"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Froebel's usually accurate judgment of his own character seems at fault; his opinions being always most decided, even to the point of sometimes rendering him incapable of fairly appreciating ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... rewarded her by presents, but she refused all articles of dress and the jewels which they offered her. Money! money! was her cry. Every month she carried her salary and her little earnings to her uncle Pillerault. Cesar did the same; so did Madame Birotteau. All three, feeling themselves incapable, dared not take upon themselves the responsibility of managing their money, and they made over to Pillerault the whole business of investing their savings. Returning thus to business, the latter made the most of these funds by negotiations at the Bourse. It was known afterwards ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the solicitors who were managing the little affair for him drily acquainted him with the fact that his relative's will was contested by other kinsfolk whom the old woman had passed over, on the ground that she was imbecile and incapable of conducting her affairs. There followed a law-suit, which consumed many months and cost a good deal of money; so that, though he won his case, Mr. Farmiloe lost all satisfaction in his improved circumstances, and was ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... stores and barber shops where everybody, including minors, was invited to sign, the circulator later coming around and gathering them up. It also said that many of the signatures were obtained by infants incapable at law of properly circulating or certifying to the petition sheets and that a number of circulators named had engaged in a systematic course of fraud and forgery, thereby making invalid all of the names. Attached were twenty pages of exhibits ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... of character. The greatest of astronomers, rather than seem ostentatious or unseasonably learned, will stoop to the popular phrase of the sun's rising, or the sun's motion in the ecliptic. But God, for a purpose commensurate with man's eternal welfare, is by these critics supposed incapable of the same ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... involved in making inquiries at the asylum in which Hester Dethridge is confined for life; announces that she has not only made the inquiries, but has seen the unhappy woman herself; has spoken to her, has found her unconscious of her dreadful position, incapable of the smallest exertion of memory, resigned to the existence that she leads, and likely (in the opinion of the medical superintendent) to live for some years to come. Having stated these facts, her ladyship is about to make a few of those ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... not prevented by the misfortune of my nose, which was last night most cruelly disarranged, by a violent contusion I had the honour to receive, in attempting to compose that unhappy fracas, at the house of Madame la Maquerelle; and what puts the finishing stroke to my mishap, is my being rendered incapable of keeping three or four assignations with ladies of fashion, by whom I have the honour to be particularly esteemed. The disfiguration of my nose, the pain I have undergone, with the discomposure of brain which it produced, I could bear as a philosopher; but the disappointment of the ladies, my ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... which had possessed me in the morning would lay hold on a man or woman; and with yells and imprecations the sufferer would attack the steep slope until, baffled and bleeding, he fell back on the platform incapable of moving a limb. The others would never even raise their eyes when this happened, as men too well aware of the futility of their fellows' attempts and wearied with their useless repetition. I saw four such outbursts in the course of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... was able to rouse him with very little delay. In the excitement that possessed me, I spoke of the revival as a possible thing in the hearing of the servants. The whole household accompanied us to the Deadhouse, at the opposite extremity of the building. What we saw there, I am utterly incapable of describing to you. I was in time to take the necessary measures for keeping Mrs. Wagner composed, and for removing her without injury to Mr. Keller's house. Having successfully accomplished this, I presumed that my anxieties were at an ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... hide in his wrinkles. Bells ding in the oldness of eyes. Did he, by any chance, tell the children that there are such monstrous things as peace and good will ... a corrupter of youth, no doubt ... he is altogether incapable of anger, wholly timid and tintinabulous. And he had always wanted so much to know—if there were ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... musician, and also a colporteur for the Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost everything but a tiler or plasterer. But this shrewd woman had evidently come to the conclusion that, if I did not work upon the housetops, I must perforce be an artist of the trowel. I assured her that I was as incapable of fixing a tile as of making ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... propensities have been so changed by an operation on the cerebrum that they have no power of recalling their past life and are incapable of uttering an oath. And what is more strange, they are intent on leading an upright life and being ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... a dumb dog, a squint-eyed Cerberus with what Count Victor for once condemned as a tribal gibberish for his language, so that he was incapable of understanding what was said to him even if he had been willing ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... into endless depths; the thunder pealed, and she clung to Hubert, too frightened for screaming. His fear was that the cockleshell of a boat should fill and founder; he tried to bale out the water with his hat, and to make her assist, but she seemed incapable, and he could only devise laying her down in the bottom of the boat with his coat over her, hiding her face in terror. Her hat had long ago been blown away, and her hair was flapping about. Ejaculations were in his heart, if not on his lips, and once or twice she cried out something like, "Save ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... he dare only whisper, lest the echo of his own voice should be changed into a curse. Let him have wine, that his blood may riot through his veins and drive memory onward. Let him have wine, that when the hollow cheers of his new allies ring in his ears he may be incapable of understanding their real meaning; or, when he rises to respond to the lip-service of his fellow bacchanals, the fumes may supply the place of mercy, and save him from the abjectness of self-degradation. Burdett! the 20th of August will never be forgotten! You have earned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... was equivalent to proof; trial to condemnation. The execution of a considerable senator was attended with the death of all who might lament or revenge his fate, and when Commodus had once tasted human blood he became incapable of pity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... countenance. For the first time he was half deceived into the belief that the passion of Maurice was unrequited. He had been puzzled in what manner to interpret Madeleine's determined rejection of her cousin. He was unable to comprehend a purity of motive which his narrow mind was equally incapable of experiencing. He finally attributed her conduct partly to a dread of her aunt's and his own displeasure, partly to a desire to render herself more highly valued by Maurice, and to gain a firmer ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... inhabit it. Transmission of characteristics. Variations perpetually introduced. Natural selection. On the other side, life not yet accounted for by Evolution. Cause of variations not yet examined. Moral Law incapable of being evolved. Account given in Genesis not at variance with doctrine of Evolution. Evolution of man not inconsistent ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... pure oxygen; we require an addition of four times its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language, the profound meaning, the high aim of life, can only be unfolded and presented to the masses symbolically, because they are incapable of grasping it in its true signification. Philosophy, on the other hand, should be like the Eleusinian mysteries, for ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... something from each and retaining something from each.[Footnote: Pomeroy, "Some Account of the Work of Stephen J. Field," 38, 45.] Some of the results of his creative touch have been the foundation of decisions in distant States, but most were so dependent on local circumstances and conditions as to be incapable ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... there were difficulties in the way. There was probably a certain diet and regimen to be observed, certain strict rules of life to be kept, a certain asceticism to be imposed on the person, which was not quite agreeable to young men; and after the period of youth was passed, the human frame became incapable of being regenerated from the seeds of decay and death, which, by that time, had become strongly developed in it. In short, while young, the possessor of the secret found the terms of immortal life too hard to be accepted, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flour by the frost. It had no cohesion, the runners sank in it, and Winston was almost waist-deep when he dragged the floundering team through the drifts. A day had passed since he had eaten anything worth mention, but he held on with an endurance which his companion, who was incapable of rendering him assistance, wondered at. There were belts of deep snow the almost buried sleigh must be dragged through, and tracts from which the wind had swept the dusty covering, leaving bare the grasses the runners ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... laughing. "The Nipe is not at all incapable of learning something new. In point of fact, he is quite good at it, as witness the fact that he has learned many Earth languages. He picked up Russian in less than eight months simply by listening and observing. Like ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Ambazouces had reached an advanced age and was near to death, he sent to Anastasius asking that money be given him, on condition that he hand over the fortress and the Caspian Gates to the Romans. But the Emperor Anastasius was incapable of doing anything without careful investigation, nor was it his custom to act thus: reasoning, therefore, that it was impossible for him to support soldiers in a place which was destitute of all good things, and ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... streets, it is unlike the hum of millions of seventeen-year locusts, it wants the musical quality of the spring conventions of the blackbirds in the chestnuts, and he could not compare it to the vociferation in a lunatic asylum, for that is really subdued and infrequent. He might be incapable of analyzing this, but when he caught sight of the company he would be compelled to recognize it as the noise of our highest civilization. It may not be perfect, for there are limits to human powers of endurance, but it is the best we ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... regain his mental equilibrium—to look his situation calmly in the face. It was a frightful one, for his ruin was complete, absolute. He could save nothing from the wreck. What was to become of him? What could he do? He set his wits to work; but he found that he was incapable of plying any kind of avocation. All the energy he had been endowed with by nature had been squandered—exhausted in pandering to his self-conceit. If he had been younger he might have turned soldier; ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the afterpart of their antagonist, followed quickly by bright flames, which darted upwards through the hatchway. Directly afterwards a fire burst out in the forepart of the ship, and raged with a fury which it was clear the crew were incapable of overcoming. Her boats were lowered, and her people were seen dropping down into them with a rapidity which showed that they had abandoned all hope of saving their ship. As they could no longer offer ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... opportunity is still here. The capitalist class has been tried and found wanting. Remains the working-class to see what it can do with the opportunity. "But the working-class is incapable," says the capitalist class. "What do you know about it?" the working-class replies. "Because you have failed is no reason that we shall fail. Furthermore, we are going to have a try at it, anyway. Seven millions of us say so. And what have you ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... We belong to two different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the wall to talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow, incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... us,"[91] meaning by "strangers" apparently heathen, but saying nothing as to the effect of conversion. Connecticut adopted similar legislation in 1650, and Virginia declared in 1661 that Negroes "are incapable of making satisfaction" for time lost in running away by lengthening their time of services, thus implying that they were slaves for life. Maryland declared in 1663 that Negro slaves should serve durante ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... hears an overt declaration of free-thought opinion. Except among the colored men educated in the Government schools, or their foreign professors, there are no avowed free-thinkers;—and this, not because the creole whites, many of whom have been educated in Paris, are naturally narrow-minded, or incapable of sympathy with the mental expansion of the age, but because the religious question at Martinique has become so intimately complicated with the social and political one, concerning which there can be no compromise whatever, that to divorce the former ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... truth or law upon an incapable and merely real man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of sympathy govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put at the head. We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep insist on in a leader. With men who are too high intellectually, the mass have ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... your expressions imply. There is no oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I bear you. By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor. I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... 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 ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... He only survived Pat's departure four days. On the third of February the last symptoms came on; the death-damps began to ooze out, his legs were swelled to the size of his body, and he sat in that state, incapable of receiving warmth, scarcely able to swallow, yet clear, bright, and tranquil, for thirty hours. The morning of the last day was marked by such a revival of strength that he walked across the room with little help, and talked ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... does a lady lose all susceptibility of the tender passion?" said his lordship to the Duchess of C——, then close upon a century of years.[4] The reply was brisk and animated—"Your lordship must apply to some one older than me, for I am incapable of answering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... little fishing village, composed of an irregular row of cottages, huddled together on the beach, and a small, not-too-clean inn, which looked as if it would be quite incapable of providing even seats for a party of forty-three, to say nothing ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... all hours of the night. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee became so exhilarated that he had to be retired from his post; and some of his brethren, who had been calling him to order in a most disorderly manner, were quite as incapable of business as himself, while order had sought her worshipers elsewhere. The exhibition was most humiliating, but it now pleasantly reminds us of the wonderful changes which have ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... arms and legs pinned and my whole body in a kind of wooden vice. I was sick with concussion, and could do nothing but gasp and choke down my nausea. The cut in the back of my head was bleeding freely and that helped to clear my wits, but I lay for a minute or two incapable of thought. I shut my eyes tight, as a man does when he is ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... of space possess but me. That man shall fall so low that when people look at the abject ruin my anger shall have wrought, they will be forced to confess at last and at least that I am indeed greater than he." The king, who was incapable of mastering his emotions any longer, knocked over with a blow of his fist a small table placed close to his bedside, and in the very bitterness of anger, almost weeping, and half-suffocated, he threw himself on his bed, dressed as he was, and bit ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the creative imagination and the impotent forms of the will. In its normal and complete form will culminates in an act; but with wavering characters and sufferers from abulia deliberation never ends, or the resolution remains inert, incapable of realization, of asserting itself in practice. The creative imagination also, in its complete form, has a tendency to become objectified, to assert itself in a work that shall exist not only for the creator but for everybody. On the contrary, with dreamers pure and simple, the imagination remains ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... they all three went in. Once in the little room, they stood in a sort of triangle on three corners of the worn Turkey carpet; awkwardly upright, not looking at each other, quite incapable of seeing any ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that beautiful and gentleman-like feature in the character of Lafayette, which appears to render him incapable of entertaining a low prejudice against those to whom he is opposed in politics. This is a trait that I conceive to be inseparable from the lofty feelings which are the attendant of high moral qualities, and it is one that I have, a hundred times, had occasion to admire in Lafayette. I do ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the new king, which some reactionaries imputed to him as a crime, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not well. Our literature he was incapable of enjoying or understanding. He never once appeared in the theatre. The poets who wrote Pindaric verse in his praise complained that their flights of sublimity were beyond his comprehension. But his wife did her best to supply what was wanting. She was excellently qualified to be the head ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... across the stern (somewhat like the lettering of a shop-sign) under the cottage windows. This ridiculously unsuitable name struck one as an impertinence towards the memory of the most charming of goddesses; for, apart from the fact that the old craft was physically incapable of engaging in any sort of chase, there was a gang of four children belonging to her. They peeped over the rail at passing boats and occasionally dropped various objects into them. Thus, sometime before I knew ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... believe you mingle in the same way with men. You may ask me what I know about it. Of course I know nothing: I simply guess. When I have done, indeed, I mean to beg your pardon for all I have said; but until then, give me a chance. You are incapable of listening deferentially to stupid, bigoted persons. I am not. I do it every day. Ah, you have no idea of what nice manners I have in the exercise of my profession! Every day I have occasion to pocket my pride and to stifle my precious sense of the ridiculous,—of which, of course, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to see that if you haven't any arms in your hands you're not incapable of handling them," said Demorest coolly, as he passed by them and again fell into the ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... do it. And then he began at the beginning again, and condoled with Brooke in his own heart, and vituperated Brooke's daughter, and wondered whether she was really incapable of being reclaimed to the paths of filial reverence, and whether he ought not to make an attempt in his friend's favor. All of which proves that if any man deserved the name of a Don Quixote, that man was ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... yet it is exactly this beauty that is demanded in the style of a French tragedy. No doubt something too is to be ascribed to the quality of their language and versification. The French language is wholly incapable of many bold flights, it has little poetical freedom, and it carries into poetry all the grammatical stiffness of prose. This their poets have often acknowledged and lamented. Besides, the Alexandrine with its couplets, with its hemistichs of equal length, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... supports allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man who tills his field badly is a traitor and ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... compelling him to saltate, then removed, the thousandth ewe lamb will jump at that point just as did the pioneer. So it is with a pietistical and puristical people—they will follow some stupid old bellwether because utterly incapable of independent thought, of individual ratiocination. When "Les Miserables" first appeared some literary Columbus made the remarkable discovery that it was a French book, that it was shot full of "slang," the expressive ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... testimony on this point for the satisfaction of H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig. As for the conduct of the mother of my nephew, it is easily to be inferred from the fact of her having been declared by the Court wholly incapable of undertaking the guardianship of her son. All that she plotted in order to ruin her poor child can only be credited from her own depravity, and thence arises the unanimous agreement about this affair, and the boy being entirely withdrawn from her influence. Such is the natural ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... seven were Rigby himself, Linton, Rand-Brown, Griffith, Hunt, Kershaw, and Chapple. Rigby might be scratched off the list at once. He was one of Milton's greatest friends. Exeunt also Griffith, Hunt, and Kershaw. They were mild youths, quite incapable of any deed of devilry. There remained, therefore, Chapple, Linton, and Rand-Brown. Chapple was a boy who was invariably late for breakfast. The inference was that he was not likely to forego his sleep for ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... quarrels, which always ended in tears, rested and refreshed, as a lawn after a watering, but he remained broken, fevered, incapable of work, Little by little his very violence was worn out One evening when I was present at one of these odious scenes, as Madame Heurtebise triumphantly left the table, I saw on her husband's face bent downwards during the quarrel and now upraised, an expression of scorn and anger ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... Kate—incapable of doing wrong. I ought to be content without an explanation, knowing you as I ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... peace with the Government, however difficult the problem, could not be doubted either. Incapable of a new idea, and contented with his lot, he was disposed to obey even to the lowest functionary, and to offer him capons, hams, and Chinese fruits at all seasons. If he heard the natives maligned, not considering himself one, he chimed in and said worse: one criticised the Chinese merchants ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Christ after His resurrection was willing to eat and to converse with men. And so of those who believe themselves to be risen with Christ, and who are nevertheless stunted in their spiritual growth and incapable of devotion,—I say, that they do not possess a resurrection life, for there everything is restored to the soul a hundred-fold. There is a beautiful illustration of this in the case of Job, whose history I consider a mirror of the spiritual ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... codes adopted in Louisiana, viz., in 1808, 1825 and 1870. The marriage laws are substantially the same in all, but bear different numbers in each code. The following references are to the code of 1870. Except in a very limited number of cases the husband and wife are incapable of making binding contracts with each other during the marriage. Hence all settlements of property, to be binding, must be executed before marriage and in solemn form, that is, before a notary and two male witnesses having the proper qualifications. The betrothed are granted considerable ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... favourite artistic effects, as witness Booz endormi, La Confiance du Marquis Falrice. An act of pity redeemed Sultan Mourad, an act of pity made the poor ass greater than all the philosophers. It was this absorbing pity for the defenceless that made Hugo so merciless to the oppressor and so incapable of seeing anything but the deepest black in the picture of the tyrant. One-sided the poet may be, but it is the one-sidedness of a generous nature; he may err, but his errors at least lean to the side ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... work, the shaking, is done by young girls and by incapable older women of many nationalities. One of the ill-paid girls, who had $4.50 a week, gave $3.50 a week board to an aunt, who never let her delay payment a day. She had only $1 a week left for every other expense. This girl was ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... Terry is incapable of such a thing,—as incapable as you yourself. He is not the flirting sort. He is just ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... during the summer, little children and old and infirm poor who are incapable of hard work, in order to earn a livelihood, employ themselves in searching the beds of dried up rivers for "Paillettes d'Or," or golden dust, which sparkles in the sun, and which the water carries away as it flows. What is done ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... than twenty different forms, and becomes susceptible of six and thirty different ways of agreement. But this article in English is perfectly simple, being entirely destitute of grammatical modifications, and consequently incapable of any form of grammatical agreement or disagreement—a circumstance of which many of our grammarians seem to be ignorant; since they prescribe a rule, wherein they say, it "agrees," "may agree," or "must agree," with its noun. Nor has the indefinite ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... so solicitous about answering reasons, as eager to put the question, when the bill passed, and a protest was entered. By this act the bishop was deprived of all offices, benefices, and dignities, and rendered incapable of enjoying any for the future: he was banished the realm, and subjected to the pains of death in case he should return, as were all persons who should correspond with him during his exile. Dr. Friend, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... leadership of the outraged nobles, Brand being bound, as he thinks, by his oath, and incapable of strongly opposing their intention to kill Thorolf. By chance, and in fulfillment of a prophecy, Thorolf seeks refuge from a snowstorm in a wintry cave and there is forewarned of his impending death by Woden himself. He is surprised by the allies and slain. ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... variety of subjects, equally in vain; and at last led the talk to her daughter. But even there she proved indifferent; said she was pretty, which (as with children) was her highest word of commendation, but was plainly incapable of any higher thought; and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned in my face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had nothing to say. 'People speak much, very much,' she added, looking at me ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... without companionship and there came some rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself. The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her imagination at work in a way that made her tremble: but always when some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... man may have ten wives, very strict prohibition States, very lax divorce States—all these large local vagaries had prepared Cyrus Pym's mind for small local vagaries in a smaller country. Infinitely more remote from England than any Russian or Italian, utterly incapable of even conceiving what English conventions are, he could not see the social impossibility of the Court of Beacon. It is firmly believed by those who shared the experiment, that to the very end Pym believed in that phantasmal court and supposed it ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the spheres through space, unlike all other forms of motion, there is no element of resistance. This form of motion is therefore incapable of developing vis viva. ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... of whom were, however, so painfully absorbed in their own individual afflictions either of death, or famine, or illness, as to be able to render them no assistance. Such as had typhus in their own families were incapable of attending to the wants or distress of others, and such as had not, acting under the general terror of contagion which prevailed, avoided the sick houses as ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... earlier this officer happened in Hong Kong and during his stay an American vessel arrived. Her captain had been seriously ill for some weeks and totally incapable of duty. The first mate died on the voyage, and the second was not equal to the difficulties of navigation. The captain was accompanied by his daughter, who had been several years at sea and learned the mysteries of Bowditch more as a pastime than for anything else. In the dilemma she assumed ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... awful intensity of meaning in the words, as applied to Jesus, "He suffered, being tempted!" Though incapable of sin, there was, in the refined sensibilities of His holy nature, that which made temptation unspeakably fearful. What must it have been to confront the Arch-traitor?—to stand face to face with the foe of His throne, and His universe? But the ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... became a faithful and intimate friend, not only during my stay in London, but ever after. Young as he was, the short time he had spent in London had sufficed to give him an opinion of English musical life, the justice of which I was soon compelled to admit, terrible though it was. Incapable of adapting himself to the curiously organised English musical cliques, he at once lost all reasonable prospect or hope of meeting with the recognition due to his talent. He resigned himself to making his way through the dreary ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... whom our infancy and boyhood held converse—whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead—hands so often grasped—arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes—have long ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... some a whole belief, on the efficacy of prayer for temporal good. Then comes the hard unbeliever, delighted to prove, as any child can do, that such prayer cannot be proved to avail anything. He is incapable of understanding the deeper and truer kind of prayer, but he convinces many that all communion with God is fruitless, or perhaps that there is no God with whom to hold it. This may not be the drift of the article, for, as I said, I have not read it, but it is the drift ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... fallen in love with her, almost, already; for her anger made her more charming than anyone else had ever beheld her; and, as far as he could see, which certainly was not far, she had not a single fault about her, except, of course, that she had no gravity. A prince, however, must be incapable of judging of a princess by weight. The loveliness of a foot, for instance, is hardly to be estimated by the depth of the impression it can ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... taken aback. Nobody, not even another woman, can tell what a woman really is. I thought I had estimated Ned Temple's wife correctly. I had taken her for a monotonous, orderly, dull sort of creature, quite incapable of extremes; but in reality she has in her rather large, flabby body the characteristics of a kitten, with the possibilities of a tigress. The tigress was uppermost when I entered the room. The woman was as irresponsible as a savage. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... his energy was spasmodic; on the field of battle he was strangely indolent, and yet he distrusted the reports of others. But more fatal than his neglect of personal reconnaissance was his power of self-deception. He was absolutely incapable of putting himself in his enemy's place, and time after time he acted on the supposition that Lee and Jackson would do exactly what he most wished them to do. When his supplies were destroyed, he concentrated at Manassas Junction, convinced that Jackson ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... qualities in so large a degree that among American consuls he might fairly be said to be monumental, for at that time our consular service was largely—and I think I may say mainly—in the hands of ignorant, vulgar, and incapable men who had been political heelers in America, and had been taken care of by transference to consulates where they could be supported at the Government's expense instead of being transferred to the poor house, which would have been ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... that the calamity happened through no fault of yours, you would still be entitled to a decision in your favor; but when you consider how apt a sober human mind is to think that an intoxicated mind is incapable of clear thought and intelligent action, I think you will agree with the decisions of the courts, which mean, when expressed in plain language, "You had better not be drunk when you get into trouble ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... gold or silver "for the good man" even though he is poor, "leaveth an inheritance to his children's children." How far the moral character as well as the physical constitution of a parent may affect the happiness and control the destiny of his children, is a question, which may be incapable of an exact and satisfactory solution; but the general fact, notwithstanding some strange exceptions, (which however may not be altogether incapable of explanation,) is sufficiently established, that examples of singular excellence, or notorious profligacy may ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... months only were allowed them for the sale of the reversion of the said offices. In 1684 the Council of State extended the preceding regulations to those Protestants holding the title of honorary secretary to the king, and in August of the same year Protestants were declared incapable of serving on a jury ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... together, read these. One is a letter from the French Commissary—the other is my answer. I could not see you till I had written my reply, that you might be satisfied how safe you were with me, and how incapable I am of baseness.'"—Quarterly Review, volume ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... to consider, is the Convenience of the place where he would Build the Fabrick. This is the reason that Dinocrates was blamed by Alexander, for having propos'd him an Excellent Design for Building a City in a Barren place, and incapable of Nourishing those who ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... the best means of winning him back to sobriety. This was a difficult task, for his powers of bearing liquor were prodigious. He has often been known to drink so many as twenty-five, and sometimes thirty tumblers of punch, without being taken off his legs, or rendered incapable of walking about. His friends, on considering who was most likely to recall him to a more becoming life, resolved to apply to his landlord—the gentleman whom we have already introduced to our readers. He entered ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... Pendleton eyes, down toward the site of the old slave market. Directly in their line of vision, an over-laden mule with a sore shoulder was straining painfully under the lash, but none of them saw it, because each of them was morally incapable of looking an unpleasant fact in the face if there was any honourable manner of avoiding it. What they beheld, indeed, was the most interesting street in the world, filled with the most interesting people, who drove happy animals that enjoyed their servitude and needed the sound of the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... he found Captain Cameron in a state of distraction that rendered him incapable of either coherent thought or speech. "What now, Rae? Where have you been? What news have you? My God, this thing is driving me mad! Penal servitude! Think of it, man, for my son! Oh, the scandal of it! It will kill me and kill his sister. What's your report? ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... incapable of conceiving that the horror of seeing herself set up as an obstacle to Blanche's marriage might have been vivid enough to overpower all sense of her own wrongs, and to hurry her away, resolute, in her ignorance of what else ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... similar remarks in another place; but I cannot tell whether this desolation has been caused by a want of population, or by an altered condition of the land.) He told me that a conjecture of a change of climate had sometimes crossed his mind; but that he thought that the greater portion of land, now incapable of cultivation, but covered with Indian ruins, had been reduced to this state by the water-conduits, which the Indians formerly constructed on so wonderful a scale, having been injured by neglect and by subterranean movements. I ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... coldly. "And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... that was all nonsense this morning. Mr Dallas is wounded, and incapable. I am senior officer, and the captain's orders must be carried out. Call the men together, and I'll have those guns up ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... reasoning by which Dr. Bode proves the German soldier incapable of destroying a work of art. The German professor stated that civilization, and with it art, could not have survived were it not for the protection of German militarism. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... irrelevance out of the unfathomable peace. She could not account for him, nor understand why, when she was incapable of seeing him a year ago, she should see him now with such extreme distinctness and solidity. She saw him, all pink and blond and callow with excessive youth, advancing with his inevitable, suburban, adolescent smile. She saw his soul, the soul he inevitably would ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... all points, incapable of being either surprised or exhausted, courage achieves results which seem miraculous. It is an element of inspiration, something superadded and incalculable, when all the other forces are exhausted. When we consider how really formidable becomes the humblest of quadrupeds, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the arguments advanced by the other side. Many good, but, I believe misguided men, hold the opinion that man is so depraved as to his will, so lost to all sense and understanding of what is good, that he is wholly incapable of choosing the right and shunning the wrong. But I believe the Lord knows just what man can do and what man cannot do. And it is a thing self-evident to my mind that Goodness and Wisdom has never yet commanded man to do anything that is out of ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... itself, in this heaven of abstraction, nevertheless, a cloud begins to appear; a limitation casts its shadow over the formless void. Infinite is finite because it is infinite. That is to say, because infinity includes all things, it is incapable of creating what is external to itself. Deny infinity in this sense, and the being to whom it is attributed receives a new power. God is greater by being finite than by being infinite . . . Logic must admit that ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Goldsmith; but unrelenting, uncompromising, uncompassionate. He drew vice and its consequences in a thoroughly literal and business-like way, neither sparing nor extenuating its details, wholly insensible to its seductions, incapable of flattering it even for a moment, preoccupied simply with catching its precise contortion of pleasure or of pain. In all his delineations, as in that famous design of Prud'hon's, we see Justice and Vengeance following hard upon ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the absolute perfection of his prescience did not escape 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
... never pretended that she was deeply in love with Horace Spotswood. Indeed, she had quite decided within herself that she was incapable of such a state of feeling, and it was her belief that the fervor and intensity of love which she had given to her mother had taken the place of what some women give to their husbands. Still, she looked upon her prospective marriage to him as one of the fixed facts of the universe, and Lord Hurdly's ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... said with a sad earnestness, "Honor, if I had come to tell you, that after many months of suspense and sacrifice, I had sought my way back to you, to tell you that, all my hopes and aspirations were incapable of realization without you, that life would never be more than an empty dream, unless I had won you, would you pity me, and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... in discussing this problem, and developing the theories of the Pleiad, he has lighted upon many principles of permanent truth and applicability. There were some who despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin—cette elegance et copie qui est en la langue Grecque et Romaine—that science could be adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead languages. "Those who speak thus," says Du Bellay, "make me think of those relics ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... and smoothed his hair. The valet disappeared. "If I only loved the woman, loved her honestly, boldly, fearlessly, what a difference it would make! I don't love her, and I realize that I never did. She never touched my heart, only my eye and mind. I may be incapable of loving any one; perhaps that's it. But what can have possessed her to leave the theater this ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... observed, that it is degrading and untrue to describe the human species as incapable of receiving gratification only from comic scenes; that "there is a luxury in wo," independent of its purifying the bosom and suppressing the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... to one of the recognized overt manifestations of sapience. The sapient being is a symbol user. The nonsapient being cannot symbolize, because the nonsapient mind is incapable of concepts ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... very considerably and disproportionately to its thickness. Now, elongated legs proving disadvantageous to their necessity of gliding and hiding, very short legs, being only four in number, since they are vertebrate animals, would be incapable of moving their bodies. Thus the habits of these animals have been the cause of the disappearance of their legs, and yet the batrachians, which have them, offer a more degraded organization, and are nearer the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... as incapable by Priscilla when they were alone together was unpleasant but tolerable. To be held up as an object of scorn to Miss Rutherford was not tolerable. He had already exposed himself to her contempt by running her down. He was anxious to show her that he was not altogether a ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... time to have grown accustomed to being alone, and to have been incapable of letting myself be made miserable by a snub, even from my father. But I was not; I was wretched. I do not think that even on the first night after Kahwa was caught, or on that morning when I saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I did that day ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... exterminated from our lists, but this we know is not the case, as any one who has tasted good samples grown in France, the Channel Islands, and upon favorable soils in this country will bear out the statement that the flavor is superb. Some fruits, we know, are quite incapable of being good, as they have no quality in them; but here we have one of the hardiest of trees, capable of giving us quantity as well as quality, provided we cultivate properly. Pears, no doubt, are capricious, like our seasons, but given a good average year, soils and stocks which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... grave voice, "I know that you beleive me young and incapable of Afection. But you are wrong. I am of a ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... providing for the security of its component parts and contributing to the strength and stability of the Empire; or whether the several Provinces of which it is constituted shall remain in their present fragmentary and isolated condition, comparatively powerless for mutual {85} aid, and incapable of undertaking their proper share ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... of the Stone Age is disappointing and perplexing, we can only be thankful that the work of Farmer Green and Tom Robinson, the two despoilers mentioned by the earliest investigators, has been prevented in their descendants, and that though the circles are incapable of restoration, the few stones that remain will be preserved ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... if Harry had known and accepted the truth," said Mrs Graybrook, continuing the conversation just before begun. "He is so light-hearted, and, enjoying health and strength, so confident in himself, that his mind has hitherto appeared incapable of attending to spiritual things; though, when I have spoken to him, he has respectfully listened with a grave countenance; but the subject has evidently not been to his taste. My grief is, also, that your father so admires his bold and daring spirit, that he encourages him to ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... torment of hesitation: "They never believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS—that's what I did, heaven help me! and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease them. Then no sooner was my back ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... She seemed incapable of motion. So great were the conflicting emotions which disturbed her soul, that she neither ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... faith is folly," said Father John, in his soft, low voice. "The great fact is that Yellow Bird believed. She was inspired by a great confidence, and confidence and faith give to the mind a power which it is utterly incapable of possessing without them. I believe in the mind, children. I believe that in some day to come it will reach those heights where it will unlock the mystery of life itself to us. I have seen many strange things in my forty-odd years in the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... reprieve matters went scarcely more smoothly. Clovis and the Baroness rather overdid the Sumurun manner, while the rest of the company could hardly be said to attempt it at all. As for Cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own prophecies, she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... to inherit, the child must be born alive, must be born during the lifetime of the mother, and must be born capable of inheriting—that is to say, monsters are incapable of inheriting. There is a mode of inheritance called 'tenancy by courtesy.' When a man marries a woman possessed of an estate or inheritance, and has, by her, issue born alive in her lifetime capable of inheriting ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... to oppression and wrong. Laws which were intended for the "common benefit" have been perverted so that large quantities of land are vesting in single ownerships. From the multitude and character of the laws, this consequence seems incapable of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... that hath received grace and redemption by his blood, is true; but that it is in our power, as is here insinuated, to become new creatures, is as untrue. The new creature, is of God; yea, immediately of God; man being as incapable to make himself anew, as a child to beget himself (2 Cor 5:17,18). Neither is our conformity to the revealed will of God, any thing else, if it be right, than the fruit and effect of that. All things are already, or before, become new in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... doubt of her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband's death and of her own complete freedom. To this he may have intended to add some final messages of love and confidence from the man she had been so ready to forget; but nothing worse. Wallace Pfeiffer was incapable of anything worse, and if she had only resigned herself to her seeming fate and consented to ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... better taste. After this ceremony, the king desired them to rise and to be covered. They put on their hats, and which appeared extraordinary to me, his majesty remained uncovered all the time. Here it was that the grand chief, as if incapable of repressing his feelings, poured out in a most eloquent manner, by voice and action, the following unpremeditated speech in his native Indian tongue. I say unpremeditated, because that fine allusion to the sun could not have been contemplated while we were waiting ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... would only have a beam of 19 feet and a depth of hold of 7 feet 6 inches. The sailing ship of contemporary times would for the same length have had a beam of about 40 feet and an extremely high freeboard; she was in consequence necessarily slow and incapable ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... troops, and to restore the fortune of the day. Much room could not be found in this disorderly battle for the talents of a general; but the king fled before the hero, and the Vandals, accustomed only to a Moorish enemy, were incapable of withstanding the arms and ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... Jack, quietly, as he tossed the hind legs (including the tail) of a cold roast pig to his comrade; "and I must again express my regret that unavoidable circumstances have thrust your society upon me, and that necessity has compelled me to cultivate your acquaintance. Were it not that you are incapable of walking upon the water, I would order you, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... moment to lose!" cried Mr. Effingham, on whose bosom Eve lay, nearly incapable of motion. "The food and water are in the boat, and in the name of a merciful God, let us escape from this scene ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and consequently to be treated even in Christian lands, as a parish caste, as hereditary "hewers of wood and drawers of water" doomed by Providence, if not primarily by the Creator himself, to a low and degrading yoke, and utterly incapable of entertaining lofty sentiments, or rising to a higher position; to be restrained therefore in every manifestation of impatience lest they should temporarily gain the upper hand, and lay waste the fair fields of civilization; and to be kept under ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... scientists at the German Headquarters Staff had experimented with sulphur, chlorine and bromine fumes. They reported on sulphur gas: "This gas thus produced acts as an irritant on the lungs and eyes, and thence it is adapted to render the enemy incapable of resistance, but is not poisonous, and in that way its use in war is not contrary to international right." They had in view Article 23 of the rules of conducting hostilities promulgated by the second Hague Conference to which they had subscribed, which specifically prohibits ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... Raften scoffingly; "now that he's got me unarrumed again. You dhirty coward! Get out av the way, bhoys, an Oi'll settle him," for Raften was incapable of fear, and the boys would have been thrust aside and trouble follow, but that Raften as he left the house had called his two hired men to follow and help fight the fire, and now they came on the scene. One of them was quite friendly with Caleb, the other neutral, and they ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... inflamed their anxiety to become masters of his possessions, they grew at last impatient and, weary of his living so long, formed a conspiracy against him, and accused him before the Areopagus, of being insane, a driveller incapable of governing his family, or managing his concerns—in short, a fool, a madman. He had fortunately, at that time, just finished his OEDIPUS AT COLONOS. When he heard the charge made against him by his ingrate sons, he offered no defence but this tragedy, which he read to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical, and not a physical foundation; not among materialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... and the detachment of 14th Sikhs left Gilgit en route for Mastuj. The Hunza and Nagar Levies came in to Gilgit on the 7th March. I issued Snider carbines and twenty rounds ammunition to each man, and they left the next day. These Levies were splendid men, hardy, thick-set mountaineers, incapable of fatigue; and, as a distinguishing badge, each man was provided with a strip of red cloth which they wore in their caps, but which, we afterwards found by practical experience at ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... family. At all events, I will write to you again soon, and I entreat you to let me know all you can learn about my uncle. I feel so grateful to you for your just disbelief of the horrible calumny which must be so intolerably galling to a man so proud, and, whatever his errors, so incapable of a baseness. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing while such authentic examples of Bacon's effort to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argument alone ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... down, and Norma, incapable of any effort, at least until she could control the emotion that was shaking her like a vertigo, sank back into her own chair, unseeing and unhearing. The gold clock on the mantel ticked and tocked, the other three women chatted and laughed, and Chris contributed ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... humiliation of this once proud and energetic, but now worn-out and enfeebled, oligarchy: so incapable was that hoary polity of contending with the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... in that same year, 1502, that the Venetians again permitted this district to be cultivated, but by labourers incapable of using arms. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Bursting with 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 had a strong ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... of the most captivating of all the poets of the world. Some of the 'Noble Numbers' are almost as pleasing as the 'Hesperides,' but not because of real religious significance. For of anything that can be called spiritual religion Herrick was absolutely incapable; his nature was far too deficient in depth. He himself and his philosophy of life were purely Epicurean, Hedonistic, or pagan, in the sense in which we use those terms to-day. His forever controlling sentiment is that to which he gives perfect expression in his best-known song, 'Gather ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... E). Beersheba, which figures in both, is celebrated by the planting of a sacred tree and (like Bethel) by the invocation of the name of Yahweh. This district is the scene of the birth of Ishmael and Isaac. As Sarai was barren (cf. xi. 30)2 the promise that his seed should possess the land seemed incapable of fulfilment. According to one rather obscure narrative, Abram's sole heir was the servant, who was over his household, apparently a certain Eliezer of Damascus3 (xv. 2, the text is corrupt). He is now promised as heir one of his own flesh, and a remarkable and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... indeed be useless, for the construction of the feline jaw precludes the possibility of grinding, and therefore a flat-crowned tuberculous tooth would be out of place. As I have before described it, the jaw of a tiger is incapable of lateral motion. The condyle of the lower jaw is so broad, and fits so accurately into its socket, the glenoid cavity, that there can be no departure from the up and down scissor-like action. The true Cats have, therefore, only one molar on each side ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... his childhood pathological lying had been a prominent symptom. As an example, when he married against his father's will, he at the wedding read a false dispatch, pretending it to be congratulations from his family. Koppen suggests that this individual was incapable of meeting life as it really was and he therefore wove a mass of phantasies. II. A young man charged with grave falsifications. He had come from an epileptic family and himself had slight attacks in childhood. He bore various pathological stigmata. Koppen ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... generally inert and negative in spirit, seldom actively loyal. At its best it was willing that leaders should lead and pay the price, and be more admired than upheld. At its worst it was alert to private and blind to public interests, peevish of change, incapable of foresight. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... entrenched positions, were no doubt, to some extent, necessary, not to guard against our immediate neighbours, for experience had taught us that without outside assistance they are incapable of a combined movement, but for the protection of such depots and storehouses as would have to be constructed, and as a support to the army ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the height, noisily wanting to know why the Turks had robbed him of the said cart and horse, which he had conveniently tipped over a precipice, and vowing that he would carry his complaint against the army to the Sultan himself; once he was fain to act the part of a drunk man, almost incapable of ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... that refuses to paint for hire or model on order is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking, and ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... if such a journey had been possible, it would have resulted in utter barbarism rather than any notable phase of civilized life. Even the Jews who remained faithful to Moses, although important on account of their scriptures and their religion, were not remarkable for civilization. They were incapable of building their own Temple without aid from the Tyrians. Moreover, there is not any where either a fact, a suggestion, or a circumstance of any kind to show that the "lost ten tribes" ever left the countries of Southwestern Asia, where they ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... falsehood that only the negro can endure the Southern climate—a fact but recently generally made known at the North—that isothermal lines do not follow the parallels of latitude—and that it is a gross error to believe the black incapable of improvement as a freeman. He admits that slave labor has its advantages, in being absolutely controllable, and in returning the whole fruit of its labor to the owner. It may, therefore, be combined on an extensive ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... who seems to have had no doubt, from the first, of the crown's absolute right of property over the natives, [114] was carried to its full extent in the colonies. [115] Every Spaniard, however humble, had his proportion of slaves; and men, many of them not only incapable of estimating the awful responsibility of the situation, but without the least touch of humanity in their natures, were individually intrusted with the unlimited disposal of the lives and destinies of their fellow-creatures. They abused this trust in the grossest manner; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... harmless disposition, we will now turn to those more elaborate pictures in which the dead are represented under an altogether terrific aspect. It is not as an incorporeal being that the visitor from the other world is represented in the Skazkas. He comes not as a mere phantom, intangible, impalpable, incapable of physical exertion, haunting the dwelling which once was his home, or the spot to which he is drawn by the memory of some unexpiated crime. It is as a vitalized corpse that he comes to trouble mankind, often subject to human appetites, constantly endowed with more than human strength ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... landed, we became extremely anxious to learn the exact state of the settlement there. This information was all the advantage that was expected to be derived from the voyage; for, whatever Mr. King's wants might be, the stores at Sydney were incapable of alleviating them. Little apprehension was however entertained of his being in any need of supplies, as, at the date of his last letter, he reckoned that his crops of wheat and maize would produce more grain than would be sufficient for twelve ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... forgotten about himself, the self which up till now had been so intolerable a burden. At school, and even before, when first the age of self-consciousness dawned upon him, he had seen himself as he believed others saw him—a queer, awkward, ill-made boy, slow at his work, shy with his fellows, incapable at games. Walled up in this fortress of himself, this gloomy and forbidding fastness, he had altogether failed to find the means of access to others, both to the normal English boys among whom his path ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... to women. For doing precisely the same work as a man and often doing it better, woman receives a much lower wage. The reasons are several and specious. We are told that men have families to support, that women do not have such expensive tastes as men, that they are incapable of doing as much as men, that by granting them equal wages one of the inducements to marry is removed. These arguments are generally used with the greatest gravity by bachelors. If men have families to support, women ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... Menton, one more bond must go, and there would not be enough to last to the end, if I should wait for seven or eight years more, now that I can no longer write. Happily, there is nothing to fear. But what I have suffered since I have been incapable of writing, and have felt my hoard of gold shrink and diminish in my hand like the Magic Skin of Balzac, is frightful. Now you understand me, do you not? and you will no longer bid me take care of myself. No; if you still pray to God, ask him to send me ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Grace exclaimed. And then Carol pulled her bodily down beside her on the bed and for a time they were all incapable of explanations. ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... no new thing to you, to gape at and talk about. As well might the gentry talk about the joys of their daily bath. You have no quarrels, do no sins, for you have neither women nor strong waters in your forest tents. And if you knew how, you would thank God that you are incapable of thought, since a thinking vegetable were a lost vegetable. To think is to hope, and to hope is to sin against religion, which says, God saw that it was good. More than any reflecting man your earth-born believes ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett |
