"Inadequacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dissertation upon "the inadequacy of the Christian movement"; and shows himself worthy to be a collaborator of M. Brunetiere by excommunicating Schleiermacher, "the typical representative," says the Rev. J.F. Smith, of modern effort to reconcile science, theology and the ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... the completion of every piece of work well and wisely done does not arise from the futility of the work, as the pessimists tell us, but from its inadequacy to express entirely the thought and force of the man who has striven to express himself completely in a material which, however masterfully used, can never give its ultimate form to a spiritual conception. It is not an evidence of failure, but a prophecy of greater achievement. A world in which ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... some faults about them. There must be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose to which they were designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault, that inadequacy, is, but we may perhaps profit by ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the sullen masses. The houses seemed little citadels against the sky. I had not taken fifty steps before my face stiffened into a sort of mask, so that it hurt me to move the facial muscles. I came home on an undignified run, experiencing a lively sense of the inadequacy of two hands to protect two ears and a nose. Did the Creator intend man to ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... question to reduce the Harwich or Dover flotillas materially, as we were already running the gravest risks from the inadequacy of these forces to deal with enemy destroyers and submarines operating in southern waters from Zeebrugge or from German ports, and in addition the Harwich Force furnished the sole protection for the weekly convoy running between the Thames and Dutch ports, besides being much required ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... Corporation, its officials did not undertake to control or direct the civic affairs of the town. Thus, the development of the Gary system of education was a natural, rather than an artificial one. There was every opportunity for an altogether new departure, in view of the inadequacy of school facilities for the fast growing population. The new system was introduced into the Gary schools by William Wirt, who had already made some experiments in this direction before 1907 (when he was called to Gary) at Bluffton, Ind., where he had been in charge of the public schools. ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... was relied on as an eye-witness to corroborate this proof. The admission of his testimony was hotly contested because of his tender years, despite the wide inclusiveness of the statute, and its inadequacy would possibly have resulted in a reversal of the case had an appeal been taken. But Phineas Copenny made no motion for a new trial and desired no appeal. He had feared, throughout, the possible capture and conclusive ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... some promise, but produced with an extraordinary inadequacy in the matter of what the programme called "the decors," has been very quickly withdrawn from the Little Theatre. But its curtain-raiser, Dusk, is to be retained for the revival ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... away and Louise did not make her appearance, either on the veranda or in the little sitting-room off the hall, Mainwaring became more uneasy as to the incompleteness of their interview. Perhaps a faint suspicion of the inadequacy of her response began to trouble him; but he still fatuously regarded it rather as owing to his own hurried and unfinished declaration. It was true that he hadn't said half what he intended to say; it was true that ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... that if ever there was a time when conditions might have been expected to have halfway adjusted themselves to the pressure which by day brought out all too clearly the hopeless inadequacy of the facilities provided by the city to perform one of its most important and inevitable functions, it was at that early morning hour of our visit. Presumably preparation had been completed for the busy day about to open by setting all into ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... by a double door. As the servant opened the first of these, Sir Robert's bell again sounded with a longer and louder peal; the inner door resisted his efforts to open it; but after a few violent struggles, not having been perfectly secured, or owing to the inadequacy of the bolt itself, it gave way, and the servant rushed into the apartment, advancing several paces before he could recover himself. As he entered, he heard Sir Robert's voice exclaiming loudly—'Wait without, do not come in yet;' but the prohibition came too late. Near a low ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... your pardon!" said I at last and then, struck by the inadequacy of these trite words, drew a pace nearer. "Oh, pray—pray don't weep!" I pleaded. "If I have hurt you, I crave your forgiveness!" Here she sobbed but the fiercer. "But indeed—indeed," I stammered, "I thought—that is, I did not ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... curiosity; but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve; and a very inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the galaxy. Their corporeal weakness, the poverty of their minds, the incredible isolation of each form, physically and mentally, from others of its kind, and, most strikingly, their mortality, point to the inadequacy of such beings in a contest of any dimension. This is no problem for the Colonial Board. It is a domestic concern. The life-forms of Earth are already developing a healthy autonomy. Their power ...
— The Demi-Urge • Thomas Michael Disch
... and spirit, they were cutting their moorings from the religion of their fathers. They remained loyal to the law, they were constant in the worship; but they had poured new wine into the bottles, and in time it proved the inadequacy of the old forms and revolutionized the world's ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... this unprejudiced person (who, although entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle, with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), "and in order to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to resort to the methods of barbarism." The most effective measure, as he proceeded to explain with well-thought-out detail, would be ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Davis, too, was known to have been hostile to the absorption and exportation by the Government of all the cotton. He had, moreover, recommended against any legislation by Congress to contract the currency and stop the issues. Now, therefore, the inflation and utter inadequacy of the paper money was laid at his door, as well as Mr. Memminger's; and the people, feeling there was no safety for them, began to distrust the good faith of such reckless issue. A system of barter was inaugurated among the country people; ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... art in itself, and that such heroic abstentions as Keniston's are not always purely voluntary. On the occasion of her first visit the artist said so little that Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing sense of her inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing and inexpressive, ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... metrical and philosophical form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards, of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of years; of one's emotional inadequacy without God for adjudicator. It is a direct search for God. One finds wrapped within it the mystery, aspiration, and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... of our churches, but who are stranded on the rocks of apostasy, on whom the storms of life will beat yet a little while, and then they will sink down into ever-lasting ruin. Strong drink, the love of money, or, perhaps, the inadequacy of their former teaching, is the occasion of their fall. Others, scattered over this great wilderness of sin, remain faithful amidst abounding wickedness, and stretch out their hands and utter the Macedonian cry, "Come over ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... speak will, of course, be great,—the hazard of gross misapprehension on the part of the public, and of hesitancy and inadequacy on the part of the poet. The latter danger, I think, was safely passed; Whitman never flinched or wavered for a moment, and that his criticism is adequate seems to me equally obvious. But the former contingency—the gross misapprehension of the public, even the wiser public—has ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... off the supplies which came down the river to Washington's army, and, as supposed, to encourage the loyalists in the upper counties and supply them with arms. Washington acknowledged that the event showed the weakness and inadequacy of the North River line of defences, and reported to Congress that it developed a possible plan of attack by the British upon his rear. Measures were taken to annoy if not destroy the ships, and, on the 3d of August, Commodore Tupper, with four of his sloops and schooners, boldly ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... for it are complex. There were in this affair individual and collective failures, imprudences committed under the fire of the enemy, divisions ill-engaged, rash deployments, precipitate retreats, a premature waste of men, and, finally, the inadequacy of certain of our troops and their leaders, both as regards the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of brightening cricket, my friend Twyford has given me a new bat. I have always felt that, in my own case, it was the inadequacy of the weapon rather than of the man behind it which accounted for a certain monotony of low-scoring; with this new bat I hope to prove the ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... for himself and others, must recognise this inadequacy of grasp, and the necessity for real and imaginary aggregations to sustain men in their practical service of the order of the world. He must be a sociologist; he must study the whole science of aggregations ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... was in the presence of one of the most popular hostesses, one of the most admired women, in the kingdom. Yet his keen professional insight revealed to him an arrested development; possibilities unfulfilled; a problem of inadequacy and consequent disappointment, to which he had not the key. But those outstretched hands eagerly held it towards him. Could he bring help, if he accepted a knowledge of the solution; or—did help ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... God would but give me strength to strangle him in my last agony, I'd go to hell with joy," groaned the impatient man, writhing to rise, and sinking back in despair, convinced of his inadequacy for the struggle. ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... William Henry. Loudon had, at first, sent an order for the corps to be broken up, and the men to rejoin their respective regiments, and to accompany them on the expedition; but the earnest representations of Colonel Monro of the 35th Regiment, who was now in command, of the total inadequacy of the garrison to defend itself, should a serious attack be made from Ticonderoga; and of the great value to him of the corps under Captain Walsham, which was now thoroughly trained in forest fighting, induced him to ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... and the Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as an observer. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... editors, of an enormous American paper. He was going to publish an article—as big, as enormous, as all the rest of the business—about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her. Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... seen, assist in stimulating higher intellectual and moral interests whose satisfaction lies above the plane of material desire. There is indeed some evidence that the meagre and wholly rudimentary education given to our town-dwellers is, by reason of its inadequacy, a direct feeder of town vices. The lower forms of music-hall entertainment, the dominant popular vice of gambling, the more degraded kinds of printed matter, owe their existence and their financial success to a public policy which has confined the education of the people ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... the suggestions made are more or less hypothetical, but not a few, I think, are necessary deductions, based on what is most probable to have happened. I am fully aware of numerous omissions, and the inadequacy of this summary; but if the suggestions brought forward shall prove in themselves to have merit, it has seemed to me that a fruitful field of investigation has been opened. Much new ground had to be covered in this attempt to picture the position of women at a period ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... as part of the total universe of experience whose constitution, with cognition in it, the critic is discussing.] But my critics treat my own more concrete talk as if IT were the kind that sinned by its inadequacy, and as if the full continuum left ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... consistently to make her world-wide empire into a self-sufficing system, and if, as is likely, she learned that even the diversified fifth of the entire globe which owns allegiance to her Crown could not satisfy all her wants, she could eke out this inadequacy with some carefully selected and ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... him. At first, he could not recall them without an aversion that was almost physical: this machine-like regularity, which, in its disregard of mood and feeling, had something of a divine callousness to human stirrings; the jarring contact with automaton-like people; his inadequacy and distaste for a task that grew day by day more painful. His own knowledge was so hesitating, so uncertain, too slight for self-confidence, just too much and too fresh to allow him to generalise with the unthinking ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... as light travels—till the count of years fell away, and there were no more numbers with which to count, and I knew that at the end of this calculation I had but entered the suburbs of that realm for which we have but one word, whose inadequacy we all confess—the Infinite. I listened, the silence seemed to utter forth majesty and might and honor and omnipotence, the air had in it the breath of sacred and adoring things, and unwittingly I cried out, alone in ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... type of Lord Ronaldshay is obliged to put us off the track. He will not deal with the one thing needful. Why is he silent about the Punjab? Why does he evade the Khilafat? Can ointments soothe a patient who is suffering from corroding consumption? Does his lordship not see that it is not the inadequacy of the reforms that has set India aflame but that it is the infliction of the two wrongs and the wicked attempt to make us forget them? Does he not see that a complete change of heart ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Stoic and Platonic systems of ethics as an instrument for the gradual realisation of this ideal.[695] With him the mystic and ecstatic as well as the magic and sacramental element is still in the background, though it is not wanting. To Origen's mind, however, the inadequacy of philosophical injunctions was constantly made plain by the following considerations. (1) The philosophers, in spite of their noble thoughts of God, tolerated the existence of polytheism; and this was really the only fault he had to find with Plato. (2) The truth did not become universally ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... his finger to where the galaxy stretched across over their heads with the luminousness of a frosted web. 'You see that dark opening in it near the Swan? There is a still more remarkable one south of the equator, called the Coal Sack, as a sort of nickname that has a farcical force from its very inadequacy. In these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. Those are deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... in methods of selection and election of our legislators and executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we vote?"—rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into office. The primary, however, we see, is ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... upon Georgie's ears. An evil impulse assailed him—impolitic, too, as he realized—impolitic but irresistible. It was the easiest way in which candidate Remington, heckled by suffragists, overridden by his campaign committee, mortifyingly tormented by a feeling of inadequacy, could re-establish himself in his own esteem as a man of prompt ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... do not see. We are not pleased with wax-work, which may be nearer reality; "we are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing ends accomplished by seemingly inadequate means." If this be sound, we ought to be sensible of the inadequacy of the means, which sets aside at once the common notion that art is illusion. "The properties of all objects, as far as the painter is concerned with them, are outline or drawing, the colour, and the light ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... violent article in the National Review concerning the inadequacy of our present solution of the housing problem; but it ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... enjoyment, our spontaneity, our mental vigor, our spirituality, and the exuberant radiance of our life—bodily, mental, spiritual—I feel that we need to examine it carefully and find out wherein lies its inadequacy ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... any personal benefit from the public school system. In other words, eighteen thousand more children in this state are still growing up without instruction than as yet attend the schools. And the utter inadequacy of the common school privileges of even these will be apparent when it is understood that in the great majority of the districts more than nine tenths of the schools are taught but three ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... for this, she ceased to take them in, and took in sewing instead. It had become necessary to do so, for the allowance she received from the government was about a quarter of Gerhardt's weekly earnings. In spite of its inadequacy it was something, and she felt she must be grateful. But, curiously enough, she could not forget that she was English, and it seemed strange to her that, in addition to the grief caused by separation from her husband ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... contributed anything to Cooper's intellectual development in the way of accuracy of thought or of statement. It (p. 009) would not in all probability have added materially to his stock of knowledge. But with all its inefficiency and inadequacy, it would very certainly have had the effect of teaching him to aim far more than he did at perfection of form. He possibly gained more than he lost by being transferred at so early an age to other ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... men so flatter and befool one of their harmless fellows? What is there in the nature of literary or agricultural achievement which justifies the outrage of his modest sense of inadequacy? It is a preposterous performance, but it does not reach the climax of its absurdity till the honored guest rises, with his mouth filled with taffy, and, dripping drawn butter all over the place, proceeds ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... for me to speak: which strongly impressed me; notwithstanding that he was ten years younger than myself, and I had seen him so lately in a lighter mood. I felt that his reputation had not belied him—that here was a great man; and reflecting with despair on the inadequacy of the tale I had to tell him, I paused to consider in what terms I should begin. He soon put an end to this, however. 'Come, sir,' he said with impatience. 'I have told you that you may speak out. You should have been here four days ago, as I take it. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... exactly similar group in the case of any two individual lovers, but quite inexhaustible. To represent him to those who do not know him is not easy; to represent him to those who do is sure, for this very reason, to arouse mild or not mild complaints of inadequacy. And it must be clear, from what has been already said, that some critic may very likely exclaim, in reference to any selected piece, "Why, this is neither a novel nor a romance, nor even in any legitimate sense a tale!" The inestimable rejoinder already quoted,[240]—episcopal, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... tone thought Margaret, came well enough from a man who was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr. Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now, and to watch his thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen was nettled. The aim of THEIR debates she ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... heroine were again discussed that evening in another part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," he said. "It ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... for me to comfort: there are things too deep for the written word. Only one thing I say, and I say it with a full sense of its pitiful inadequacy. When the joy bells do ring out, and in the ringing seem to mock so hideously the empty chair, the voice for ever silent, then in that bitter moment, remember one thing. Somewhere or other, in the Soldier's ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... to the gross inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault. She had not wished for more. Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt. But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come. Perhaps something ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... or two we recognized the figure as that of young Hare, and in less than five he was on board.... We soon discovered that though exhausted, weak, and hungry, he was in full possession of his faculties and quite free from frost-bites. He went placidly off to sleep whilst objecting to the inadequacy of ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... despised her, because I had a staff on which to lean when the great winds of weariness blew; I believed in my novels, I worked at my history, I had my art. I have come to recognize its absolute inadequacy, its complete incapacity to afford happiness. Then I understood that Pessimism was, at most, good to console those who had no real need of comfort; I understood that its theories, alluring when we are young, and rich, and well, become singularly ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Almost the entire population were descendants of the original proprietors of the soil, and we had our own ideas about our first families. Thorpe's views, however, were not flattering: he was, in fact, one of those elegant young men whose innermost souls are penetrated with convictions of the inadequacy of intellects in general ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the sexual sphere, nor are they required for the due action of the sexual mechanism. But in a slightly abnormal organism—whether the anomaly is due to a congenital neuropathic condition, or to a possibly acquired neurasthenic condition, or merely to the physiological inadequacy of childhood or old age—the balance of nervous energy is less favorable for the adequate play of the ordinary energies in courtship. The sexual impulse is itself usually weaker, even when, as often happens, its irritability assumes the fallacious appearance of strength. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "images," speaks of impressions as "those perceptions which enter with most force and violence" while he defines ideas as "the faint images of these (i.e. of impressions) in thinking and reasoning." His immediately following observations, however, show the inadequacy of his criteria of "force" and "faintness." ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... in advance of those from Rome by a day and a night. The Papal kingdom is not very extensive, but it seems to me even too extensive, when I see distances trebled by the carelessness of the Government and the inadequacy of the public works. As to railways, there are two, one from Rome to Frascati, and one from Rome to Civita Vecchia; but the Adriatic provinces, which are the most populous, the most energetic, and the most interesting ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... horseback to Leeds and other towns for sale. He continued indefatigable at this trade for some time, being on the road often for nights together; but he was at length forced to abandon it in consequence of the inadequacy of the returns. He was therefore under the necessity of again taking up his violin; and he was employed as a musician in the Long Room at Harrogate, at the time of the outbreak of the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... system, that princely astronomer, Alphonso of Castile, seeing the inadequacy of the Ptolemaic theory, yet knowing no other, startled Europe with the blasphemy that, if he had been present at creation, he could have suggested a better order of the heavenly bodies. Under the new system, Kepler, filled with a religious ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was a Democrat and nominated by the Democrats for the office. Two years later, at the expiration of his term, he was strongly solicited by both parties to take the office another term, but declined in consequence of the inadequacy of the salary. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain unto it." In the presence of such ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... going into committee on the sugar duties, and Viscount Sandon's resolution being put from the chair, he should move a counter-resolution; namely, "That it is the opinion of this house, that it is practicable to supply the present inadequacy of the revenue to meet the expenditure of the country, by a judicious alteration of protective and differential duties, without any material increase of the public burdens; that such a course will, at the same time, promote ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... compression, as determined by the pendulum, and also to the uncertainty of the moon's mass, as deduced from the nutation of the earth's axis. It is also suspected that the southern hemisphere is more compressed than the northern; and other phenomena also point out the inadequacy of the law of gravitation, to account for the figure of ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... of course, from the inadequacy of the piano transcription, for it was conceived and written orchestrally. Paula, too, has given finer performances of it;—indeed, she sang it better a little later that same evening. But spurred as she was by the knowledge that the composer was ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... could most readily explain the doubt he had had for many years: the ultimate unimportance of all events; or only the happenstance that important people often must croak because of a lack of appropriate nourishment and medicine... the inadequacy of women... The incurable nature of Tabes disease, the symptoms of which he believed he detected in himself... When Maria Mondmilch named her profession, he lit up. Syphilis and its consequences were mentioned. Miss Mondmilch told of frightening cases. Mr. Schwertschwanz ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... it is necessary and practicable, since my "System of Anthropology" has been entirely out of the market for thirty years, to present a concise exposition of cerebral psychology and physiology, to satisfy those who perceive the inadequacy of the Gallian system, and who are aware that my discoveries have thoroughly revolutionized as well as enlarged cerebral science, rendering the old term phrenology inadequate to express ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... for all the affectionate interest, the kind solicitude, the innumerable thoughtful attentions you have so indefatigably shown to Aunt Patty, in the sad complication of misfortunes that so suddenly overwhelmed her; and I feel the inadequacy of any attempt to express my thanks. Your letter can only rivet more indissolubly the links of an affectionate friendship that must always bind you and me; but the future can hold no renewal of pledges which I feel assured would conduce neither to your happiness, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... article began by remarking that the subject of Colonial verse, and the immense future before the English-speaking poets, is allied to a question that is very great, the adequacy or inadequacy of English poetry—British, American, and Colonial—to the destiny of the race that produces it. The article enunciated the thesis that if the English language should not in the near future contain the finest body of poetry in the world, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... occupied by water. In that happy place occupied by the people of God, there is no sea; consequently, "yet there is room," many mansions, room enough for all the redeemed. "The holy city," compared to a "bride," two very incongruous emblems, shows the poverty of symbols, their inadequacy to represent the church triumphant: how then shall created objects furnish suitable emblems of the glorious and glorified Bridegroom? In vision the city seemed to the apostle as if suspended in the air on ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... laid down in his celebrated Reflexions (1719) that the poet's art consists of making a general moral representation of incidents and scenes, and embellishing it with elegant images. This had been accepted and acted upon by Pope and by all his followers. To have been the first to perceive the inadequacy and the falsity of a law which excluded all imagination, all enthusiasm, and all mystery, is to demand respectful attention from the historian of Romanticism, and this attention is due ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... perturbations of Uranus. With exhaustive analysis Le Verrier investigated every possible known source of disturbance. The influences of the older planets were estimated once more with every precision, but only to confirm the conclusion already arrived at as to their inadequacy to account for the perturbations. Le Verrier then commenced the search for the unknown planet by the aid of mathematical investigation, in complete ignorance of the labours of Adams. In November, 1845, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... concluded that the actual beginning of the malady was unknown, and that the inability of the doctors to master the disease arose from the inadequacy of the means employed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... felt his inadequacy to the situation. "Don't you want to wear it?" he hesitated. "It's real pretty. What's ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Leonard answered, and instantly feeling the awkwardness of the words, blushed so painfully that Miss Bartram felt the inadequacy of her social tact to relieve so manifest a case of distress. But she did, instinctively, what was really best: she gave Leonard the check for her trunk, divided her satchels with Betty, and walked to ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... shock the same day. The Clutterbuck cousin had proclaimed that owing to the inadequacy of the bedroom furniture she had been obliged to employ a sofa as a wardrobe. Then there were more references to Captain Deverax. And then at dinner it became known— Heaven knows how!—that the entire Clutterbuck party had given notice and was seceding ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... in some nebulae. The nebular hypothesis as described by Herschel was not received with much favour, nor did it unsettle much the belief that all nebulae were vast stellar aggregations, and that their cloudy luminosity was a consequence of the inadequacy of telescopic power to resolve them into their component stars. Laplace, who was highly gifted as a geometrician, demonstrated how the solar system could have been evolved in accordance with dynamical principles from a slowly rotating and slowly contracting ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... with justice, peace, and the general satisfaction; thus giving to our country the full enjoyment of the blessings of liberty, and to the world the full benefit of its great example. I have never considered the main difficulty of the great work as lying in the deficiency of emancipations, but in an inadequacy of asylums for such a growing mass of population, and in the great expense of removing it to its new home. The spirit of private maunmission, as the laws may permit and the exiles may consent, is increasing, and will increase, and there ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Harm, no; but you should have seen how silly I looked. Fancy the inadequacy of the expression when my whole ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... first edition of "The Golden Dog" (Le Chien d'Or) was brought out in the United States, entirely without my knowledge or sanction. Owing to the inadequacy of the then existing copyright laws, I have been powerless to prevent its continued publication, which I understand to have been a successful and profitable undertaking for all concerned, except the author, the book ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... at any period of history must take the form of an examination of the wants engendered by the age, and of the adequacy or inadequacy of their means of satisfaction. If we turn our attention first to the forces of society which were in possession of the fortress and were to be the object of attack, we shall find that the ruling desires which animated these men of wealth and influence were chiefly the product of ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which never wavered to the hour of his death.[14] The pitifulness of it is to see the incongruity between such faith, such devotion, and the distasteful inadequacy ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... for the public service overcame all personal predilections, and this great officer was sent to take the command of the most extensive and important station to which a British admiral could be appointed. Lord Hood had previously declined it, on the singular plea of inadequacy of force; and Sir Charles Hotham having solicited his recall in consequence of declining health, the gallant Jervis was sent forth to establish the renown of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... not considered by Whitehall with the seriousness it deserved; only the men who saw planes come over, hover about, and were in consequence heavily and accurately shelled shortly afterwards, realized what the command of the air meant. The air tangle, and the inadequacy of the air service became such a scandal that Lord Derby and Lord Montague resigned from the air board as a protest against the way this branch of the service was ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... the different States were various and injurious to legitimate commerce, while the want of uniform laws upon subjects altogether national, was everywhere observed. A general government, adequate to the necessities of the nation, was not established until the inadequacy of the State governments had been felt in peace and war; but war more than peace created bonds of sympathy, and inspired ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... some soft tone of your wall color. Then, let the rugs and curtains and things go until you decide you have to have them. The room will gradually find itself, though it may take years and heartache and a certain self-confession of inadequacy. It will express your life, if you use it, so be careful of the life ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... wonder worker, the spoken word, is no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought, or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... impartial investigation by a non-partisan commission into the practice of animal experimentation as conducted in this State. In view of the inherent possibility of cruelty in the practice, and the obvious inadequacy of the existing laws to prevent such cruelty, we deem the existing status of vivisection in this State to be a menace to the community, which calls for ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... to conceive great enterprises is not to perform them, and every after-step of John Brown reveals his lamentable weakness and utter inadequacy for the heroic role to which he fancied himself called. His first blunder was in divulging all his plans to Forbes, an utter stranger, while he was so careful in concealing them from others. Forbes, as ambitious and reckless as himself, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... in general. This is one of the basic industries, upon the proper understanding and growth of which depends the food supply of the nation. It is admitted by scientists that, other conditions being equal, an adequacy or inadequacy in the supply of proper food makes the difference between great people and undesirable people. This being true, the various operations of agriculture must always be of the greatest concern to those who are interested in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... of March 18 was ineffectual, owing to the inadequacy of the landing forces, and the failure of the Entente powers to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... under every vicissitude the determined spirit and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to its honor and its essential interests, I repair to the post assigned me with no other discouragement than what springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties. If I do not sink under the weight of this deep conviction it is because I find some support in a consciousness of the purposes and a confidence in the principles which I bring with me ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... that though by no means disposed originally to dissent from the theory of "Natural Selection," if only its difficulties could be solved, he has found each successive year that deeper consideration and more careful examination have more and more brought home to him the inadequacy of Mr. Darwin's theory to account for the preservation and intensification of incipient, specific, and generic characters. That minute, fortuitous, and indefinite variations could have brought about such special forms and modifications as have been enumerated in ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... judgment of the subsidy advocates the law's failure to produce the anticipated results only proved its inadequacy in not providing enough subsidy. Accordingly, further measures were proposed affording a ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... utterly failed me; I could only think to myself: "Is this fear? it is not fear!" I strove to rise—in vain; I felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhelming power opposed to my volition—that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond man's, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to my will was another ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... to have no God because it was all God—that he felt convinced he only needed to destroy accepted figments, for the light which blazed around him to break through and flood the world with beauty. Shelley can only be called an Atheist, in so far as he maintained the inadequacy of hitherto received conceptions of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... To be perfect, expression must be luminous yet terse, vigorous, yet in taste and keeping. It must be without mannerisms, without inadequacy, without flatness, without obscurity. "Clear, but with distinction," is the brief definition of Aristotle. Davidson has learned his lesson well from Shelley and Wordsworth and Arnold. He cultivates all the virtues, and not without success. He has not been tempted to leave the true path and court ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... warriors, or demons last night, the implication being that the things seen were objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence in the absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his OTHER ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... lawyer's clerk was ever more careful than Napoleon was, when dealing with problems of war? Who was ever more attentive to details, who more industrious, who more untiring? And yet Napoleon's plans for his Russian campaign were inadequate to an amazing degree, and the inadequacy was the cause of his disaster. But whether the cause was carelessness or moral cowardice on his part, the fact remains that he did not estimate the situation with sufficient care, and make due plans to ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all and more than Nettie's usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. Her handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like curtains before the changing charm of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... title to Lismore. The doubt of the validity of Boyle's tenure, though it equally affected Sir Walter's right, may have suggested to Carew somewhat later an attack on him in his own interest, probably on the score of the inadequacy of the price paid to Ralegh. Lady Ralegh had already, in 1619, set up a claim to dower, on the ground that her consent to the sale in 1602 had not been obtained. Boyle intimated that he should meet ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... foolishly of the necessities of things, and we blame circumstances for the consequences of our own follies and vices; but there are faults which are not faults of will, but faults of mere inadequacy to some unforeseen position. Human nature is equal to much, but not to everything. It can rise to altitudes where it is alike unable to sustain itself or to retire from them to a safer elevation. Yet when the field is open it pushes forward, and moderation in the pursuit ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... to the consideration of the petition presented by the Senator from Kentucky, and to an examination of the views he has presented to the Senate on this highly important subject. Sir, I feel, I sensibly feel my inadequacy in entering into a controversy with that old and veteran Senator; but nothing high or low shall prevent me from an honest discharge of my duty here. If imperfectly done, it may be ascribed to the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... developed. The outline on pp. x, xi shows the logical framework on which the book is constructed. Under the limitations of such a table, confined to a single term in every case, it is of course impossible to avoid the appearance of artificiality of form and inadequacy of treatment. This collection of dry bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a glance the conception of ethics as an organic whole of interrelated members: a conception it would be impossible to present in any other form without ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and motives, a system that grows and develops. He regards its spirit, its intimate substance as the most hopeful thing in human affairs at the present time, but he does also find it shares with all mundane concerns the qualities of inadequacy and error. It suffers from the common penalty of noble propositions; it is hampered by the insufficiency of its supporters and advocates, and by the superficial tarnish that necessarily falls in our atmosphere of greed and conflict darkest upon the brightest things. In ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... composed a century ago should fully satisfy us now; but we must beware of blaming the writer for his supposed or real shortcomings, till we have ascertained how far they arose from his personal inadequacy to his task, and were not the result of his chronological position. It need not be said that this remark does not refer to many books which are called histories, but are really contemporary memoirs and original authorities subservient to history ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... means the truth which we see—the inward sight, the radical experience. Formal truth is the verbal statement, and consists in accuracy of expression. And so of error. Substantial error means error in regard to the substance, and is necessarily inadequacy of inward experience. Strictly speaking, there cannot be substantial error; for error, in regard to the substance of truth, is purely negative. It is not-seeing. It is failing to perceive the truth, either from want of opportunity, weakness of vision, or neglect in looking. But formal error ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... for these beauties of chivalry, art, and tradition. We have striven to put them into our lives often blindly, crudely. We have borrowed and bought what we could not create; instinctively we pay homage to what is beyond our industrial power to make, confessing the inadequacy of our materialism to satisfy our souls. We, too, demand a world in which beauty of conduct, beauty of manners, and beauty of art shall be cultivated to give meaning to our lives. The bombardment of Rheims, the murder of Edith Cavell are as shameful to the American mind ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... gesture—the accent of irreparableness, as of something dismally done and finished. What did it all mean? For what had he brought her there? She sat stunned, realising with awful force the feebleness, the inadequacy, of her ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inadequate but misleading, for instead of the two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with time added as a vital element, and, I dare say, a "fourth dimension" as well. Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a space divided into four strata. The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, the region of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of the universe, the unconditioned Absolute, in the terms of Christian theology, Almighty ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... has so far been altered, that the children, whilst under instruction, are boarded and lodged at the school houses, and as far as practicable, the boys and girls are kept separate. There are still, however, many evils attending the present practice, most of which arise from the inadequacy of the funds, applicable to the Aborigines, and which must be removed before any permanent good can be expected from the instruction given. The first of these, and perhaps one of the greatest, is that the adult natives make their encampments immediately in ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Shakespeare is their comparative indifference to human nature. There is too much mechanical malice in their tragedies and too little of the passion that every man recognizes in his own breast. Even so good a play as The Duchess of Malfi is marred by inadequacy of motive on the part of the duchess's persecutors. Similarly, in Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, the villains are simply a dramatist's infernal machines. Shakespeare's own plays contain numerous examples of inadequacy of motive—the casting-off of Cordelia by her father, for instance, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... these reviews fell in my way, I read them, knowing no better. But I very soon learned to let them alone. The kind notices, while they gave me a sort of courage which by temperament possibly I needed more than all young writers may, overwhelmed me, too, by a sense of my own inadequacy to be a teacher of the most solemn of truths, on any such scale as that towards which events seemed to be pointing. The unfair notices put me in a tremor of distress. The brutal ones affected me like a blow in the face ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various |
