"Aptitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cost. His appointments to office, though sometimes sharply criticised, proved, almost without exception, to have been judiciously made, and in many instances exhibited remarkable insight into the character and aptitude of the persons appointed. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... which Socialism was to come. Still calling himself a Marxist, and believing as strongly as ever in the fundamental Marxian doctrines, as he understood them, he naturally devoted his keen mind with its peculiar aptitude for Talmudic hair-splitting to a new interpretation of Marxism. He declared his belief that in Russia it was possible to change from Absolutism to Socialism immediately, without the necessity of a ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... a separate establishment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the King, and partly, no doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude for affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and all who were engaged in collecting the tributes of the provinces, as well as in lending the money to enable the tax-payers to pay (see above, 71 foll.), were constantly busy with their ledgers. The humbler inhabitants of the Empire had long been growing familiar with the Roman aptitude for arithmetic.[284] ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... them all their lives, will be brought together for the first time in the working of this scheme of Local Government.... On every one of the juries in Ireland there have been county gentlemen who have shown the greatest aptitude for business, the greatest industry, and the greatest ability; and I say it would be a monstrous thing if, by working the election of these County Councils on narrow sectarian or political lines, men of that class were excluded from the service of ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... thus reviewing Leichhardt's aptitude — or rather inaptitude — for the work, and commenting upon his shortcomings, we must do him the fullest justice by paying homage to the sincerity of his belief in himself and his mission. In that belief he was ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... world who is rich and prosperous (compare the jest in the Euthydemus), the best friend of Socrates, who wants to know his commands, in whose presence he talks to his family, and who performs the last duty of closing his eyes. It is observable too that, as in the Euthydemus, Crito shows no aptitude for philosophical discussions. Nor among the friends of Socrates must the jailer be forgotten, who seems to have been introduced by Plato in order to show the impression made by the extraordinary man on the common. The gentle nature of the man is indicated by his weeping at the announcement ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... save. More, far more than that! Inspired by God, whom she studies and contemplates, the Church admits the inequalities of strength, she allows for the disproportion of burdens. If she finds us unequal in heart, in body, in mind, in aptitude, and value, she makes us all equal by repentance. Hence equality is no longer a vain word, for we can be, we are, all equal through feeling. From the formless fetichism of savages to the graceful inventions of Greece, or the profound and metaphysical doctrines ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... of Semitic religion as found in the lands bordering on the eastern Mediterranean in a more original form. The Semitic peoples outside of Babylonia founded no lasting empires, and showed no great aptitude for art or for literary style; but, in point of religion, they communicated to the world impulses of immeasurable force, which will act powerfully on the world as long as the Prophet ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... this tent they were wont to partake of the mid-day meal (usually a cold collation), which they generally finished off with a cup of chocolate or coffee and a cigar, the potables being prepared by a particular one of the women labourers, who speedily developed quite a special aptitude for the task, and who at length fell into the habit of regularly bringing with her, every day, the milk needed for the purpose. The tent being pitched on a spot which commanded a full view of the operations in progress, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... plan, that is. I am fairly well educated, I believe. Dear mamma was most accomplished, I have often heard papa say, and she taught me everything she knew. I speak French, German, and Italian, and seem to have a natural aptitude for music; and I sketch a little in water-colours. I have all my materials with me, and a few sketches which I may perhaps be able to sell when I reach home—I will let you see them some day—and I think I may perhaps be able to get a situation as governess, or maintain myself respectably ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... gentleman that he lives elegantly on nothing a year, we use the word "nothing" to signify something unknown; meaning, simply, that we don't know how the gentleman in question defrays the expenses of his establishment. Now, our friend the Colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance: and exercising himself, as he continually did, with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is natural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them. To use a cue ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sketch, was born at Versailles in 1805, and is consequently in his sixty-fourth year, though his appearance is that of a man little past the meridian of life. Early in life he evinced peculiar aptitude for the diplomatic career in which he has since distinguished himself—a career as varied and romantic as it is brilliant. In 1825 he was appointed attach to the French Consulate at Lisbon. Two years later found him engaged in the Commercial Department ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... day he was installed as a clerk in the office of Peter Van Erk, one of the principal merchants in the city. Wenlock had an aptitude for business of which he had not been aware. He took a positive pleasure in his work, and soon attracted the observation ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... uncouth exterior, son of a journeyman carpenter who died when rather young; godson of F. Grossetete. From the age of twelve the banker had encouraged him in the study of the exact sciences for which he had natural aptitude. Studied at Ecole Polytechnique from nineteen to twenty-one; then entered as a pupil of engineering in the National School of Roads and Bridges, from which he emerged in 1826 and stood the examinations ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... had shown the great fertility of the land in Louisiana, especially on the banks of the Mississippi, and its aptitude to the culture of tobacco, indigo, cotton, and rice; but the labourers were very few, and many of the new comers had fallen victims to the climate. The survivers found it impossible to work in the field during the great heats of the summer, protracted ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... few books as came in his way. Later, his taste for reading seemed to grow less. He had a keen instinct for reality, and perhaps he found little in books that satisfied him. For poetry and philosophy he had small aptitude, and in science he had no training. What books he read he seemed to digest and get the pith of. Once, made suddenly conscious by defeat of his lack of book-culture, he took up Euclid's geometry, and resolutely studied and re-studied it. Doubtless that helped him in the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... any thing, implying some continuance or permanence. It may be formed by nature or induced by extraneous circumstances. It is a settled disposition of the mind or body, involving an aptitude for the performance of certain actions, acquired by custom or frequent repetition. There are habits of the body, of the mind, of action; physical, mental, moral and religious habits. All these are ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... month). The menstrual flow continues from three to five days, and is merely the exudation of ordinary venous blood through the mucous lining of the cavity of the uterus. At this time, the nervous system of females is much more sensitive, and from the fact that there is greater aptitude to conception immediately before and after this period, it is supposed that the sexual feeling is then the strongest. When impregnation occurs immediately before the appearance of the menses, their duration is generally ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... are with difficulty brought again into voluntary contraction; and seem to require a greater quantity or energy of volition for this purpose. At the same time they still remain obedient to the stimulus of agreeable sensation, as appears in tired dancers finding a renovation of their aptitude to motion on the acquisition of an agreeable partner; or from a tired child riding on a gold-headed cane, as in Sect. XXXIV. 2. 6. These muscles are likewise still obedient to the sensorial power ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in Northumberland, was first taught grammar at Newcastle, and afterward removed to Cambridge, where his aptitude in education raised him gradually till he came to be the head of Pembroke college, where he received the title of Doctor of Divinity. Having returned from a trip to Paris, he was appointed Chaplain to Henry VIII. and ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Our new acquaintance was a fair player and he played to win. Frances was learning to play and had a natural aptitude for the game. I played better than my usual form and I needed to, for Bayliss played wretchedly. He "dubbed" his approaches and missed easy putts. If he had kept his eye on the ball instead of on his opponents ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... movements with his hands so swiftly that they are covered in less than a tenth of a second, ordinary human sight can not register them. He has achieved the magician's slogan—the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. It takes natural aptitude and long practise, whether one is juggling gilded balls or blued-steel revolvers. Sandy could, with a circling movement of his wrists, draw his guns from their holsters and bring them to bear directly upon the target to which his eyes shifted. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a most effective picture of the condition of New York working-women, because she has brought to the study of the subject not only great care but uncommon aptitude. She has made a close personal investigation, extending apparently over a long time; she has had the penetration to search many queer and dark corners which are not often thought of by similar explorers; and we suspect that, unlike too many philanthropists, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... taken in connection with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own page with the individual character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything does) some patience and some pains. That these are not usually given to it, - that numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of the face as the whole ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... the Christinos more confident of a speedy termination to the war than when Mina took the command. The well-earned reputation of that chief, his peculiar aptitude for mountain warfare, and intimate acquaintance with the country of Navarre, which had been the scene of his triumphs during the war against Napoleon, certainly pointed him out as the most fitting man to oppose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... deterioration which some people think they would incur, but simply their inability to act. Men of education who become actors do not find that their education is useless. If they have the necessary aptitude—the inborn instinct for the stage—all their mental training will be of great value to them. It is true that there must always be grades in the theatre, that an educated man who is an indifferent actor can never expect to reach the front rank. If he do no more than figure in ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... I might aspire To military station too, for once I led my party into Pixley's camp, And he paroled me. I defended, too, The State of Oregon against the sharp And bloody tooth of the Australian sheep. But I've an aptitude exceeding neat For bloodless battles of diplomacy. My cobweb treaty of Exclusion once, Through which a hundred thousand coolies sailed, Was much admired, but most by Colonel Bee. Though born a tinker I'm a diplomat From old Missouri, and I—ha! ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... but they differ so widely in many of their characteristics, that success in rendering the one, though greater than any which I can hope to have attained, would afford no presumption that the translator would be found to have the least aptitude for the other. As a matter of fact, while the Odes still continue to invite translation after translation, the Satires and Epistles, popular as they were among translators and imitators a hundred years ago, have scarcely been attempted at all since that great revolution ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... friendliest terms with sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of letters; endowed with a facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear of singular acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry and singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;—he had by the exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render inestimable services to the Republic which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... find men who combine the rare qualities necessary for a confidential dragoman; such a person would be invaluable, as he would represent all the cardinal virtues, at the same time that he must possess a natural aptitude for his profession, and a store of patience, with the most unruffled temper. The natives dread the interpreter, they know full well that one word misunderstood may alter the bearing of their case, and they ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... never shown any aptitude whatever for learning. Thou canst read and write, but beyond that thy knowledge runneth not. Your mind seems to be set on the water, and when you are not in it you are on it. Therefore it appears, to me, to be flying in the face of Providence ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... be to end my own line, it would be to install the children of William Adolphus. I did not grant even a moment's hospitality to such an idea. Bederhof was right, the marriage was urgent; I must marry—just as occasionally I was compelled to review the troops. I had as little aptitude for one duty as for the other, but both were among my obligations. I was so rooted in this attitude that I turned to Victoria with a start of surprise when she said to me ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... formulated. It must, therefore, be regarded as an individual question to be adjusted, if necessary, by the family physician. What may safely be regarded as normal and harmless in one, constitutes, for many reasons, excess in another. When a man performs hard physical or mental labor, his sexual aptitude or capacity is limited, and this limitation cannot be exceeded without risk. Such a limitation may not constitute an excess in a man whose occupation does not call for a great expenditure of physical or mental energy. Any indulgence which produces ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... he wished to cudgel a Puritan, has for his opinion "no exquisite reasons, but reasons good enough." In the periods of science immediately subsequent to the time of Bacon, men commenced their career by successful experiment; and having convinced the world of their aptitude for perceiving the relations of natural phenomena, enounced theories which they believed the most efficient to give a comprehensive generality to the whole. Men now, however, commence with theories, though, alas! the converse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... works, by Mr. Scott Douglas, gives three different versions of this song. Any one who will compare these, will see the truth of that remark of the poet, in one of his letters to Dr. Moore, "I have no doubt that the knack, the aptitude to learn the Muses' trade is a gift bestowed by Him who forms the secret bias of the soul; but I as firmly believe that excellence in the profession is the fruit of industry, attention, labour, and pains; at least I am resolved to ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... his life, and the two testy old men appear to have become not only a constant irritation to each other, but intolerable bores at court. In "Hymenaei," "The Masque of Queens," "Love Freed from Ignorance," "Lovers made Men," "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue," and many more will be found Jonson's aptitude, his taste, his poetry and inventiveness in these by-forms of the drama; while in "The Masque of Christmas," and "The Gipsies Metamorphosed" especially, is discoverable that power of broad comedy which, at court as well ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... was wonderful, especially as Stella had received no training in the science of electricity, that she could have grasped the subject thus thoroughly in so short a time. Evidently she must have had a considerable aptitude for its theory and practice, as might be seen by the study that she gave to the literature which he lent her, including some manuscript volumes of his own notes. Also there ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... conclusion scarcely helps us; for remember, the option is not given to all. Genius, or talent, or special aptitude, is a necessary equipment for such an undertaking. Great discoverers must be great observers, dexterous manipulators, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... young ladies of his acquaintance—the mystery of her coming and going, all went to give color to the single dream of his unimaginative life. Apart from her, he was a somewhat vulgar, entirely commonplace young man, of saving habits, and with some aptitude for business, in a small way. He had been well on his way to becoming a small but successful shopkeeper, thereby realizing the only ideals which had yet presented themselves to him, when Madame Violet had unconsciously intervened. Of what ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... grown-up children of his own and could not help speaking with a touch of sarcasm—he thought it good for boys in the lunatic stage), "pray," said he, looking quizzically down at the unhappy but firm-minded George as he sat there in his chair, "is there any form of work for which you do feel an aptitude?" ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... specially quick in comparison with their neighbours on the continent at seizing on novel mercantile opportunities, but it makes them likely also to retain any trade on which they have once regularly fastened. Mr. Macculloch, following Ricardo, used to teach that all old nations had a special aptitude for trades in which much capital is required. The interest of capital having been reduced in such countries, he argued, by the necessity of continually resorting to inferior soils, they can undersell ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... he was about to offer up Isaac, he saw a little he-goat suggestively nearby fastened among the thorns; and I suggested that instead of sacrificing me he should take the widow Smith's little Johnnie, who shows even at this early Sabbath-school age a pharisaical aptitude for piety. I pointed out that in the sight of heaven one soul is as worthy, as acceptable, as another. Besides, did not Isaac become a righteous man, even if he was not offered up and did live in this world of temptations an unconscionably long time? But father was not to be reasoned with ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... recognisably remember, insisted on himself as little as ever in either character, and seemed even more disposed than usual not to let his intelligibility interfere with his modesty. He promptly recovered and returned to camp, whence it was testified that his specific practical aptitude, under the lively call, left nothing to be desired—a fact that expressed again, to the perception of his circle, with what truth the spring of inspiration worked in him, in the sense, I mean, that his imagination itself shouldered and made light of the material load. It had ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... other reasons why Archie Clavering's regrets that he did not take holy orders were needless. He had never succeeded in learning anything that any master had ever attempted to teach him, although he had shown considerable aptitude in picking up acquirements for which no regular masters are appointed. He knew the fathers and mothers—sires and dams I ought perhaps to say—and grandfathers and grandmothers, and so back for some generations, of all the horses of note living in his day. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... dispose of, and happiness that he cannot impart to others, but yet who would only too gladly share his gladness with the world, do to advance the cause of the general weal? Must he plunge into activities for which he has no aptitude or inclination, and which have as their aim objects for which he does not think that the world is ripe? Every one will remember the figure of Mrs. Pardiggle in Bleak House, that raw-boned lady who enjoyed hard work, and did not know what it was to be tired, who went about rating inefficient people, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... interest in Drouet's little shop-girl grew in an almost evenly balanced proportion. That young lady, under the stress of her situation and the tutelage of her new friend, changed effectively. She had the aptitude of the struggler who seeks emancipation. The glow of a more showy life was not lost upon her. She did not grow in knowledge so much as she awakened in the matter of desire. Mrs. Hale's extended harangues upon ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... within the Tropics, and perpetually covered with the richest vegetation?" The moral aspect of things is by no means so good; but neither is that without its fair features. "So far as I see, the Slaves here are cunning, deceitful and idle; without any great aptitude for ferocious crimes, and with very little scruple at committing others. But I have seen them much only in very favorable circumstances. They are, as a body, decidedly unfit for freedom; and if left, as at present, completely in the hands of their masters, will never ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... pass for one good reason for not writing a play, that I cannot form a plot. But the truth is, that the idea adopted by too favourable judges, of my having some aptitude for that department of poetry, has been much founded on those scraps of old plays, which, being taken from a source inaccessible to collectors, they have hastily considered the offspring of my mother-wit. Now, the manner in which I became possessed of these fragments is so ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... House of Commons for 18 years, and taking little interest in the proceedings, Lord George, about 1844, suddenly attracted attention by his attacks on Sir Robert Peel and the Free Traders. He showed an aptitude for Parliamentary business that he had not been credited with in racing circles in which he had held such a leading position. His absorption in politics, which had newly aroused his interest, led him to dispose of ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... that the child's baptism was deferred several months. To his schooldays reference has been made already, and we may therefore pass on to the time when he tried to make his living as an operatic conductor. Although he was then only twenty-one years old, he showed remarkable aptitude for this kind of work from the beginning, and it was through no fault of his that misfortune overtook every opera company with which he had anything to do. The bankruptcy, in 1836, of the manager of the Magdeburg Opera, affected him most disastrously, for it came at the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the rigging like a monkey, or in regard to any other monkey performance, I do not believe that women will ever enter into competition with men in these things, because the latter have shown such remarkable aptitude for that business. (Laughter and applause). But after all that may be said on this subject, we fail to reach one class in the community who have spare time, spare energies, abundance of power for work. I mean young ladies of wealth and rank. The world shows a degree ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... accomplished men of letters in Europe was engaged upon a history of the French Revolution, raised some doubts among those who have thought most about the qualifications proper to the historian. M. Taine has the quality of the best type of a man of letters; he has the fine critical aptitude for seizing the secret of an author's or an artist's manner, for penetrating to dominant and central ideas, for marking the abstract and general under accidental forms in which they are concealed, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... birds he has given a clothing of feathers; and to quadrupeds, of furs, adapted to their latitudes. Where art is requisite in providing food for future want, or in constructing a needful habitation, as in the case of the bee and the beaver, a peculiar aptitude has been bestowed, which, in all the inferior races of animals, has been found adequate to their necessities. The crocodile that issues from its egg in the warm sand, and never sees its parent, becomes, it has been well said, as perfect and ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... prestige, inherent qualities of the Osmanli 'Turk' himself, will be admitted by every one who knows him and his history. To say that he has the 'will to power' is not, however, to say that he has an aptitude for government. He wishes to govern others; his will to do so imposes itself on peoples who have not the same will; they give way to him and he governs them indifferently, though often better than they can govern themselves. For example, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... part of the workmen; so that, though he found some difficulty in procuring employment, as might be expected from his ignorance of machine-labour, he yet was sooner successful than he would otherwise have been. Possessed of a natural aptitude for mechanical operations, he soon became a tolerable workman; and he found that his previous education assisted to the fitting execution of those operations even which were ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... a fine, manly lad, was the Leader of the Wolf Patrol of New York City, Boy Scouts of America. He had been often selected for difficult work by the Chief of the United States Secret Service because of his aptitude for the work. His coolness and sound judgment had carried himself and his companions through many difficulties. It was a mission of this character upon which the boys had recently engaged and from which ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... representative of reviving Art Ennobling effects of Art when inspired by lofty sentiments Brilliancy of Art in the sixteenth century Early life of Michael Angelo His aptitude for Art Patronized by Lorenzo de' Medici Sculpture later in its development than Architecture The chief works of Michael Angelo as sculptor The peculiarity of his sculptures Michael Angelo as painter History of painting ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... seemed desirous to teach this manner to his numerous pupils, especially to his compatriots, to whom he wished, more than to others, to communicate the breath of his inspiration. These [ceux-ci, ou plutot celles-la] seized it with that aptitude which they have for all matters of sentiment and poesy. An innate comprehension of his thought permitted them to follow all the fluctuations of his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the citizens. So long as this idea has not been realised for all, the natural transition through all the schooling grades up to the universitya transition to a higher stagemust depend entirely upon the pupils aptitude, and not upon the resources of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... production of satisfactory phenomena, suffer from this lack. The spirits who seek to use a medium may or may not be fitted for such task. Many spirits are utterly unable to properly develop a medium; some fail by reason of their lack of knowledge, and others fail because of their lack of special aptitude for the task. ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... that she was the Swift One, that she had that amazing aptitude for swift flight through the trees. She needed all her wisdom and daring in order to keep out of the clutches of Red-Eye. I could not help her. He was so powerful a monster that he could have torn me limb from limb. As it was, to my death I ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... money, he supplied me, and gave me an invitation to the magistrates' table." Endicott had undoubtedly received a good education. His natural force of character had been brought under the influence of the knowledge prevalent in his day, and invigorated by an experience and aptitude in practical affairs. There is some evidence that he had, in early life, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... we have met with elsewhere, and for the reception of which the brain is, so to speak, attuned. These last recollections find themselves in fuller accord with our consciousness, and enter upon it more easily and energetically; hence also their aptitude for reproduction is enhanced; so that what is common to many things, and is therefore felt and perceived with exceptional frequency, becomes reproduced so easily that eventually the actual presence of the corresponding external stimuli is no longer necessary, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... as he afterwards called himself, De Foe, was born in London, in the year 1661. He was the son of a butcher, but such was his early aptitude, for learning, that he was educated to become a dissenting minister. His own views, however, were different: he became instead a political author, and wrote with great force against the government of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... transferred, upon the expiration of his year on the training-ship, he begins the task of mastering the intricacies of a modern ship-of-war. Here he remains until his first term of service has expired. If he re-enlists and has shown aptitude for the service, he is sent to Washington navy yard for a course of six months' instruction in gunnery and special branches, such as electricity and torpedoes. He becomes a seaman gunner, with the billet and pay of a ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... good-natured among themselves. Hall says "their memory is remarkably good, and their intellectual powers, in all that relates to their native land, its inhabitants, its coasts, and interior parts, is of a surprisingly high order" (I., 128). But what is of particular interest is the great aptitude Eskimos seem to show for art, and their fondness for poetry and music. King[255] says that "the art of carving is universally practised" by them, and he speaks of their models of men, animals, and utensils as "executed in a masterly style." Brinton indeed says they have a more artistic eye for picture-writing ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... passive subject is moved by its active principle; but only when this is done against the interior inclination of the passive subject. Otherwise every alteration and generation of simple bodies would be unnatural and violent: whereas they are natural by reason of the natural interior aptitude of the matter or subject to such a disposition. In like manner when the will is moved, according to its own inclination, by the appetible object, this movement is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... officially as my supercargo, since you now understand the duties. The captain of the vessel in which you will sail is a good sailor and a brave man, but he has no aptitude for trade, and I must have sent a supercargo with him. Your decision to go relieves me of this, for which I am not sorry, for men who are at once good supercargos, and honest men, are ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... needs for its preservation many other bodies by which it is, as it were, regenerated. The human mind increases its aptitude in proportion to the number of ways in which the body can be disposed. The idea constituting a formal being of the human mind is not simple, but is highly complex. An idea of each component part of the body ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... Spectator," wrote Matthew Arnold in 1865, "is all very well, but the article has Hutton's fault of seeing so very far into a mill-stone." And, two years later, "The Spectator has an article in which Hutton shows his strange aptitude for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick." Both were sound criticisms. When Hutton addressed himself to a deep topic of abstract speculation, he "saw so very far into it" that even his most earnest ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... successful. It is true that war fully developed many qualities which had been observed in him previously, and (surest sign of real capacity) he to the last continued to grow with every call that was made upon him. But he manifested an aptitude for the peculiar service in which he acquired so much distinction, an instinctive appreciation of the requisites for success, and a genius for command, which made themselves immediately recognized, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... consistent with his dress; he gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a romantic envelope, which, being removed, you find, not a bravo, but a kind chirping soul; not a moody poet avoiding mankind for the better company of his own great thoughts, but a jolly little chap who has an aptitude for painting brocade gowns, a bit of armour (with figures inside them), or trees and cattle, or gondolas and buildings, or what not; an instinct for the picturesque, which exhibits itself in his works, and outwardly on his person; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... questions as to the influence of heredity and the sources of genius. In the first place Beethoven was not a pure-blooded German, but partly Flemish on his father's side. His paternal grandfather, Ludwig van[133] Beethoven, was a man of strong character and of a certain musical aptitude, who had migrated from the neighborhood of Antwerp to Bonn where he served as court musician to the Elector of Cologne. The paternal grandmother early developed a passion for drink and ended her days confined in a convent. The son of this couple, Johann (the father of the composer) ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... speak the truth, they look one straight in the eye, they are hospitable, courageous, and uncomplaining; their women are on a footing of equality, more or less, with the men, and are respected by them. Where they have had an opportunity, they have shown an aptitude to learn of no mean quality. Physically they are the best people of the Archipelago, and under this head would be remarkable anywhere else in the world. Now, the Spaniards, with a few exceptions, made no systematic, continuous attempt to civilize these peoples; ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... is not to be denied that such men have a certain peculiar aptitude for War, on account of their constant equanimity. They often want the positive motive to action, impulse, and consequently activity, but they are not apt to throw things ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... curtain rises. The actors are their own townspeople—young men and women who have shown an aptitude for the art; they have been trained at the cost of the town, and are paid a small stipend for their services once a week. How the lights shine! How sweet is the music! What a beautiful scene! And what lovely figures ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... foot. The wild effervescence of his mood—which had so readily supplied thoughts, fantasies, and a strange aptitude of words, and impelled him to talk from the mere necessity of giving vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas had entirely subsided. A powerful excitement had given him energy and vivacity. Its operation over, he forthwith began ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... worship. His art, however little it may tempt us to the use of the term realism, is nevertheless based on an almost passionate sympathy with actual human nature. This is the fount of his inspiration, the central theme of his song. The literary genius of Greece showed little aptitude for landscape, and seldom treated inanimate nature except as a background for human action and emotion, or it may be in the guise of mythological allegory. Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that Theocritus, so tenderly concerned with the homely aspects of human life, was ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Melanesians or at all events exhibit a strong infusion of Melanesian blood. They cultivate the ground, live in settled villages, build substantial houses, construct outrigger-canoes, display some aptitude for art, possess strong commercial instincts, and even employ various mediums of exchange, of which shell-money ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... various ways. It eliminates those parts of the native fetish that were a wholesome restraint on the African. The children in the mission school are, be it granted, better than the children outside it in some ways; they display great aptitude for learning anything that comes in their way—but there is a great difference between white and black children. The black child is a very solemn thing. It comes into the world in large quantities and looks upon it with its great sad eyes as if it were weighing carefully the question whether ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and they are also agents to landowners, patwaris and shopkeepers. The Vidurs are the best educated caste with the exception of Brahmans, Kayasths and Banias, and this fact has enabled them to obtain a considerable rise in social status. Their aptitude for learning may be attributed to their Brahman parentage, while in some cases Vidurs have probably been given an education by their Brahman relatives. Their correct position should be a low one, distinctly beneath ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... more perfect dispensations is not familiar with the figure of Adolfo Betti, the guiding brain and bow of the Flonzaley Quartet? Born in Florence, he played his first public concert at the age of six, yet as a youth found it hard to choose between literature, for which he had decided aptitude,[A] and music. Fortunately for American concert audiences of to-day, he finally inclined to the latter. An exponent of what many consider the greatest of all violinistic schools, the Belgian, he studied for four years with Cesar ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... interested in arctic exploration as early as 1886 and discovered he had an aptitude for its grueling demands on several minor expeditions to Greenland and the arctic ice cap. In 1893 he became determined to reach the North Pole, and he spent the next 15 years in unsuccessful attempts to achieve ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... secretary to a man whose policy Sir William cordially detested, Lord Stamfordham, the Foreign Minister, whose acute and wide-reaching sagacity inspired his followers with a blind confidence to himself and his methods. Lord Stamfordham had soon discovered the practical aptitude, the political capacity, the determined, honourable ambition that lay behind Francis Rendel's grave exterior, and had made up his mind, as indeed had others, that the young man had a ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... at these political assassinations, but rather be astonished that they are not more frequent. Unfortunately for our cause, the Nihilists are too humanitarian, and hence are incapable of carrying out many necessary measures. Perhaps in time they will acquire the aptitude necessary in critical moments; perhaps it will be your conduct which will effect this change in them. Then in that case the responsibility of terrorism and assassination will rest with ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... persistent egoistic reference than the common run of humanity; they may boast, but they have no frankness; they have relatively great powers of concealment, and they are capable of, and sometimes have an aptitude and inclination towards, cruelty. In the queer phrasing of earthly psychology with its clumsy avoidance of analysis, they have no "moral sense." They count as an antagonism ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... sacrifice of the Man-God. Though the fall of man was great, it was not absolute. Man was ruined by apostasy, but he was not left destitute of all higher life. He retained some vestige of his primal nature. A sense of the divine, a religious aptitude, and the longing to return to God, subsist in his heart. These render his redemption possible; for the moral law, which had been vindicated by the terrible consequences of the fall, is maintained in all its integrity in the restoration of the fallen creature. A certain harmony was necessary ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... her eyes with her back-hair, which is in fresh need of being wound up, and having got it out of the way, watches with terrified interest all that goes on. Her natural woman's aptitude soon renders her able to give a little help. Anticipating the doctor's want of this or that, she quietly has it ready for him, and so by degrees is intrusted with the charge of supporting her ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... for more than six years, and returned to England in 1576. Soon after he repaired to the Netherlands, and served as a volunteer against the Spaniards. In such schools, and under such leaders as Coligni and the Prince of Orange, Raleigh's natural aptitude for political and military science received the best nurture; but he was soon drawn from the war in Holland by a pursuit which had captivated his imagination from an early age—the prosecution of discovery in the New World. In conjunction with his half-brother, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... voyages in the Myrtle; Captain Barrow gave him instruction in navigation, for which he showed so much aptitude, that after one or two voyages he was appointed third-mate, and on the next he ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... him too lightly and underrates the peril to which the United States was then exposed. Genet was no casual rhetorician raised to important office by caprice of events, but a trained diplomatist of hereditary aptitude and of long experience. His father was chief of the bureau of correspondence in the Department of Foreign Affairs for the French monarchy, and it was as an interpreter attached to that bureau that the son began his career in 1775. While still a youth, ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... could pull herself together, Mrs. Turner sought employment and got it in a large dressmaking establishment at the inadequate wage of seven dollars a week. She was skillful with her needle but had no aptitude for design, therefore she was ever to be among the plodders. One night in the busy season of overwork before the Christmas holidays, she started to walk the ten blocks to her little home, for car-fare was a tax beyond ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not make all great men, more than all other men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless; but infinitely more of circumstance; and far oftenest it is the latter only that are looked to. But it is as with common men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capability of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... inability of the old to acquire new habits is due rather to lack of attention, and to indifference or preoccupation, than to lack of aptitude. He placed, in fact, no limit to the age for learning new methods, stating in ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... His aptitude for managing men was very great; his capacity for affairs incontestable; but it must be always understood as the capacity for the affairs of absolutism. He was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit manager; it remained to be seen whether he had a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... what is waste? Now his strongest aptitude never was for classical work; and if he is not to touch a Latin book till Christmas, and then only cautiously, I do not see what chance he would have, even if Will were out ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Boers have of the poor Englishman; needless to say it is strong, emphatic, comprehensive, and by no means complimentary. Obviously the origin of such opinion concentrates in the fact that the Englishman is too persevering in other people's countries, and, moreover, shows an aptitude for developing the said countries which, in the opinion of the Boer, is altogether too progressive. It is, of course, a pity that the Englishman cannot accommodate himself to the antiquated ideas of the Boer, because if he could, he ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... Afro-Americans." "Greek art is not [Greek: autochthonus]," said Thiersch some fifty years ago, "but we derived from the Pelasgians, who, being blood relations of the Egyptians, undoubtedly brought the knowledge from Egypt." "The aptitude for art among all nations of antiquity," remarked Count de Gobineau a few years later, "was derived from an amalgamation with black races. The Egyptians, Assyrians and Etruscans were nothing but half-breeds, mulattoes." In the year ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... supposes to have acquired civilization and the love of art from the Saxons,—a supposition at war with probability as well as fact. If anything distinguished the Norman from the Saxon, it was his aptitude for appreciating beauty as distinguished from use,—an aptitude on which French influence could not have been lost before the Conquest of England. The Normans in Sicily certainly had not had the advantage of Saxon training in aesthetics, and the poetry and architecture of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the choice of manager of the enterprise. The manager of a municipal theatre must combine with business aptitude a genuine devotion to dramatic art and dramatic literature. Without a fit manager, who can collect and control a competent company of actors, the scheme of the municipal theatre is doomed to failure. Managers of the requisite temper, knowledge, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... He smiled at her derisively. His instinct for effective poses asserting itself, he began showing off his aptitude with the revolver. He twirled it, with elaborate carelessness, on his trigger finger, and with one movement of his wrist, stopped it, at the same time drawing a bead on the shining gold-scales ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth, has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... for himself in accordance with his natural aptitude, the utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural aptitude really is. The principle on which our industrial army is organized is that a man's natural endowments, mental and physical, determine what ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... comprehension; for very often the reverse is conspicuously true; but because practical affairs call for promptitude and a decisive seizing upon what is predominantly important. How learn to play the fiddle? "Go to a good teacher." (Then, beginning young enough, with natural aptitude and great diligence, all may be well.) How defeat the enemy? "Be two to one at the critical juncture." (Then, if the men are brave, disciplined, well armed and well fed, there is a good chance of victory.) Will the price of iron improve? "Yes: for the market is oversold": (that is, many have ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the arbitrary standards of German pedagogues. Europe has admired the patriotic resistance of the Spanish, Tyrolese, and Russian peasants to the enlightened tyranny of Napoleon. There are other standards of culture besides proficiency in research and aptitude for systematic work. The massacre of Louvain, the hideous brutality of the Germans—as regards non-combatants—to mention only one or two of the appalling occurrences of these last weeks—have thrown a lurid light on the real character of twentieth-century ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... desert their workshops, their plows, and offices, to pass their time at the polls? Is it a credit to a man to be called a professional politician? The pursuits of men in the world, to which they are directed by the natural aptitude of sex, and to which they must devote their lives, are as foreign from political functions as those of women. To take an extreme case: there is nothing more incompatible with political duties in cooking and taking care of children than there is in digging ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... was successful in the first suit he pleaded in court. The young man therefore first learned all the methods employed to win the votes of the jurors, all the tricks of opposing counsel, and all the artifices of oratory. This he did with ease, for he was a very clever fellow with a natural aptitude for strategy. When he had satisfied himself that he had learned all he desired to know, he began to show reluctance to perform his part of the contract. At first he baffled his teacher's requests ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... this they inferred only that good servants were more abundant than most people had supposed. They were somewhat surprised when these marvels were wrought by professedly green hands, but were given to suppose that these green hands must have had some remarkable quickness or aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits could be made by a raw Irish girl, fresh from her native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the genius of the race; and my wife, who never felt it important ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... added to his store of knowledge. He was still the most industrious Talmud scholar of the college; his remarkable aptitude and zeal for the studies of his fathers was in nowise diminished; but when the hours at the jeschiva were at an end, instead of returning to his uncle's home, or of spending his time upon the streets with his boisterous playmates, he would walk with Rabbi Jeiteles in the fields, or remain closeted ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... cares, and when they felt how much their reputation and interest depended on the exertions which they made. After serving a few years (seldom more than eight, or less than four), they generally obtained appointments in the church, and thus transferred to another field the intellectual industry and aptitude for communicating knowledge, by which they had distinguished themselves in the university. It may well be conceived that, by stimulating and exemplifying diligence, their influence on their brethren in the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... an admirable painter and a most worthy man. Do not answer me, I beg you. If I believed you had as much genius and aptitude for great affairs as for the wonders of the brush, I would make you a Counsellor of State on the instant, and a half-hour spent with me and my documents and papers of importance would be sufficient to make you believe ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... knew you had the stuff," The Barbarian was booming. "I knew they had to start breeding men out on the coast sooner or later. Here—give me your other wrist." The blade burned his skin twice each way—once for victory and once for special aptitude—and then Myka pressed a ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... notable incident were devoted to instruction, especially in marching, the only military quality for which Southern troops had no aptitude. Owing to the good traditions left by my predecessor, Walker, and the zeal of officers and men, the brigade ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... with ease a mathematical problem that others could never grasp. So it is here. Perhaps I was in a favourable frame of mind on dying, for the so-called supernatural always interested me on earth, or I had a natural aptitude for these things; for soon after death I was able to affect the senses of the friends I had left." "Are we to understand, then," asked Cortlandt, "that the reason more of our departed do not reappear to us is because they ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... the Catholic part, and, among other things, it began to make the Elector of Brandenburg with his Prussians particularly prominent as the champion of the Protestant cause. For, of all the warring towns, counties, principalities, and the rest, Prussia had in particular shown military aptitude. ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... as for the recreant Storri, no one named him. Bess might have brought Mr. Fopling, for he was asked, could she have trusted that young gentleman on this point of Storri. But Mr. Fopling was prone to bring up the one subject which others were trying to forget; and, realizing his tenacious aptitude for crime of that character, Bess sent him home ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and it would have been foolish to do so. Mr. Shaw also says Germany ought to have turned her whole army against Russia and left the western frontier to the care of the world's public opinion in spite of the military alliance by which France was bound to Russia. We have here an example of his aptitude for practical politics. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... then said:—'Many Mardians live, who have no aptitude for Mardian lives of thought: how then endure more ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... sweet-scented perfumes and silk goods. He gave me a good education; he partly instructed me himself, and also had me instructed by one of our priests. He at first intended me to succeed him in business one day, but as I showed greater aptitude than he had expected, he destined me, on the advice of his friends, to be a doctor; for if a doctor has learned a little more than the ordinary charlatan, he can make his fortune in Constantinople. Many Franks ...
— The Severed Hand - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Wilhelm Hauff
... of it. They saw that the whole island was a maritime paradise, with seaports in its very heart as well as round its shores. But they were a race of gallant, industrious landsmen at home, with neither the wish nor the aptitude for a nautical life abroad. They could not have failed to see that there was plenty of timber in some parts of the island, and that the soil was fit to bear good crops of grain in others. A little prospecting would also have shown them iron, coal, and gypsum. But their ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... to catch the fellow by the middle and give him a back throw which would enlighten him as to my physical aptitude; but I forbore, and allowed him to pump for me, which he did with great willingness, discoursing the while on the infirmities of all his kin. Refreshed by my ablutions, I was nothing loath to follow him to the kitchen, ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... in us a rooted distrust of improvised statesmanship, even if we did not believe politics to be a science, which, if it cannot always command men of special aptitude and great powers, at least demands the long and steady application of the best powers of such men as it can command to master even its first principles. It is curious, that, in a country which boasts of its intelligence, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... easily furnished the Chief-Justice with the requisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime importance, upon which his adequacy must finally be tested; I mean, his relation to the court as its presiding head, his relation to the profession as masters of the reason and debate over which the court ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... deal with the reconciliation of science with Scripture, Genesis with geology, and the like. As soon as they go beyond the literal statements even of the English text, and enter into the details of the subject, they find ample occasion and display a special aptitude for producing and using them, not always with very satisfactory results. It is not, perhaps, for us to suggest that the theological army in the past has been too much encumbered with impedimenta for effective aggression in the conflict against atheistic tendencies in modern science; and that ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Mexican Indian as destitute of all imagination, though when to a certain degree educated, he attributes to him facility in learning, a clearness of understanding, a natural turn for reasoning, and a particular aptitude to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... business. She had come to Lincoln, a country girl, with no introductions except to some cousins of Mrs. Thomas who lived there, and she was already making clothes for the women of "the young married set." She evidently had great natural aptitude for her work. She knew, as she said, "what people looked well in." She never tired of poring over fashion books. Sometimes in the evening I would find her alone in her work-room, draping folds of satin on a wire figure, with a quite blissful expression of countenance. I could n't help thinking that ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... navy—required an exception to be made. But for the maintenance of our maritime supremacy it was, as Burke had preached three-quarters of a century before, better to trust to the spirit of the people, to their attachment to their government, and to their innate aptitude for seamanship, which they seem to have inherited from the hardy rovers of the dark ages, and which no other nation shares with them in an equal degree. And if that may safely be trusted, as undoubtedly it may, to maintain the supremacy ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... a few may be brought together. Two Benedictines named William of Selling and William Hadley, some time warden of Canterbury College, Oxford, were in Italy studying and buying books for three years after 1464.[1] The former became distinguished for his aptitude in learning the ancient tongues, and consequently won the friendship of Angelo Poliziano. At least two other visits to Italy were made by him; the last being undertaken as an emissary of the king. On these occasions he got together as many Greek and Latin books ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... days at the end of July, and cannons think it necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz, fountains to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl up greasy mats-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and rejouissance publique!—My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses, opinions, politics, actions, history, it is ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saved the day. Later, while he was at work in the room which she had set aside for his daily writing, she would answer the letter on the typewriter, having taught herself to write by position and touch, and he would take her reply for posting. Her nurse and companion, an elderly woman with a natural aptitude for silence and discretion, was Banneker's partner in the secret. The third member of the conspiracy was the physician who came once a week from Angelica City because he himself was a musician and this slowly and courageously dying woman was Royce ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... more marked than his love for art was his passion for physical science. His opportunities for the indulgence of this taste were unlimited, and the reinforcement of his natural aptitude by his great means enabled him to carry on experiments upon a scale of the most magnificent proportions. These experiments were made in a large building which was especially built for this object. It contained every facility for his various new designs, and in it he anticipated ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... of the scene at St. Cloud, fortune was preparing for the First Consul another matrimonial trouble. His youngest brother, Jerome, then aged nineteen years, had shown much aptitude for the French navy, and was serving on the American station, when a quarrel with the admiral sent him flying in disgust to the shore. There, at Baltimore, he fell in love with Miss Paterson, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... his love, though she had no grounds for fearing it. But she could not help being grateful to him for his attitude to her, and showing that she appreciated it. He, who had in her opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in which he would have been certain to play a leading part—he had sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the slightest regret. He was more lovingly respectful to her than ever, and the constant care that she should not feel the awkwardness ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... in the year 1672, at a village near Commerci, in Lorraine. He early gave proofs of aptitude for study, and an opportunity was speedily offered of devoting himself to a life of learning. In his sixteenth year he became a Benedictine of the Congregation of St. Vannes, and prosecuted his theological ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... increasing trust in the overruling providence of God. Adhering to none of all the religions in the colonies, he yet devoutly, though without form, adhered to religion. But though famous as a disputant, and having a natural aptitude for metaphysics, he obeyed the tendency of his age, and sought by observation to win an insight into the mysteries of being. The best observers praise his method most. He so sincerely loved truth, that in his pursuit of her she met him half-way. Without ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sub-divisions should be two, or three, or how many? I do not think it will be wise to insist upon any such arithmetical curiosity as a perfect number; nor on such a toy as an equilateral triangle and its properties; nor on the peculiar aptitude for sub-division in every thing, to be discerned in a beginning, a middle, and an end; nor in the consideration that every fact had a cause, is a constancy, and produces a consequence: neither, to draw any inferences from the social maxim that for counsel, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... matter as it ought to yield them.... In fact, all experience tends to show that the state as well as the chemical composition of our food must be considered; in other words, that the digestibility and aptitude for assimilation are not less important ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... from the bailiff. The book is of course a measure of the advances made in farming during the two hundred years elapsed since Cato's time; but those advances were not great. There was advance in power to systematize facts, advance in literary aptitude, but no very noticeable gain in methods of culture. Columella gives the results of wider observation, and of more persistent study; but, for aught I can see, a man could get a crop of lentils as well with Cato as with Columbia; a man would house ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... a substantive pronounced adept, if as an adjective adept; from Lat. adeptus, one who has attained), completely and fully acquainted with one's subject, an expert. The word implies more than acquired proficiency, a natural inborn aptitude. In olden times an adept was one who was versed in magic, an alchemist, one who had attained the great secrets of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was wonderfully black, blacker than Nature had designed it, and the entire absence of hair upon his high, gleaming crown enabled the craniologist to detect, without difficulty, Sir Leopold's abnormal aptitude for finance. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... Old Serbia acknowledged their Serbian nationality were the constant victims of Albanian intolerance. One massacre followed another—that people which, according to some of its present champions, is mild and noble and misunderstood, with a particular aptitude for silver-work and embroidery—Miss Edith Durham asks that this poor nation should not be robbed of its country, its one ewe-lamb, which they love intensely and which, to everyone's admiration, they defend with great heroism; one cannot expect her, the Secretary of the Anglo-Albanian Committee, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... intolerably bad, the machinery is so cumbrous, the parts so ill-distributed, the company so full of "walking gentlemen," the managers have such large families, and are so bent upon putting those families into what is theatrically called "first business"—not because of their aptitude for it, but because they ARE their families, that we find ourselves obliged to organize an opposition. We have seen the Comedy of Errors played so dismally like a tragedy that we really cannot bear it. We are, therefore, making bold ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens |
