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More "Inexperience" Quotes from Famous Books



... always; the evil depends upon the character and discretion of those the child sees and hears. "Reverence the greatest is due to the children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans [Cicero. The sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],—that is to say, that we must revere the candour and inexperience and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... My inexperience in the art of story-telling must be manifest to everybody; for here I am talking of Helen, as of a young lady of sixteen or more, with shy notions of beaux and lovers in her head,—whereas, in point of time, my story has not advanced by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... back the sleeve which came to the wrist gauntlet, and discovered a furrow ridged by a rifle bullet. It was a clean flesh wound, neither deep nor long enough to cause him trouble except for the immediate loss of blood. To her inexperience it looked pretty bad. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... can be profitably told one of my inexperience has been left untaught," quickly answered the pupil, unconscious herself that she reached her hand towards that of her constant monitor, though too intent on her object to change her look from the features of the Carmelite. "But why ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... course, maintain friendly relations with my comrades and soon was at loggerheads with them, and in my youth and inexperience I even gave up bowing to them, as though I had cut off all relations. That, however, only happened to me once. As a rule, I ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... charm," it has been said, "of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect of experience, and when this has for some reason failed or been misapplied, the charm is broken. When we say that we are getting old, we should say rather that we are getting new or young, and are suffering from inexperience; trying to do things which we have never done before, and failing worse and worse, till in the end we are landed in the utter impotence ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Bhowanipore. The "Sheaf gleaned in French Fields" is certainly the most imperfect of Toru's writings, but it is not the least interesting. It is a wonderful mixture of strength and weakness, of genius overriding great obstacles, and of talent succumbing to ignorance and inexperience. That it should have been performed at all is so extraordinary that we forget to be surprised at its inequality. The English verse is sometimes exquisite; at other times the rules of our prosody are absolutely ignored, and it is obvious ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... have wondered at the negligence which left him to arrange his life as best he could, notwithstanding youth and utter inexperience. It looked indeed as if there were no one in the world who cared what became of him. Yet this was merely the result of his mother's circumstances, and of his own character. Mrs Peak could do no more than make her small remittances, and therewith ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... London to-night,' replied Mr. Egremont. 'We shall spend a day or two there, and then go home. Alice,' he added, though his wife had never heard him call her so before, 'Lady Kirkaldy knows your inexperience. Perhaps she would be good enough to give you some addresses ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... they must be wrong, though he was too polite to tell them so. And he had such a pleasant, paternal way of looking down into one's little thoughts when he put on his spectacles, that to say any more was to hazard the risk of ungrateful inexperience. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... through inexperience, many serious mistakes were made. When the first diggers reached the bottom of the red sand, they thought no diamonds would be found in the next stratum. When, however, diamonds were found in the second stratum, the diggers had again ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... least, did a good trade, and when the three adventurers at last turned into their beds, it was with the knowledge that all the world was before them, with a totally inadequate capital to see them on their way. Health, strength, and inexperience is a grand stimulant to hope, and the three young men only looked on the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... would hold out, between his carelessness and her inexperience, was a question over which his father sighed, and gave good advice, which Arthur heard with the same sleepy, civil air of attention, as had served him under the ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as charlotte-russe, Spanish cream, wine jellies and mousses, to say nothing of the caviars and anchovies, were wholly unknown to them; but they ate the dainties with a wise disregard of their inexperience ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne

... Allis; "I musn't take any chances of losing this race through my inexperience. Even Lauzanne will hardly know me, I'm afraid. Mike and Carter needn't see much of me—I can slip away as soon as I've ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... the unwisdom of inexperience in communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind, they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous pyrotechnical ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... appreciated. It requires some tact, and sometimes delicate observation, on the part of the mother to determine whether a mode of action which she sees ought to be corrected results from childish ignorance and inexperience, or from willful wrong-doing. Whatever may be the proper treatment in the latter case, it is evident that in the former what is required is not ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... Tends to imply someone who is ignorant mainly owing to inexperience. When this is applied to someone who *has* experience, there is a definite ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... to deny, he could still fetter self and acquiesce. But he began to understand that half his strength lay in her unwillingness; half of their safety in her inexperience, her undisturbed tranquillity, her aloofness from physical emotion and her ignorance of the mastery of ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... I was deceived by my inexperience. I realised later the wonderful effect Captain Selover threw away with his empty brandy bottles. The crew might grumble and plot during the watch below; but when Captain Ezra Selover said work, they worked. He had been saying work, for eight months. They had, from force of experience, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... legislature apparently possessed of interfering with vested rights, and even with pending suits, by a resolution having the force of law. This was a defect due, not to any desire to do wrong, but to the inexperience of those who had originally framed the Constitution, and to the want of legal knowledge and skill among those who had worked it, and was aggravated by the fact that the legislature consisted of one Chamber only, which ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... not a fool. I suppose he knew—or at least he felt—where this was leading him. But his complete inexperience gave him the necessary audacity. The girl's voice was charming when she spoke to him of her miserable past, in simple terms, with a sort of unconscious cynicism inherent in the truth of the ugly conditions of poverty. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spence, far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience.... Your surmise, madam, is just; I am, indeed, a husband.... You are right that a bachelor state would have ensured me more friends; but, from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... Art thou so very certain that thou hast never had a predecessor? And Aja started, in spite of himself. For the word recalled to him the manner of the old King. And Natabhrukuti saw it. And she looked at him as it were with compassion, and said: Alas! unhappy boy: thou seest that in thy youth and inexperience such an idea had not occurred to thee. Little art thou qualified to cope ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain

... Starr's voice that roused all the manliness in the boy. He flung off the oppression that was settling down upon him and listened attentively to what Endicott was saying, responding gracefully, intelligently, and trying to make himself think that it was his inexperience with ladies that had caused him to say something inappropriate. Henceforth during the evening he ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... other causes, which render parturition more dangerous to the ladies of high life; such as their greater general debility from neglect of energetic exercise, their inexperience of the variations of cold and heat, and their seclusion from fresh air. To which must be added, that great source of the destruction of female grace and beauty, as well as of female health, the tight stays, and other bandages, with which they are generally tortured in their early years by the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... that I did not, and to shout my appreciation of the fount of type, the margins, the binding. He beamed agreement, and fetched another volume. Archly he indicated the title, cooing, 'You are a lover of this, I hope?' And again I was shamed by my inexperience. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... profitable to me in every sense, as a student and a preacher of the Gospel, as a spiritual man and a Christian pastor, and your high intelligence and great learning have at all times so kindly stooped to my ignorance and inexperience, that not merely with the affection of friend to friend, and the honour due from youth to experienced age, but with the gratitude of a disciple to a wise and generous teacher, of an anxious inquirer to the good man who ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... "Everything is so absurd in the West. But you were good to my daughter, and to poor, dear Andrew. If only he had been spared. Women are so unused to these business responsibilities, Mr. Conward. It is fortunate there are a few reliable firms upon which we can lean in our inexperience." ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... out with infinite tenderness but inexorable clearness in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost boy. The sheep were but young and silly, they did not wish to be lost on the mountain-side; they knew no better; inexperience, ignorance were theirs, and for their sad estate they were not held responsible. For them the compassionate shepherd sought until he found them in the wilds, took them, involuntary burdens, on his heart, brought them back to safety and the fold. The coin had no native affinity with ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... contrived to get into the slack water of crossing streets, and one was swamped before his eyes. But James Smith kept only the barge in view. His difficulty in following it was increased by his inexperience in managing a boat, and the quantity of drift which now charged the current. Trees torn by their roots from some upland bank; sheds, logs, timber, and the bloated carcasses of cattle choked the stream. All the ruin worked by the flood seemed ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... Panama; but from early years had followed the troubled fortunes of his father, to whom he bore much resemblance in his free and generous nature, as well as in the violence of his passions. His youth and inexperience disqualified him from taking the lead in the perplexing circumstances in which he was placed, and made him little more than a puppet in ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... Valerie's, promising her every assistance in the terrible scene when the two women had sworn to be like sisters. So she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her mother's side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... a circumstance of life, which, in its actual course, involves the feelings and fortunes of human beings more than any other event of their lives. It is a connexion generally formed by inexperience, under the blindness and caprice of passion; and, though these conditions cannot be avoided, as forming the bases of the connexion, yet it is so important, that a man is never ruined who has an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... was afraid to answer his own question; not because of any dread of what his wife might do—he was conscious only of a new, cold, impersonal hatred toward her because she stood between him and his Rose; nor was it qualms about his ability to win the girl's heart. Already, despite his inexperience with love technique, he was, in some mysterious manner, making progress. The community—his position in it? This was food for thought certainly, but it was not what worried him. Then why this feeling of dismay when he ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... reconciling those pleasures, which usually consume wealth, with the means of making a great and speedy fortune,—at once eager candidates for opulence, and perfect novices in all the roads that lead to it. Debi Sing commiserated their youth and inexperience, and took upon him to be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... that anything serious was going to happen. Some spirits find it as difficult to believe in impending disaster as others find it to believe in continued safety. It seemed so impossible to Robin, in his inexperience, that the strong and still buoyant vessel which had borne them so long and bravely should sink! Nevertheless, like the rest, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... even if the strictness of the authority over them be inexpedient and over strained, it affords them a safeguard and a support for which they cannot be too grateful; it preserves them from the responsibility of acting for themselves at a time when their age and inexperience alike unfit them for a decision on any important practical point; it keeps them disengaged, as it were, from being pledged to any peculiar course of conduct until they have formed and matured their opinion as to the habits of social intercourse ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... tres jeune encore quand il est entre au saint ministere et qu'il fut nomme pasteur a Hambach, village de la Lorraine. L'endroit etait assez grand, mais de peu de ressources, et il etait heureux de trouver quelqu'un qui, dans son inexperience et loin de sa famille, fut capable de lui aider a fonder sa maison, selon les usages et ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson

... received this invitation, called attention to his youth and inexperience. Yet he did not refuse it; and, after a graceful display of diffidence, he accepted the charge, entering thus upon that famous political career, in the course of which he not only established and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the old wits with great cordiality, and on a footing of perfect equality, yet the inexpressible air which denotes birth was both pretended to and wanting. This, perhaps, was however owing to the ordinary inexperience of youth; which, if not awkwardly bashful, is generally awkward in its assurance. Whatever its cause, the impression vanished directly he entered into conversation. I do not think I ever encountered a man so brilliantly, yet so easily, witty. He had but little of the studied ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... it can be made—" At this juncture the eye of Mr. Adolph Meyer was inserted to a crack of the door and then removed as he shook his head in puzzled doubt. He had intended to intrude to the rescue of his co-employer's inexperience, but he decided that the time was not ripe by one glance at Mr. Farraday's eager face, surmounted by ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... fare forth into the world that your education may be completed by a knowledge of the ways of men. That when the Great Yama shall gather me to His bosom you will be prepared to assume the government of this kingdom and to conduct its affairs wisely and well. And, lest your inexperience should lead you from the paths of wisdom, I have arranged that you be accompanied on your journey by Ablano, the Holy Brahman, who has lately come to our realm. On the morrow, then, you will be prepared to start in company with an escort of horsemen and a train of camels ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood

... failed. Curiously enough, distributive co-operation has not succeeded in France, because, owing to a wide-spread dislike of the wages system, workmen will try nothing less than productive schemes. And their success in this has been no greater than might be expected, when inexperience is put to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... organization of the rural school is haphazard and faulty. This is partly because of the small enrollment and irregular attendance, and partly because of the inexperience and lack of supervision of the teacher. Children are often found pursuing studies in three or four different grades at the same time. And even more often they omit altogether certain fundamental studies because they or their parents have a ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts

... bed, through inexperience in the management of it, sink below the point at which Mushrooms can grow, we advise the exercise of a little patience. We have known several instances of beds made in autumn producing no crop at the expected time, but which have borne ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... one of seven daughters in a bare, untidy Irish manor-house to which she had returned from the convent I have so often spoken of. She had left it just a year and she was just nineteen. It is impossible to imagine such inexperience as was hers. You might almost say that she had never spoken to a man except a priest. Coming straight from the convent, she had gone in behind the high walls of the manor-house that was almost more cloistral than any convent could have been. There were the seven girls, there ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... diaries, lies a square white volume, the first part of my "Experience Boke" before mentioned, and upon it two queer fat little pairs of bronze kid shoes, buttonless and much worn on the toes, telling a tale of feet that dragged and ankles that wobbled through inexperience in walking. Ah yes! I'm quite awake and the same Barbara, though looking over a wider and eye-opening horizon, having had three rows of candles, ten in a row, around my last birthday cake and one extra in the middle, which extravagance has constrained the ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... be considered in money's use, which is likened to movement, than in its keeping, which is likened to rest. As to those who, having received money that others have earned, spend it more liberally, through not having experienced the want of it, if their inexperience is the sole cause of their liberal expenditure they have not the virtue of liberality. Sometimes, however, this inexperience merely removes the impediment to liberality, so that it makes them all the more ready to act liberally, because, not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... must pursue this investigation of national traits in our writing, not only over a wide and variegated territory, but through a very considerable sweep of time. American literature is often described as "callow," as the revelation of "national inexperience," and in other similar terms. It is true that we had no professional men of letters before Irving and that the blossoming time of the notable New England group of writers did not come until nearly the middle of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... complaints soon arose that it inflicted considerable injury and imposed heavy and undeserved penalties upon some respectable tradesmen, mainly owing to the "want of a clear understanding of what does and does not constitute adulteration,'' and in some cases to conflicting decisions and the inexperience of analysts. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... times in these so different figures is strictly the same; and tho his knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake was from a want of knowledge in art, and this arose from his inexperience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in nature. For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, and that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him no more than the middling performance of a vulgar artist; and this ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... cover the distance. When one travels along a high road at the age of seventeen, master of one's actions, of an old mule, and forty ducats, one is bound to meet with adventures on the way. I was out to see the world, and I meant to see it; my self-confidence was equalled only by my utter inexperience. Out of my first misadventure came an extraordinary piece of good luck. I fell into the hands of some brigands, and lost my mule and my money. Among my fellow prisoners was a wealthy lady, Dona Mencia, of Burgos. I helped her to escape and got away myself, and when I came to Zurgos she rewarded ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... democratic and supreme powers of the state, which has been found not less necessary to repress the licentiousness of the one, than to curb the tyranny of the other. Besides, it at all times provides a remedy for the inexperience or ignorance of governors; and is a sort of nucleus, round which all new bodies may easily agglomerate. Like a handful of veterans in a newly raised regiment, it will be capable of setting in motion the whole machinery of the government, and establishing ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... of laying blocks is the most uncertain item in the whole industry. Mr. Palmer states that he has known of instances where it cost only 5 cts. per block and of other instances where, because of the difficulty of getting help and its inexperience, it cost 15 cts. per block. In this particular building one mason and three helpers laid 100 blocks per day. The building had no long walls, but it did have many turns. The cost of laying, then, was ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... feelings or those of another; and then, too, there has been so much hard reality, so much serious business, in her life that the sweet follies of girlhood have not been hers. Shall I say that I cannot help feeling her innocence and inexperience make her more attractive? I am not sure, even, that they do not balance her self-reliance and independence, which certainly repel me. All this I did not dream of at first. I am not a scoundrel or a coxcomb. It came to me the other afternoon all at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... Fyne had been remarkably vague as to the contents. They were unsatisfactory. They did not positively announce imminent nuptials as far as I could make it out from her rather mysterious hints. But then her inexperience might have led her astray. There was no fathoming the innocence of a woman-like Mrs Fyne who, venturing as far as possible in theory, would know nothing of the real aspect of things. It would have been comic if she were making all this fuss for nothing. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... should describe ourselves), existing upon the hereditary principle, and yet not allowed to extract any of its living values. As detached forces we succeed each other upon the throne, each in turn reduced in power and initiative by our official training and our inexperience. When shall we learn to organize our labor and combine like ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... at his visit. Of General French, bronzed and grizzly bearded, we had seen much; all our work had been under his immediate supervision. He was a typical old regular, and many were the cuffs and knocks we received for our inexperience and shortcomings, all, however, along the lines of discipline and for our good, and which had really helped to make soldiers of us. These incidents showed that each commanding general keeps a keen eye on all his regiments, and no one is quicker to ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... responsible for guarding these early associations and giving timely warning when needed. The youth should always be ready to take advice on this subject, for with their inexperience they cannot know their wants so well as do their elders. Nothing is more disgusting to persons of sound sense than youthful flirtations. Those misguided persons who encourage these indiscretions in young people ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... the idea of being in debt. It seemed, to her inexperience, a comical vagary of the imagination. Mr. Grewgious stretched his near sight to be sure that this was her view of the case. 'Ah!' he said, as comment, with a furtive glance towards Miss Twinkleton, and lining out pounds, shillings, and pence: 'I spoke of having got among the angels! ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... time I was a voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and speculator of the first water, well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking any and every subject, which is the blessed compensation of youth and inexperience. Among the books and essays, on all sorts of topics from metaphysics to heraldry, which I read at this time, two left indelible impressions on my mind. One was Guizot's "History of Civilisation, the other was Sir William Hamilton's essay "On the Philosophy of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... enthusiasm for your sublime profession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serve artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the timidity of inexperience, and the vague aspirations of youth. By the intuition of a kindred mind, you have equalled the learning of Winckelman, and the plastic poetry of Goethe, in the intimate comprehension of the antique. Each work of yours, rightly studied, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... greatest race on the earth, who began their career with more advantages than ever fell to the lot of a young nation yet. War never looked on them. Not theirs was the lot to fight, like the Americans, through bankruptcy and inexperience towards freedom and honour. No. Freedom came to them, Heavensent, red-tape-bound, straight from Downing-street. Millions of fertile acres, gold in ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... (Justinus de Nassau), be too young to govern, must Holland and Zeeland lose their countries and towns to make them expert men of war?" asked Roger Williams.' A pregnant question certainly, but the answer was, that by suspicion and jealousy, rather than by youth and inexperience, the arms were paralyzed which should have saved the garrison. "If these base fellows (the States) will make Count Hollock their instrument," continued the Welshman; "to cover and maintain their folly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... two, David was certainly the more nervous. His arm was about her shoulders; her firm, slender body was drawn close to his. His clasp tightened as the timidity of inexperience gave way to confidence; an amazing sense of conquest, of possession took hold of him. He could have shouted defiance to the storm. He held her! This beautiful, warm, alive creature ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... don't break your neck; pray don't fracture your skull, and be very cautious in your manner of tumbling down precipices: beware of falling into coal-pits, and don't drown yourself in every pool you meet with. Having thus warned you of the most material dangers which your youth and inexperience will be ready to lead you into, I now proceed to others less momentary indeed, but very necessary to be strictly observed. Go not near the Soaping-Club, never mention Drury-lane Playhouse; be attentive to those Pinchbeck buckles which fortune has so graciously given you, of which I ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... everyone else off his guard, and was himself immovable. I never knew anyone who did not admit his superiority in this kind of warfare. He put a full stop to one of C——'s long-winded prefatory apologies for his youth and inexperience, by saying abruptly, "Speak up, young man!" and, at another time, silenced a learned professor, by desiring an explanation of a word which the other frequently used, and which, he said, he had been many years trying ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... this strange child through her school life, so monotonous, and yet full of incident, or what seemed such to her inexperience. All studies that she undertook were singularly broken up and independent. Indeed, I much doubt if regular methodical teaching can ever be applied to a nature like hers. Such organisms generally study ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... rules of conduct ascribed to the Tahitians by the first discoverers, especially by those who were not narrowed in judgment by inexperience and religious fanaticism, as were the British and French missionaries of early days, peasants and apprentices who had forsaken the fields and workshops for the higher sphere of devoteeism and freedom from manual labor. These clerics, though often self-sacrificing and yearning ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... his own, some fifteen hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him. I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded in convincing him that the wisest course for ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Youth and inexperience have been the secret of many young persons being led astray, like Franklin, by infidel speculations; but age and observation have convinced many of them that all infidel speculations are empty and worthless. ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880

... merely for the perusal of a few friends to whom they are dedicated; who will look upon them with indulgence; and as most of them were composed between the age of 15 and 17, their defects will be pardoned or forgotten, in the youth and inexperience of the WRITER.) Text, pp. [1]-66; (the Imprint (Printed by S. and J. Ridge, Newark.) is at the foot of p. 66) p. [67] (emblem-heraldic lion with shield and monogram, subscribed with the Imprint, Chiswick Press:—C. Whittingham and Co., ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... marriage to my daughter, and according to all appearances he thought but little of it. Unusually gifted, and understanding chemistry and mechanics, yet he was entirely ignorant of business matters, and already had to pay dearly for his inexperience. No doubt he had trusted all the arrangements to Noah Jones, according to his usual habit. Probably he signed with closed eyes the contract which was laid before him. These are the ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... young coachman, who would grow old in their employ, and Ellen, the cook, came in for their morning orders, and were full of Irish delight at the inexperience and novelty of it all. Then they were gone, and only the lovers in their new house and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... would be towards a hiding- place. So, at any rate, felt one of the men in this history. Schools had done their secluding work for a time; tutors and governors had come and gone under an almost Carthusian vow of silence, except as to their lessons; and now with seventeen years of inexperience on his hands, Mr. Falkirk's sensations were those of the man out West, who wanted to move off whenever another man came ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... the Post Office a long, bulky envelope, addressed, with the delightful confidence of youth and inexperience, to the very biggest of the "big" magazines. Diana was as excited over ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... writers donkeys. How they obtained her address was a puzzle; they stole in to comfort her slightly. They attached her to her position of Defendant by the thought of what would have been the idea of her character if she had flown—a reflection emanating from inexperience of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... might be so awkward, slow, and inefficient as a go-between that the possible ability of Brown and Smith in passing would be nullified or greatly hampered. But if the inefficiency of Jones is blamable to his inexperience, it evidently can be changed to efficiency by sufficient right exercise in passing. The more of that sort of work he does, in either direction, the ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... did not contribute to its exercise. In Mr. Norbury a fatal indecision in action and a too great sensitiveness of moral fibre paralysed latent energies of a high order which might otherwise have made him a leader among men. As for the girls, the dove-like innocence of inexperience, so far as it could exist among a lot of young monkeys, was responsible for their contribution to the hot water. A negligible quantity of a trivial ingredient! Young persons were young persons, and would always remain so—an enigmatical saying. As for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... that, in the half-dozen stolen and rapturous interviews which had taken place between these young lovers, there had been no suggestion of the future, nor any of those glowing projects for a united destiny peculiar to their years and inexperience. They had lived entirely in a blissful present, with no plans beyond their next rendezvous. In that mysterious and sudden absorption of each other, not only the past, but the future seemed ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... unfortunate girl had an inheritance from her mother of more than a million! If she had but known it, if she had but had a single friend to advise her in her inexperience! But she had been faithful to her vow never to let her secret be known to a living soul; and the most terrible anguish had never torn from ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... knew her address? Ellen at first said, "to be sure," but after a few minutes' reflection, was obliged to confess that she was not certain about it. It would have been just like Mr. Humphreys to lose sight entirely of such a matter, and very natural for her, in her grief and confusion of mind, and inexperience, to be equally forgetful. She wrote immediately to Mr. Humphreys and supplied the defect, and hope brightened again. Once before she had written, on the occasion of the refunding her expenses. Mr. Lindsay and his mother were very prompt to do this, though ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... race; and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours. In our youth is our strength; in our inexperience, our wisdom. At a period when other nations have but lisped, our deep voice is heard afar. Long enough, have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves, and doubted whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in us, if we would but ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... that since 1914 eleven thousand persons have been taught to make cheese. It is admitted, however, that as the result of inexperience the mortality among young cheeses ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various

... one or two cases of these early struggles, I have chiefly in view the effect of these upon my subsequent visions under the reign of opium. And this indulgent reflection should accompany the mature reader through all such records of boyish inexperience. A good tempered-man, who is also acquainted with the world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright simplicity, jealous of its own rights, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... of fodder depoted, we were only 50 miles odd from our destination off Cape Armitage, and had one meal over three days' food. If, therefore, we could average 15 miles a day that would suffice. It was a silly risk in view of blizzards and other possibilities, chiefly our own inexperience. As it was I took it and left the fodder there for ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... an inevitable association of ideas, to remember that, unknown and unnoticed as he might be, he was the only Coningsby in that proud Castle, except the Lord of the Castle himself; and he began to be rather ashamed of permitting a sense of his inexperience in the mere forms and fashions of society so to oppress him, and deprive him, as it were, of the spirit and carriage which became alike his character and his position. Emboldened and greatly restored to himself, Coningsby advanced into the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... attempt to put down the Taira. Yoritomo summoned the scattered members of the Minamoto clan and all the disaffected elements of every kind to his assistance. It does not seem that this summons was responded to with the alacrity which was hoped for. The inexperience of Yoritomo and the power and resources of him against whom they were called upon to array themselves, led the scattered enemies of Kiyomori to hesitate to join so hopeless a cause. The rendezvous of the ...
— Japan • David Murray

... horseback, and were also followed by a mounted servant. Kirillov, who had never mounted a horse before, sat up boldly, erect in the saddle, grasping in his right hand the heavy box of pistols which he would not entrust to the servant. In his inexperience he was continually with his left hand tugging at the reins, which made the horse toss his head and show an inclination to rear. This, however, seemed to cause his rider no uneasiness. Gaganov, who was morbidly suspicious and always ready to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... choice of the results without the fatigue of travel. Defects enough there were to critical eyes,—false drawing, cold color, and unsuccessful distances; still there was much to admire, and the spirit and intention were interesting, even where the inexperience of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... Williams for publishing Paine's 'Age of Reason.' The extracts from Paine impressed him; though, for a time, he had an impression from his father that Coleridge and other wise men had made a satisfactory apology for the Bible; and 'in his inexperience' he thought that Paine's coarseness implied a weak case. 'There is a great deal of truth,' he says, 'in a remark made by Paine. I have gone through the Bible as a man might go through a wood, cutting down the trees. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... the articles. "But," he continued, "if any one offence of that kind was ever attended with circumstances which might move compassion, the said Earl hopes he may be entitled to it." He then referred to his peaceable disposition, and pleaded his youth and inexperience; the absence of all malice, of all concerted conspiracy; his having made no warlike preparations. He pleaded also, that he could not be justly reproached with any cruel or harsh conduct while he bore arms: he specified his advice to those with ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... how ignorant dreaming book-worms are of the common business of life. Most of my readers will laugh at the idea of a serious answer to such a quibble. Nevertheless, for the sake of those whose inexperience may be abused by the authority of learned names, I will show them that the primitive Christians, supposing them able to read, could know whether their ministers did really write the books and letters which they received ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... and when the time for his departure arrived, he was attended to the wharf by Mr. Bayard and Ellen, with whom he had passed the afternoon. The bookseller assisted him in procuring his ticket and berth, and gave him such instructions as his inexperience demanded. ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... with more dramatic genius than Milton to make these favourites of Heaven interesting in their happy state, while yet the key that was to admit them to our world of adventure and experience, of suffering and achievement, hung untouched on a tree. And Adam, from the wealth of his inexperience, is lavishly sententious; when anything is to do, even if it is only to go to sleep, he does it in a high style, and makes a speech. Milton plainly saw the danger of arousing a sense of incongruity and ludicrous disproportion ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... inexperience of our carpenters and masons, not one of whom had even built a chimney. Everybody had fireplaces in pioneer days, in the days of the Kentucky rifle, the broad-axe and the tallow-dip; but as the era of frame ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... him two or three days without needing any further directions than those he had received, and by the end of that time he thought that his master would be at liberty again. So he—so they all thought in their ignorance and inexperience. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... we may say that the belief that virtue is not the right road to happiness betrays inexperience and immaturity of judgment. A moderate degree of morality saves man from many pitfalls into which his unrestrained impulses would lead him. The highest levels of morality bring a degree of happiness unknown to the "natural man." ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... youth and inexperience, I suppose," he returned; then added, reassuringly: "But, as I said before, I believe that will be in your favor, although I warn you that you will have to exercise firmness and judgment at all times. But when can you come ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... years ago at a water-cure followed the watchman all night on crutches through his tour of inspection around the establishment. Other people, after walking a long time, shift from chair to chair in their rooms, talking to any body who may happen to be present in a low-voiced suicidal manner, which inexperience finds absolutely blood-freezing. Later such rock to and fro, moaning with agony, for hours at a time, but saying nothing. Still others go to their beds at once, and lie writhing there until the struggle is entirely decided. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience. The golden dream was soon to end—end even with the yellow dross that gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness—three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various

... religion and Christianity further than an implied objection or a sneer. If he had an opportunity of talking in private with an ingenuous and intelligent youth, he sometimes attempted to make a proselyte, and showed much address in bribing the vanity of inexperience, by suggesting that a mind like his ought to spurn the prejudices impressed upon it in childhood; and when assuming the latus clavus of reason, assuring him that such as he, laying aside the bulla of juvenile incapacity, as Bletson called it, should proceed to examine and decide for ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... Simple first and ask him what it was that laid him so soon and in such a plight and in such company in this bottom. It was not that which from his name we might at first think it was. It was not the weakness of his intellects, nor his youth, nor his inexperience. There is danger enough, no doubt, in all these things if they are not carefully attended to, but none of all these things in themselves, nor all of them taken together, will lay any pilgrim by the heels. There must be more than mere and pure simplicity. No blame attaches to a ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... disposition, to determine the education which will best answer to it? Why in cases of guilt do we vary our moral censure according to the opportunities of the offender? Why do we find excuses for youth, for inexperience, for violent natural passion, for bad education, bad example? Except that we feel that all these things do affect the culpability of the guilty person, and that it is folly and inhumanity to disregard ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... nobody knew where the Cabinet would be that time twenty-four hours. Lady Eynesford, who wanted her husband to drive her out, thought the meeting under the circumstances mere nonsense—which it very likely was—and said so, which betrayed inexperience, and Alicia Derosne asked what time it ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... a nobleman should need the offices of such an attendant as your goblin," said Nigel; "you are but jesting with my inexperience." ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... "world." He seemed willing, even anxious, to make himself secondary, subordinate. However he may have been on the Continent, here in England his desire to conform made him appear subservient and almost abject. My own unabashed and unconscious Americanism—the possible consequence of inexperience—sometimes embarrassed him, and he occasionally undertook to edit my dealings with members of the older half of our race, even with waiters and cabmen. As for the more boastful, aggressive, self-assertive sort of Americanism, that would make ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... of its existence one evening in the winter of nineteen-five, when he dropped in on me to consult me, he said, about a rather delicate matter, in which I gathered there lurked for his inexperience the most frightful pitfalls of offence. That he should come to me in this spirit was evidence that a certain chastening had been ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair

... all due to my inexperience, Mr. Gorham, and I am sorry that you are angry. I believe in you as I could never believe in any other man, and I know that, as far as you can control it, you will keep the Consolidated Companies within the lines you have laid down; but I can't make myself believe ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... and depressing circumstances; it was very trying for him, a mere boy, to sit day after day in a sick room, so I seconded his request to be allowed to go to Rome for a few weeks, and obtained the desired permission for him. I ought never to have done so. But I did not know how great was his inexperience or into what it ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... the retrospect as the youth turns from them to the hardened and unfamiliar face of the world! With what a sweet sadly-cheering pathos they must linger in the memory! And then what chance and hazard is there in his newly-gotten freedom! What instincts of warning in its very novelty and dim inexperience! What possibilities of failure as well as of success in the unknown future ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... upon his advancement in life as her especial care; she should always remember him, with the most grateful affection; but as for love, all notion of it must be considered at an end. And, she wrote still further, she could not blame herself for this, because she felt that her youth and inexperience excused her. She should always remember the claim that Adelaide and himself had upon her, and she was always his sincerely ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme

... walked as gods on the roof of the world, saw with clear eyes, knew with mind and spirit untroubled by self-sickness. We were silent, having fallen into an accord which made all speech idle. Arduous as the road soon became, and, while unknown to both of us, more arduous to me because of my inexperience, we chose without hesitating, almost without consulting. Each difficulty brought decision, and with decision, its own help. Now it was I who steadied her leap across a chasm; now came her turn to underprop my ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... taste. This little event, homely as it may appear, is connected with the principle that influences the decisions of more than half of those who visit foreign nations. Usages are condemned because they are not our own; practices are denounced if their connexion with fitness is not self-apparent to our inexperience; and men and things are judged by rules that are of local origin and local application. The moral will be complete when I add, that we, who were so fastidious about the butter at Cowes, after an absence of nearly eight years from America, had the salt regularly ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... face the physiognomist might dwell longer,—but that rather because youth, hope, and inexperience had refused to make any of the life-marks that tell stories in faces. There was abundant room ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... diligence, came the feeling of uneasiness as to his situation. He was alone, on foot, lost in a forest, without any means of finding his right road again, and with a considerable sum of money about him, for which he was responsible. His anxiety was increased by his inexperience. The idea of a forest was connected in his mind with so many adventures of robbery and murder, that he expected ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... foot for the first time, and stood almost erect on the grass. Oh, how the little doll screamed and chuckled as she tumbled over and rolled about; ever and anon stretching out her little hand, and asking, as it were, my assistance in aiding her inexperience and weakness. However, "Tentando fimus fabri," by effort, frequently repeated, success is at last secured; and Phebe at last flew off from me like an arrow, and, like an arrow, too, alighted head foremost on the soft sward. Phebe won all hearts when she ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... some change for the better showed itself in a few hours, she must succumb. Probably she was only relieving the tension of her own feelings by looking facts fiercely in the face. It is a common attitude of inexperience, under like circumstances. Dr. Nash certainly had said to her that "the strength was well maintained." But do we not all of us accept that phrase as an ill-omen—a vulture in the desert? No—no! Look the facts in the face! ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... dalliance with the blushing stream, Transcribes each tree, branch, leaf, and rock and flower, Perfect in shape and colour, clear, distinct, With all the panoramic change of sky— Even as Youth's bright river, toying with The fairy craft where Inexperience dreams, And subtle Fancy builds its airy halls, In blest imagination pictures most Of bright or lovely that adorn life's banks, With the blue vault of heaven over all; On that serene and wizard afternoon, As hunters chase the wild ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... various expressions of the various forms which that extraordinary judgment-court afforded, no wonder that Clarence forgot, with the artist himself, the disadvantages Warner had to encounter in the inexperience of an unregulated taste ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Philosophia, 1510; cf. Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. p. 1 seq.) made the mixture still worse by the addition of the magic art. The impulse of the modern spirit to subdue nature is here already apparent, only that it shows inexperience in the selection of its instruments; before long, however, nature will willingly unveil to observation and calm reflection the secrets which she does not yield to the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... me in the choice of my young friends. While I can honestly say that I was never in a position to stand aloof out of envy from any one who was specially gifted, I can only explain my indifference in the choice of my associates by the fact that through inexperience regarding the sort of companionship that would be of advantage to me, I cared only to have some one who would accompany me in my excursions, and to whom I could pour out my feelings to my heart's ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... property of his own, some fifteen hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him. I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded in convincing him that the wisest course for him to pursue ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Hampton and his guests. Trevors had misnamed him a fool, sweepingly mistaking youth, business inexperience and a careless way, for lack of brains. Just a breezy young fellow, likable, gay-hearted, keen for the joy of life, scarcely more than a boy after all. One of those rare beings whose attitude toward his fellow mortals ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... to the efficiency of that Department, in order to take a more tangible part in the war. After raising among his friends and the cowboys of the West a regiment of "Rough Riders," he declined its command on plea of military inexperience. Roosevelt made one of those happy choices which are a mark of his administrative ability in selecting as colonel Leonard Wood, an army surgeon whose quality he knew through common ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... and very much the sport of slight and trivial occasions. A very small matter suffices to upset him, though, to be sure, he is apt enough to be set right again. All this, no doubt, is partly owing to his youth and inexperience; but in truth his character is mainly that of a brave and clever upstart, somewhat intoxicated with sudden success, and not a little puffed with vanity of the Prince's favour. Notwithstanding John's ingrained, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... sums in blockade running during the American Revolutionary War. It was not without good reason, therefore, that the more cautious Scot addressed to him so many pathetic letters: "I beg of you to attend to these money matters. I cannot rest in my bed until they have some determinate form." Watt's inexperience in money matters caused apprehensions of ruin to arise whenever financial measures were discussed. He was at this time utterly wretched, and Mrs. Watt at last became anxious, long and bravely as she had hitherto borne up and striven to dispel her husband's fears. Never before had ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... business. Two years ago our women's fingers were busy making "Havelocks." It seemed to us then as if the Havelock made half the soldier; and now we smile to think of those days of inexperience and illusion. We know now what War means, and we cannot look its dull, dead ghastliness in the face unless we feel that there is some great and noble principle behind it. It makes little difference what we thought we were fighting for at first; we know what we are fighting for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... advance yet," said the other general emphatically. "McClellan is right in making elaborate preparations and long drills before moving upon the enemy. It was inexperience, and not want of courage, that beat us at ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... hotels, so let myself be guided by a fellow-traveller. We went to the Hotel du Louvre, then so new that it smelt of plaster and paint. In those days, big, splendid hotels were almost unknown in Europe. The vast dining-hall, with its palatial decoration, impressed my inexperience very strongly. During my stay in the Hotel du Louvre, I made the acquaintance of some English officers. One was a splendid-looking man of about twenty-eight, physically the finest Englishman I was ever personally acquainted with, and another was a much older and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... but who has since 1898 been giving quite a spectacular demonstration of waving a red light after the wreck, having become his most enthusiastic, almost hysterical, biographer: "Rizal is what is commonly called a character, but he has repeatedly demonstrated very great inexperience in the affairs of life. I believe him to be now about thirty-two years old. He is the Indian of most ability among those ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would perhaps—either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... every assistance in the terrible scene when the two women had sworn to be like sisters. So she had brought from the depths of the Vosges a humble relation on her mother's side, a very pious and honest soul, who had been cook to the Bishop of Nancy. Fearing, however, her inexperience of Paris ways, and yet more the evil counsel which wrecks such fragile virtue, at first Lisbeth always went to market with Mathurine, and tried to teach her what to buy. To know the real prices of things and command the salesman's respect; to purchase unnecessary ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... a dress-rehearsal in the noble art of packing mules. The result was that I had to take a hand myself in putting the aparejos on the animals, shoeing them and curing the sore backs, which, as a matter of course, developed from the inexperience of ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... footing characteristic of first steps. Even if it could have seen the rapidly approaching carriage that was hidden by the angle of the building, its baby feet could not have carried it out of harm's way in time, and it is more than probable that its inexperience would have prevented ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... party went through under one leadership. Fortunate were those who possessed experienced men as leaders, or who in hiring the services of one of the numerous plains guides obtained one of genuine experience. Inexperience and graft were as fatal then as now. It can well be imagined what disaster could descend upon a camping party in a wilderness such as the Old West, amidst the enemies which that wilderness supported. It is bad enough today when inexperienced people ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... think of Rose's wealth and his paltry twelve hundred per year. An ambition which had always slumbered within his mind awoke to full strength and activity. He began to sit up late at night and write articles for the papers and magazines. He had got one accepted, and received a check which to his inexperience seemed promisingly large. In spite of all his anxiety he was exalted. He began to wonder if circumstances would not soon justify him in reaching out for the sweet he coveted. He made up his mind not to be precipitate, to wait until he was sure, but his impatience had waxed ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... fulfilment of Fitzgerald's promise, anxiety changed to distrust. She twice requested Tom to ask his master for the papers he had spoken of, and received a verbal answer that they would be sent as soon as they were ready. There were greater obstacles in the way than she, in her inexperience, was aware of. The laws of Georgia restrained humane impulses by forbidding the manumission of a slave. Consequently, he must either incur very undesirable publicity by applying to the legislature for a special exception in ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... willing, even anxious, to make himself secondary, subordinate. However he may have been on the Continent, here in England his desire to conform made him appear subservient and almost abject. My own unabashed and unconscious Americanism—the possible consequence of inexperience—sometimes embarrassed him, and he occasionally undertook to edit my dealings with members of the older half of our race, even with waiters and cabmen. As for the more boastful, aggressive, self-assertive sort of Americanism, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... Chosroes, and the retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed on the head of Yezdegerd, the grandson of Chosroes; and the same aera, which coincides with an astronomical period, [18] has recorded the fall of the Sassanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. [19] The youth and inexperience of the prince (he was only fifteen years of age) declined a perilous encounter: the royal standard was delivered into the hands of his general Rustam; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular troops was swelled in truth, or in opinion, to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... life;) the loveliness of this inestimable blessing will shine forth, like the sun on a misty morning, and preserve the even temperature of the mind. To the youthful lover it is the polar star that guides him from the shoals and quicksands of vice, among which his wayward fancy and inexperience are too apt to lead him. But in the matrimonial state, the pleasures arising from the exercise of this virtue are manifold, as it sheds a galaxy of splendour around the social hemisphere; for it is such a divine perfection, that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various

... meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our destination—a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people, principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped, which ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... disposition was to deny, he could still fetter self and acquiesce. But he began to understand that half his strength lay in her unwillingness; half of their safety in her inexperience, her undisturbed tranquillity, her aloofness from physical emotion and her ignorance of the ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... affairs here. If you had addressed that question to me before my departure, most assuredly I should have replied without hesitation, 'It is Count Schwarzenberg!' But I have since then found out that I had done the count injustice in many things through my inexperience and want of foresight; that he is a very great and experienced statesman and politician, who with his far-seeing glances can discern much more clearly than I with my unpracticed eyes the relations of things. Who knows but that, after all, the peace of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... literary character of her writings, (says the editor), it does not, perhaps, become me largely to speak; yet I must hazard the remark, that her defects will be perceived to be those of youth and inexperience, while in invention, and in that mysterious power of exciting deep interest, of enchaining the attention and keeping it alive to the end of the story; in that adaptation of the measure to the sentiment, and in the sudden change of measure to suit a sudden change of sentiment; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... and loved by a being surpassing the brightest dream of his purest youth: yet the remembrance of the past poisons, even now, his joy. He is haunted by the suspicion that the affection, even of this being, is less the result of his own qualities, than of her inexperience of life—he has everything at stake—he dares to submit her devotion to the sharpest trial—he quits her without withdrawing the dark curtain with which he had enveloped himself—he quits her with the distinct understanding ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... of something new and rather wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush of sympathy for June's unarmoured youth and inexperience. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... wiser head than that of Berry Lawson, or even that of his more fortunate kinsman, the many-named Nimbus, has been sorely puzzled to understand how ignorance and poverty and inexperience should maintain the right, preserve and protect themselves against opposing wisdom, wealth and malicious skill, according to the spirit and tenor of the Reconstruction Acts. But it is a problem which ought to trouble no one, since it has been enacted ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... A woman who attempts to carry out any plans of system, order, and economy, and who has her feelings and habits conformed to certain rules, is constantly liable to have her plans crossed, and her taste violated, by the inexperience or inattention of those about her. And no housekeeper, whatever may be her habits, can escape the frequent recurrence of negligence or mistake, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... situation, the more dreadful and impossible of remedy it appeared. How could they prove their innocence, when they did not have a single witness to appear in their defense? How could their youth and inexperience, friendless and alone, hope to combat successfully with the cunning and the experience of these two unprincipled men, who would stop at nothing to accomplish their ends? But, they were not the kind of boys to give up a fight for life, as long ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... the enemy's advance pickets at Middle Fork Bridge, and a spirited fight occurred in which he lost one man killed and inflicted some loss on the enemy. This unauthorized expedition caused McClellan to censure Schleich, who was only to be excused on the score of inexperience. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... in that; the Camille of the dressmaker—nothing more. The audience, moreover, were not slow in recognizing this fact also. That day has gone by, apparently, when tyros may sally forth from the city and win country audiences with fine dresses, pretty faces, cheek, and inexperience. The theatre-going public knows the trick. The days of such ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville

... children along this difficult way it is not wise to call direct attention to it, lest their inexperience and sensitiveness should turn to scrupulosity and their spontaneity be paralysed. It is both more acceptable and healthier to present it as a feat of courage, a habit of fearlessness to be acquired, of hardihood and strength of character. The more subtle forms of self-knowledge ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... most part the story of the land grants under this provision is an unfortunate one of speculation, misappropriations, and sale by venal Legislatures, whose only excuse was probably their inexperience and lack of vision; and the natural desire of the people to benefit at once from the endowment these lands represented. Michigan had her troubles in common with the other new states, but she did manage to acquire enough from these ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... remember that he had to "catch a car" if he were asked suddenly to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. I would not blame the most sturdy theologian for remembering that it was club night, if his wife were to ask him, unexpectedly, how Nebuchadnezzar, with his inexperience, could digest grass with only one stomach, when it takes four for the oxen that are used to it. That may account, however, for his hair ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... brought it out with infinite tenderness but inexorable clearness in the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost boy. The sheep were but young and silly, they did not wish to be lost on the mountain-side; they knew no better; inexperience, ignorance were theirs, and for their sad estate they were not held responsible. For them the compassionate shepherd sought until he found them in the wilds, took them, involuntary burdens, on his heart, brought them back to safety and the fold. The coin had no native affinity ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... Jammtzer had made for them, his resentment concerning the ornament sold by Barbara again awoke. He could no longer punish her for this "loveless" deed, as he called it, but he made the marquise feel severely enough his indignation for her abuse of the young girl's inexperience, for, without granting her a farewell audience, he sent her back to Brussels, with letters to Queen Mary expressing his displeasure. Instead of her skilful maid Alphonsine, a clumsy Swabian girl accompanied her—the former had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... smoothed his spotless shirt-front, and looked daggers, while the Blues laughed heartily, and the Yellows cried "Shame!" "As for the other candidate on the same side, he [the maltster] had nothing to say against him.—He was, no doubt, seduced into presumption by his uncle and his own inexperience. It was said that that candidate, Mr. Fairfield, was an author and a poet; if so, he was unknown to fame, for no bookseller in the town had ever even heard of Mr. Fairfield's works. Then it was replied Mr. Fairfield had written under another name. What would that prove? Either ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... day as Bok was going out to lunch, he found a small-statured man, rather plainly dressed, wandering around the retail department, hoping for a salesman to wait on him. The young salesman on duty, full of inexperience, had a ready smile and quick service ever ready for "carriage trade," as he called it; but this particular customer had come afoot, and this, together with his plainness of dress, did not impress the young salesman. His attention ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... are his wits and his presence of mind. The violent death, the accidents, the illnesses to which he falls victim might be often warded off by proper knowledge. Nature is a zealous enemy; ignorance and inexperience keep ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... Bajazet. [61] The duke of Burgundy, sovereign of Flanders, and uncle of Charles the Sixth, yielded to the ardor of his son, John count of Nevers; and the fearless youth was accompanied by four princes, his cousins, and those of the French monarch. Their inexperience was guided by the Sire de Coucy, one of the best and oldest captain of Christendom; [62] but the constable, admiral, and marshal of France [63] commanded an army which did not exceed the number of a thousand knights and squires. [631] These splendid names were the source ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... Your inexperience still leaves your virtues in an inflexible condition that will inevitably cause your ruin, if you have not enough intelligence to bring them into accord with the morals of the times. One can not now wear his sentiments on his sleeve. Everything is show; payment is made in airs, demonstrations, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... that, in spite of his inexperience, he was able to be of service to one more unaccustomed than himself to city scenes and ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... impetus before they could get any pace on, and trotting quietly on with this object, he got within thirty paces, and then, cramming his spurs in, went at them as they got clear of the declivity. And he showed good judgment, in spite of his inexperience; for he bowled one enemy over with the force of the shock, and a Bashi- Bazook on his right served another the same, and got a slice at him as he rolled over, which made the number of ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... failures do not mean final failure. There is often said to be a malice, a spirit of rebellion, in inanimate things. They refuse to become slaves until they are once and for all utterly subdued, and then they are docile forever. Yet the malice truly lies in the inaptitude and inexperience of men. Had Field and his associates known how to make and lay an Atlantic cable in the beginning as well as they did in the end, the first one laid would have been successful. The years were passed in the invention of machinery for laying, and in improving the construction ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... resist joining in the laugh against his inexperience in this respect, although he was not over-pleased. With all his head-knowledge of Gospel truth, he had not seen anything of the work of the Spirit, and moreover, like too many others, could not distinguish ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... alive—these instances lost nothing in the telling. And they were true! Chayne could not deny to Garratt Skinner a certain criminal grandeur. He had placed Hine in no peril which he had not shared himself; he had taken him, a man fitted in neither experience nor health, on an expedition where inexperience or weakness on the part of one was likely to prove fatal to all. There was, moreover, one incident, not contemplated by Garratt Skinner in his plan, which made his position absolutely secure. He had actually saved Walter Hine's life on the rocky path of the Mont de la Brenva. There was ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... rise of the ground was so great and we had covered the position so completely that it was rather dangerous to attempt shelling. For about two hours there was hot firing, and every now and then there was a little work for our ambulance people, but not much. The only noticeable evidence of inexperience on the part of the Yeomanry was that they did not realise—and no one can realise this when fighting the Boers for the first time—how great is the enemy's firing range, and how far away one must keep to be able to live at all. They kept pressing forward, and Major Streatfeild had ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... With the unwisdom of inexperience in communicating with an unlike thing, not realizing that the values of their kind of awareness might not be the values of this differing kind, they rushed in with all their powers and forces, a joyful rapturous ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... powerful. His conceptions and expressions were of corresponding vigour, and on all subjects were as remote as possible from commonplaces. Though somewhat authoritative, it was in a way which gave little offence, and was readily imputed to his inexperience in those modes of smoothing dissent and softening assertion, which are important characteristics ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... watch the enemy," Carmen had said to Goutran, when they parted. The enemy was the man who had taken advantage of her inexperience, and induced her to call him father. Why had she not realized what she was doing sooner? She had, however, shown her womanly courage by the confession she had made to Goutran, and now she found herself without shield or buckler in opposition to the man under whose roof she lived. She resolved ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... amazement. The nearest were not more than half a mile off, so we picketed our horses under the sky line; and choosing the hollows, walked on till crawling became expedient. As is their wont, the outsiders were posted on bluffs or knolls in a commanding position; these were old bulls. To my inexperience, our chance of getting a shot seemed small; for we had to cross the dipping ground under the brow whereon the sentinels were lying. Three extra difficulties beset us - the prairie dogs (a marmot, so called from its dog-like bark when disturbed) were all round us, and bolted ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... round to call on me at the Abode of Unclaimed Domestic Angels. He was explicit and generous. 'Look here, miss,' he began; 'I didn't do fair by you when you interviewed me about your agency last evening. I took advantage, at the time, of your youth and inexperience. You suggested 10 per cent as the amount of your commission on sales you might effect; and I jumped at it. That was conduct unworthy of a gentleman. Now, I will not deceive you. The ordinary commission on transactions in wheels is 25 per cent. I am going to sell the Manitou retail at twenty ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... gone, but they called a Council, which agreed to own Avery as their Captain; which he accepted of with all humility imaginable, seeming to excuse himself on account of his inexperience at sea. But he did it so artfully that it more confirmed them in the good opinion of their choice. "Gentlemen," said he, "what we have done we must live or die by; let us all be hearty and of one mind, and I don't question but we shall make our fortune in a little ...
— Pirates • Anonymous

... crush the hope of inexperience. Till one day, having sat awhile silent, "I know not," said Rasselas, "what can be the reason that I am more unhappy than any of my friends. I see them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my own mind restless and uneasy. I am ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... and unclean influences. For the forces of evil are infinite in their variety, insidious beyond the ability of natural sharpness to detect and guard against, and unsleeping in the pressure of their siege upon the heart of man. Who will explain how it comes to pass that youth, whose callowness and inexperience are the mockery of the world, has laid prostrate in single combat this giant of evil and won fields where the reputations of the world's wisest and noblest ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.

... lived so long, Lacedaemonians, without having had the experience of many wars, and I see those among you of the same age as myself, who will not fall into the common misfortune of longing for war from inexperience or from a belief in its advantage and its safety. This, the war on which you are now debating, would be one of the greatest magnitude, on a sober consideration of the matter. In a struggle with Peloponnesians and neighbours our strength is ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... eyes, knew with mind and spirit untroubled by self-sickness. We were silent, having fallen into an accord which made all speech idle. Arduous as the road soon became, and, while unknown to both of us, more arduous to me because of my inexperience, we chose without hesitating, almost without consulting. Each difficulty brought decision, and with decision, its own help. Now it was I who steadied her leap across a chasm; now came her turn to underprop ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... follow this strange child through her school life, so monotonous, and yet full of incident, or what seemed such to her inexperience. All studies that she undertook were singularly broken up and independent. Indeed, I much doubt if regular methodical teaching can ever be applied to a nature like hers. Such organisms generally study through ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... long years the one passion of her life was her anxious solicitude about me. We lived together, and she always treated me as a small boy whose bringing up was her business. That I could exist more than at most two or three days away from her protection, without becoming the victim of my childish inexperience and of the wickedness of evil men, always seemed to her an utter impossibility. Imagine, then, the unutterable terror of my protectress when I was eventually compelled to disclose to her not only that I was a member of a socialistic society, had not only devoted the whole of my ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... crystallised with flaming speech. I could only listen to him dumbly, vaguely divinatory through my love for him and I suppose through a certain temperamental sensitiveness, but alas! uncomprehending by reason of my inexperience in the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... But what with their inexperience and the nature of the channel, they found it hard to get along. The river was full of great stones, making narrow passages, so that, in some parts, it was not possible to row. They knew nothing about the management of a boat, and were no more at ease than if they had been afloat in a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... something more in accordance with the object of their trip roused Dexter into action, and, after helping to force the boat from among the branches, he willingly took one of the sculls; and in obedience to the frequently given orders, rowed as well as his inexperience would allow, and they glided swiftly ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... to her coming to England...." The words were an evocation. He saw her again as she had looked at their first meeting, the poor woman of genius with her long pale face and short-sighted eyes, softened a little by the grace of youth and inexperience, but so incapable even then of any hold upon the pulses. When she spoke, indeed, she was wonderful, more wonderful, perhaps, than when later, to Glennard's fancy at least, the conscious of memorable things uttered seemed to take from even her most intimate ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... if it had been fair, would have been a victory for Baree, even in his youth and inexperience. In fairness the pack should have waited. It was a law of the pack to wait—until one was done for. But Baree was black. He was a stranger, an interloper, a creature whom they noticed now in a moment ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... herself had brought her into the fields this week for the first time during many months. After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illuminated her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again—to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... altogether to understand her youth, her inexperience, above all her coloured romantic fancy. Her romantic fancy had made him in her eyes for a brief hour something that he was not. After a month at the war I believe that she had grown into a woman. She had loved him ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... I had my first case when I was a young man. It was a minor case—a robbery. I won that despite my youth and inexperience. In those days the cases were much harder than now on account of the lawyers. The old-fashioned lawyer was the talkingest kind of a nuisance I ever had to deal with. He always reminded me of somebody talking at a mark for ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... answered, sometimes gently refuting and sometimes assenting to her proposition, it was always with a slow, deliberate earnestness, as if he felt but her deep sincerity, and forgot for the moment her sex, her youth, and her inexperience. It was just this kind of fellowship for which she had hungered so long, and her heart went out with a great gratitude toward this strong and generous man, who was willing to recognize her humanity, and to respond with an ever-ready frankness, unmixed ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... still attractive. From her first greeting to the end of the interview Cass felt that she knew all about him. This relieved him from the onus of proving his identity, but seemed to put him vaguely at a disadvantage. It increased his sense of inexperience ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... this quarter, and which, in the inexperience of the time, was regarded as a great battle, may claim a passing notice, as exemplifying the extent to which the individuality, self-reliance, and habitual use of small-arms by the people of the South was a substitute for military ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... stools seen in the picture. When they had all been thus stationed, the executioner proceeded to administer blows with his blunt sword until the heads were severed from the bodies. On the occasion in question, several of the bodies were hacked about most mercilessly through the inexperience or drunkenness of this brute. The third man in the illustration, for example, had a good part of his left shoulder cut off as clean as a whistle, although the blow had been meant to strike the neck; but let this suffice ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... these two generals, one of whom he knew by person, and the other by description, seemed to Morton decisive of the fate of his embassy. But, notwithstanding his youth and inexperience, and the unfavourable reception which his proposals seemed likely to meet with, he advanced boldly towards them upon receiving a signal to that purpose, determined that the cause of his country, and of those with whom he ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... were the hardest things she had to encounter, though all the housekeeping proved more onerous than, in her inexperience, she had expected it to be. After the first week or two, however, she managed very well, and gradually learned the little labor-saving ways which can only be learned by actual experiment. Getting breakfast and tea she enjoyed, ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... loses will pay the stake. The officers realise this, and sitting down to their work they make the pace. The wild line careering behind them suits itself to their lead; instinctively in its excitement and inexperience it closes inwards. Only 200 yards more. The sky-line is clear and defined. No heads have appeared as yet. One hundred yards! Now we are under the rise, the horses feel the hill—a few seconds and we shall know who has won the race. "Steady, men, steady!" Up goes the squadron leader's arm. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... died in 1343, Joanna became Queen of Naples and Provence at the age of fifteen; but on account of her youth and inexperience, and because of the machinations of the hateful monk, she was kept in virtual bondage, and the once peaceful court was rent by the bitterest dissensions. Through it all, however, Joanna seems to have shown no special dislike to Andreas, who, indeed, was probably innocent of any participation in the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... reproached for their imprudence in preferring a small present pleasure to a large distant advantage: this errour also arises from inexperience, not from want of judgment, or deficiency in strength of mind. When that which has been the future, has in its turn become present, children begin to have some idea of the nature of time, and they can then form some comparisons between the value of present and future pleasures. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... struggled earnestly to find a job. But his inexperience and the season of the year were against him. No newspaper wanted a dramatic critic when the only shows in town had been running three months, and on roof gardens; nor did they want a "cub" reporter ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis

... visited only by the more daring and courageous among the children of the tribe. Tumbler and Pussi were unquestionably the most daring among these— partly owing to native bravery in both, and partly to profound ignorance and inexperience ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... clad in purple and fine linen and driving his own blood horses, talked and laughed with a one-legged mariner, and sought the companionship of his own valet; which irregularity must be excused by his youth and inexperience, and the lamentable fact that, despite his purple and fine linen, he was, as yet, only a ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... was not exactly the woman to submit quietly to patronage from any Mrs. Val, however honourable she might be; but for a while Gertrude hardly knew what it meant; and at her first outset the natural modesty of youth, and her inexperience in her new position, made her unwilling to take offence and unequal to rebellion. By degrees, however, this feeling of humility wore off; she began to be aware of the assumed superiority of Mrs. Val's friendship, and by the time that their mutual affection was of a year's standing, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... of three short years, and when he was but in his thirtieth summer, Desiderius was summoned from his cell on the lonely mountain, and, despite his tears and supplications and his protestations of ignorance and inexperience and extreme youth, made Archbishop of Sarras. Only one answer was vouchsafed to him. "One of thy vows was entire obedience, and the grace of God ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... smile; but that side of womanliness was one which her inexperience had no great zest ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... Lucca; and this last work has such qualities as indicate that he had studied the sculpture of classic days. The work upon this pulpit is a wonderful advance upon the sculpture of the period; and though there are marks of his inexperience in its arrangement, as a whole it is above criticism when the time to which it belonged and the circumstances of its sculpture are taken ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... "Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be formed concerning your conduct,—conceptions which will have a baneful effect, even in spite of known evidence to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, without any willful gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected from my want of religion. I say willful, because the instances I have mentioned had something of necessity in them, from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... place—and studying a Road Map of the South of England. Briggs of the "dresses," who shared the room with him, was sitting up in bed and trying to smoke in the dark. Briggs had never been on a cycle in his life, but he felt Hoopdriver's inexperience and offered such advice ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... Foote, he contrived to persuade them that their flight was leading them right upon a body of royal cavalry posted to intercept their retreat. This fear effectually halted them. The insurgents, through a prejudice natural to inexperience, had an unreasonable dread of cavalry. A second time, therefore, facing about to retreat from this imaginary body of horse, they came of necessity, and without design, full upon their pursuers, whom unhappily the intoxication of victory ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. "Reproof," says Dr. Johnson, "should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;" and "the care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors will unalterably act. And, since they have cited the great moralist's maxim as a direction for critics, they, even in this their first step into public view, beg leave to offer ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... Ethelberta's inexperience, but that her conception of self precluded such an association of ideas, which led her to dismiss the surmise that his attendance could be inspired by a motive beyond that of paying her legitimate attentions as ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... bright October sun overhead was making the rapid Garonne quiver in a sheen of golden light. I found we had made good progress, and were not many hours from our destination. I found it inexpressibly pleasant to float down that bright river, as it carried me to new scenes, which love, hope, and inexperience painted in pleasing colors. My feet were sufficiently painful for me to be glad to lie idly among the piles of cabbages and while the time in day-dreams. Aged confessors might go forth sighing, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" but to the ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning

... they baited with pieces of venison suspended just above them on a projecting limb of a tree. In the morning, when the trappers went out to look for their supposed victims, both the meat and the traps were gone. They had, in their inexperience, forgotten to fasten the traps to anything, and if any of the wolves were caught, they had walked ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... and wasted as much energy and interest over a two-gold-mohur race for maiden ekka-ponies with their manes hogged, as if it had been the Derby. One-half of this came from inexperience—much as the puppy squabbles with the corner of the hearth-rug—and the other half from the dizziness bred by stumbling out of his quiet life into the glare and excitement of a livelier one. No one told him about ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... confidence to Waitstill's mind. He was gay and young and thoughtless; how had he managed to do this wild thing?—and had he done all decently and wisely, with consideration for the girl's good name? The thought of all the risks lying in the train of Patty's youth and inexperience brought a wail of anguish from Waitstill's lips, and, dropping the beads and closing the drawer, she stumbled blindly down the stairway to the kitchen, intent upon one thought only—to find her sister, to look in her eyes, feel the touch of her ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... long way off, and felt that the hour of my departure from Egypt had come, so I left quietly. Instead of A (Ismail), who was a good man, you have B (Tewfik), who may be good or bad, as events will allow him. B is the true son of A; but has the inexperience of youth, and may be smarter. The problem working out in the small brains of Tewfik is this: 'My father lost his throne because he scented the creditors, I may govern the country as I like.' No doubt Tewfik is mistaken; but these are his views, backed up by a ring of pashas. Now look ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... little time for anything else, so their household tasks were not always well or cheerfully performed, especially Margaret's. Her love for music amounted to a passion, and she grudged the time for practice; then their inexperience tried her mother's patience sadly, and brought the inevitable scoldings, and made Margaret's irritable nerves flash up to meet her mother's. But that Saturday morning that we began to tell about, it was such a very exasperating ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... delusion, and was unwilling to crush the hope of inexperience: till one day, having sat awhile silent, "I know not," said the Prince, "what can be the reason that I am more unhappy than any of our friends. I see them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those pleasures which I seem most to ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... tenderfoot. Mrs. Henry had in the beginning endeavored to shield me from this humiliation; but when she found that I was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all the world, begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs, owls, blue and willow grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten the front cinch of my saddle, and that my spirit soared into enthusiasm ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... his inexperience of the water Finn was a quicker swimmer than the Master, and he reached little Tim within a very few seconds, and seized the youngster firmly between his great jaws, while turning in the water towards the ship he had left. Finn was careful enough ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... were considerably damped when I heard the charge of his lordship. With all respect for the eminent Senator who that day presided on the bench, I think he went rather too far when he designated my maiden-effort a rhapsody which could only be excused on account of the inexperience of the gentleman who uttered it. Passing from that unpleasant style of stricture, he went seriatim over all the crimes of M'Wilkin, and very distinctly indicated his opinion that a more consummate ruffian had seldom figured ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various









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