"Fitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... party. With a certain rude sense of the fitness of things, he put Douglas and Pasmore together. He assured the former that the same young squaw who had been in attendance on his daughter would continue to wait upon her in the future. His lieutenant, "Young-Man-Who-Jumps-Like-a-Frog," ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... first time in twenty-five years we are living in an apartment, large and in a nice place, but somehow my sense of the fitness of things will not let me call the place "home"—altho' it is the most comfortable habitation I have ever lived in, elevator, whole floor to ourselves. ... and they let me keep my dog. I wouldn't have come if they hadn't. We turned down a fine place ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... obviously we may also refer to the duty of veracity. The word arete; signifies 'force,' and was originally used as a property of bodies, plants, or animals. {184} At first it had no ethical import. In Attic usage it came to signify aptness or fitness of manhood for public life. And this signification has shaped the future meaning of its Latin equivalent—virtus (from vis, strength, and not ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... or shelving ledges the fisherman often sees the nest of the phoebe-bird, which does not cease to please for the hundredth time, because of its fitness and exquisite artistry. On the newly sawn timbers of your porch or woodshed it is far less pleasing, because the bird's art, born of rocky ledges, only serves in the new environment to make its ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... will to many seem the expression of an indolent conservatism, and will at any rate be made an excuse for it. The mind of the patriot rebels when he is told that the worst tyranny and oppression has a natural fitness: he cannot be persuaded, for example, that the conquest of Prussia by Napoleon I. was either natural or necessary, or that any similar calamity befalling a nation should be a matter of indifference to the poet or philosopher. ...
— Sophist • Plato
... best thing that could happen to him; it would bring him to anchor, at any rate, and he had been such mere driftwood until now. But he wanted to feel himself quite a free agent, and this pressing-on of the marriage by Lady Laura was in some manner discordant with his sense of the fitness of things. It looked a little like manoeuvring; yet after all she was quite sincere, perhaps, and did really apprehend her father's death intervening to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... at once that he had found a kindred spirit in Antony, and a kind of friendship between the two, having its basis on horticulture, was the result. Not that he showed him the smallest favouritism, however. That would have been altogether outside his sense of the fitness of things. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... in the use of action, more expressive than words, he threw his arms around the neck of the duke in an affectionate embrace. The best part of the multitude accepted this as the indorsement of his fitness for the trust, by one in whom they could confide. It was on this occasion that the ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... his fitness as commander, for I have never seen him in the field. But I am astonished at his election, as he himself was, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... of the fittest" must be furnished to account for a progressive evolution. Does the phrase "survival of the fittest" say much more than that those who happen to survive are the fittest, or that their survival proves their fitness? But that survival itself is valuable: that it is better to be alive than dead; that existence has a value other than itself; that what comes later in the history of the race or of the universe is an advance over what went ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... within its circumference. It was thus passing through one of the remote eras of its existence. It was then young, just emerging, as it were, from nothingness, growing into form, assuming shape, and gathering attributes of fitness for exterior vitality, preparing the way for higher existences than mere inorganic matter. How long this era existed, science has failed to demonstrate, but it passed away, and solid land marked the next era ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... well: but, I cannot ask Captain Capel to rate him; that must depend upon the boy's fitness, and Capel's kindness. I have placed another year's allowance of thirty pounds in Capel's hands, ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... people cowering in their rags before the door of a union, cold, hungry, and forlorn, or munching their dry bread in some cheerless garret, may not perhaps so fully appreciate its advantages; but then we all know that poor people never are contented, and seldom understand the fitness of things. Here in Paris, the numbed soldiers out in the open fields, and the women and children, who have no fires and hardly any food, bitterly complain of the "seasonable" weather. With plenty of money, with warm clothes, and a good house, a hard frost has its charms, without them ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... them might assist you in finding an answer to a very difficult question. Still, like Moodie, I have great faith in race, and in the fitness of climates to races. There is something enervating to a northern race in these subtropical climates. While the powers of enjoyment remain unimpaired, or are even stimulated, the energy of action is rapidly sapped. We know that the Gothic conquerors ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... important element in his fitness for the struggle of life lies in the fact that he is unafraid of man. He is wary of man; by which I mean he will quickly fly up from in front of man's feet. It is exceedingly difficult to catch a sparrow ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... visiting women depends upon chance, they are as likely to be indiscreet, and to interfere unwisely as otherwise. If they were selected as men are, or ought to be, for their fitness, their work would be done with good judgment and discretion. Then, again, criminal men separated from their families and from all gentle influences, need the ministry of good women for their reformation. The motherly influence of pure, gentle women will sometimes control and subdue the violent, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... 1900 there was a great movement of non-cooperation under the leadership of Aurobindo Ghose against the British Government in Bengal. Ghose wanted independence and freedom from foreign tribute. He called upon the people to demonstrate their fitness for self-government by establishing hygienic conditions, founding schools, building roads and developing agriculture. But Ghose had the experience Gandhi was to have later. The people became impatient and fell back on violence; and the British ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... Philippines.[4] Hindostan would furnish another highly suggestive example of the educational effects of "tutelage" on a race. After a century and a half of that British "tutelage," what progress has India made towards fitness for self-government? Is ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... useless to complain or rebel, since, according to all political axioms, the majority will rule, and ought to rule. And the more the East saw of the leading men of the West, the more it respected their force of mind, their broad and comprehensive views, and their fitness for high place under ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... feelings of her victim, and with the air of Velpeau redivivus, drives through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and injured tissues, a many-bladed lancet of marvellous fineness, of wonderful complexity and fitness. While engorging herself with our blood, we will examine under the microscope the mosquito's mouth. The head (Fig. 61) is rounded, with the two eyes occupying a large part of the surface, and nearly meeting on the top of the head. Out of the forehead, ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... committing themselves to a promise of marriage, would at least consult their mothers, and ask them to make private and confidential inquiries as to the disposition, as well as to the moral and physical fitness of the young man or lady whom they contemplate marrying. Mothers are naturally concerned about the welfare and happiness of their offspring, and could be trusted in most cases to make careful, impartial and conscientious inquiries as to whether the girl or man was really ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination; but I could not persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot: but when I came to the place, first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts; secondly, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... porous to allow the heat to pass through without injurious effect. When the clayey dough is ready to be used a sufficient quantity is rolled into a ball. The dough, if worked by a careful artist, is first tested as to its fitness for molding by putting a piece of the paste to the tongue, the sensitiveness of which is such as to detect any gritty substance or particles, when the fingers fail to do so. The ball is hollowed out with the ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... had been made by a British bullet discharged after a discussion of the family port. She had found something depressing in the rococo civilization of Southern California. There was an insufficient appreciation of Mr. Square's Eternal Fitness of Things. The spirit of Los Angeles, for example, was the same as that of the picnic party which, lunching on Ruskin's glacier, leaves its chicken bones and eggshells to offend all subsequent picnickers. At Woodbridge people ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... the criterion of the perfectness of any language is not to be found in a comparison of its forms or methods with those of any other, but in its fitness as a vehicle for the expression of deeper life, of the best and the greatest that is in those who use it, and above all in its ability to react and stimulate newer and yet greater mental and spiritual activity and expression. The force ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... Scotchman, is apparently attached to the London Mission, and seems to have quitted Peking for Mongolia on an impulse to teach Christ to Tartars. He could not ride, he did not know Mongolian, he had an objection to carry arms, and he had no special fitness except his own character, which he knew nothing about, for the work. Nevertheless, he went, and stayed years, living on half-frozen prairies and deserts under open tents, on fat mutton, sheep's tails particularly, tea, and boiled millet, eating only once a day because Mongols do, and in all things, ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... undertaking. Indeed, considering the peculiar genius of our busy population for the Practical Arts, and marking their avidity in the study of scientific facts and principles tending to explain or advance them, we see a special and most striking fitness in the establishment of such an Institution among them, and we gather a confident assurance of its preeminent utility and success. Nor can we advert to the intelligence which is so well known as guiding the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... of the session was that the people of the state were fortunate in faring no worse. The many had little fitness; a few had large responsibility. Doubtful and useless measures predominate, but they are mostly quietly smothered. The country members are watchful and discriminating and a few leaders exercise great power. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Friendship have so much advantage to arrive to, and be maintain'd in its Perfection, as where two Persons have inseparably one and the same Interest; and see themselves united, as it were, in their common Off-spring? All People, it is certain, have not a like fitness for, or relish of this pleasure of Friendship, which therefore, however preferable to others in the real advantages of it, cannot be equally valuable to all. But where there is mutually that predominant Disposition to vertuous Love, which is ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... you can guess pretty well what I have come to say, Bertrand," Everton said, after the door had closed behind the outgoing shorthand man. "I have been putting it off in the hope that your own sense of the fitness of things would come to the rescue. I may be old-fashioned and out of touch with the times and the manners of the new generation, but I can't forget that I am a father, or that common decency still has ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... manner of contented hard-working men whose lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in rank which made his master's downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged, in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the family sorrow; and these words, which he had used ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... riding-breeches, to hold the capital of Matabeleland. Young men of the most eligible sort are everywhere. Some of them are manifestly youthful, others are well on in the thirties, there is even a sprinkling of men of years; but the mass of the population presents the same aspect of physical fitness, that indefinable something besides, which is perhaps not to be expressed save under the single head of 'race.'" In fact, our authority asserts that nowhere can be found a healthier, shrewder, or friendlier set of men. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... With perfect fitness then does William the Norman, William the Norman Conqueror of England, take his place in a series of English statesmen. That so it should be is characteristic of English history. Our history has been largely ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... day will then inspect the guard with especial reference for its fitness for the duty for which it is detailed and will select, as prescribed in paragraphs 140 and 141, the necessary orderlies and color sentinels. The men found unfit for guard will be returned to quarters and will be replaced by others found to be suitable, if available in the company. ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... to mention the word goodness. The favourite phrase of the former, was the natural beauty of virtue; that of the latter, was the divine power of grace. The former measured all actions by the unalterable rule of right, and the eternal fitness of things; the latter decided all matters by authority; but in doing this, he always used the scriptures and their commentators, as the lawyer doth his Coke upon Lyttleton, where the comment is of equal authority with ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... blow the ash off the fish. A paper of tea and a loaf of bread I found in a higgledy-piggledy mixture of clothes, books and papers. My godlike friend had carelessly put his hair-brush into the butter. The condition of the sole cooking utensil warred even against my sense of the fitness of gridirons, and I cleansed it ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... stimulated to this display by a desire to show his sable friend from Georgia all the decencies of a New York funeral; and the ebullition of his zeal went off very well, producing no other result than a mild lecture from Miss Peyton at his return, on the fitness of things. The attendance of the black was thought well enough in itself; but the napkin was deemed a superfluous exhibition of ceremony, at the funeral of a man who had performed all the menial offices in his ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers. In the latter case they are useful: jugs and pitchers are lifted by them. And what is useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of beauty. But human ears are put to no use, except sometimes when naughty little boys are lifted by them in the way of discipline; and I can see no beauty in them. It is only because they are so common that we do not notice how ridiculous they are. In the days of Charles ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... his was at Viola's mercy. It would last just so long as she could keep him from knowing that he had outraged the beauty, the fitness and the simplicity she loved. I thought how he had once boasted that he knew what she wanted, that he knew what she was thinking and feeling all the time. How could he have imagined that she wanted this? What was his knowledge worth if he didn't know what she would ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Mr. Kramer lose with his stripping. He was ready in almost record time, presenting, bared, a man of about Mr. Spurlock's proportions, weight and general muscular fitness. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... and when that occurred he was very far from assurance. I think that at no time did he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental qualification for the work he had taken in hand; but he doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation of the world; he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect to valuable account; he doubted his physical capacity,—dreading his own lack of industry; he doubted his luck; he doubted the continual absence of some of those misfortunes on which the works of ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... things to be considered and carefully weighed and determined before entering upon a work of such grave responsibilities as the Itinerant ministry. First of all, the question must be settled in a man's conviction of duty; then the question of one's fitness for the work; and, finally, the financial question could not be ignored. To enter the Itinerancy involved responsibilities that could only be sustained under the deepest convictions that can possibly penetrate a human soul. The minister is God's ambassador to lost ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... simpler and more poetic age than this. It was like meeting some plain, natural nobleman after contact with one of the bedizened, artificial sort. The Tower of London, for instance, is as pleasing to the eye, has the same fitness and harmony, as a hut in the woods; and I should think an artist might have the same pleasure in copying it into his picture as he would in copying a pioneer's log cabin. So with Windsor Castle, which has the beauty of a ledge of rocks, and crowns the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... several times hinted to the Duke of York that she considered it high time that Constance should take up her residence at Cardiff, for she was a firm believer in "the eternal fitness of things," and while too much love was in her eyes deeply reprehensible, a proper quantity of matrimony, at a suitable age, was a highly respectable thing, and a state into which every man and woman ought to enter, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... him, more in need of compassion, of care, of protection, than a child? Does it not seem as if his sweet face and touching aspect were intended to interest every one who comes near him, and to urge them to assist his weakness? What then is more outrageous, more contrary to the fitness of things, than to see an imperious and headstrong child ordering about those around him, impudently taking the tone of a master toward those who, to destroy him, need only leave him ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... God, receives into himself the merit and power of the death, and the indwelling power of the life, of Jesus Christ, is personal faith in Jesus Christ. To trust Him is to come to Him, and it is represented in Scripture as conferring an instantaneous fitness for access to God. People pray sometimes that they may be made 'meet for the inheritance of the saints in light,' and the prayer is, in a sense, wise and true. But they too often forget that the Apostle says, in the original connection of the words which they so quote: 'He hath ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... affected by any cause of disease than those which are sound. Thus, in one instance, checked perspiration may produce a bowel complaint, and in another, inflammation of the lungs, and so on. Hence the fitness, in prescribing remedies, of adapting them not only to the disease itself, but of taking into the account the cause of the disease. A bowel complaint, for example, may arise either from overeating or from ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... roused from his slumbers at nine o'clock to assist in working the Isabel farther into the swamp, and in the course of the day she was safely moored in her permanent position. The quick eye of Dan had detected the admirable fitness of this place both for concealment and defence. It was not more than three miles from ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may almost say, idiom. "Love" then becomes "the anticipation of benefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or "fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the least need of maintaining the perfect fitness and rhetorical felicity of every phrase and every word used by him in his interview with Lord Clarendon. It is not to be expected that a minister, when about to hold a conversation with a representative of the government to which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... him from habit, from a sense of decorum, and for the fitness of things; but that was not love. He shrugged his shoulders scornfully, looking for some word to express the mildly pleasant, unagitating emotion. James, who had been devoured by it, who had struggled with it as with a deadly sin, who had killed it finally ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... Lewis had very much modified his ideas of London, he was walking with his father in the park at the hour which the general English fitness of things assigns to the initiated. A very little breaking in and a great deal of tailoring had gone a long way with Lewis. Men looked at father and son as though they thought they ought to recognize them even if they didn't. Women turned ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... true, that his thought was not always clothed in the best language, and often appeared in the slouching, slangy undress of the place and period, yet it never was rustic nor homespun, and sometimes struck me with its precision and fitness. Considerably softened toward him, I tried him with other literature. But vainly. Beyond a few of the lyrical and emotional poets, he knew nothing. Under the influence and enthusiasm of his own speech, he himself had softened considerably; offered to change horses with ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... a ball dress a lady of distinction never leans back in a chair; one can not picture a beautiful and high-bred woman, wearing a tiara and other ballroom jewels, leaning against anything. This is, however, not so much a rule of etiquette as a question of beauty and fitness. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... may take it as fairly certain that the same principle held good from the earliest times.[353] After being summoned (so the story ran) from the Sabine city of Cures by the Senate, he consulted the gods about his own fitness. He was then conducted by the augur to the arx on the Capitol, and sat down on a stone facing the south. The augur took his seat on his left hand (the lucky side) with veiled head, holding the lituus[354] of his office in his right hand, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... "comfortable" as English nurses (and house-keepers) are wont to look, the countess merely bestowed upon her a passing glance and then took no further notice of her presence. It never occurred to Madame de Gramont to inquire into the fitness of this person for her position and duties. Besides, the countess seldom addressed a "hireling," except to utter a command or a rebuke. Maurice was greatly relieved when he perceived his grandmother's perfect indifference to the individual whom he had ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... tackling and sails required renewing, and that the necessary repairs would take longer than her owner had stated. The captain, as has been said, was a man of action; having satisfied himself as to the fitness of the vessel, on returning on shore he concluded the purchase, with such deductions as were considered just by her owner, Master Holdfast, who, knowing him to be a man of substance as well as a man of honour, was content to abide his time ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... desirable to ascertain the fitness of the river La Plata and its tributaries for navigation by steam, the United States steamer Water Witch was sent thither for that purpose in 1853. This enterprise was successfully carried on until February, 1855, when, whilst in the peaceful prosecution of her ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not let them off from coming to the breakfast party, and with the well-bred sense of fitness they obeyed his bidding. Captain Stubbard (whose jokes had missed fire too often to be satisfied with a small touch-hole now) was broadly facetious at their expense; and Johnny, returning thanks for them, surprised the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Dalveigh well. She had been the Camerons' guest many times that summer, finding in the luxury and beauty of their surroundings something that entered with a strange aptness into her own nature. It was as if it were hers by right of fitness. And this was the life that might be hers, did ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... surrounded by hostile Indians, with no servants but Siberian convicts, hold his own single-handed in American wilds? Simply by the power of his fitness, by vigilance that never relaxed, by despotism that was by turns savage and gentle, but always paternal, by the fact that his brain and his brawn were always more than a match for the brain and brawn of all the men under him. To be sure, the liberal measure of seventy-nine lashes ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... is again taken up in a coffeehouse in Vienna where Bollman is accustomed to go. Lafayette has suggested an assistant, and Bollman realizes that he can do nothing without one. Therefore he is looking about to find one who shall have spirit and fitness for the work. We see him now at the supper table, eagerly conversing with a certain young American, like himself a medical student on his travels. Curiously enough, it is Francis Kinloch Huger, now twenty-one years old. They talk of America. Bollman, ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... Wilfer. 'I make false statements, it appears? So be it. If my daughter flies in my face, surely my husband may. The one thing is not more unnatural than the other. There seems a fitness in the arrangement. By all means!' Assuming, with a shiver of resignation, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Adeline knew Eliot. For Eliot talked to her about his work as he walked with her at a fine swinging pace over the open country, taking all his exercise now while he could get it. That was another thing he liked about Anne Severn, her splendid physical fitness; she could go stride for stride with him, and mile for mile, and never tire. Her mind, too, was robust and active, and full of curiosity; it listened by the hour and never tired. It could move, undismayed, among horrors. She could see, as he saw, the "beauty" of the ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... West, and found eager readers throughout the country. The voice and manner, which add so much to the effect of a speaker, could not be reproduced on the printed page; nor could full justice be done, in a hasty transcript, to the force and fitness of the language employed. Still, the impressions of those who heard them at the time, as well as later and cooler analyses of them, have agreed in pronouncing these debates among the most able and interesting ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... eternal Fitness and Unfitness of Things determine Justice, Equity, Goodness and Truth, and lay corresponding obligations upon reasonable creatures. The sanction of Rewards and Punishments secondary and ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... the best judge of your fitness,—but you must judge for yourself also. I am certain of your father's and mother's acquiescence, so I do not mention them. But do not hurry; take time, consult your own heart; consider the whole matter. I will not press for your decision. I will wait days, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... varied allurements were placed eagerly at her disposal. Respectful persons, obedient to her most faintly-expressed desire, displayed garments as wonderful as those the New York trunks had revealed. She was besought to consider the fitness of articles whose exquisiteness she was almost afraid to look at. Her thin little body was wonderfully fitted, managed, encouraged to make the most ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and poems that set forth the eternal fitness of the cling-twine-and-depend school, the vine is always feminine, the oak (or cedar?) masculine. Not one that I know of depicts the gradual strangling of the independent tree by the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Delta, the richest region on the face of the whole earth, the Big House ruled over these wide acres as of immemorial right. Its owner, Colonel Calvin Blount, was a king, an American king, his right to rule based upon full proof of fitness. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... took the lead, neither Helen nor Mrs. Markham disputing her fitness for the place, too apparent to all to be denied; it was she who never flinched, who, if she spoke at all, spoke words of cheer, whose strength and courage seemed ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... afternoon between three and four he would turn up at the Boyne Club, as well groomed, as spruce as ever, generally with a flower in his buttonhole. He never forgot that he was a gentleman, and he had a gentleman's notions of the fitness of things, and it was against his principles to use, a gentleman's club for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Federalism that this psychological condition should exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of each of the component parts would have to ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the hearing, yearns the sight. But tho' not far, yet strangely hid—the way, And our sense slow; nor long for us delay The guides their flight! The breath goes by; the word, the light, elude; And we stay wondering. But there comes an hour Of fitness perfect and unfettered mood, When splits her husk the finer sense with power, And—yon ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the song sparrow. I find it only in the Catskills, or on their borders, often in a mossy bank by the roadside, in the woods, or on their threshold. With what delicate and consummate art it is insinuated into the wild scene, like some shy thing that grew there, visible, yet hidden by its perfect fitness and harmony with its surroundings. The mother bird darts out but a few yards from you as you drive or walk along, but your eye is baffled for some moments before you have her secret. Such a keen, feather-edged, not to say spiteful little body, with ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... not see or understand the intolerable disgust and irritation which her ridiculous conduct excited. In a weak mind egotism and selfishness, beyond a certain point, pass into practical insanity. All sense of delicacy, of the fitness of things, is lost; even the power to consider the rights and feelings of others is wanting. Unlike poor Holcroft, Mrs. Mumpson had few misgivings in regard to coming years. As she rocked unceasingly before the parlor ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... smallest, but He at the same time foresaw and foredoomed everything. All that was to happen in this universe did God foresee and foredoom, and lo! it cometh to pass. He appointed me for them and for their sins, that for them I might make prayer and exhortation. Not for my fitness or my strength was I chosen, but only through the grace of His mercy and His long-suffering. For I assure thee, Joshua, not on account of the excellence of this people wilt thou destroy the heathens; all the fastnesses of heaven and the foundations ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order, out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American labor. There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an American living and enough money to insure a decent start under American conditions. This would stop the influx of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the death of Attila, under all its manifold variations, is never without a certain natural fitness for consistent ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... elected themselves or their creatures the lawgivers of the commonwealth about to be created. So outrageous were the crimes of these miscreants at this and subsequent periods, that even the very creatures of Pierce and Buchanan, chosen especially for their supposed fitness to assist in these villanies, turned away, one after another, sickened at the sight of them, and forfeited forever the favor of their masters by shrinking from an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... eyes. He pulled his tawny beard lazily with one hand, and with the other caressed a great tumbler of iced beer. He was beautifully happy in his perfect idleness, and a sense was upon him of the eternal fitness of things in general. In the absolute serenity of his beatitude he fell asleep, with one hand still lazily clutching his beard, and the other still lingering lovingly near the great tumbler. This was surely not surprising, and on the face of things it would ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... two! She told herself that it was absurd to do so; none the less she did it. For instance, she reminded herself that she had mentally assented promptly to the suggestion of inviting the doctor to this room to talk this strange scheme over; she had recognized the fitness of the act. But suppose Professor Ellis should call, would it not be simply absurd to think of explaining to him the uses of this unique room? Who would for a moment think of suggesting his name ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... that promotion in the U.S. services will be based solely on fitness, without regard to seniority. These are the sort of revolutionists who would cover up grave defects in army organisation by the meretricious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... chosen and presumably qualified men, who may themselves intrust such of their functions as need peculiar knowledge or skill to a smaller governing body or bodies selected in respect of their more eminent fitness. By this method the defects of democracy are remedied while its strength is retained." The members of American legislatures, being disjoined from the administrative offices, "are not chosen for their ability or experience; they are not much respected or trusted, and finding ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... boots and saddle, singing the "Prize Song," while my aunt went about her work in the kitchen. She had hovered over him until she had prevailed upon him to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, in so far as I could gather, lay in his boyish face and his possession of this divine melody. Shortly afterward, he had gone to town on the Fourth of July, been drunk for several days, lost his money at a faro table, ridden a saddled Texas steer on a bet, and disappeared with ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... me the true cause of that great and necessary, work; but whatever the cause was, the effect was good; and the Reformation spread itself by its own truth and fitness; was conscientiously received by great numbers in Germany, and other countries; and was soon afterward mixed up with the politics of princes; and, as it always happens in religious disputes, became the specious covering of injustice ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and moreover writes for their ordinary moods. He aims at giving us the refined and doubly distilled essence of the conversation of the statesmen and courtiers of his time. The standard of good writing always implicitly present to his mind is the fitness of his poetry to pass muster when shown by Gay to his duchess, or read after dinner to a party composed of Swift, Bolingbroke, and Congreve. That imaginary audience is always looking over his shoulder, applauding a good ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Stultz and a Hoby. There are who pretend, and that with some plausibilty, that these things are but typical; that taste in dress is but the outward and visible sign of the frequentation of good company; and that propriety of exterior is but evidence of a general sense of the fitness of things. Yet if this were really the case, if there were nothing intrinsic in the relation of the clothes to the wearer, how could a good coat at once render a pickpocket respectable; or a clean shirt pass ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... hand thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, his left hand in his breeches pocket, and his head very much on one side; looking, on the whole, like an actor who has only a mono-syllabic part entrusted to him, but feels sure that the audience discern his fitness for the leading business; curiously in contrast with old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands behind him and leaned forward, coughing asthmatically, with an inward scorn of all knowingness that could not be turned into cash. The talk was in rather ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... and the baldness which had shone against the light was not exactly what you would have called a gentleman's baldness. Clearly, however, the only thing to do was to treat the event as one of entire fitness till it proved itself otherwise, and Louise returned to the parlor with an air of lady-*like inquiry, expressed in her look and movement; if this effect was not wholly unmixed with patronage, it ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... extravagant farragoes and heterogeneous compositions which fill their pages, are combinations no rational being would ever think of either dressing or eating; and without ascertaining the practicability of preparing the receipts, and their fitness for food when done, they should never have ventured to recommend them to others: the reader of them will often put the same quaere, as Jeremy, in Congreve's comedy of "Love for Love," when Valentine observes, "There's a page doubled down in Epictetus ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... measure was borne entirely by Beckwith. And, moreover, to secure permanently the above results, a rule was adopted by the synod in 1839, that henceforth every teacher in the Vaudois parish schools must produce a certificate of didactic power, as well as moral fitness for the office. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... condition lasted they used to dash across the ring at full run; but, after a while, when the punishment got severe and their "fitness" began to fail, it became a very exciting question whether or not a dog would "come to scratch". The brindled dog's condition was not so good as the other's. He used to lie on his stomach between the rounds to rest himself, and several ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... government pledged to do equal and exact justice to all men there should be no pretext for anxiety touching the protection of the freedmen in their rights or their security in the enjoyment of their privileges under the Constitution and its amendments. All discussion as to their fitness for the place accorded to them as American citizens is idle and unprofitable except as it suggests the necessity for their improvement. The fact that they are citizens entitles them to all the rights due to that relation ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Vardanes was immediately followed by the restoration of Gotarzes to the throne. There may have been some who doubted his fitness for the regal office, and inclined to keep the throne vacant till they could send to Rome and obtain from thence one of the younger and more civilized Parthian princes. But we may be sure that the general desire ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... the sex-poet, was the leading spirit in the organization. He had a special fitness for the task: he had actually resided in India. In fact, he had spent six weeks there on a stop-over ticket of a round-the-world 635 dollar steamship pilgrimage; and he knew the whole country from Jehumbapore in Bhootal to Jehumbalabad in the Carnatic. So he was looked ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... meteors hovering there, And the wide regions of the land, proclaim The Power Divine, that raised the mighty frame. What things soe'er are to an end referred, And in their motions still that end regard, Always the fitness of the means respect, These as conducive choose, and those reject, Must by a judgment foreign and unknown Be guided to their end, or by their own; For to design an end, and to pursue That end by means, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... city. Briefly, there should be provision made to give all competitors an equal chance. Boys of the 6th grade should meet others of that grade. Prizes may be awarded for the best houses made for the more common birds, such as wrens, bluebirds, and martins. These should be judged as to adaptability or fitness to purpose, amount of protection afforded to birds, good workmanship and artistic merit. A prize might be awarded to the boy whose house has the first pair of birds nesting in it. Prizes may be of many kinds, ...
— Bird Houses Boys Can Build • Albert F. Siepert
... discovery of the Kongone harbor, and the ascertaining of the condition of the Zambesi River, and its fitness for navigation. ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... farther back we trace the idea of special sacredness in color, the more exclusively do we see this confined to yellow. This was long saved from vulgar uses and associations. It had a significance to the ancients, such as it does not have to us. There was a fitness in their decorating the temples and the statues of the gods with gold, and silver, and ivory, and amber, and gems. These offerings symbolized light, and light stood for the happier destinies of man,—for the milder and gentler influences which ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... unprotestingly into the current which clawed and gnawed at his feet. He had been tried too long; the test, from the first, had been too crucial. He might, in time, even find some solacing thought in the fitness between the act and its environment—here he could fling himself into an obliterating Niagara, not of falling waters, but of falling men and women. Yes, it was a stage all prepared and set for the mean and sordid and ever recurring ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Ducke Lane, and there bought Montaigne's Essays, in English, and so away home to dinner, and after dinner with W. Pen to White Hall, where we and my Lord Brouncker attended the Council, to discourse about the fitness of entering of men presently for the manning of the fleete, before one ship is in condition to receive them. W. Coventry did argue against it: I was wholly silent, because I saw the King, upon the earnestness of the Prince, was willing to it, crying very sillily, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... metaphorical terms—'the survival of the fittest.' In the working together of those many actions, internal and external, which determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' are applicable in the physical sense." And he continues: "Evidently, the word 'fittest' as thus used is a figure of speech." Had the sun fallen from the heavens the shock to the followers of Darwin could not have been ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... taken girls for wives who are everything they don't want their wives to be. There is no fitness of disposition and character, no unity of ideals, no passionate surrender of the Self in devotion, no fixed purpose of duty, no harmony in tastes or outlook. Such love must come to disaster; it is like a damp squib, it is never properly alight and fades out swiftly ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... of his private life, and they had been neither better nor worse than the average. But he had breeding and a sure sense of the fitness of things, and this present week-end visit, with the ostentatious care the younger crowd took to allow him time to see Natalie alone, was galling to him. It put him in a false position; what hurt more, perhaps, in an unfavorable light. The war had changed standards, too. Men were ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mean? It would mean nothing. Doctor; it would be meaningless. No, sir; this isn't the end. Mary and I"—his voice trembled an instant and then was firm again—"are designed for a long life. I argue from the simple fitness of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... years, seem to be more numerous. The explanation is found in the peculiar times in which so many of the business men are ruined, and the discharge of a class of employees whose uncertain habits and want of special fitness for their work make them less valuable. Both of these classes drift to the inebriate asylum, and, if not able to pay, finally go to insane ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... and does not prove his fitness for freedom he will be kept two or three years, and he may possibly have to serve the whole eight years. "How long are you in for?" I asked a convict at Jeffersonville, who was caring for the flowers in front of the walls. "Me? Oh, I'm in for ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... it is an instructive note on the life and culture of the times and whether or not this exudation from the diseased and polluted will and imagination of the authors marks a real advance in artistic expression, irrespective of its contents or their fitness for dramatic representation. This is asking much of the harassed commentator on the things which the multitude of his readers receive as contributions to their diversion merely and permit to be crowded ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to nearly its narrowest limits, is also distinguished by a break for a few miles of the Great chain of Mountains, which otherwise extends, with but few exceptions, to its extreme northern and southern limits. This combination of circumstances points out the peculiar fitness of the Isthmus of Panama for the ...
— A Succinct View of the Importance and Practicability of Forming a Ship Canal across the Isthmus of Panama • H. R. Hill
... to circumstances—in such immense waste of primary and youthful life those only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue their kind ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... that they reigned, not by right of birth, but in virtue of their supposed divinity as representatives or embodiments of a god, and that as such they mated with a goddess, and had to prove their fitness from time to time to discharge their divine functions by engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may often have proved fatal to them, leaving the crown to their victorious adversary. Our knowledge of the Roman kingship is far too scanty to allow us to affirm any one of these propositions ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... railings of Belgrave Square, cursed with consciousness of itself, fears of the judgment of the other railings, and doubts of their fitness to stand in the same row with it. You are cold, mistrustful, cruel to nervous or clumsy people, and more afraid of the criticisms of those with whom you dance and dine than of your conscience. All of which prevents you from looking like ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... reconciled to such a caricature. Now that I can choose for myself, I shall attend less to fashion than to fitness in my dress. But I have seen mankind—let me see nature and heaven. Mesmer, may I ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the plan, to continue the expedition and strengthen it as fast as possible. To the American soldier at this distance it looks as though the French and British, perhaps in all good faith, planned to muddle along till the American authorities could be shown the fitness or the necessity of supporting the expedition with proper forces. But this was playing with a handful of Americans and other Allied troops a great game of hazard. Only those who went through it can appreciate the peril ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... off to work in the shop as proud as if she was going to a party," she said, and she fairly trembled with anger when she saw the girl set out with her son in the morning. She would have considered it much more according to the eternal fitness of things had her son Andrew been attending a queen whom he would have dropped at her palace on the way. She writhed inwardly whenever little Ellen spoke of her aunt Eva, and would have forbidden her to ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... political power. Except the Catholic Church, there was no single religious institution which was founded upon liberty and equality. Everything was ordered to this end. The father-superior, the abbot, the bishop, the general of an order, and the pope were then chosen conscientiously for their fitness for the requirements of the Church. They were the expression of its intelligence, of the thinking power of the Church, and blind obedience was therefore their due. I will say nothing of the ways in which society has ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... Under the power of the imagination, all his faculties waken to a higher life; his fancies are more vivid and clear; all the suggestions that come to him are more apt and congruous; and his faculties of selection, his perceptions of fitness, beauty, and appropriateness of relation are more keen and watchful. No lapse in what he writes at such times indicates aught like dreaming or madness, or any condition of mind incompatible with soundness and health,—with that perfect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... very often to be a sort of moral fitness between the beginning and the end of certain alliances or acquaintances. This sentiment is not very clearly expressed. I am about to illustrate it by an important event in my political life. During ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this visible world we find them to have been as rational, and shrewd to detect an historic anomaly, as ourselves. But when once the invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion—of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable absurd—could they have to guide them in the rejection or admission of any particular testimony?—That maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... as much to be dreaded as that of hate. When it is durable it is serene and equable. Even its famous pains begin only with the ebb of love, for few are indeed lovers, though all would fain be. It is one proof of a man's fitness for Friendship that he is able to do without that which is cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no other law nor kindness. It is not extravagant and insane, but what it says is something ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... on the existence of a special developmental force termed "bathmism" or growth-force, which acts by means of retardation and acceleration "without any reference to fitness at all;" that "instead of being controlled by fitness it is the controller of fitness." He argues that "all the characteristics of generalised groups from genera up (excepting, perhaps, families) have been evolved under the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... peaceful nation, if its women fall victims to the luxury which rapidly increasing wealth brings, will decay." "Man power must give itself unreservedly at the front. Woman power must show not only eagerness but fitness to substitute ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... expression of what Man values most—control, freedom, understanding, and love. The advance of animal life through the ages has been chequered, but on the whole it has been an advance towards increasing fullness, freedom, and fitness of life. In the study of this advance—the central fact of Organic Evolution—there is assuredly much for Man's instruction ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... fitness for work; that is, your education, experiences, aptness, power of concentration, ...
— A Jolly by Josh • "Josh"
... depriving the places they represented of their right of choosing representatives, but they were to constitute a Committee of Revision, and in this capacity to determine the validity of each election and the fitness ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... those of the other arms, and expecting, says a Federal officer, that the regiment would be accompanied by an itinerant livery stable! Both horses and men were recruited without the slightest reference to their fitness for cavalry work. No man was rejected, no matter what his size or weight, no matter whether he had ever had anything to do with horseflesh or not, and consequently the proportion of sick horses was enormous. Moreover, while the Southern troopers generally carried a firearm, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Forge hotel. Not looking for any shortcomings, Lans did not observe them. He found Crothers an agreeable man with a desire to uplift The Hollow by practical, legitimate methods, not fool-flights of fancy. Then, too, Crothers had a fine sense of the fitness of things. He deplored the fact that a man of Sandy Morley's antecedents should, by the vulgar power of money, gain control ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... 1837, and who had also made a careful reconnoissance in 1835 for a line from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and had very strongly urged its construction on the American plan. The more De Gerstner examined our roads, the more impressed he was with the fitness of what he termed the American system of building and operating railroads to the needs of the empire of Russia. In one of his letters in explaining the causes of the cheap construction of American ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various |
