand aloof from both government and opposition? The leading Unionists in Ireland again and again declared that they could not possibly enter ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... not only to the inadequacy of the means of transportation, but to the singular apathy—it was not fearlessness—of the people themselves. In the great tenement districts, it became necessary to send soldiers into the houses to drive ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... remarking that the subject of Colonial verse, and the immense future before the English-speaking poets, is allied to a question that is very great, the adequacy or inadequacy of English poetry—British, American, and Colonial—to the destiny of the race that produces it. The article enunciated the thesis that if the English language should not in the near future contain the finest body of poetry in the world, the time is now upon ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the necessary inadequacy of the finite mind to conceive of the Infinite that most tragically hides God from us. That inadequacy is compatible with true and sufficient knowledge of Him. Nor is it 'the veils of flesh and sense,' as we often hear it said, that hide Him. But it is our sinful moral nature that darkens His face ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... USURPATION;"—that "when the representation is PARTIAL, the kingdom possesses liberty only PARTIALLY; and if extremely partial it gives only a SEMBLANCE; and if not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a NUISANCE." Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of representation as our FUNDAMENTAL GRIEVANCE; and though, as to the corruption of this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its full perfection of depravity, he fears that "nothing will be done towards ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of religious phenomena must somehow be seen to be consistent with their common nature. The religious experience must not only be found, but must also be reconciled with "the varieties of religious experience." The inadequacy of the well-known definitions of religion may be attributed to several causes. The commonest fallacy is to define religion in terms of a religion. My definition of religion must include my brother's religion, even though he live on the other side of the globe, and ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... investigator, for in his case matters are further complicated, first by the difficulty of correctly translating from that plane to this the recollection of what he has seen, and secondly by the utter inadequacy of ordinary language to express much of what he has to report. However, just as the explorer on the physical plane would probably commence his account of a country by some sort of general description of its ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... inadequacy of language to express the feelings I experienced, or to describe the wonders which I surveyed, an American gentleman, to my great amusement, tapped me on the shoulder, and "guessed" that it was "pretty droll!" It was difficult to avoid laughing in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... connections stand at less than 1 per 100 persons; equipment is old and outdated, and connections with many parts of the country are unreliable; mobile-cellular usage, in part a reflection of the poor condition and general inadequacy of the fixed-line network, increased more than 6-fold between 2002 and 2007 reaching a subscribership base of 25 per 100 persons domestic: cable, microwave radio relay, and tropospheric scatter international: country code - 237; landing ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... churches, but who are stranded on the rocks of apostasy, on whom the storms of life will beat yet a little while, and then they will sink down into ever-lasting ruin. Strong drink, the love of money, or, perhaps, the inadequacy of their former teaching, is the occasion of their fall. Others, scattered over this great wilderness of sin, remain faithful amidst abounding wickedness, and stretch out their hands and utter the Macedonian cry, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... without an aversion that was almost physical: this machine-like regularity, which, in its disregard of mood and feeling, had something of a divine callousness to human stirrings; the jarring contact with automaton-like people; his inadequacy and distaste for a task that grew day by day more painful. His own knowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, too slight for self-confidence, just too much and too fresh to allow him to generalise with the unthinking assurance that was demanded of him. Yet had anyone, he asked himself, more obstacles ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... mind for a proper compliment, but for once he was dumb; in all the oft-repeated phrases of his gallant experiences there was no sentiment to do justice to a moment like this. "I am delighted to meet you again," he said slowly, his mind confused with a sense of the inadequacy of the thing and the inexplicable feelings that crowded into him in the presence of a girl who, three years ago, would have no more disturbed him than would his sister. She was the first to recover from the ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... evidently prepared to listen to all that was said. His clothes and bearing, and quiet, unobtrusive manners, all seemed to suggest truthfully enough his possible identity—an English detective from an advertised office. Duncombe smiled as he realized the almost pitiful inadequacy of ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain unto ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... comparative merits of the Shelburne districts and those of the St John river it is difficult to understand. Edward Winslow frankly accused him of jealousy of the St John settlements. Possibly he was only too well aware of the inadequacy of the preparations made to receive the Loyalists at the mouth of the St John, and wished to divert the stream of immigration elsewhere. At any rate his opinion was in direct conflict with the unanimous testimony of the agents ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... judgment is often emphasized; and the reason for it is here evident, since it must guide us at every turn. The reason for education of judgment is also evident. Every person is bound to make many mistakes; but he will make far fewer when his ability to judge has been properly trained. The utter inadequacy of instruction that aims mainly at acquisition of facts is likewise evident; for the exercise of judgment involves the use or adaptation of knowledge to particular conditions, and the mere possession of facts bears little ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... The Counts Palatine were full of the desire to undertake the journey, and all the inferior knights were animated with the same zeal. Even the poor caught the flame so ardently, that no one paused to think of the inadequacy of his means, or to consider whether he ought to yield up his farm, his vineyard, or his fields. Each one set about selling his property at as low a price as if he had been held in some horrible captivity, and sought to pay his ransom without ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... have known and respected for years is driven by high prices and income-tax to vacate a beautiful home and asks such a simple thing of you as to find a shelter for his bird, you like to do your best. Personally I knew nothing of ravens, but I recognized the inadequacy of my garden for the accommodation of a bird of any kind, therefore I could not think of taking it. But I had a surface acquaintance with the owner of a carriage drive, and I approached him without delay. He was cold in his manner and said with so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... discussed but a few of the many works of this great artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms. Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... unknown places and people. How could he get at them? What place was there for him and his mission in that wild, reckless life of theirs? What had he to bring them. Only a Tale? In the face of that vigorous, strenuous life it seemed at that moment to Shock almost ridiculous in its inadequacy. Against him and his Story were arraigned the great human passions—greed of gold, lust of pleasure in its most sensuous forms, and that wild spirit of independence of all restraint by law of Good or man. He was still looking at the map when ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... a town called Lahedj, about eighteen miles distant, where he kept the treasures which his uncle, who was a brave and politic ruler, had succeeded in amassing. He reputation for wealth, however, and the inadequacy of his means for defending it, drew on him the hostility of the more warlike tribes in the vicinity; and in 1836 Aden was sacked by the Futhalis, who not only carried off booty to the value of 30,000 dollars, (principally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... article in the National Review concerning the inadequacy of our present solution of the housing problem; but it did ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... and with all mystics, in his appeal from the intellect to that which is beyond intellect; in his assertion of the supremacy of feeling, intuition, over knowledge. Browning never wearies of dwelling on the relativity of physical knowledge, and its inadequacy to satisfy man. This is perhaps best brought out in one of the last things he wrote, the "Reverie" in Asolando; but it is dwelt on in nearly all his later and more reflective ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... sounds used to express emotion, if I may so put it, is to weaken that expression, and it would naturally be the strongest emotion that would first feel the inadequacy of the new-found speech. Now what is mankind's strongest emotion? Even in the nineteenth century Goethe could say, "'Tis fear that constitutes the god-like in man." Certainly before the Christian era the soul of mankind had its roots in fear. In our superstition we were like children ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... address I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two sections. I did so in language which I can not improve, and which, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... President, to the consideration of the petition presented by the Senator from Kentucky, and to an examination of the views he has presented to the Senate on this highly important subject. Sir, I feel, I sensibly feel my inadequacy in entering into a controversy with that old and veteran Senator; but nothing high or low shall prevent me from an honest discharge of my duty here. If imperfectly done, it may be ascribed to the want of ability, not intention. If the power of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... industrial revolution and the dominance of all-conquering machinery in Western civilization show the inadequacy of political and economic measures to meet the terrific rise in population. The advent of the factory system, due especially to the development of machinery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, upset all ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... societies, with "pleasure clubs," with organizations connected with churches and factories which are filling a genuine social need. And yet the whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it. Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have emigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these dangers. We cannot expect the young people themselves to cling to conventions which are totally unsuited to modern ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... Squadron.' They are clearly based on the later precedents of Charles I, but it must be noted that Penn is told 'to expect more particular instructions' in regard to the fighting article. We may assume therefore that the admiralty authorities already recognised the inadequacy of the established fighting instructions, and so soon as the pressure of that critical time permitted ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... gauntness, spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... declared, "Idiots and epileptics and lunatics are many; but all together they are less numerous than the victims of nervousness—the people afflicted with lesser grades of psychasthenic and neurasthenic inadequacy, who become devoted epicures of their own emotions, and who claim a large share of the attention of every general practitioner and of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... described as an attempt to reclaim the world of art as a world of fixed laws, to show that the creative activity of genius and the simplest act of thought are but higher and lower products of the laws of a universal logic. Criticism, feeling its own inadequacy in dealing with the greater works of art, is sometimes tempted to make too much of those dark and capricious suggestions of genius, which even [75] the intellect possessed by them is unable to explain or recall. It has seemed due ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Street, the floor of which is now used as a public billiard saloon, while the galleries from which applause and interruption used to come freely now stand empty. There had long been complaint of its inadequacy; Oxford had set the example of a special edifice, and as far back as 1857 a Building Fund had been started, which, however, dragged on an abortive existence from year to year, a constant matter of gibes. 'Can the North restore the Union?' Mr. Trevelyan asked. 'Never, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the disturbances at school are but outward signs of unwholesome physical conditions. If the teacher attempts to treat these causes by crushing the child, she makes confession of her own nervousness and inadequacy and visits her own suffering upon her pupils. A transfixing glance prolonged into an overbearing stare, a loud, sharp voice, a rough manner, are successful only so far as they work on the nervousness of her pupil. She finds that it is temporarily effective, and so by her example and practice ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... leads up in the end to practical conclusions. Public education must be reorganised and must work in a new direction. The extant educational system suffers from a threefold inadequacy. 1. From the humanist point of view, it immures the mind in the study of remote epochs and past civilisations, and does nothing to prepare the pupil for the fulfilment of contemporary duties. 2. From the specifically Swiss point of view, it aims at creating ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... horse, as has been well said, has always stimulated industry and production beyond his power to carry it. It was the forcible remark of the English traveler Sir Morton Peto that the American railroads from West to East were "choked with traffic." So great is the inadequacy of all existing outlets for conveying the more than Amazonian streams of trans-Alleghany merchandise that it has long since become the interest of every great corporation, as well as of every citizen of the country, to open for them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... twenty-three he was invited to accompany General Braddock's staff, but neither he nor angels from heaven could prevent Braddock from plunging with typical British bull-headedness into the fatal Indian ambush. He gave up border warfare, but did not cease to condemn the inadequacy of the Virginia military equipment and its training. He devoted himself to the pursuits of a large planter, and on being elected a Burgess, he attended regularly the sessions at Williamsburg. Wild conditions which in his ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... raised her head as I bid her, and on her face there is a sort of scorn at the poverty and inadequacy of the expression, and yet she replaces it with no other; only the sapphire of her eyes is dimmed and made more tender by ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... army in Kentucky. Some estimates are as high as 150,000. I know, and Mr. Benjamin knows, that Gen. Johnston has not exceeding 29,000 effective men. And the Secretary knows that Gen. J. has given him timely notice of the inadequacy of his force to hold the position at Bowling Green. The Yankees are well aware of our weakness, but they intend to claim the astounding feat of routing 150,000 men with 100,000! And they suppose that by giving us credit for such a vast army, we shall not ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... echoed 'Agreed.' And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink—and, above all, my own inadequacy—to express its quality. You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot know ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... was disappointed by his own emotions, as he turned them from side to side, and prodded them, and shifted to a fresh viewpoint, only to find it no more favorable than the one relinquished: but he veiled the inadequacy of his emotions with very moving fervors. The tale does not record his conversations with Guenevere: for Jurgen now discoursed plain idiocy, as one purveys sweetmeats to a child in fond astonishment at the pet's appetite. And leisurely Jurgen advanced: ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... comfort her, to assure her that it was just the glare on the water, that she would be able to see again in a moment, but I felt the pitiful inadequacy of my empty words, and it seemed that the light had gone out of my life. I pray that I may never again witness such a harrowing sight as that of Myra, leaning her beautiful head on my shoulder, suddenly stricken blind, doing her best ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... round to the landing-place under the hill of Mount Vernon. Again, in disembarkation, there was a crowd and rush which set the General's temper on edge. He emerged from it, hot and breathless, after haranguing the functionary at the gates on the inadequacy of the arrangements and the likelihood of an accident. Then he and Roger strode up the steep path, beside beds of blue periwinkles, and under old trees just bursting into leaf. A spring sunshine was in the air and on the grass, which had already donned ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... God knows how, or by whom? When all these circumstances were considered, the state of the Irish Catholic church, the way in which the reformation had been effected, the rivalry and enmity between the Catholics and the established church, and the inadequacy of all securities which had been proposed, there was in his opinion, enough to decide the question; for, the first and greatest duty of the legislature was, to secure the establishments as settled at ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... self-preservation, from the conditions of a contract which awarded to them misery and death; that they were at war with society, and had a right to all they could get by exterminating the rich, and that their inflexible theory of equality, the chief legacy of the Revolution, together with the avowed inadequacy of economic science to grapple with problems of the poor, revived the idea of renovating society on the principle of self-sacrifice, which had been the generous aspiration of the Essenes and the early Christians, of Fathers and Canonists and Friars, of Erasmus, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... The inadequacy of these stores was felt very severely. At last, after a short and determined deliberation, it was resolved to run the colony upon communal lines. This was the only feasible form of control in order to protect the prisoners against scandalous robbery, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... To illustrate the inadequacy of Wordsworth's theory to explain the merits of his own poetry, I select a stanza from one of his simplest and most characteristic ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... conventional language of compliment, which showed no real discrimination and which, one suspects, often disguised mere advertising. His estimate of his own capabilities was only the repetition of the medieval formula, with its profession of inadequacy for the task and its claim to have used simple speech devoid of rhetorical ornament. That it was nothing but a formula was recognized at the time and is good-naturedly pointed out in the words of Harrington: "Certainly if I should confess or rather profess ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... framework on which the book is constructed. Under the limitations of such a table, confined to a single term in every case, it is of course impossible to avoid the appearance of artificiality of form and inadequacy of treatment. This collection of dry bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a glance the conception of ethics as an organic whole of interrelated members: a conception it would be impossible to present ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... had encountered this book earlier. It would have been useful to me when writing my own pages on the country it describes. I am always finding myself in accord with the author's opinions, even in trivial matters such as the hopeless inadequacy of an Italian breakfast. He was personally acquainted with several men whose names I have mentioned—Capialbi, Zicari, Masci; he saw the Purple Codex at Rossano; in fact, there are numberless points on which I could have quoted him with profit. And even at an ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... to explain my own inadequacy to answer such a question and my total lack of authority to voice American sentiment. While I was confident that many Americans believed in the cause of the Allies, and had every confidence in the outcome of the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... am sorry you made her angry, Stella." Mary O'Gara had found her tongue at last. She had no idea of the inadequacy of what she said. Her thoughts had gone swiftly back to the days when she had trembled before Grace Comerford's cold rages. Her thoughts, as though they were too tired to consider the situation of the moment, went ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... letting nature speak will, of course, be great,—the hazard of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former contingency—the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser public—has ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... knowing there are a great number of objects worth knowing, which you may never have the chance to see again. You go every day, in all moods, under all circumstances; feeling, probably, in seeing them, the inadequacy of your preparation for understanding or duly receiving them. This consciousness would be most valuable if one had time to think and study, being the natural way in which the mind is lured to cure its defects; but you have no time; you are always wearied, body ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the subsidy advocates the law's failure to produce the anticipated results only proved its inadequacy in not providing enough subsidy. Accordingly, further measures were proposed affording a ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... authority, and that he had summoned Amursana to Pekin only for the purpose of deposing him. To complete the quarrel, Amursana declared himself King of the Eleuths, and absolutely independent of China. But the energy and indignation of Keen Lung soon exposed the hollowness of these designs, and the inadequacy of Amursana's power and capacity to make good his pretensions. Keen Lung collected another army larger than that which had placed him on his throne, to hurl Amursana from the supremacy which had not satisfied him and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the old-time barriers had been maintained, may be added the name of the late Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. Mary Putnam secured her preliminary medical education in the early '60's, and found herself keenly troubled and dissatisfied at the inadequacy of the facilities extended to women for the study of medicine. She insisted that if women practitioners were to be, as she expressed it, "turned loose" upon the community with license to practise, they should, not only as a matter of justice to themselves but of ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... "that enchanting possibility seems to be more remotely positioned than ever. Again has the clay-souled Wang Ho, on the pretext that he can no longer make his in and out taels meet, sought to diminish the monthly inadequacy of cash with which he ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... since the Koran was authority for it, does in no way affect God's unity. The problem was quite as important for Judaism as it was for Islam, and for the same reason. Hence Saadia's insistence that inadequacy of language is alone responsible for our expressing God's essential attributes in the three words, Living, Omnipotent, Omniscient; that in reality they are no more than interpretations ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... chosen means and instrument. These are entitled respectively, "The Model Man," "The Model Life," and "The Idea of the Church." Three more chapters discuss Protestantism, stating its commonest doctrines and citing its most competent witnesses in proof of its total and often admitted inadequacy to lead man to his destiny. Bringing the reader back to the Church, the fourteen last chapters fully develop her claims, dealing mostly with known facts and public institutions, and citing largely ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... nothing of the justice of the measure he proposed to adopt, but much on the expediency. He concluded by offering to Vargrave, in the most cordial and flattering terms, the very seat in the Cabinet which Lord Saxingham had vacated, with an apology for its inadequacy to his lordship's merits, and a distinct and definite promise of the refusal of the gorgeous viceroyalty of India, which would be vacant next year by the return of the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... functions per se. I was simply speaking of states of feelings. The source and origin I did not go into. I simply made an attempt to imply that such states of feeling were responsible for the discomfort and feeling of inadequacy of the patient, and as Dr. Jelliffe has well repeated that the victim attempts to rationalize this in supernatural fashion and that this may be not at all dependent upon the notion of the supernatural universe he ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... chivalry, art, and tradition. We have striven to put them into our lives often blindly, crudely. We have borrowed and bought what we could not create; instinctively we pay homage to what is beyond our industrial power to make, confessing the inadequacy of our materialism to satisfy our souls. We, too, demand a world in which beauty of conduct, beauty of manners, and beauty of art shall be cultivated to give meaning to our lives. The bombardment of Rheims, the murder of Edith Cavell are ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... crying pity that children are equal to the task imposed upon them. It is a crying pity that machines (since they have appeared, with their extended, all-absorbing power) should not do all! Particularly in the Southern States do they evince, at a fatal point, their limit, display their inadequacy. When babies can be employed successfully for thirteen hours out of the twenty-four at all machines with men and women; when infants feeds mechanism with labour that has not one elevating, humanizing effect upon them physically or mentally, it places human intelligence below par ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... inadequacy of human evidence. You must not expect any one to believe that such a manifestation took place. It is like the stories we hear of haunted houses. A friend of mine the other day was telling me of a ghost that frequented an Australian ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... usually contents himself by compassionating the inadequacy of my efforts for dealing with the miseries which they contemplate, with the remark that I don't go deep enough, that mine is a superficial operation, whereas they destroy poverty by dragging it up by ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... child will not improve. When errors of diet or inattention to general rules of health incapacitate the mother from the performance of her duty, there may be hope from the adoption of a wiser course; while when the supply simply fails from its inadequacy, much may be hoped for from a wise combination of hand-feeding with nursing at the breast; the mother perhaps suckling the infant by day, but being undisturbed by ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... brief example. But wealth is nothing unless you can use it. The real strength of English lies in the inspired freedom and variety of its syntax. There is no grammar of the English speech which is not comic in its stiffness and inadequacy. An English grammar does not explain all that we can do with our speech; it merely explains what shackles and restraints we must put upon our speech if we would bring it within the comprehension of a school-bred grammarian. But the speech itself is like the sea, and ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... straits by having the temptation forced too much upon them. Flesh and blood can not always withstand the provocation of earthly delicacies, even where the spirit is a tolerably stout one; and of the inadequacy of the mind, always to contend with the inclinations of the flesh, have we not a caution in that injunction of Holy Book which warns us to fly from temptation? But lame people can not fly, and he is most certainly lame who ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... ensure a facsimile in any such case, the originals, or representations of them, would require to be submitted to the eye,—not merely described to the ear. Nay, from the example given in the text,—that of the golden candlestick,—we have an instance furnished in recent times of the utter inadequacy of mere description for the purposes of the sculptor or artist. Ever since copperplate engravings and illustrated Bibles became comparatively common, representations of the branched candlestick taken from the written description have been common also. The candlestick on the arch of Titus, though ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... seemed to her that the imposing force which had that morning left her walls, was sufficient to have routed all the disaffected in Scotland, if collected in a body; and now her first reflection was upon the inadequacy of their own means of resistance, to an army strong enough to have defeated Claverhouse and such select troops. "Woe's me! woe's me!" said she; "what will all that we can do avail us, brother?— What will resistance do but bring sure destruction on the house, and on the bairn Edith! for, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... must be added the appointment of Kutusoff, which had revived their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and for the less affluent, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning the only home which they possessed; lastly, the inadequacy of the means of transport, notwithstanding the quantity of vehicles, which is peculiarly great in Russia; either because heavy requisitions for the exigencies of the army had reduced their number; or because they were too small, as it is customary to make them very light, on account of the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the newspaper insists upon, on the ground, presumably, that it is right and natural, in the minor affairs of life, it entirely ignores in the major matters of life. While it insists, for example, that the writer who expresses an opinion in its columns on the ludicrous inadequacy of the Promenade Concerts shall accept personal responsibility for that opinion, it allows views and opinions on such vital matters as the sovereignty of Parliament, the invincibility of Capitalism and the immorality of Trades ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... peonage; denial of political rights; long continued persecution for political reasons; a system of cheating by landlords and storekeepers which rendered it impossible for tenants to make a living, and the inadequacy of school facilities.[2] Sworn public documents show that nearly 3,500 persons, most of whom were negroes, were killed between 1866 and 1879, and their murderers were never brought to trial or even arrested. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... misapprehension that I do not wish you to entertain. Do not suppose that there is any new or sudden or recent inadequacy on the part of this Government in respect of preparation for national defense. I have heard some gentlemen say that we had no coast defenses worth talking about. Coast defenses are not nowadays advertised, you understand, and they are not visible ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... beside her might be capable of any extreme of action. Whatever decision he might adopt over any given matter, he would hold by it, come what may, and she was aware of an odd reflex consciousness of feminine inadequacy. To influence Garth Trent against his convictions would be like trying to deflect the course of a river by laying a straw across ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... patient hears a different story. "Cut loose the womb, shorten the ligaments, put it into the right position, and everything will be well." This sounds plausible and seductive; but everyday experiences expose the inadequacy and the destructive ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... another opportunity of introducing my small engine system into the Government Arsenal at Woolwich. In 1847 the attention of the Board of Ordnance was, directed to the inadequacy of the equipment of the workshops there. The mechanical arrangements, the machine tools, and other appliances, were found insufficient for the economical production of the apparatus of modern warfare. The Board did me the honour to call upon ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... cricket, my friend Twyford has given me a new bat. I have always felt that, in my own case, it was the inadequacy of the weapon rather than of the man behind it which accounted for a certain monotony of low-scoring; with this new bat I hope to prove ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... to have no God because it was all God—that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... student of expression not to be too absolute in determining how much he will or will not "make gestures." The person whose impulse is not sufficiently strong from the center may do far better to arouse activity of the organism by more action than to allow any inadequacy of nervous energy to depress the power of vibration which determines the influence ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... history of Principles announced as firmly established, which a little later were found to be defective and had to be adjusted to the advanced stage of human Experience. The very nature of the Inductive Method indicates its inadequacy for the largest and most important purposes of Science. It gives certainty, where it does give it, only up to the point of the present, it can never afford complete certainty for the future. The logical and rigid testimony of this Method can never be more than this;—Observation ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... only think to myself, "Is this fear? it is not fear!" I strove to rise—in vain; I felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to my volition; that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond men's, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to my will was another will, as far superior to its strength ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... isolated in their own atmosphere, and as if revealed. It is as if their vulnerable being was exposed and they have not the wit to cover it. There is a pathos of physical sensibility and mental inadequacy. Their mind is not sufficiently alert to run with their ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... so hardly of me. Your thought does a great wrong to the—respect and deep devotion I feel and shall feel for you." He wobbled the least bit over these words, as if himself conscious of a certain inadequacy, but went on with his usual masculine decisiveness: "Now it must of course be as you wish. But to-morrow I shall make ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... unprejudiced person (who, although entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle, with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), "and in order to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to resort to the methods of barbarism." The most effective ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... 1855. Unfortunately, however, no information was given as to the unfinished state in which it had been left by Balzac, and therefore no explanation was offered of the insufficiency of the denouement, and the inadequacy of the last chapters. Madame de Balzac worked hard, and long before her death in April, 1882, the whole of Balzac's ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... against established teachers and governors. His understanding seriously craved a full and independent satisfaction, and could draw this only from laborious meditation, which should either disclose the inadequacy of the grounds for an opinion, or else establish it, with what would be to him a new and higher because ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... what lawyer's clerk was ever more careful than Napoleon was, when dealing with problems of war? Who was ever more attentive to details, who more industrious, who more untiring? And yet Napoleon's plans for his Russian campaign were inadequate to an amazing degree, and the inadequacy was the cause of his disaster. But whether the cause was carelessness or moral cowardice on his part, the fact remains that he did not estimate the situation with sufficient care, and make due ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... observed by Fothergill, however, the kidney is not the starting-point, the new departure only taking place when the structural change on the kidney has reached that point that it is no longer equal to its function—the "renal inadequacy" of Sir Andrew Clarke. (J. Milner Fothergill, in ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault. She had not wished for more. Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt. But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come. Perhaps something might ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
