"Inapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand, with a bold, defiant, confident swagger; the Secretary, on the contrary, trusted to management, expediency, and silent tenacity of purpose. The one had faith in violence, the other in corruption; they were no inapt personifications of the two chief agencies by which the union was ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might be drawn between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern history—Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden change, as ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... mistakenly said to have been the property of Margaret Fuller. As a matter of fact, the beast had been named after Cambridge's most intellectual woman, by Ripley, who had a whimsical fashion of thus honouring his friends. According to Hawthorne, the name in this case was not inapt, for the cow was so recalcitrant and anti-social that it was finally sent to Coventry by the more docile kine, always to be counted on ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... splendid creatures are really works of art, and form our only substitute for sculpture in the absence of any native plastic talent. From the collector's point of view they belong to the best period, while the graceful convention of isocephaly, which has raised the standard of height, renders them inapt for the 'battles' of life, however well equipped for those of their College where the cuisine is at ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... diarist was no inapt observer of the ways of men, and had no small experience. Evelyn was a more attached and grateful admirer. To him, the great Chancellor was "of a jolly temper, of the old English fashion." Yet Evelyn had known ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... appeared; for when Captain Cook and several companions approached the shore in one of the boats, although the greater number of the people ran away, two men armed with lances came down on the rocks to dispute the landing of the strangers. [Note 2.] It was not an inapt representation on a small scale of the contest which, ere many years had rolled by, was to begin on these shores between savagedom and civilisation, when the latter would, with giant strides, sweep over and subdue the land. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... Kaiser, he is dreadfully poor; inapt for battle himself. And in the end of this same May, 1727, we hear, his principal ally, Czarina Catherine, has died;—poor brown little woman, Lithuanian housemaid, Russian Autocrat, it is now all one;—dead she, and can do nothing. Probably the Kaiser will ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a poet in undress is true within certain limits. If it conveys the impression that he is careless or inapt in the use of language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the right word—for just the right word—than did Whitman. He would wait for ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... or reading aloud is very rare and difficult to acquire. For a few years there was a tendency to over-emphasis in both, and, in recitation, to teach gesture, for which as a nation we are singularly inapt. This is happily disappearing, simplicity and restraint are regaining their own, at least in the best teaching for girls. As to reading aloud to children it begins to be recognized that it should not be too explicit, nor too emphatic, nor ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... puzzle is not inapt,' replied Fielding, as he opened his door. 'Good-night!' and ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... just spoke of, I should doubtless as promptly add that my own case must have been intrinsically of the poorest, and indeed make the point once for all that I should be taken as having seen and felt much of the whole queerness through the medium of rare inaptitudes. I can only have been inapt, I make out, to have retained so positively joyless a sense of it all, to be aware of most of it now but as dim confusion, as bewildered anxiety. There was interest always, certainly—but it strikes me to-day as interest in everything that wasn't ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... new life vitalises and dominates their nature, believers have received 'the Spirit of adoption,' and by it they cry 'Abba, Father.' But the body still remains a source of weakness, the seat of sin. It is sluggish and inapt for high purposes; it still remains subject to 'the law of sin and death'; and so is not like the Father who breathed into it the breath of life. It remains in bondage, and has not yet received the adoption. This text, in harmony with the Apostle's whole teaching, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... himself did not deny the universality of grace, declared at the colloquy in Weimar, 1560, that, when taken in their context, Luther's statements in De Servo Arbitrio contained no inapt expressions (nihil incommodi). He added: "I do not want to be the reformer of Luther, but let us leave the judgment and discussion concerning this book to the Church of sound doctrine. Nolo reformator esse Lutheri, sed iudicium et discussionem istius libri permittamus ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... big subject, I know; I can't get it all in. I shall only suggest it. Just keep that pose, will you? Hold the horse still. 'Stand the storm, it won't be long!'" the artist said, smiling with renewed satisfaction as his pencil, not all inapt, went briskly to work on the horizontal lines ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... part, he would speak of "unifying" this, that or the other stop, and this somewhat inapt phrase has now been adopted by other builders and threatens ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... as Sitta caesia, is closely related to our American forms, resembling them in many of his habits. In studying the literature of the transatlantic species, we at once stumble upon the reason for calling this avian family by the somewhat peculiar and apparently inapt name of nuthatch. The older English form of the word was "nuthack," which unfortunately has been changed to "nuthatch," a word that gives an erroneous impression, for no bird ever hatches a nut. But with the last syllable "hack" the difficulty is all cleared up, as his habit ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... should say. This whimsical volunteer with the voice of an angel, who is so tenderly treated by rough Appenzelder, is a woman, not a refractory choir boy. How you are blushing! You have proved a very inapt pupil in the art of dissimulation and disguise in my royal sister's service. Really ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... overboard. Which when the lady learned, and knew that he was irretrievably lost, she relapsed into her former plaintive mood. But the twain were forthwith by her side with soft speeches and profuse promises, which, however ill she understood them, were not altogether inapt to allay a grief which had in it more of concern for her own hapless self than of sorrow for her lost lover. So, in course of time, the lady beginning visibly to recover heart, they began privily to debate which of them should ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... I was very far away, in a foreign country where they spoke a language which she did not understand. She saw first a paved yard, shaded by a big tree, with a building on the left and a garden at the back: a rough but not inapt description of Krall's stables, which my wife did not know and which I myself had not seen at the time when I wrote the note. She next perceived me in the midst of the horses, examining them, studying ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... "liberally" applied all about him, had been incurred or contrived to predetermine his distinction. It is difficult to express on the contrary how peculiar a value attached to his having simply "come in" for the general luck awaiting any English youth who may not be markedly inapt for the traditional chances. He could in fact easily strike those who most appreciated him as giving such an account of the usual English things—to repeat the form of my allusion to them—as seemed to address you to them, in their very considerable number indeed, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... of the born combatant. The class that laughed openly at his first tremblingly bashful, and ludicrously inapt answer at quiz, was indelibly photographed ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... be borne in mind that the definitions here given do not pivot on the specific illustrations proffered for their explanation. If, in any instance, the illustration seems inapt or imperfect, it may be thrown aside, and reference made to the definition itself. The definition represents the principle involved; the illustration is only ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... thinking of, Katharine?" he asked suspiciously, noticing her tone of dreaminess and the inapt words. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... comparative criticism of her husband's appearance had in due season reached the ears of the bride, and had caused a rupture in the family that the years had not healed, but her resentment had been more a matter of justice to herself than that she felt the criticism to be wholly inapt. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... son!" joyously exclaimed Eva, who ran to meet her favourite brother, oblivious of the smiles produced by her unflatteringly inapt remark. ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... weal, they met our weal with ill; * Such, by my life! is every bad man's labour: To him who benefits unworthy wights * Shall hap what inapt to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... inapt to liken the attainment of the North Pole to the winning of a game of chess, in which all the various moves leading to a favorable conclusion had been planned in advance, long before the actual game began. It was an old game for me—a game which I had been playing for twenty-three years, with ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... composition—but she lived in them. The parts which it bored her to read she easily invented for herself, but the scenes and passages which thrilled her she knew by heart; she had no gift for verse-making, but she laboriously wrote a long poem on the death of Rienzi, and she tried again and again with a not inapt hand to illustrate for herself in pen and ink ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... its own institutions; and one of the most remarkable social phenomena of that country is the absolute subserviency which the political spirit of unbridled democracy yields to its decrees. The bees of the Barberini carved upon its architectural ornaments are no inapt symbol of the spirit and method of working of this busy theological hive, which sends its annual swarms all over the world to gather ecclesiastical honey from every flower ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... walls of our sitting-room, she labored during some years to teach me all the leading dates of human history—the charts being designed according to a novel and ingenious plan to fix those facts in childish memory. But as a pupil I was always most inapt and grievous, in dates and in matters mathematical especially; so that I gave her inexhaustible patience many a sad hour. To this day I cannot tell in what year was fought the battle of Marathon, or when John signed Magna Charta; though the battle ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... on seeing a letter from his father asking him to meet him at Samson Wilks's was to send as impolite a refusal as a strong sense of undutifulness and a not inapt pen could arrange, but the united remonstrances of the Kybird ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... doubt of their future. On the whole they inclined still to the satraps. Persian influence and even control had, in fact, greatly increased on the western coast since the supersession of Athens by a power unaccustomed to imperial politics and notoriously inapt in naval matters; and the fleets of Phoenicia and Cyprus, whose Greek princes had fallen under Phoenician domination, had regained ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth |
