"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taken Alexander in his little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport kept piling up in ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... into needless detail respecting all the particular phenomena of the process through which I was now passing, it may yet give the reader a more definite idea of the extremely nervous state to which I was reduced, if I mention that so nearly incapable had my hand become of holding a pen, that whenever it was absolutely necessary for me to write a few lines I could only manage it by taking the pen in one quivering hand, then grasp it with the other to give it a little steadiness, watching for an interval in the nervous twitching of the arm and ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... by the processes of which knowledge was generated. The Sa@mkhya puru@sa cannot know the world when the buddhi-stuff is dissociated from it and merged in the prak@rti, the Mima@msa and the Nyaya soul is also incapable of knowing the world after emancipation, as it is then dissociated from manas. But the Vedanta position is quite distinct here. We cannot know the world, for when the right knowledge dawns, the perception of this world-appearance proves itself to be false ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... of a confused mind, and its spiritual penetration, as also its mastery of the English language, are of a low order. The marks of Boehme's influence appear everywhere in the book, though Pordage is quite incapable of comprehending the more profound and robust features of Boehme's philosophy. What he relates professes to be what he himself has seen in visions, or what he has heard from celestial visitants. It has, he says, been his privilege to taste much of that Tree of Life which ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... possess such qualities of mind, such grasp of reason, such continuity of induction, as to entitle him to underrate the intelligence of so large a number of his fellow-citizens by accusing them of being incapable of a generalization and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... of France climbed wearily a feeble youth always under the influence of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and then it was filled by two other incapable and final Orleans monarchs, until at last by virtue of inheritance and sword, it became the seat of that grand and faulty Henri IV, King of Navarre. By fighting he got his place, and the habit being strong upon him, he ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... the Conservative audiences in the constituency were those got together under the auspices of the Primrose League. But Conservatism even with them was no more than a vague sentiment, healthy so far as it went, but incapable of aiding them in controversy with any glib Radical opponent. I tried again and again during the following few weeks to call their attention to the sources from which our national wealth generally, and most of their own food, was derived, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... in some points upon heat. Heat produces electrical currents; electrical currents produce heat. Heat destroys magnetism. Melted iron is incapable of magnetic influence. Reduction of temperature in iron so far decreases the force, that a celebrated philosopher made an elaborate series of experiments to ascertain whether a great reduction of temperature might not develop magnetic properties in metals other than iron. This branch of thermo-electricity ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... persecution; if we feel at all we must persecute something; the mere acts of feeding and growing are acts of persecution. Our aim should be to persecute nothing but such things as are absolutely incapable of resisting us. Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... by expedients, which in time must lose their effect, and which can have no power over confirmed fretfulness. The pleasure of exercising their senses, is in itself sufficient to children without any factitious stimulus, which only exhausts their excitability, and renders them incapable of being amused by a variety of common objects, which would naturally be their entertainment. We do not here speak of the attempts made to sooth a child who is ill; "to charm the sense of pain," so far as it can be done by diverting ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... and despise it with his whole soul. Whether he actually was suffering from bodily pain, in addition to the pain of his spirit, or not, it is not for me to judge. The doctor came to the rear to see him, and he said that Mr Barlowman certainly was in a state of high fever, that would render him incapable of being of much service. But I thought that he made the declaration in an ironical sort of tone; and whether it was a fever of fear, of spiritual torment, or of bodily torment, he did not tell. One thing is certain, the one frequently ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... on finding our pinnace incapable of farther use, we took out her four bases, anchor, and every thing of value, and set her on fire, after which we ran along the coast. On the 3d February we anchored about 4 leagues from a town, which we saluted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... awake again, dry-mouthed, feeling stupid and drowsy, yet incapable of dozing off for more than several minutes at a time. He abandoned the idea of sleep, ate breakfast in bed, and devoted himself to the morning papers and the magazines. But the drug effect held, and he continued briefly to doze through his eating ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun. Mystery impenetrably shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... it. The more he thought of it, the more he had to acknowledge that he was incapable of executing such a deed. To burn the morsel of paper;—oh, how easy! But yet he knew that his hands would refuse to employ themselves on such a work. He had already given it up in despair; and, having told himself that it was impossible, had resolved to extricate the document and, calling ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... Kate—incapable of doing wrong. I ought to be content without an explanation, knowing you ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... had resolved itself into an unromantic routine—like extracting the last penny for her wool that was possible, shipping on favorable markets, acquiring advantageous leases, discharging incapable herders and hiring others, eliminating waste and unnecessary expenditures, studying ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... hurts; unto whom, being appeased with sacrifices, offerings, or evil works, they seemed to extend the grace of health or of safety, while they only ceased from doing harm. And after was beheld such a multitude of these, flying in the air or walking on the earth, that the island was deemed incapable of containing so many; and therefore was it accounted the habitation of demons, and their peculiar possession. Likewise the crowd of magicians, evil-doers, and soothsayers had therein so greatly increased as the history of not ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... thunderbolt had fallen at her feet, Lady Ashley could not have been more amazed. She sat silent, rigid, incapable of ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... side-car, and one brewery lorry. It was the allegory of my own imperturbable country, delayed for a short time by unforeseen external events but now going about her business, and I blessed Her with tears in my eyes, even though I knew She looked upon me as drunk and incapable. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... by reviving in the mind those pleasures which the study of their history afforded in early life. To Europeans the history of China has hitherto furnished no materials for such recurrence, and the country itself is therefore incapable of communicating such impressions. In vain should we here look for the massy and stupendous fabrics that appear in the pyramids and the pillars of the ancient Egyptians; the beautiful and symmetrical works of art displayed in the temples of the Greeks; the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... I do—after a fashion," he said, smiling at her. It was only in love's fashion, for really he was incapable of quite understanding her. To the country lawyer of sober piety and granite sense of duty, the rich variety of her moods was a continual wonder and sometimes a painful bewilderment. But whether he understood the impetuous inconsequence of her temperament "after ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... eventually got into very serious trouble. I was obliged to fly; and learning that your mother—by this time married—was in Rome, I resolved to seek her in the first instance, and beg of her that pecuniary assistance which my other friends were incapable of affording me. I did so, found her, and, after considerable difficulty, succeeded in obtaining a private interview with her. I represented to her the danger of the position ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... continued Wilkins, "that I have been thinking this evening. I really take a deep interest in his welfare, and wish I knew how to guide him. For his sake I wish my own heart was more disciplined, that I was not so utterly incapable." ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... never interested me much," she replied indifferently. She did not ask him to sit down. It would not have been etiquette in an age when women were by some odd misjudgment considered incapable of managing their ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... with dirt, my clothing torn and disreputable. Laboring for breath, my fingers raw and bleeding, I lay there, with scarcely enough strength remaining to keep from rolling to the bottom of the ravine. For some moments I was incapable of either thought or action, every ounce of energy having been expended in that last desperate struggle. I lay panting, with eyes closed, hardly realizing that I was indeed alive. Slowly, throb by throb, my heart came back into regularity ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... fitted to serve as ridge-tiles on the roof of a house. Although this chert could not have been brittle as now, when first folded into this shape, it presents, nevertheless, here and there, at the points of greatest flexure, small cracks, which show that it was solid, and not wholly incapable of breaking at the period of its displacement. The numerous rents alluded to are not empty, but ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... was rather better. He delighted in the swell and subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recurring rhyme. Nor was Clifford incapable of feeling the sentiment of poetry,—not, perhaps, where it was highest or deepest, but where it was most flitting and ethereal. It was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the awakening ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crisis. He felt himself quite unequal to the work, and also to that of either of the Secretaries of State, or even of the more subordinate and less heavy and responsible offices. He is very subject to have accesses of weakness, which render him incapable for exertion, and deprive his life of much of its enjoyment. They do not appear at present to hasten its termination, but how soon they may do so it is impossible ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... therefore, they directed their course. Trusting to the fleetness of their steeds, they had reason to hope that they should keep ahead of their pursuers; for the Indians' horses, though strong and possessed of great endurance, were incapable, they knew, of going ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... With these virtues he might have made a good king, had he possessed firmness of will enough to support a good minister, or to adhere to a good policy. But such strength had not been given him. Totally incapable of standing by himself, he leant successively, or simultaneously, on his aunt, his wife, his ministers, his courtiers, as ready to change his policy as his adviser. Yet it was part of his weakness to be unwilling to believe himself under the guidance of any particular person; he set a high ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... blueness that creeps there after the pinks and purples and yellows of the dawn,—"Greenways," with a chimney at the rear sending up the friendly line of its earliest smoke, begot in him a vague emotion that all the bricks and mortar in the city were incapable of doing. He told himself that he, too, wanted a home;—not the boarding-house life that had been his before fame swooped down on him, nor the more luxurious club life that had followed, nor a holiday-month like this present one, in a rented cottage with his favourite sister for companion; ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... of the Great White Father, harangued the chief in a style similar to that he had used with Ahchoogah. Ahcunazie appeared dazed and incapable ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... said their visitor. "There is not the faintest idea in the mind of one of us that Professor Frowenfeld is guilty of even an intention of wrong; otherwise I should not be here. He is a man simply incapable of anything ignoble." ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... some of its antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier—once or twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting that Rosie had anything to do with her tears. He hardly noticed that Rosie had taken to feeding the canary; the question of how he should feed himself was becoming every day more and more menacing. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... thought the Doctor to himself, and growing uneasy; yet, from his very anxiety to turn the subject, quite incapable of saying an ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... a spoke in one's wheel; break the neck, break the back; unhinge, unfit; put out of gear. unman, unnerve, enervate; emasculate, castrate, geld, alter, neuter, sterilize, fix. shatter, exhaust, weaken &c 160. Adj. powerless, impotent, unable, incapable, incompetent; inefficient, ineffective; inept; unfit, unfitted; unqualified, disqualified; unendowed; inapt, unapt; crippled, disabled &c v.; armless^. harmless, unarmed, weaponless, defenseless, sine ictu [Lat.], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... morning. It was morning because, until the direct rays of the sun touched it, the changing nitrogen of our atmosphere did not pass into its permanent phase, and the sleepers lay as they had fallen. In its intermediate state the air hung inert, incapable of producing either revival or stupefaction, no longer green, but not yet changed to the gas that now lives in ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... him. She knew, indeed, how much he made in his speculations, how much he lost at cards; she knew through him the gossip of the clubs, and venturing herself not too far at sea, liked to watch the undertow of fashionable life. And she liked Jack, and was not incapable of throwing him a rope when the hour came that he was likely to be swept ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... poetry of the Gael, Macpherson has expressed himself unfavourably; he regarded the modern Highlanders as being incapable of estimating poetry otherwise than in the returning harmony of similar sounds. They were seduced, he remarks, by the charms of rhyme; and admired the strains of Ossian, not for the sublimity of the poetry, but on account of the antiquity of the compositions, and the detail of facts ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... speedily announced by an exclamation, "Oh, goodness, oh!" I felt my delightful invader pressed into me with all his force, as if he wished his whole body could follow. I endeavoured to add to his delight by a few movements on my part, for he was now so overcome with pleasure as to be almost incapable of motion, and contracting the mouth of the orifice as much as I could, I pressed upon his swollen and throbbing column and strove to prolong his pleasure by delaying as long as possible the passage of the precious liquid through ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... to endure whatever Miss Debby might choose to inflict. So she leaned back hopelessly in her chair, while the old lady snapped and cracked a plate of candied fruits with a vigor of which her teeth looked incapable. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... brain, nourished by a well sustained body; his intelligence was apt and rapid, but these unheard-of complications demanded a morbid analysis of which he was incapable. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Emperor, King of Prussia, seems to be quite incapable of understanding that, in love as in hate, it is wisest not to be overfond of repeating either the word "always" or the word "never." It is the intention of William II, that Germany should for ever and ever remain the gate of Hell for France, and he has continued to din ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... went plunging through the swamps. Most of the mules fell several times, and we had great difficulty in getting them up again. We passed two travellers with their mules up to their girths in mud, and incapable of extricating themselves, but could not help them, as we dared not allow ours to stand, or they would stick fast also. We had met, at San Ubaldo, the son of Dr. Seemann, on his way home to England. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing the fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. And besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of the other's fortified places already, these precautions are of the nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away. But I have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sister, the Infanta Fernanda; and pray, what possible objection could there be to that? The wily old King whispered into the chaste ears of Guizot the key to the secret; he had good reason to believe that the Duke of Cadiz was incapable of having children, and therefore the offspring of Fernanda would inherit the Spanish crown. Guizot rubbed his hands, and began at once to set the necessary springs in motion; but, of course, the whole ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... Ewold's, and, as I think, contented. Her happiness began very quickly. Though she had been greatly broken by her troubles, the first sight she had of her husband in his new long frock-coat went far to restore her, and while he was declaring himself to be a cock so daubed with mud as to be incapable of crowing, she was congratulating herself on seeing her husband once more clothed as became his position. And they were lucky, too, as regarded the squire's house; for Mr Thorne was old, and quiet, and old-fashioned; and Miss Thorne was older, and though ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... be relieved, and in consequence he was inactive and apathetic, confining his operations to an aimless expedition whose advance extended only as far as Blain's crossroads, whence it was soon withdrawn. Meanwhile General Foster had superseded Burnside, but physical disabilities rendered him incapable of remaining in the field, and then the chief authority devolved on Parke. By this time the transmission of power seemed almost a disease; at any rate it was catching, so, while we were en route to Dandridge, Parke transferred the command to Granger. The latter next unloaded it ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... ill-judged, bitter, and unfair. The Border States men had a right to be represented and it was all-essential that they should feel that they had a part in the War government even though their spokesman Blair might show himself, as he often did show himself, quite incapable of understanding, much less of sympathising with, the real spirit of the North. Stanton might be truculent and even brutal, but he was willing to work, he knew how to organise, he was devotedly loyal. Seward, scholar and statesman as he was, had been ready to give needless provocation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... himself go once, and explained in definite terms that they were incapable of understanding a man's needs, a man's desires, a man's point of view. He called them neuters, epicenes, bloodless, sexless creatures. He said they could of course kill him—as so many insects could—but that he despised ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... side for their supply.' We have been struck with a passage in a powerful article upon 'The Hope that is within Us,' in a late foreign periodical, wherein the fruitful theme of our correspondent is touched upon. 'If matter,' says the writer, 'be incapable of consciousness, as JOHNSON so powerfully argues in Rasselas, then the animus of brutes must be an anima, and immaterial; for the dog and the elephant not merely exhibit 'consciousness,' but a 'half-reasoning' power. And if it be true, as JOHNSON maintains, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... was our passage on a bamboo bridge over a river in our course. The army had crossed by a ford lower down, where the water was shallow and the current slight. Here it was of great depth, and the banks of considerable height. As I looked at the slight structure, however, it appeared to me incapable of bearing more than the weight of a single man, while a few cuts with a manchette would have sent it ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... of spirit" which Lord Chancellor Fortescue so quaintly and so unjustly denounces in the French and Scottish temperaments, may it not be more justly attributed to the German temperament? Are not the Germans constitutionally incapable of accomplishing a revolution? They lack the red corpuscles in their veins. They have no phosphorus or mercury in their composition. They have no elan, no resilience or vitality. They are strong, but only when they act gregariously, not when they act as free and irresponsible individuals. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... my father and mother taught me little but what was Christian, doctrines were taught me by others that shocked both my reason and my sense of right. I was taught, among other things, that in consequence of the sin of Adam, God had caused me to come into the world utterly depraved, and incapable, till I was made over again, of thinking one good thought, of speaking one good word, or of doing one good deed. I felt that I did think good thoughts, and that I had good feelings, and that I both said and did good things. But this I was ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... it is evident from the authority of the gravest men—theologians, presidents, judges, corporations, universities, senates—that every prince is better than his father, 'of blessed memory, now with God'. If they continue to rise thus transcendently, earth in a little time will be incapable of holding them, and higher heavens must be raised upon the highest heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian courts, the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... seemed incapable of sitting still, with folded hands, for any length of time; and when the stress of her attention to household work, and her devotion to neighborly good deeds relaxed, she turned to knitting wash-rags as a sportsman turns to his gun, or a toper to his cups. She seemed ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... he added, muttering to himself, and looking as if he were stretching his eyes to see into futurity; "twenty-four hours? It is of the shortest. Yet twenty-four hours, ably and skilfully employed, may be worth a year in the hand of indolent or incapable agents.—Well—to the forest—to the forest, my gallant lords!—Orleans, my fair kinsman, lay aside that modesty, though it becomes you; mind not my Joan's coyness. The Loire may as soon avoid mingling with the Cher, as she from ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the eye of Lucan, who describes him as—"Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum." A fine lambent gleam of his character escapes also in that magnificent fraction of a line, where he is described as one incapable of learning the style and sentiments suited to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... cut into her heart; it could not reach the image of Raoul she shielded there. She knew her lover too well, and that he was incapable of this baseness. But the injurious charge, diverted from him, fell upon her own defences, and, breaking them, let in the cruel light at length on her passion, her folly. This was how the world would see it. . . . Yes! ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... faculties. This delightful experience, as it may be called, I have enjoyed this evening, to an exquisite degree, at the funeral of the king; but, although the whole succession of incidents is indelibly imprinted on my recollection, I am still so much affected by the emotion excited, as to be incapable of conveying to you any intelligible description of what I saw. It was indeed a scene witnessed through the medium of the feelings, and the effect partakes of the nature of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... celebrated Captain Kidd, who indeed is mentioned in the novel. But of the state of mind which leads a man to be a pirate, and of the effects which it produces upon his morals, De Foe has either no notion, or is, at least, totally incapable of giving us a representation. All which goes by the name of psychological analysis in modern fiction is totally alien to his art. He could, as we have said, show such dramatic power as may be implied in transporting ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... trembled in melancholy accord with the shrill complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr Brogley's shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an eternal perspective ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the largest sense, should include whatever is fine, straightforward, clean, brave, and manly. The best boys I know—the best men I know—are good at their studies or their business, fearless and stalwart, hated and feared by all that is wicked and depraved, incapable of submitting to wrongdoing, and equally incapable of being aught but tender to the weak and helpless. A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward, and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals. One prime reason for abhorring ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Claude lifted the girl as though she had been a child, and stepped towards the boat. Zac was already on the raft, and held the boat, while Claude stepped aboard. The old man then tried to rise and follow, assisted by the maid, but, after one or two efforts, sank back, incapable of keeping his feet. Upon this Zac flung the rope to the French lieutenant, and walked over to the old man. Claude now had returned, having left the girl in the stern ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... back to the burdens Shem and Japhet piled onto him with alacrity, that Democracy, then in the womb uv the future, kicked lively, and clapped its hands. There wuz a nigger to enslave, and whisky to bring men down to the pint uv enslavin him. There wuz whisky to make men incapable uv labor; whisky to accompany horse racin, and poker playin, and sich rational amoosements, and a nigger cust especially that he mite sweat to furnish the means. Observe the fitniss uv things. Bless the Lord, my brethren, for whisky and the nigger; ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... brain. The thing was out of his hands. He—Andy Larson—he gave up. He quit. He was nothing but a head that was hard and a body that was dead. What right did he have thinking he had any control over what happened to him? He was incapable of doing anything himself—he had to wait until something happened to him. And he knew what was going to happen. So that's what he'd do. ...
— A Choice of Miracles • James A. Cox
... examination will, moreover, suffice to show of what this mechanical model is formed which is presented to us as constituting the essence of matter. This can be nothing else than the sensations, since we are incapable of perceiving or imagining anything else. It is the sensations of sight, of touch, and even of the muscular sense. Motion is a fact seen by the eye, felt by the hand; it enters into us by the perception we have of the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... to which they do not consent, disowned by their brethren and countrymen, refused the liberty not only of trading with their own manufactures, but even their native commodities, forced to seek for justice many hundred miles by sea and land, rendered in a manner incapable of serving their king and country in any employment of honour, trust, or profit; and all this without the least demerit; while the governors sent over thither can possibly have no affection to the people, further than what is instilled into them by their own justice and love of mankind, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... every Hour wantonly and wickedly calling for Damnation on themselves and others, which may be ('tis much to be feared) too near them already. Add to this the Lewdness and Debauchery that prevail amongst the lowest People, which keeps them idle, poor, and miserable, and renders them incapable of getting an honest Livelihood for themselves and Families; the Number of lewd Houses, which trade in their Vices, and which must at any rate be paid for making Sin convenient to them; and it will account for Villainies of another Kind, which are ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... probably a convicted thief, or liar, or something fully as bad, if not worse. He said nothing after rejoining his friends, but his spirits sank lower than Bracebridge had ever before seen them. He seemed incapable even of doing his ordinary lessons in the way he had been accustomed to get through them. Even the Doctor and the masters observed the change. By degrees, too, many of the boys with whom he had been accustomed to ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... Soldier. There are Three Things which the officers are chiefly afraid of in their Men: The First is, that they may desert, which is so much Money lost: The Second, that they may rob or steal, and so come to be hang'd: The Third is, that they may be sick, and consequently incapable of doing Duty. Any middling Honest secures them entirely as to the two First; and, without Doubt, the less vicious; that is, the more sober and temperate the Men are, the more likely they are to preserve ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... period of ferment before Descartes. Each of these nations contributes elements to the total result which it alone is in a position to furnish, and each is rewarded by gifts in return which it would be incapable of producing out of its own store. This international exchange of ideas, in which each gives and each receives, and the fact that the chief modern thinkers, especially in the earlier half of the era, prior to Kant, are in great part not philosophers by profession ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... misrepresent things so. As far as Zaidos could see, there was nothing to be gained by it. The incident was past and did not concern the doctor in any way. Zaidos, who did not know his cousin at all, had yet to learn that his was one of the natures that are incapable of any noble effort, yet which feed on praise. With Velo everything was personal. If he passed a beautiful woman driving in the park, he thought instantly, "Now if that horse should run away, and I should leap out and grasp the animal by the head, wouldn't that ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... in this instance it was all very well to keep a tame squirrel. "Billee" seemed happy leading the life he was accustomed to; he had been fed and cared for by human beings from his infancy, and might be as incapable of finding food and managing for himself in a wild state as a poor canary would be if let loose from its cage. But generally it is cruel to imprison little wild birds and animals who have known the enjoyment ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... promise ourselves all the emolument which could be derived from it, we found ourselves deceived; and that we might with as much conveniency be out of the sight of land; for, except when the captain launched forth his own boat, which he did always with great reluctance, we were incapable of procuring anything from Deal, but at a price too exorbitant, and beyond the reach even of modern luxury—the fare of a boat from Deal, which lay at two miles' distance, being at least three half-crowns, and, if we had been in any distress for it, as many half-guineas; ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... of Captain Delano, a man of such native simplicity as to be incapable of satire or irony, had been dropped in playful allusion to the Spaniard's singularly evidenced lordship over the black; yet the hypochondriac seemed some way to have taken it as a malicious reflection upon his confessed inability thus far to break down, at ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... only to be obedient. That is her whole duty, The line does not mean, as it has been said, that 'she is incapable of good or evil;' but it is not her part to take the initiative even in ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... says (Div. Nom. iv) that evil is "weak and incapable." But weakness or inability either takes away or diminishes guilt. Therefore a human action does not incur ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... and treated well, and then you will see that our reputation will be very good in all Europe, which will declare for our independence; but if we do not conduct ourselves thus, the Americans will decide to sell us or else divide up our territory. As they will hold us incapable of governing our land, we shall not secure our liberty, rather the contrary; our own soil will be delivered over to other ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... he was seventy-eight, he met with a severe accident. He was overturned, and his thigh was severely fractured. He was laid up for six months, quite incapable of stirring. He was afterwards able to get about in a marvellous way, though quite crippled. As his life's work was over, he determined to retire finally from business; and he handed over the whole of his cars, coaches, horses, and plant, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Irish jigs, his old English North-country ballads and his coster songs were an unending joy to his comrades. Their gratitude and admiration took forms that proved poor Harry's undoing, and besides some of them took an unholy joy in sending the chaplain's batman to his officer incapable ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... again, unchecked. Bill stood beside her, his shoulders drooping, but in no situation of his life had he ever felt more helpless, more incapable of aid. "Don't cry," he pleaded. "Don't cry, Miss Tremont. I'll take care of you. Don't you ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... entirely to money-getting, he has to neglect so many things necessary to make a man attractive. But even before that, the very nature that made him choose money-getting as the chief end of man was incapable of the finer qualities. There are charming rich men, but either they inherited their wealth, or made it in some high pursuit to which gain was only an incident, or they are exceptional cases. But of course Bagley isn't even a fair type of the regular money-grinder—he's a speculator in anything, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... indignation, for it was as if her father had accused her of untruthfulness; but an imploring look from her mother, just as she was going to speak, silenced her, and she suffered to herself till her father had gone, and then indignantly declared that John Grange was incapable ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... gratefully to accept. Young men and women, recent graduates of colleges, have sometimes requested me to introduce them to publishers desiring to issue translations of certain books in foreign languages; but knowing how superficial often is the linguistic attainment of the college graduate, making him incapable of rendering correctly into English the spirit and the letter of a foreign tongue, I have respectfully declined. I may say, and with accuracy, that scarcely a translation is made which does not show some ...
— The Importance of the Proof-reader - A Paper read before the Club of Odd Volumes, in Boston, by John Wilson • John Wilson
... retorted Chauvelin decisively. "In his present state he is incapable of it, even if he would, which ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... first, luffed up, to come to the assistance of her consort; but on seeing the fall of the latter's mast, and that she was incapable of rendering any assistance, had again altered her course, feeling her incapacity to engage so redoubtable an opponent, single handed. Three hearty cheers broke from all on board the Madras as, after pouring in a broadside at a ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... The proper relation of both times is preserved, or the advantage of both is secured, as more fully explained in the next member, viz. by discussing when they are incapable of disguise, and deciding, when they are not liable to mistake. Cf. Or. in loc., and Boetticher, ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Judge said, in giving judgment, that without Grimston's evidence the seat would have been in great danger, but that he had put an innocent colour on the whole case, and that, knowing him to be an honourable man and incapable of saying anything but the truth, he had implicitly trusted to every word ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... through various experiences without collating them. It would then remain, in fact, more truly and literally identical than if it were modified somewhat by those successive shocks. Yet a sensorium or a spirit thus unchanged would be incapable of memory, unfit to connect a past perception with one present or to become aware of their relation. It is not identity in the substance impressed, but growing complication in the phenomenon presented, that makes ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of death, he had acquired knowledge that turned something in his being into the hardness of the hardest rock. What was the sense of such a disaster if the eternal goodness ordained it? And where was the power of eternal goodness, if it was incapable of hindering it? Nothing remained but to strip oneself bare of all pride and dignity and grovel in the dust before the great unknown, a humble, will-less slave, completely at ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in the detail of their own affairs, and well qualified to acquit themselves on particular occasions, they study no science, and go in pursuit of no general principles. They even seem incapable of attending to any distant consequences, beyond those they have experienced in hunting or war. They entrust the provision of every season to itself; consume the fruits of the earth in summer; and, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... succession fragments of a defeated army had passed through the town. They were mere disorganized bands, not disciplined forces. The men wore long, dirty beards and tattered uniforms; they advanced in listless fashion, without a flag, without a leader. All seemed exhausted, worn out, incapable of thought or resolve, marching onward merely by force of habit, and dropping to the ground with fatigue the moment they halted. One saw, in particular, many enlisted men, peaceful citizens, men who lived quietly on their income, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... law seems to be that, so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. It may even be the reverse of progressive, because as an art becomes more complicated and makes ever greater demands upon technical mastery, it becomes more difficult as a medium of expression, while the mind to be expressed becomes more ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... ceased my demonstrations. An hour later the old servant came to me and said that my wife was in a fit of hysterics. I went to see her. She sobbed and laughed, incapable of expressing anything, her whole body in a tremble. She was not shamming, she was really sick. We sent for the doctor, and all night long I cared for her. Toward daylight she grew calmer, and we became reconciled under ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... gulping her delight, and quite incapable of uttering a word, because of it, flew to the kitchen, instead of to the bedroom, and returned with a broom, with which, while the Shadow peeked in at the window, she brushed, and scraped, and slapped John Fairmeadow so vigorously that John Fairmeadow ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... three nights, and Leavitt gave us our fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable digressions about volcanoes, neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what not. There was no keeping Leavitt to a coherent narrative about the missing Farquharson. He was incapable of it, and Major Stanleigh and myself had simply to wait in patience while Leavitt, delighted to have an audience, dumped out for us the fantastic contents of his mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Emperor curtly. "Hark you—you seem to be a clever mountebank, and I know what power fellows of your sort have over the mob—add to your play lines to be spoken by your puppet King. They should convey this meaning—that although he is a King he is but a puppet incapable of independent action. Puppets that go wrong are broken up and burned in the fire. My will is the law for my realm. Saxony shall be taught that law as Milan was ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... suffered enough to change the bold, high-spirited, active had, so that he hardly knew himself. He was quite incapable of work all the next day, and Mistress Headley began to dread that he had brought home jail fever, and insisted on his being inspected by the barber-surgeon, Todd, who proceeded to bleed the patient, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... killed by the fumes or poisonous gases which the shell ex-hales. From 150 to 200 they are not killed, but knocked senseless, and their skin is turned to a brilliant green colour. From 200 to 250 they are so dazed and stupefied as to be incapable of action, and, generally speaking, after that any one in the district or neighbourhood of the shock is "never the same man again." This is no mere rumour, for I have it direct from ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... these instinctive dispositions with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless, like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam-engine whose fires ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... was yet to fall. The "Encyclopaedia" was issued by an association of publishers which paid Diderot a moderate salary for his services. Of these publishers one, named Le Breton, was the chief. He is said to have been a dull man, incapable of understanding any work of literature. It was his maxim that literary men labor for glory, and publishers for pay, and consequently he divided the income of the "Encyclopaedia" into two parts, giving to Diderot the glory, the danger, and the persecution, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... is so easily set up as an antiquary's. Like those of the lowest order of pawnbrokers, a commodity of rusty iron, a bay or two of hobnails, a few odd shoe-buckles, cashiered kail-pots, and fire-irons declared incapable of service, are quite sufficient to set him up. If he add a sheaf or two of penny ballads and broadsides, he is a great man—an extensive trader. And then, like the pawnbrokers aforesaid, if the author understands a little legerdemain, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... always great! After all, we show a kind of belief in it in our daily practice. Every man is always making fancies about himself; but it is never his workaday self, but something else. The bank clerk who pictures himself as a financial Napoleon knows that his own thin little soul is incapable of it; but he knows, too, that it is possible enough for that other bigger thing which is not his soul, but yet in some odd way is bound up with it. I fancy myself a field-marshal in a European war; but I know perfectly well that if the job were offered me, I should realise ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... anger, but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side. Archie watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father's son. He ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down. Bumptious with a good child's complacency, grieving with a bad child's remorse, indifferent and rebellious as ill-trained children are, we live unawakened among social laws. We enjoy when we can; we suffer much—and needlessly; but we seem incapable of taking hold of our ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... army found itself incapable of acting up to these expectations of its leaders. A cavalry regiment of the Guard, with the cannon and machine guns assigned to it, succeeded on the 16th of June, on the road Jaworow-Niemirow, in making ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... "I'll have to admit that Torlos' people are a higher type of creation than we are. Man, and all other animals on Earth, are parasites of the plant world. We're absolutely incapable of producing our own foods. We can't gather energy for ourselves. We're utterly ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... as a defiance aimed at the royal authority, and they attributed it to the teachings of Williams. In view of the king's unfriendliness these were dangerous proceedings. Endicott was summoned before the General Court at Boston, where he was publicly reprimanded and declared incapable of holding office for a year. A few months afterward, in January, 1636, Williams was ordered by the General Court to come to Boston and embark in a ship that was about to set sail for England. But he escaped into the forest, and made his way through the snow ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it afforded. Man is a being of high aspirations, "looking both before and after," whose "thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance with transcience and decay; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... district, I had always thought that the coasts of Lower St. Lawrence were almost incapable of any degree of cultivation, and practically of no agricultural value; but when at Father Point, some three summers ago, I was delighted to see all along the sandy road-sides long ridges of ploughed land, with potatoes, cabbages and beans growing in abundance. Back of these ridges, extending ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... were not, however, always favourable. They were sometimes the reverse. The new horse was unmanageable, the bullocks were weak and could not draw the carts, the servants were remiss or incapable, the roads were in some places shockingly bad, we were left for hours without tent and food, and, as I have said, the weather now and then was wet and stormy. We had sometimes an amount of trouble which made us half regret we had left home. Ladies ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... meant the love that he swore before they had married! Why had he deceived her? It had all been in his hands, her fate and future; but almost before the bridal flowers had faded, she had come to know two bitter things: that he had married with a sordid mind; that he was incapable of the love which transmutes the half- comprehending, half-developed affection of the maid into the absorbing, understanding, beautiful passion of the woman. She had married not knowing what love and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... belongs to its kindred systems. Nothing would be further from the reality. The fundamental principle on which it rests, that the empire is a community of sovereigns, that the diet is a representation of sovereigns and that the laws are addressed to sovereigns, renders the empire a nerveless body, incapable of regulating its own members, insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentations in its own bowels. The history of Germany is a history of wars between the emperor and the princes ...
— The Federalist Papers
... upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation on a matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words, and as ready to pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his time and his night hours. Horace, in short, was one of those ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... "Great Satan, don't you know? No, of course not; the news would have come on the same ship I did. Why, Angus divorced Flavia. He claimed that she was incapable of giving him an heir to the throne. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... Lindsay is odious to me. Melville's, on the contrary, is, in my present circumstances, one of those which I have most pleasure in hearing; as to Lord Lindsay's, it is doubtless not agreeable to me, but it is none the less an honourable name, always borne by men rough and wild, it is true, but incapable of treachery. Tell me, then, what is this name, Mary; for you see ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... something on the border of fear, but of what? Fear and Milo was a combination hard of reconciliation. The slaves at his heels followed dumbly, slaves in thought and action; if their dulled brains ever awoke, it was but to the call of animal appetites; they were incapable of devotion such as Milo's, and as incapable of shock should their obedience fail reward. They passed into the great chamber, and a throaty cry of alarm burst from the giant at the sight of his ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... tidings of her brother in a letter written from Avoncester, the nearest garrison town. He told his sister that, heart-broken already at the result of what he knew to be his own presumption, and horrified at the fatal consequences of his unhappy neglect, he felt incapable of facing any of those whom he had once called his friends, and the letter of dismissal had removed all scruples. Had it not been for his faith and fear, he would have put an end to his life, but she need have no alarms on that score. He had rushed away, scarce knowing what he was ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it," said he, "that means that you're—that she has accepted you, eh?" He held out his hand. He was a brave and honest man. Even in pain he was incapable of jealousy. He said: "I ought to want to murder you, but I don't. I congratulate you. You're an undeserving beggar, but so were the rest of us. It was an open field, and you've won quite ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... on the flowing world; The climbing instinct was enough for Thee. Or wast Thou, then, an ebbing tide that left Strewn with dead miracle those eldest shores, 420 For men to dry, and dryly lecture on, Thyself thenceforth incapable of flood? Idle who hopes with prophets to be snatched By virtue in their mantles left below; Shall the soul live on other men's report, Herself a pleasing fable of herself? Man cannot be God's outlaw if he would, Nor so abscond him in the caves of sense But Nature stall shall search some crevice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and constantly bring living beings into existence, than to attribute the formation of things to an unknown force, to a spiritual being, who can not draw from his ground that which he has not himself, and who, by the spiritual essence claimed for him, is incapable of making anything, and of putting anything in motion? Nothing is plainer than that they would have us believe that an intangible spirit can act ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... wholesome, and the Country level. He told his Men, that this was an excellent Place for an Asylum, and that he determined here to fortify and raise a small Town, and make Docks for Shipping, that they might have some Place to call their own; and a Receptacle, when Age or Wounds had render'd them incapable of Hardship, where they might enjoy the Fruits of their Labour, and go to their Graves in Peace. That he would not, however, set about this, till he had the Approbation of the whole Company; and were he sure they would all approve this Design, which he hoped, it being evidently for the general ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... accumulated in useless numbers in the villages. Of the twenty-six battalions in Blenheim, twenty were useless, and could not get into action, while the long line of cavalry from thence to Oberglau was sustained only by a few battalions of foot, incapable of making any effective resistance. This was the more inexcusable, as the French, having sixteen battalions of infantry more than the Allies, should at no point have shown themselves inferior in foot soldiers to their opponents. When the curtain of horse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the course of this Journal, included the events of several days in the form of narrative, particularly in my account of the Second Cataract. Wherever I have so done, it has been occasioned by paroxysms of a severe ophthalmia, which afflicted me for fifteen months, and rendered me at times incapable ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... calling ever quite forgets it: and though no one could well have appeared (or indeed felt) lazier, I was really giving my eye practice in discriminating, on this ant-hill, the drunk from the sober, and even the moderately drunk from the incapable. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for a life of piracy, for he saw that the pirate, instead of being a gorgeously-dressed and nobly-chivalrous hero, was only a brutal ruffian travelling on the road to Execution Dock. Tin soldiers could have brought him no happiness, for he knew that they were only lifeless bits of tin, as incapable of fighting as the army of Monaco. It gave him no pleasure to be dressed in a pasteboard helmet and to wear a tin sword, for he knew that grown-up people would not mistake him for a soldier; and that a blue flannel shirt, and a cap with the name of some frigate on a silk ribbon, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... affairs of a nation with a master's hand. In saying this I do not intend to impute any blame to Mr. Chase, the present Secretary of the Treasury. Of his ability to do the work properly had he received the proper training, I am not able to judge. It is not that Mr. Chase is incapable. He may be capable or incapable. But it is that he has not had the education of a national financier, and that he has no one at his elbow to help him who has ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... Captain Branscome: and, such as he was, he kept the school running on days when Stimcoe was merely drunk and incapable. He ever treated Mrs. Stimcoe with the finest courtesy, and, alone among her creditors, was rewarded with ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness. Soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians were thrust aside by the more ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... fathoms "too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which prompt tears—wanting of necessity to those who, being protected usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow, would by that same levity be made incapable of resisting it on any casual access of such feelings; but also, I believe that all minds which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I have done, must, for their own protection from utter despondency, have early encouraged and cherished some tranquillising ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... attracting the best men, his ability in quieting rivalries and—animosities, and the kindly firmness of his whole policy were a source of wonder to all who knew him. And, at his lamented death in 1903, it was found that he had rendered another service of a sort which such strong men as he are often incapable of rendering— he had trained a body of assistants and students worthy to take ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White |
