"Inefficiency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible maximum; limiting factors; cost of equipment; life of the mine; mechanical inefficiency of patchwork plant; overproduction of base ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... considerable number, and sustained a rather severe loss themselves, Lieutenant Preston of the Ark-Royal, among others, being dangerously wounded. "We had a pretty skirmish for half-an-hour," said Tomson. At last Don Hugo de Moncada, furious at the inefficiency of his men, and leading them forward in person, fell back on his deck with a bullet through both eyes. The panic was instantaneous, for, meantime, several other English boats—some with eight, ten; or twelve ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... the inefficiency of impulsive benevolence. That liberality is sometimes the offspring of the kindly tendencies of our natures, is readily admitted. God, in making us social beings and helpers of each other's joy, gave ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... the Christian faith. Hardly had he arrived in Dublin when he found himself at loggerheads with Lord Grey, who treated him with studied contempt and took very violent measures to cool his religious ardour. He was assailed by his royal spiritual head for his arrogance and inefficiency, and warned to take heed lest he who had made him a bishop might unmake him. By his fellow-labourers and associates in the work of spreading the gospel, Staples of Meath and Bale of Ossory, he was denounced as a heretic, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... closely into the facts, it is seen that this made a clean division between the direction of the fighting and of the motive power of the ship. This is the essence of the matter; and the principle is the same whatever the motive power may be. The inconvenience and inefficiency of such a system was obvious then as it is now, and the logic of facts gradually threw the two functions into the hands of one corps of officers, the result being the modern naval officer, as that term is generally understood.[36] Unfortunately, in this ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... think that the Oxford and Cambridge missionaries have treated me badly in trying to make me the scapegoat of their own blunders and inefficiency.... But I shall try equitably and gently to make allowances for human weakness, though that weakness has caused me ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... It is this type of independent union church, to which the term community church is most commonly applied by the laity, and such community churches have increased rapidly in the past five years as a protest of the people against denominational competition and inefficiency. These independent community churches have now become so numerous in one or two states that they are holding state conventions. The question at once arises whether if they become affiliated in even the most nominal ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... motor stoppage or inefficiency by applying dust mixed with grease to the face of the armature so that it will ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... diversity in human beings ranging from herculean physical strength to pitiable weakness; from the mental power of genius to the nonentity of imbecility; from outstanding and unquestionable talent in arts and letters to illiteracy and clumsy inefficiency. This wide diversity in human capacity is one of the outstanding features of human nature, recorded again and again in history and encountered in ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... as I have been just right about it," said Mrs. Underhill. "But Mrs. Whitney's carelessness and inefficiency have always tried me. Still, the children have turned out well. Delia is smart, and capable; and since ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... what I like to see is a hungry man going where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can only be acquired by the lapse of time. Some will say that this Modernism has no sense of obligation, no sense of veneration, ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... been provoked by the rough treatment from the military, which the waggoners and others of the yeomanry had experienced when employed in Braddock's campaign, and by the neglect to pay them for their services. Much of Washington's difficulties also arose, doubtlessly, from the inefficiency of the military laws, for an amendment of which he had in vain made repeated ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... pursued to render their influences most beneficial. The position taken up, vindicating the high educational value alike of the old classic and the new scientific studies, on even stronger grounds than are urged by most of their advocates, and insisting that it is only the stupid inefficiency of the usual teaching which makes those studies be regarded as competitors instead of allies, was, I think, calculated, not only to aid and stimulate the improvement which has happily commenced in the national institutions ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Englanders in 1745 (Colonies, sec. 127) it had been strongly fortified. An English force under Amherst and Wolfe reduced it after a brief siege in 1758. The attack through Lake George failed in consequence of the inefficiency of the English commander, Abercrombie, but the English penetrated across Lake Ontario and took Niagara. Nov. 25, 1758, Fort Duquesne was occupied by the English, and the spot was named Pittsburg, after the great minister. For the first time the tide ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... corrupt every honest man we wished to put in office, nor to have these alien nations attempting to put into power dishonest and inefficient men as their own tools. That is China's problem at present: not only must she contend against the inherent weakness and dishonesty, the inefficiency and graft of her own people, but she must contend against unseen, suave enemies, who under diplomatic disguise are intriguing to bring ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... in silence for a minute or two. "They talk about the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time. There are days when I feel as ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... rich and deep natures, in lives that were meagre or unsuccessful. Again, from lack of perspicacity, she sometimes saw nothing but inefficiency in people with wide intellectual gifts; thus, she considered that her son-in-law, Henrik Ibsen, who at that time had not become either known or celebrated, had very imperfect poetic gifts. "What he writes ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... markets, and sea-ports in Ireland. These tolls and customs had been granted to particular individuals and corporations, and great evils existed in the levying of them, whence the motion for inquiry. It was opposed both on the general merits of the measure, and on the inefficiency of the particular mode of inquiry proposed; but the motion was carried, and a select ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... or conduct, and the history of the league more than justified the disapprobation of Orange. The nobles thus banded together, achieved little by their confederacy. They disgraced a great cause by their orgies, almost ruined it by their inefficiency, and when the rope of sand which they had twisted fell asunder, the people had gained nothing and the gentry had almost lost the confidence of the nation. These remarks apply to the mass of the confederates and to some of the leaders. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... noted that the class seems to include the most peaceable—perhaps all the characteristically peaceable—primitive groups of men. Indeed, the most notable trait common to members of such communities is a certain amiable inefficiency when confronted with ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... that the management should content themselves with results which in the lump seem satisfactory, and regard losses here or there with an indifferent eye. That way lies stagnation, waste, progressive inefficiency and ultimate disaster. To inquire searchingly into every nook and cranny of the business, to construct, as it were, for each part a separate balance-sheet of profit and loss, to expand in those directions where further development promises good results, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... of usefulness which is not inconsistent with general inefficiency, as an old man. Discredited by lapse of time and offensive to the popular taste, as ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... deal with a remarkable case of arrested development. Although inexperienced observers might imagine traces of the British colonel, as found in Pall Mall, in the bristling white moustache, swollen neck, and red gills, we find neither public school education nor inefficiency much in evidence anywhere. On the contrary, education is in a rudimentary condition, though with slightly protuberent mathematical and fictional glands. Inefficiency, too, is quite absent, the organ having had but small opportunity to perform its functions. The subject, we may conclude, gentlemen, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... issues of the present can be faced to better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the leaders of the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of Lincoln's life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and inefficiency—the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... looked sick and shabby; he who had once rejoiced in his day's employment, like a horse among pastures, now sat staring on a column of accounts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily sighing, the picture of inefficiency and inattention. He was sunk deep in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor heard me; and I stood and watched him unobserved. I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance bludgeoned me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood and kicked myself. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... years, on terms of affectionate intimacy with the Head Master and the staff; and, though he was keenly alive to the absurdities of the "catch-scholarship," as he called it, which was cultivated there, and to the inefficiency of the Principia and Notabilia, on which the Harrovian mind was nourished, his adverse judgment never made itself felt. Marlborough he praised and admired as "a decided offspring of Rugby." At ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... had a conversation with the Duke, in which he evidently felt embarrassed, because he admitted the folly of suspending any measures, but was forced to admit, at the same time, he was compelled to it. He talked over and admitted the inefficiency of many members of the Cabinet, but then said there were reasons which made it difficult to remove them, particularly when adverting to Lord Sidmouth—said he knew how "silly a fellow he was," but that a great following of the country attended him, and he would bring more "public opinion" ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of government, commerce, and prosperity, beyond anything she had enjoyed and manifested under the first Charter—so much so, that the neighbouring colonies would have gladly been favoured with her system of government. It is possible there may have been individual instances of inefficiency, and even failure of character, in some officers of the Government during a period of seventy years, as is the case in all Governments, but such instances were few, if they occurred at all, and such as to afford no just pretext for the rhapsody and insinuations ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Francesco Nori, a most intimate friend of the Medici, either from some previous hatred or for having endeavored to render assistance to Giuliano; and not content with these murders, he ran in pursuit of Lorenzo, intending, by his own promptitude, to make up for the weakness and inefficiency of the others; but finding he had taken refuge in ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... jealousies of the girls and the manageresses, those manageresses who had been obliged to invest little bunches of savings as guarantees and who had to account for every crumb and particle of food stock that came to the branch, and the hunt for cases and inefficiency by the inspectors, who had somehow to justify a salary of two hundred a year, not to mention a percentage of the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Those countries that did become Communist either did so at the point of the Red Army's bayonet or under the stress of complete collapse such as in China. But tomorrow, and the New Russia? Freed from the inadequacy and inefficiency of the bureaucrats who have misruled us, we'll develop a productive machine that will be the envy of the world!" Her voice had all ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the war ends the German Army will all have been driven back into its own country and so will be on its own soil, only requiring to be redistributed to its peace occupations. Our Army will have to be fetched home, firstly, over Continental railways, probably battered into a condition of much inefficiency, and then in ships, of which the supply will be very short. The process will be very slow and very costly. Our Overseas Army will have to be sent back to distant Dominions, and the Army of our American Allies will have to be ferried back over the Atlantic. Consequently if Germany is able ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... matter of fact, he had felt the same way about it—he felt that way still. It hurt him to think that Helen should be wearing the badge of his inefficiency. And then, deep down, he had a masculine distaste for sharing his workday world with a woman. He liked to preserve the mystery of those hours spent in the fight for existence, because he knew instinctively that battle ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... his characteristics, isn't it?" returned the elder lady, with unaccustomed tartness. "A minor branch of the root of inefficiency." ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... part they had acted. The Athenians, finding that the Lacedaemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves, and would become masters of the public deliberations, vigorously opposed and defeated the attempt. This piece of history proves at once the inefficiency of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest. The smaller members, though entitled by the theory of their system to revolve in equal pride and majesty around the common center, had become, in fact, satellites of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... due to German destruction in France, of the diminished output of mines in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and of many secondary causes, such as the breakdown of transport and of organization and the inefficiency of new governments, the coal position of all Europe is nearly desperate;[48] and France and Italy, entering the scramble with certain Treaty rights, will not ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... of numerous reports received from vessels in service of the inefficiency of certain fuzes, commanders of vessels are required to observe carefully the action and result of all fuzes, and report in detail to the Bureau of Ordnance whenever opportunities may occur, particularly specifying the number and kind fired, elevation ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... Hereditary Treasure was, if they might believe the king's words, restored to them, and the burden of the tax averted. They did not understand, nor did they seek to understand; because they knew the inefficiency of details and they also knew the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... that which punishes the homeless for not going home) have really, I think, a great deal to do with a certain increase in their sheepishness and short-wittedness, and, therefore, in their industrial inefficiency. By one of the monstrosities of the feeble-minded theory, a man actually acquitted by judge and jury could then be examined by doctors as to the state of his mind—presumably in order to discover by what diseased eccentricity he had refrained from the ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... literature. Literature does not ask the assistance of pictures to make its meaning clear. Nor, too, is anything gained by calling colours harmonies or symphonies. Let such pictures strike their own chords and blow their own trumpets. Catalogues of all kinds are but props to artistic inefficiency. If dumb-show plays did not rely on "books of the words," pantomime would have to become a finer art. If ballets had no thread of narrative attached to them, their constructors would be driven to achieve greater intelligibility, or to give up trying for ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... by Phyllis's dulness, Ada's inattention, and the interruption of work to do for Emily, and often was she baffled by interference from Jane or Emily. She was conscious of her unfitness to teach the children, and often saw that her impatience, ignorance, and inefficiency, were doing mischief; but much as this pained her, she could not speak to her father without compromising her sister, and to argue with Emily herself was quite in vain. Emily had taken up the principle of love, and defended herself with it on every ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sitting there who did not know that Sir Marmaduke had been brought home as his friend;—and some of them, no doubt, had whispered that this bringing home of Sir Marmaduke was part of the payment made by the Colonel for the smiles of the Governor's daughter. But no one alluded openly to the inefficiency of the evidence given. No one asked why a Governor so incompetent had been sent to them. No one suggested that a job had been done. There are certain things of which opposition members of Parliament complain loudly;—and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the river below their parent-source: considering the singular rapidity of the great body of water in the Santa Cruz, and that no still reaches occur in any part, this example is a most striking one, of the inefficiency of rivers in ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... aspiration which he hardly dared to expect or to see realized." A little later, however, Sir William, always cautious and canny, began to discover the inherent defects of the primitive battery, as to disintegration, inefficiency, costliness, etc., and though offered tempting inducements, declined to lend his name to its financial introduction. Nevertheless, he accepted the principle as valuable, and put the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... ambitions within bounds; to live and let live; to regard, without jealousy or envy, possessions which are the heritage of others less efficient than herself; and to leave it to time, slowly but surely, to do its work in rewarding merit and punishing inefficiency ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... morning, when Virginia awoke, that she found Bulan rolling and tossing upon the wet ground before her shelter, delirious with fever. At the sight of the mighty figure reduced to pitiable inefficiency and weakness, despite the knowledge that her protector could no longer protect, the fear of the jungle faded from the heart of the young girl—she was no more a weak and trembling daughter of an effete civilization. Instead she was a lioness, watching ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Customs, and the Postal Inspection. Then there's the State Service and the police and several other services. And there is no proper co-ordination, no single head for all these agencies. The result is a ghastly confusion and shameful inefficiency. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... were in plenty on the outer worlds, but one other essential was lacking ... oxygen. Coal on Mars, for instance, had to burned under synthetic air pressures, like the old carburetor. The result was inefficiency. A lot of coal burned, not ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... a school fund of more than two millions of dollars, long ago adopted the first plan named. But the inefficiency of her system of public instruction, until within a few years, is proverbial, and affords conclusive evidence that a large school fund is of little or no avail in the absence of a correct public opinion and a due appreciation of the importance of education. The improvements in the schools of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... severely moral mood. For when I reflect upon the difference between what books have to offer and what even relatively earnest readers take the trouble to accept from them, I am appalled (or should be appalled, did I not know that the world is moving) by the sheer inefficiency, the bland, complacent failure of the earnest reader. I am like yourself, the spectacle of ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... of his brother. He no longer dared to treat him ignominiously, lest his brother should be provoked to some desperate act of retaliation. On the other hand, Matthias despised the weakness and superstition of Rhodolph. The increasing troubles in the realm and the utter inefficiency of Rhodolph, convinced Matthias that the day was near when he must thrust Rhodolph from the throne he disgraced, and take his seat upon it, or the splendid hereditary domains which had descended to them from their ancestors would pass ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... suddenly occurred to him that on the morrow, instead of coming to the house in his car, he would leave it in the garage and walk. Between the discovery of his inefficiency and his resolution to dispense with a hitherto accustomed luxury there may have been a subtler connection ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... table before him the statements and accounts of his newly-augmented options. The papers, to his clerical inefficiency, presented a bewildering mass of inexplicable details and accounts. He brought them, with vast difficulty, into a rough order. In the lists of the acreages of timber controlled there were appended none of the names of those from whom his privilege of option had been obtained, no ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... They out-numbered us and were, in the main, heavier but we had a foot or more of good stiff material between each head and harm. Of just what befell us, when we got to the enemy, I have never felt sure. Of the total inefficiency of the stove-pipe hat as an article of armour, I have never had the slightest doubt since then. There was a great flash and rattle of canes. Then the air was full of us. In the heat of it all prudence went to the winds. We hit out right and left, on both sides, smashing hats ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... could assure Mrs. Brown of the inefficiency of hair-dye as an internal application, she had ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... throw down the gauntlet to the overwhelming power of America rather than to face what the writer terms the "cabbage-headed riff-raff of the Plaza de la Cevada" of Madrid. Again and again was the absolute inefficiency of the fleet pointed out to them. Even the few ships there were, all of them vastly inferior to those of the United States' navy, were without their proper armament; they might have been of some service ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... he was given the use of the Cumberland, a mere barge of only twenty-nine tons, in which to carry himself and part of his shipwrecked company to England. Compelled by the leaky condition of the crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the French governor, General Decaen, for six ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... started to the completion of the operation. This is deleterious. Also, local overheating of the infusion occurs at the point of application of the heat; and because of the manner in which the water is brought into contact with the coffee, the degree of extraction shows inefficiency. Spraying of the water over the coffee never permits the grounds to be completely covered with water at any one time, and the opportunity offered for channeling is excessive. The principle of thorough extraction demands that, as the substance being extracted becomes progressively more ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... authority for a contract with the two men. He did not seem to like my placing the work in the hands of two perfectly unknown people; but I insisted that they should at least have a fair trial. As I was obstinately resolved not to withdraw the work from Roche, but soon realised Lindau's complete inefficiency, I joined in the task myself at a cost of much exertion. We frequently spent four hours together in my room in translating a few verses, during which time I often felt tempted to kick Lindau out, for although ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Socialist," said the Professor, "then I am a Socialist." Here also we may sympathise with the aim, but the results are largely dependent on the method; and that method is the offspring of ignorance and inefficiency. The results may be summed up in one word—superficiality. I have elsewhere warned readers not to think that this word means simply a slight knowledge of, a subject. A slight knowledge is all that most of us possess, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... a cause of connubial discord is the general inefficiency of a woman at the business of what is called keeping house—a business founded upon a complex of trivial technicalities. As I have argued at length, women are congenitally less fitted for mastering these ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... increments to L172 for men and L140 for women. Two-thirds of the primary school teachers of Ireland have a salary of less than 30s. a week. The average payment to head teachers is in Scotland 75 per cent. and in England 48 per cent. higher than in Ireland. The general state of inefficiency of education in Ireland may be gathered from the fact that the Census of 1901 showed that of persons over five years of age no less than 13.7 per cent. could neither read nor write, the percentage of illiteracy being in the four provinces, 11.3 in ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... that the Brazilian institution of slavery was softer, far less brutal than the United States system. On the other hand, the United States slave system was probably more efficient, for the inefficiency of the management of the plantations of sugar in Brazil allowed the West Indies in the eighteenth century to take the lead in the sugar, rum, and molasses exports. The United States, under the slave system, secured pre-eminence in the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... high-grade defectives under the surveillance and protection of society. This will ultimately result in curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency. It is hardly necessary to emphasize that the high-grade cases, of the type now so frequently overlooked, are precisely the ones whose guardianship it is most important for ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... will be practically beyond criticism, and it will have the public interest passionately at its heart, and it will be practically beyond interference and it will be as inefficient as hell! And the more inefficient it is, the more it will have to take in to allow for its inefficiency—and for your patents it has to give us a flat cut of its gross! And meanwhile we'll get ours from the planets we've landed on and publicized. We've got customers. We've built up ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of these is still so limited that their judgment has little weight; and the hostile conductor—in presence of the public who would pitilessly hiss a vocal accident of a good singer—reigns, with all the calm of a bad conscience, in his baseness and inefficiency. Fortunately, I here attack an exception; for the malevolent orchestral conductor—whether capable or ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... the display of a new sentiment in the United States; and the republic of the West, hitherto so apathetic and unwieldy, but already stung by German nonchalance, leaped to its feet for the first time at the news of this fresh insult. As though to make the inefficiency of the war-ships more apparent, three shells were thrown inland at Mangiangi; they flew high over the Mataafa camp, where the natives could "hear them singing" as they flew, and fell behind in the deep romantic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acknowledgment of this state of things that it is an ultimate public blessing when the man appears with wit and will enough to regulate and keep from chaos a society thus destitute of political training. But those who look deeper know that this political inefficiency is but the external manifestation or the latent cause of more serious defects: by impeding healthful development in one way, it occasions a morbid development in another. If citizenship in its most free and active ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... official limousines were frequently overturned. Meetings denounced the inaction of the authorities; a gigantic parade bearing placards calling for an end to procrastination marched past the cityhall. Democrats blamed Republicans for inefficiency and Republicans retorted that Miss Francis had done her research during ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... met him several times in the streets; but for the last three or four years I have neither seen nor heard of him. With his habits it is scarcely probable that he still survives. Poor fellow! He furnishes another melancholy instance of the utter inefficiency of mere learning or intelligence in preserving a man from the most vicious and degrading abuses. He had neither religion nor moral principle; and that kind of gentlemanly feeling which from association he did possess, only ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... divided, Robert Lowe leading the opposition,[213] and the experiment was vetoed by Mr. Gladstone's successor at the colonial office. He exposed himself to criticism and abuse by recalling a colonial governor for inefficiency in his post; imprudently in the simplicity of his heart he added to the recall a private letter stating rumours against the governor's personal character. These he had taken on trust from the bishop of the diocese and others. The bishop left him ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the gaudy labels of canned goods. Dyer sat down, feeling, for the first time, a little guilty. This was not because of a sense of a dereliction in duty, but because he feared the strong man's contempt for inefficiency. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... to pass sentences by wholesale, and sign death-warrants blindfold. But, admitting that these men had no cause of complaint; that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless; that they deserved the worst;—what inefficiency, what imbecility has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of, if they were to be called out at all? As far as the difference of seasons ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the far nobler intellects of the heart. You will meet every day with men and women who have received the best college education this city can give them, who are yet stark stupid in everything that belongs to true religion. They are quick to find out the inefficiency of a university chair, or a schoolmaster's desk, but they know no more of what a New Testament pulpit has been set up for than the stupidest sot in the city. The Divine Nature, human nature, sin, grace, redemption, salvation, holiness, heart- corruption, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... gainsay for a single moment the efficient service rendered by the Y. W. C. A. in its hostess-house work in the American camps; that work alone would have entitled it to the support of the American people. That of the Y. M. C. A. was on so large a scale that naturally its inefficiency was often ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... will not let you know whether your country is winning the fight or is in danger, whether we have blundered and the soldiers are starving, whether they gave their lives gloriously or through our lack of preparation or inefficiency are dying of neglected wounds." And if you answer that you will send with the army men to write letters home and tell you, not the plans for the future and the secrets of the army, but what are already accomplished facts, the army makes reply: "No, those men ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... success. Modelling his scheme upon that of Hawke, forty years before, he gave to it a development, a solidity, and an extension which his distinguished forerunner had not been able to impart. Hawke had not the advantage, which St. Vincent had, of following a period of inefficiency, the remembrance of which compelled the Admiralty vigorously to support all measures of the commander-in-chief, if they desired to replace the interminable uncertainties and anxieties of the last administration of the fleet by a sense of security, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... number have been set free and sent to Africa. During the last year not one single free Negro was sent to Africa from this State. When this law went into effect, we had 52,000 free Negroes in the State; and after a trial of twenty-seven years, we now have 90,000 or 100,000. The inefficiency of this enterprise being so obvious to every one of the least reflection, your committee propose the repeal of all laws taxing the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... sure that obedience to him was a duty. Could it be a duty to sin against her father's wishes, and to assist in profaning his house and abusing his hospitality after this fashion? Then her mind again went back to the troubles of Mrs. Parker, and her absolute inefficiency in that matter. It seemed to her that she had given herself over body and soul and mind to some evil genius, and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... had collapsed in a few weeks. Whether the ruin was due to inefficiency and corruption in government or the injection by the Young Turk party of politics into the army or exhaustion resulting from the recent war with Italy or to other causes more obscure, we need not pause to inquire. The disaster itself, however, had spread far enough in the opinion of Europe, and a ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... the increase of, 1 in the manufacturing districts, 6 increase of, by strikes, 8 by infant labour, 9 inefficiency of the proposed preventives ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... delirium that seemed to have lingered in the old room. He continued to watch the darkness until the outlines of the room and of its furniture dimly detached themselves from the black pall. The snow apparently caught what feeble light the moon forced through, reflecting it with a disconsolate inefficiency. He could see after a time the pallid frames of the windows, the pillow on the bed, and the wall above it. He fancied the dark stain, the depression in the mattress where the two bodies had rested. Those physical objects forced on him the probability ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... appealing once more to the immemorial defence of the country, the Government weakly and with most deplorable results allowed the formation of a new body, the volunteers—a body whose patriotism was noble, whose intentions were admirable, but whose inefficiency became and remained a byword.[23] The militia continued ingloriously, mainly as a nursery for ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... Blow, Vogle, and O'Reilley actually composed the committee, I was never informed. On August 10, Halleck, then general-in-chief, telegraphed me from Washington: "There is a deputation here from Colonel Blair and others asking for your removal on account of inefficiency." ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... in 1746. In his "Qualifications for Full Communion," 1749, he again dwelt upon the same theme; but his main purpose was to uproot the Half-Way Covenant practice and the Stoddardean view of the Lord's supper. He attempted to do this by exposing the inefficiency of "means," and at English Arminianism in particular Edwards leveled his "Freedom of the Will," [i] published in 1754. His friend and disciple, Joseph Bellamy, put forth in 1750 "True Religion Delineated," wherein he advances from Edwards's ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... America and Americans for his loss of work, for Anna's disappearance. He searched his mind for grievances and found them in the ore dust on the hill, which killed his garden; in the inefficiency of the police, who could not find Anna; in the very attitude of Clayton Spencer ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of her own age, who looked at her as if with contempt for her diffidence. She wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of knowing much in order to do anything in it at all. Dread at her own inefficiency crept upon her. She would not know how, she would not be quick enough. Had not all the other places refused her because she did not know something or other? She would be scolded, abused, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... of "revoluting." Yet the country is a naturally rich one, having on the highlands a splendid temperate climate, and everywhere great mineral and agricultural resources. We were fortunate to see a parade of some of the State troops; and such a comical picture of military imbecility and inefficiency could surely not be found elsewhere. The officers swaggered in the gayest of uniforms; the men were shoeless, dirty and slovenly. On approaching the city one passes near by the famous volcanoes Fuego, Aqua and Picaya (14,000 feet), and mysterious ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... Britain. On the 9th of May 1906 a decree appointed Chinese commissioners to control the Imperial Maritime Customs.[63] This was the only department of the government under European (British) control, and the only department also against which no charge of inefficiency or corruption could be brought. The change decreed by China was in accord with the new national sentiment, but by all the foreign powers interested it was felt that it would be a retrograde step if the customs were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... regret for a moment darkened the face of the sleeper as he thought of his own inefficiency. But it soon passed away. There was wisdom for the asking; and his bright red lips ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... singular instance of the confusion wrought by words and of their inefficiency. There is no single 'ought' and therefore no science of the obligation it implies. 'Ought' in the phrase 'you ought to speak the truth' refers to an instinct in us to report veraciously what we see. 'Ought' of self-sacrifice refers to love, ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... smoothing out and roaring down crowds, rolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines. Let Jefferson go out and face the New York Central Railway! Jefferson in his time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures or chasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy, the haughty, tyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds, too mean-spirited and full of fear and machines to dare ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... abolished them by acclamation? I contend, that this was a victory gained, not for a populace, but for a people, for all France, for twenty-eight millions of men—over a portion of society who had lost their rank, a body already sentenced by their personal inefficiency—a caste, who, like a famished garrison, had been starved by the sterility of the spot in which they had inclosed themselves; or, like the Indian devotees, had turned themselves into cripples by their pretence of a sacred superiority to the habits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... powder nor ball, while each barrel had been carefully filled with bore, up to the space which the loading had occupied! and, the priming of the weapons being left untouched, nothing but actually drawing and examining the charge could have discovered the inefficiency of his arms till the fatal minute arrived when their services were required. Charlie bestowed a hearty Liddesdale curse on his landlady, and reloaded—his pistols with care and accuracy, having now no doubt that he was to be waylaid and assaulted. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... me, would cost all of $10, probably $15. "And besides," he added, "if you did get ads you couldn't set them up." With that final fling at my inefficiency he took ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... inutility; uselessness &c. adj.; inefficacy[obs3], futility; ineptitude, inaptitude; unsubservience[obs3]; inadequacy &c. (insufficiency) 640; inefficiency.&c. (incompetence) 158; unskillfulness &c. 699; disservice; unfruitfulness &c.(unproductiveness). 169; labor in vain, labor lost, labor of Sisyphus; lost trouble, lost labor; work of Penelope; sleeveless errand, wild goose chase, mere farce. tautology &c. (repetition) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... he took from them the port of Trincomalee for a base. He fought five battles off the coast of India against the British Vice Admiral Hughes, in only one of which was the latter the assailant, and in all of which Suffren bore off the honors. He was constantly hampered, however, by the inefficiency and insubordination of his captains. On four or five occasions, including an engagement at the Cape Verde Islands on his way to India, it was only this misconduct that saved the British from the crushing ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... inefficiency, passed the fingers and inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if to calm himself. "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner like you! I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, I had a theory, and the patience ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... nature and origin in man, reinforced by a vivid realisation of the sufferings of others, and appealing forcibly to the tender and sympathetic feelings, have co-operated with the economical considerations drawn from the wastefulness and comparative inefficiency of slave labour, and with what may be called the self-regarding reason of the hardening and debasing effect of slave-owning on the character ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... conduct of her countrymen. At first she believed them; but there was occasionally a general, who was obliged to do justice to his enemy in order to obtain justice for himself; and Frances became somewhat skeptical on the subject of the inefficiency of her countrymen. Colonel Wellmere was among those who delighted most in expending his wit on the unfortunate Americans; and, in time, Frances began to listen to his eloquence with great suspicion, and ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. It was only later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for direction and control sank into unimagined depths of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... politician—but certainly a democratic politician. A power seldom falls being wholly faultless; and it is true that the Second Empire became contaminated with cosmopolitan spies and swindlers, justly reviled by such democrats as Rochefort as well as Hugo. But there was no French inefficiency that weighed a hair in the balance compared with the huge and hostile efficiency of Prussia; the tall machine that had struck down Denmark and Austria, and now stood ready to strike again, extinguishing the lamp of ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... to judge whether all this was mere accidental clumsiness and rudeness on the part of stupid detectives or if it was something very much deeper, prompted by someone higher up. One is, however, inclined to doubt inefficiency in the Prussian Secret Service and there may have been reasons why German authorities would count it of great importance to know the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... up a running comment on the general inefficiency of the visiting club. The majority of those who sit near you came out to the game especially to hear your views ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... inefficiency of the Committee, in not hurrying forward reliefs without a moment's delay, as the state of circumstances became ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... missiles, and almost exclusive employment of cavalry, with an increase in the number of their own horse, a larger employment of auxiliary irregulars, and a greater use of the sling. At the same time they learnt to take full advantage of the Parthian inefficiency against walls, and to practice against them the arts of pretended retreat and ambush. The result was, that Parthia found she could make no impression upon the dominions of Rome, and, having become persuaded of this by the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... it this way," he said. His eyes returned to the agent. "Suppose you're a congressman," he went on, "and you find evidence of inefficiency in the government." ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... write a little," she replied, "and I've been a governess and a companion. But I'm really a victim of the English method of educating girls. That's my chief profession—being a monument to its inefficiency," and she laughed, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... imprisoned inconvenient critics. And the Club owned the ministers of finance and communications, the two cabinet places that dispense revenues, give out jobs and make loans. It also regulated the distribution of intelligence by mail and telegraph. The reign of corruption and despotic inefficiency, tempered only by the student revolt, set in. In two years the Anfu Club got away with two hundred millions of public funds directly, to say nothing of what was wasted by incompetency and upon the army. The Allies had ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... better than I ever before heard from him, but I do not believe you or any other Lord-Lieutenant would like him as a secretary, as his warmest friends admit his inefficiency and idleness. His total neglect of his correspondence with this country, after repeated friendly admonition, was really inexcusable. We are nearly in the same state with respect to Lord Wellesley, which I trust is only owing to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... and think themselves Liberal when they are defending the ideas of Henry VII, and gentlemanly when they are opposing to them the ideas of Richard III. Thus the educated man is a greater nuisance than the uneducated one: indeed it is the inefficiency and sham of the educational side of our schools (to which, except under compulsion, children would not be sent by their parents at all if they did not act as prisons in which the immature are kept from worrying the mature) that ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... in his "Autobiography," which ought to be a textbook in all those practical classes of literature that work to turn out self-supporting authors, tells us that the most important part of a novel is the plot. This may be true, but the inefficiency of the plot in the works of Charles Dickens may easily be shown in an attempt to summarize any of them, except ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... under the same disadvantage in the organization of his command that made itself felt on the first two great battlefields of the Army of the Cumberland. That was the inefficiency of his corps commanders. Of Gilbert it is only necessary to say, that a worse appointment as a corps commander was not made during the war. Fortunately, the battle of Perryville was his first and only appearance in that position. ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... the fugitive was continued, but by the warrior of the Fleur de lis alone. Aware of their inefficiency to keep pace with this singular being, his companions had relinquished the chace, and now stood resting on the brow of the hill where the wretched Halloway had first recognised his supposed deliverer, watching eagerly, though within musket shot of the detachment, the result of a race ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... any more talking to Thad," Persis repeated, as Mrs. West looked at her with the instant confidence of inefficiency in one who indicates a readiness to take the helm. "Don't make him feel that he's so awfully important just because he's making a fool of himself. Most boys attract more attention the first time they kick over the traces than they ever did in all their ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Dispensary which is to rival that of the Medical Mission; of the asylums for lepers, foundlings, the blind, aged men and aged women, dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, originally well conceived and noble institutions, but reduced into inefficiency and degradation by the greed and corruption of generations of officials; of the "Beggars' Square" and beggars' customs; of the trades, and of the shops with their splendors; of the Examination Hall with ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Bronte," is very easily penetrated by those who love her. Under the pathetic finery so lovingly bestowed, under the borrowed splendours of a thousand a year, a lovely face, an ancestral manor-house, we recognise our hardy and headstrong heroine, and smile a little sadly at the inefficiency of this masquerade of grandeur, so indifferent and unnecessary to her. We recognise Charlotte's sister; but not the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' Through these years we discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of infinitely inferior ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Spain was the field in which the great battle of Europe was now to be fought; but the inefficiency of public men in Spain, and the divisions of the provincial governments, rendered it necessary that some superintending mind should be sent to conduct the national affairs. Early in 1809, Mr Canning, then secretary ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... in August, Baggs left Medicine Bend with a light engine for Fort Park, where he was to pick up a train-load of ties, he had no thought of making further pioneer railroad history. His engine had been behaving so well that his usual charges of inefficiency against it had not for a long time been registered with the roundhouse foreman, and Dan Baggs, dreaming in the heat and sunshine of nothing worse than losing his scalp to the Indians or winning a fortune at cards—gambling was another ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... which was already working such important results. In London, especially, three West India warehouses had been burnt in the year 1829, with a loss of 300,000l.; and with the extending use of gas, the increasing frequency of fires, and the conspicuous inefficiency of the parish engines, and the want of unity of action among the insurance companies, it was felt that what had answered so well in Edinburgh would prove still more valuable in the metropolis. The general ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... sums have been expended on the Great Roads of this Province; but their condition shows the inefficiency of the present system, in appropriation and execution. This arises, chiefly, from having tried too much, and in such attempts dispersing limited means, to superficial and endless labor; on works far too numerous ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... Indeed he looked rather pained; he was remembering General Punnit's story: military inefficiency, even military imperfection, was for him no smiling matter. Beaumaroy did not appear to notice ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Case 4.) Here, to be sure, there were more marked stupor features in that the patient wet and soiled, in addition to occasional spells when she lay with her head raised. But she spoke and acted fairly freely (even while soiling). By her replies she showed a considerable intellectual inefficiency, although, like Anna G., her orientation was not seriously disturbed. Here again there ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... known to differ widely. The commission can neither reconcile nor change these variant opinions resting on conviction, nor will it be authorized to decide the difference. Under these impressions of the inefficiency of such a commission was the inquiry made in the letter of the undersigned of 5th March, 1836, as to the manner in which the report of the commission, as proposed to be constituted and instructed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... recognized that when an enterprise of this character is extended over more than three thousand counties throughout the nation, there may be occasional instances of inefficiency, bad management, or misuse of funds. When cases of this kind occur, there will be those, of course, who will try to tell you that the exceptional failure is characteristic of the entire endeavor. It should be remembered that in every big job there are some imperfections. There are ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... the Germans could be seen lying in the trench in force. When the barrage was on the Munich Trench, the enemy machine guns played on the attackers from both flanks all the time. The failure of the attack was due to the inefficiency of the British supporting barrage, together with the condition of the ground—thaw having set in and rain falling on the snow, making it exceedingly slippery—the targets the men formed against the snowy background, and the ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... actually smiled. "But you can count on them for that much inefficiency," he said, and his eyes twinkled for a moment at Bart. "That's how it was so easy to work the old double-shuffle trick on them. They had Steele's description but not his name, so Briscoe took Steele's papers and managed to slip through. Once they landed on Earth, they had the Steele ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... relation of service to the community, they have never been trained nor their imaginations touched to any social purpose. A great proportion of small shopkeepers, for example, are people who have, through the inefficiency that comes from inadequate training and sheer aimlessness, or improvements in machinery or the drift of trade, been thrown out of employment, and who set up in needless shops as a method of eking out the ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and local self-government, the subject which demanded most urgently the attention of reformers was the judicial organisation, which had sunk to a depth of inefficiency and corruption ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... great pace, while the bassoon every now and then boomed a flying shot after them." It was all very curious, very quaint, very primitive. The Church was asleep, and cared not to disturb the relics of old crumbling inefficiency. The Church was asleep, the congregation slept, and the clerk ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... strain the brain is beaten down; if the number of "low-efficiency" cells increases, the driving power of the brain is correspondingly lessened and therefore the various organs of the body may escape through the very inefficiency of the brain to produce in them forced activity. On the other hand, if the brain remains vigorous, the kidneys may take the strain and break down; if the kidneys do not break, the blood-vessels may harden; if the blood-vessels are not affected, the thyroid may become hyperplastic ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... Cyreian forces passed, with no one to hinder them. The great trench, on which so much labor had been expended, was, therefore, not only useless as a defence to Artaxerxes, but it was a positive encouragement to Cyrus and his men, for it revealed the inefficiency and the cowardice of the Persians. The whole army now moved rapidly forward, confident of an easy victory, many even supposing that Artaxerxes would make no stand at all, but abandon his capital to them. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... world, here amending a law, here building a settlement house, and so on. Thus the reformer charges the poet. Mrs. Browning, in Aurora Leigh, makes much of the issue, and there the socialist, Romney Leigh, sneers at the poet's inefficiency, telling Aurora that ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... infantry posted in front of the British right wing, soon drove it from its ground. While rapidly pursuing the flying enemy, Woodford's brigade,[70] which was on the right of this wing, was arrested by a heavy fire from Chew's house, directed against its right flank. The inefficiency of musketry against troops thus sheltered being instantly perceived, the brigade was drawn off to the left by its commanding officer, and the field-pieces attached to it were ordered up to play on the house, but were too light to be of service. Some time was consumed ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... shared by Sir George Arthur, who, in dealing with the War Office, dwells with emphasis on the occasions when "this great war expert was thwarted in respect of his best considered plans by the civilian element in that citadel of inefficiency,"[52] and speaks with approval of Lord Wolseley's "severe strictures on blundering civilian interference with the army," as also of the "censure reserved for the criminal negligence and ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... elections in that case over which the Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but has accepted and adopted the election laws of the several States, provided penalties for their violation and a method of supervision. Only the inefficiency of the State laws or an unfair partisan administration of them could suggest ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... ordinary trade profits. Such a builder is building streets, house after house, each house costing him L800, and selling for L1000 say; and this, after paying his interest at the bank, etc., pays him about 10 to 15 per cent on his own capital embarked. Suppose now that the bricklayers increase their inefficiency either by a trade rule or by a combination to shorten the hours of labour. The cost of each house is increased L50 to him: nothing in the new bricklaying rules or rates affects the purchasers; the builder estimates that his profits will ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... assiduously aimed to keep Russia in a backward economic condition. As a great industrial nation it was to Germany's interest to have Russia remain backward industrially, predominantly an agricultural country, quite as surely as it was to her interest as a military power to have weakness and inefficiency, instead of strength and efficiency, in Russia's military organization. As a highly developed industrial nation Russia would of necessity have been Germany's formidable rival—perhaps her most formidable rival—and by her ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... before had volley so crushing been fired by British troops. Up to that day, musketry had seldom been blasting in effect; firelocks then in use were singularly clumsy weapons, noted for anything but accuracy, and, to add to their inefficiency, it was not the practice to bring the cumbersome piece to the shoulder, and thus to take aim, but rather, the method was to raise the firelock breast high and trust to chance that an enemy might be in the line of ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... applied to the Navy Board for permission to alter the Indefatigable. The Comptroller of the Navy was much offended at the request, denying that the plan of the Navy Board had failed; and when Sir Edward alluded to the notorious inefficiency of the ships, he said that it arose entirely from faulty stowage of the ballast and hold. They parted, mutually dissatisfied; and Sir Edward appealed immediately to Lord Spencer, who, a short time before, had been placed at the head of the Admiralty. This nobleman showed every ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... means resulted from inefficiency on their part that so many of the transferred officers had left their own regiments. Many had requested the move; many more were rendered supernumerary as being the juniors of their grades; but there were ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... approve contracts for materials or construction entered into by the township or county authorities. The state highway departments can secure the requisite technical experts to determine the merits of materials and equipment and, in spite of some glaring examples of inefficiency or worse, have made a good record for impartiality and integrity as custodians of the funds for ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his behaviour on the discovery of 'Waller's plot', the purpose of which was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them. To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are transparent. 'His company ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... experience in public affairs. Of such qualifications, Grant had very few. He was egotistical, a poor judge of men, without experience in statesmanship, and unwilling to submit to guidance. As a result, his administration was marked by inefficiency and extravagance, and ended in ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... thought, leads to inquiry, and results in understanding and mastery. Poor questioning leaves the mental powers unawakened, cripples thought, and results in inefficiency ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... made in regard to the inefficiency of the means provided by the Government of New Granada for transporting the United States mail across the Isthmus of Panama, pursuant to our postal convention with that Republic of the 6th of March, 1844. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... purpose of giving him bribes, in a province where Mr. Hastings says that agent had the power of committing such enormities, and which nobody doubts his disposition to commit,—he leaves him, I say, in such a state of inefficiency, that these iniquities could be concealed (though every one true) from the person appointed there to inspect his conduct! What, then, could be his business there? Was it only to receive such sums of money ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... journey on the top of the coach, that I shall have enough to do to nurse it into its natural pace before I go home. I must devote myself to imbecility. I must be gloriously useless while I stay here. How is Mrs. [M.]? will she pardon my inefficiency? The city of Salisbury is full of weeping and wailing. The Bank has stopt payment; and every body in the town kept money at it, or has got some of its notes. Some have lost all they had in the world. It is the next thing to seeing a city with a plague within ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... hitherto been treated with a neglect highly impolitic, or supported by a spirit so languid, as, while it has preserved the existence of the establishment, has had the effect of loading it with the imputations of wasteful expense, and comparative inefficiency.... Such a course is impolitic under any circumstances." This was the condemnation of the party's past. Clay found his delight in dealing with some of the oratory, which on the present occasion still sustained—and for the moment successfully sustained—the prepossessions of Jefferson. Carthage, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the administration to the humblest soldier in the trenches. It shaped the opinions of thousands, and this great influence was not due to trick or chance. It was not because it denounced the Executive in terms of the bitterest invective; because it descended like a wild boar on the abuses or inefficiency of the departments; but because this journal, more, perhaps, than any other in the South, spoke the public sentiment, uttered its views with fearless candor, and conveyed those views in words so terse, pointed, and trenchant—in such forcible ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... matter, the investigation of which should be included in Mr Lloyd George's Land Campaign. There is an obvious connection between the status of the agricultural labourer and the inefficiency of rural schools. [EDITOR.]] ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... stood before me with the iron expression of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to smile for another seven. He looked me steadily in the eyes—mine lost confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:— ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... satisfied. Clara's adopted vivacity proved his thorough knowledge of feminine nature; nor did her feebleness in sustaining it displease him. A steady look of hers had of late perplexed the man, and he was comforted by signs of her inefficiency where he excelled. The effort and the failure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prayers, and coerce the sordid corn- dealers, who had, no doubt, numerous pits yet unopened. The alarm became still greater in the cantonments, where the commanding officer attributed all the evil to the inefficiency of the commissariat and the villany of the corn-dealers; and Major Gregory was in dread of being torn to pieces by the soldiery. Only one day's supply was left in the cantonment bazaars—the troops had become clamorous almost ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... fort our men were hungry, having had but "one square meal" in forty-eight hours—the one the Philadelphia ladies had given us, plus what was picked up from pie peddlers on the way. We learned the lesson all green troops must learn, when inefficiency of the commissary is shown. I volunteered to get feed for the men; the Colonel accepted my tender. I went down to the city limits, pressed three wagons (those deep box-wagons in use in Baltimore) into service, drove to the Quartermaster's Department in South Gay Street, represented ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... regaining her strength—very slowly, and with frequent caution from the Silverbridge doctor that any attempt at being well too fast might again precipitate her into an abyss of illness and domestic inefficiency. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... pronounced this response, we sat in a comical sort of restraint, smothering a laugh, which we were afraid might burst out. In his Life of Gay, he has been still more decisive as to the inefficiency of The Beggar's Opera in corrupting society[1099]. But I have ever thought somewhat differently; for, indeed, not only are the gaiety and heroism of a highwayman very captivating to a youthful imagination, but the arguments for adventurous depredation ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Mississippi, the provision-boats had not arrived, and for three days they waited there literally without food; very uncomfortable days for Governor Reynolds, who accompanied the expedition, and was forced to hear the outspoken comments of two thousand hungry men on his supposed inefficiency. But on the 6th of May the William Wallace arrived, and "this sight," says the Governor with characteristic sincerity, "was, I presume, the most interesting I ever beheld." From there they marched to the mouth of Rock River, and thence General Whitesides proceeded with his volunteers ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the whole better than that of Stark's men. They were a brave, hardy, warlike band of irregulars, probably better fighters than any similar force on this continent or elsewhere; but occasional brilliant exceptions must not blind us to the general inefficiency of the Revolutionary militia, and their great inferiority to the Continentals of Washington, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... no vitality to spare; because it lulls to indolence those who must struggle to survive; because the theories of good men who are enthralled by its delusions are made the excuse of the wicked who would rather plunder than work; because it stops enterprise, promotes laziness, exalts inefficiency, inspires hatred, checks production, assures waste and instills into the souls of the unfortunate and the weak hopes impossible of fruition whose inevitable blasting will add to the bitterness ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... made for the protection of the commerce, and convoys, which were to sail as long as the sea was open, Sir James, and the Swedes themselves, aware of the inefficiency of the Swedish ships of war compared with the English, and desirous that they should be in a better state to co-operate next season, complied with the request of Admiral Nauckhoff, to leave the Author with them ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... country, whether they be managers or operative employees, let me say that the railways are the arteries of the nation's life and that upon them rests the immense responsibility of seeing to it that those arteries suffer no obstruction of any kind, no inefficiency or slackened power. To the merchant let me suggest the motto, "Small profits and quick service," and to the shipbuilder the thought that the life of the war depends upon him. The food and the war supplies must be carried across the seas, no matter how many ships ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... man with honest, sincere views of life. Bereft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domestics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromising source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife but commands his respect and eventually wins his love. A bright and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts all difficulties and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... is a sad apology that I have to offer for delays which no apology can retrieve. I received your first letter with pure joy, but in the midst of extreme inefficiency. I had suddenly yielded to a proposition of Fields & Co. to manufacture a book for a given day. The book was planned, and going on passably, when it was found better to divide the matter, and separate, and postpone the purely literary portion (criticism chiefly), and therefore to modify and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson |
