"Inadequate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no credit, but died, nevertheless, because he was overcome and heart-broken by its imaginary presence."—"I, my dearest doctor," said the sick man, "am in that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the presence of the persecuting vision, that my reason is totally inadequate to combat the effects of my morbid imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a wasted victim to an imaginary disease." The medical gentleman listened with anxiety to his patient's statement, and for ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... with him as to what edifies), finding himself moved by some extraneous considerations or other to take a Church's part against its enemies, calls taking a Church's part returning to base uses, culture teaches us how out of place is this language, and that to use it shows an inadequate conception of human nature, and that no Church will thank a man for taking its part in this fashion, but will leave him with indifference to the tender mercies of his Benthamite friends. But avoiding Benthamism, or an inadequate conception of the religious ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... preferred to Froude's version. For, though certainly an inadequate account of the reign, it is true ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suicides, is it not to encourage them and to make them attain the end that they desire when we inflict on all those so disposed a spectacular death?... For many criminals by passion, unbalanced by an inadequate education, and whose feeling is aroused by either their own misery or at the sight of the misery of others, we would no more award the death penalty if the motive has been exclusively political, because they ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... as he spoke, that this was the reward of her silence and her struggle, she told herself, in the next breath that, in some way, it was all inadequate. She had expected more than a phrase, and the very fact that the note of earnestness was absent from his voice but made her desire the sound of it the more passionately. Again she felt the baffled sensation which came to her in moments of their closest ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... the biscuits were delicious and the coffee uplifting, inspiring, would, in the mind of all who have shared the matutinal hospitality of the steward of the General, be an inadequate expression of gastronomic gratitude. Let it be sufficient to note that Anne Wellington beamed gratefully upon the steward, who, expanding under the genial influence, discussed his art with ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... that view likewise, had there been unlimited numbers of divisions to dispose of, and had there been no U-boats about. But an army merely sufficient to hold the Egyptian frontier would have been entirely inadequate to start a campaign based on the sea in northern Syria, and experiences in the Dardanelles theatre of war hardly offered encouragement for embarking on ventures on the shores of the Levant. Lord K. called Sir D. Haig, who happened to be over on short ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... it was true that there were exceptional cases, that authority might be put out of countenance, that the rule might be inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be framed within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled obedience, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of the functionary, that destiny did indulge in such ambushes, and he reflected ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with an Arabian; a circumstance of which he was not conscious until he went to India. This great man, however, had he been told that his knowledge of this popular eastern language was so far deficient, that he was ignorant of the separate powers of its synonymous letters, and consequently inadequate to converse intelligibly with a native Arab, he would certainly have considered it an aspersion, and have disputed altogether that such was the fact. Considering how much we are indebted to the Arabians 358 for the preservation of many of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the support of such a large household seems to us in these days almost absurdly inadequate. The father's wages rarely exceeded L30 a year, and they never all his life reached L40. They were mostly paid in kind. So many bolls of oats, of barley and of peas, so many carts of coals, so many yards of growing ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... the Christian is the perfect gentleman, who does for his fellows what an easy chair does for a tired man, what a winter's fire is to a lost traveler, we may also affirm that Newman's definition is inadequate and fragmentary. As the ideal portraits of Christ, from Perugino to Hoffman, divide the kingdom of beauty—and must be united in one new conception in order to approach the perfect face—so the poets and the philosophers, with their diverse ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... that he would have felt disposed to assist his brother, whose scanty salary he knew was inadequate to the needs of a family. But Godfrey Thornton was an obstinate man, and chose to give assistance in his own way, and no other. It would be a very handsome thing, he thought, to give his nephew a college education. And so, ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... to scientific mining, which is as legitimate a business as any other, and which, by the wealth it circulates, will tempt men into new avenues of industry, and recruit, to any extent that may be desirable, the supply of labour. Hitherto that supply has come in inadequate quantities, or from polluted sources; but we have now precisely what the colony wanted—a stream of voluntary emigration, which, in the process of time, when skilled labour only can be employed, will flood the diggings, and its superfluous portions find their level in the other employments afforded ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... of rechas, or sacred stone figures of Brahmin and Buddhist origin, in the garden of the Dutch Residency, shows the scant care bestowed on the ancient temples, for years used as mere quarries of broken statuary, and still receiving inadequate recognition as historical remains, though Sir Stamford Raffles a century ago realised the supreme importance of Javanese sculpture as an indispensable link in archaeological science. Djokjacarta, interesting in itself as the survival of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... notice the sound of breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine had told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in life wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech is. There are some things that others know which we have never told them, and would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us for which no language ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... sheepishly dug two one-dollar bills out of his trousers pocket and the sum striking Archie as a pitifully inadequate fee he slipped a ten-dollar bill into the minister's hand as the bride and groom were ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... yielded to the advice of the minister of the imperial household, Prince Stolberg-Wernigrode, who urged him to institute a very careful secret investigation of his own before rushing the denouement, cautioning him that Baron Schrader's evidence was inadequate, had it not been for the pressure brought to bear upon his majesty by the Saxe-Meiningens and other members of his family, who were all convinced that Baron ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... had no fear of starving, even should fruits not be discovered in the island, to support us till we could get away. How to get away was the question. The obvious means was by building a boat; but we could find no tools, and we were obliged to confess that our skill was inadequate to the work. Hassan and Kalong, however, asserted that they would be able, in time, to construct a large canoe. Our first excursion was to the wreck, which we found we could reach by wading at low tide along the top of the reef. On further examination, ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... are equivalent. Because a certain screw is necessary for a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is equivalent of the machine." Bergson's simile of a screw and a machine is quite inadequate to show the interdependence of mind and body, because the screw does cause the machine to work, but the machine does not cause the screw to work; so that their relation is not interdependence. On the contrary, body causes mind to work, and at the same time ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... very impudent little fellow,—but owing no doubt to his stupidity, I failed to find a single vessel which could be fairly described as a lightship. Finally the boy said they had all been sunk in yesterday's great storm, and with that inadequate explanation I was forced to content myself. But there is a mystery ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... deg. 51 min. north and 90 deg. 26 min. 15 sec. west of Greenwich, had been named by Lieutenant Schwatka after the president of the American Geographical Society. The tents that had been provided for the expedition proving quite inadequate for our wants, Captain Barry got Armow (the Wolf), one of the most influential natives, to let us have his tent, one that had been made by the crew of the brig 'A. Houghton', memorable to us as the vessel on which Captain Barry received his spoon. The Iwillie tribe moved up their tupics to ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... cases out of ten, in itself a proof of lowered resisting power on the part of the patient. This may be, and often is, only temporary, due to overwork, underfeeding, overconfinement, or that form of gradual suffocation which we politely term inadequate ventilation. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... had done on the other; I therefore judged it advisable to alter the plan of keeping within seven points of the wind, and to go with it upon the beam; and also to put in practice every means of lightening the upper works, for they seemed to be very inadequate to support the weight with which they had been unavoidably loaded. Two eighteen-pound carronades, stern chacers, were taken off the upper deck and struck into the hold; the spare rudder, and a variety of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... Niccola, now. Taine fairly howled an order. There were yells of defiance and excitement. There were more of those inadequate noises as rockets went out—every tube on the starboard side emptied itself in a series of savage grunts—and the Niccola's magnetronic drive roared at ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... in practical farming, dairying, horticulture, etc., is given in an increasing number of schools, but the opportunities are still very inadequate to the needs. If it be possible the way must be found to enable the Negro to use more and better machinery. The average planter does not care to introduce expensive machinery lest it be ruined by careless and ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... repose is a state of rigid tension, if not extravagant distortion. He is the Fuseli of novelists. Does he deem it necessary to be energetic, he forthwith begins foaming at the mouth, and falling into convulsions; and this orgasm is so often repeated, and upon such inadequate occasions, that we are perpetually reminded of the tremendous puerilities of the Della Cruscan versifiers, or the ludicrous grand eloquence of the Spaniard, who tore a certain portion of his attire, "as if heaven and earth were coming together." In straining to reach the sublime, he perpetually ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Body to be inherently mortal. The majority of uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishes at Death, and the something—called indifferently Soul or Spirit—that survives Death. This last classification—if classification it may be called—is entirely inadequate, if we are to seek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the phenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man's nature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, but ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... has never been described; and inadequate as a description may be to convey an idea of the reality, it will perhaps enable American lovers to realise what a calamity they escaped when they were born in America and not in Kamchatka. The young Korak's troubles begin when he first falls in love; ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... pursuits, for which their Physical powers are inadequate. If man is endowed with superior bodily strength, to him exclusively be allotted those manual avocations, which demand that strength. Let not the more delicate sex be tasked with the severe exercises of the field or the workshop. And if mental power depend at all on physical, if ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... can and they do show it in part: and it gives them the interest which has been noticed in other cases. Indeed in one respect—as a writer—Kingsley is perhaps better in his letters than in his Essays, where he too often affects a Macaulayesque positiveness on rather inadequate grounds. The following specimen should show him in pleasantly varied character—as a thoroughly human person, a good sportsman, and what Matthew Arnold (by no means himself very liberal of praise to his ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... she was, there was nothing of the distracted or the inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... on, the provision for all these Chantries being found inadequate to maintain them, some were united together, and thus, at their dissolution in the first year of Edward VI., it was found that there were only thirty-five, to which belonged ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... which has been unable to demonstrate any way in which the sun's radiated energy may be restored, or otherwise made perpetual, since meteoric impact has been shown to be—under existing conditions, at any rate—inadequate. In accordance with the theory of Helmholtz, the chief supply of solar energy is held to be contraction of the solar mass itself; and plainly this must have its limits. Therefore, unless some means as yet unrecognized is restoring ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... French pensions, which twenty-five years ago were crowded with American mothers and their daughters who had crossed the seas in search of culture, one often found the mother making real connection with the life about her, using her inadequate German with great fluency, gaily measuring the enormous sheets or exchanging recipes with the German Hausfrau, visiting impartially the nearest kindergarten and market, making an atmosphere of her own, hearty and genuine as far as it went, in the house and on the street. On the other ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... pains pen, paper, and ink. A pencil would be inadequate when the note was going to Rittenhouse Square. She sat down when Nan and Lizzie had left for their day's work, and constructed ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... must train their men to economize in the use of ammunition. Train service, even by rail for ammunition, would be inadequate ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... "'How inadequate,' she continued, 'is language to express the emotions which Such a scene calls up in the bosom! Poetry alone is the voice of the spiritual world, and we, who are not poets, must borrow the language of the gifted sons of Song. Oh, Enos, I wish you were a poet! But you feel poetry, I know you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... taken root. And if Englishmen knew the United States better, they would be astonished to find how frequent these "sports" and accidents seem to be. And it must be remembered that the country does at least produce excellent Duchesses and Countesses in not inadequate numbers. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... electric light of the big car's interior shining on the faces of Uncle Rufus and Aunt Ruth, on Mr. Kendrick and Hugh Benson—the latter a little pale but quite composed. Hugh had owned that he felt seriously inadequate for the role which was his to-night, being no society man and unaccustomed to taking conspicuous parts anywhere but in business. But Richard had assured him that it was all a very simple matter, since it was just a question of standing by a friend in the ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... of the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States declares that 'no person' [etc., reciting it]; and whereas the laws now in force within the State of Ohio are wholly inadequate to the protection pledged by this provision of the Constitution to the Southern States of this Union; and whereas it is the duty of those who reap the largest measure of benefits conferred by the Constitution to recognize to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... further resistance. It was in review of their whole quivering platoon of hopes and fears, of doubts, cautions, and delays, that he then made the speech which seems to have wrought astonishing effects upon those who heard it, and which, though preserved in a most inadequate report, now fills so great a space in the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... crucified Christ on a stick, he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it, and that if we were better men we might try his plan. There have been one or two grotesque attempts at it by inadequate people, such as the Kingdom of God in Munster, which was ended by crucifixion so much more atrocious than the one on Calvary that the bishop who took the part of Annas went home and died of horror. But responsible ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Italian art, so living within certain limits, remained stunted beyond these. The conviction that art existed in order to express ideal beauty, that its main purpose was to please the eye and the senses in spite of the result attained, proved inadequate compensation for all that had been withdrawn. The art ideal tended more and more to become a conscience and a purpose in itself, an inward impulse for action and an ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... the left of it or the right, and again at the fork of the roads. He kept shifting his stick in his hand, and every now and then he would get in the way of people on the footpath or be jostled by them because of the uncertainty of his movements. He felt, he confesses, 'inadequate to ordinary existence.' He seemed to himself to be something inhuman and mischievous. All the people about him looked fairly prosperous, fairly happy, fairly well adapted to the lives they had to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... highly ingenious but highly fantastic; in religion no outward freedom of thought except for a few courageous spirits, but the arbitrary dictates of a despotic hierarchy, insisting on an ironbound creed which the remorseless process of time was steadily rendering more and more inadequate—this offers some slight suggestion of the conditions of life for several centuries, ending with the period with which we ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... little struggling—nothing like that displayed by a perch about a quarter his size, which Mr Inglis next hooked and played, and then lost through its darting into a bed of strong weeds and entangling the line, so that the heavy clearing ring sent down towards the hook proved inadequate to the task of releasing it, and the line broke, and the fish escaped with at least a yard of shotted silkworm gut hanging to ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... with game shooting, we never could see the advantage of longitudinal grooves running down the shaft of the arrow, such as some aborigines use, supposed to promote bleeding. In the first place these marks are inadequate in depth, and secondly it is not the exterior bleeding that kills the wounded animal so ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... thus proceeding became evident; they were still, by land, forty days' march from Antioch, whereas it required but three to get there by sea. The governor of Satalia proposed to the king to embark the crusaders; but, when the vessels arrived, they were quite inadequate for such an operation; hardly could the king, the barons, and the knights find room in them; and it would be necessary to abandon and expose to the perils of the land-march the majority of the infantry and all the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of honour and gratitude, but must blush for his country, if such a man retired unrewarded from the public service, let the motives for that retirement be what they would? It was not possible that his sovereign could let his eminent services pass unrequited: the sum that was given was inadequate to his merits; and the quantum was rather regulated by the moderation of the great mind that received it, than by the liberality of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... support of the singular incident I am about to relate. Disjointed memoranda, the proceedings of ayuntamientos and early departmental juntas, with other records of a primitive and superstitious people, have been my inadequate authorities. It is but just to state, however, that, though this particular story lacks corroboration, in ransacking the Spanish archives of Upper California I have met with many more surprising ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... field, Abner and John Henry, who had been to war, also discussed politics. They agreed that the pay they received for their work was inadequate. It seemed to them to be the fault of the government, which was run for the benefit of others ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... ground? Good God! on the ground of ABSENCE! Is it not true that legists are governed by caprice in giving and taking away rights? When it pleases these gentlemen, idleness, unworthiness, or absence can invalidate a right which, under quite similar circumstances, labor, residence, and virtue are inadequate to obtain. Do not be astonished that legists reject the absolute. Their good pleasure is law, and their disordered imaginations are the real cause of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... gold and silver exist in circulation, the less becomes their value. Within half a century, the imports from the Spanish and Portuguese mines, had reduced the value of the precious metals by one half; and those imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the mines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the general value, the operation became more profitless still; and at length both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... my power. Something always prevented me, till at length I thought no more of it, but resolved to enjoy his fascinating company in private, and by all means to keep my own with him. The resolution was vain: I set a bold face to it, but my powers were inadequate to the task; my adherent, with all the suavity imaginable, was sure to carry his point. I sometimes fumed, and sometimes shed tears at being obliged to yield to proposals against which I had at first felt every reasoning power ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Mark, "bad pays get acquainted fast." The reply was obviously inadequate, but Mark wanted the detective to know. Saunders took ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... hordes of the confederated nations of Russia, Austria, Prussia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Bavaria, flushed with their success, pushed on to Paris, to defend which Marshals Marmont and Mortier had but very inadequate means. The assailants, two hundred thousand in number, reached the northern side of Paris on the 29th of March, and on the following day a desperate battle took place. It was not till they had sacrificed fifteen thousand men that the allies could make themselves masters ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... with the Harperian wishes, confidentially communicated to the deceased and by him faithfully concealed at the cost of his life. All that Mr. Brentshaw had since done for the dead man's memory seemed pitifully inadequate—most mean, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... drapery, to the fact that he had once been Captain Gaskin, having taken orders and a diphthong but shortly before his engagement to Miss Armyn. If any one had objected that his preparation for the clerical function was inadequate, his friends might have asked who made a better figure in it, who preached better or had more authority in his parish? He had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of opinions and conduct, because he felt himself able to overrule them, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... world. It was to bring home to people some various aspects of one very startling proposition: that human society had arrived at a phase when the complete restatement of its fundamental ideas had become urgently necessary, a phase when the slow, inadequate, partial adjustments to two centuries of changing conditions had to give place to a rapid reconstruction of new fundamental ideas. And it was a fact of great value in the drama of these secret dreams that the directive force towards ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Ganga down on the Earth. Repairing unto her, men always succeed in freeing themselves from every kind of fear both here and hereafter. Observing with the aid of intelligence, I have mentioned to thee only a small part of the merits of Ganga. My power, however, is inadequate to speak of all the merits of the sacred river, or, indeed, to measure her puissance and sanctity. One may, by putting forth one's best powers, count the stones that occur in the mountains of Meru or measure the waters that occur in the ocean, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... formation of a wise and well-balanced government for a free people. It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... of British force in a pitched battle on the soil of India, would be a calamity of which no man could calculate the consequences; yet such a result would not have been impossible, if the contempt of our commanders for the enemy had brought them to the encounter with inadequate numbers; and the rulers of India have reason to congratulate themselves that this underrated force remained quiescent during our Affghan disasters, when intrigue and difficulties were at their height among both Hindoos and Moslems, and every disposable regiment was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... dreams," that nation is declining to the naturalistic level. For this clearly indicates that the humane and religious resources of civilization, of which the church is among the chief confessed and appointed guardians, are utterly inadequate to the strain imposed upon them. Hence force, not justice, though they may sometimes have happened to coincide, and power, not reason or faith, are becoming the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the brief for the defence was in itself remarkable. The fee, as I took the trouble to find out, was not large; indeed, for a man of Holymead's commanding eminence at the bar it might be called a small one, and he should have returned the brief because the fee was inadequate. We have, therefore, two things to consider—his defence of the man charged with the murder of your father, and his readiness to do the work without regard to the monetary side of it. Much was said at the time in some of the papers about a barrister being a servant of the court and compelled ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Indian, were considerably over a thousand. Now, if the ship was to be at all adequately guarded and manned, Captain Drake could not spare more than a score of men as a land force. Obviously, this was totally inadequate if the foe stood his ground; so weak a band might be shot down one by one in the forest. Yet no man would leave the coast without making some real effort to aid his captured comrades. The brave fellows could readily put ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... well-being of a nation; that these elements, however, in the absence of those of an opposite or counteracting nature, had a morbid rather than a healthful action, and kept humanity in darkness and stagnation, being inadequate to all the requirements of social progress; that a new development then began, under the impulse of a new and opposite principle, which evolved precisely those tendencies the want of which had prevented the complete realization of the highest purposes of national life; such were intellectual culture, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... her words and smiled appealingly at the end as if for consideration for her inadequate ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... dignified; there is nothing more inartistic, except a woman who is trying to be brave on an inadequate income." ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Mike Gaynor shuffled moodily up to them. Usually Mike's clothes suggested a general despondency; his wiry body, devoid of roundness as a rat trap, seemed inadequate to the proper expression of their original design. The habitual air of endeavorless decay had been accentuated by the failure of Lucretia to win the Brooklyn. Mike had shrunken into his allenveloping coat with pathetic moroseness. The look of pity in his eye when it lighted ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... made of our rugged speech was a revelation to us, and words, as we employ them, are inadequate to express our enjoyment of Mona's song, when to its former beauty was added the clear enunciation of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... would have taken a new view of beauty and grace. By taste, he means not only a knowledge of what is right in art, but a power to estimate degrees of excellence, "and by comparison proceeds from justness to refinement." This, too, we think inadequate to express what we mean by taste, which appears to us to have something of a sense, independent of knowledge. Using words in a technical sense, we may define them to mean what we please, but certainly the words themselves, "copy" and "imitation," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Old Charges, or Gothic Constitutions, began to be collected and collated, a number having already been burned by scrupulous Masons to prevent their falling into strange hands. In 1721, Grand Master Montagu found fault with the Old Charges as being inadequate, and ordered Dr. Anderson to make a digest of them with a view to formulating a better set of regulations for the rule of the Lodges. Anderson obeyed—he seems to have been engaged in such a work already, and may have suggested the idea to the Grand Master—and ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... yield his rights to the crown of France in case of the death of a sickly infant, the great-grandson of Louis XIV., who was heir apparent to the throne; but, in other respects, the terms were not more favorable than what Louis had offered in 1706, and very inadequate to the expenses of the war. The allies should have yielded to the overtures of Louis before, or should have persevered. But party spirit, and division in the English cabinet and parliament, prevented the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... wonderful contrast or relation between his personal qualities, the position which he held, and the life that he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all history has to show; and it is a pity that Southey's biography—so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man—should have taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... young gentleman in question is settled down as a master sweep in the neighbourhood of Battle-bridge, his distinguishing characteristics being a decided antipathy to washing himself, and the possession of a pair of legs very inadequate to the support of his ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... were willing to abandon his enterprise. He sent back to Cadzand for artillery, but it was flood-tide, the waters were out, and it was not till late in the afternoon that nine pieces arrived. The stadholder ordered a cannonade, less with the hope of producing an impression by such inadequate means on so strong a work, than with the intention of showing the enemy that he had brought field-guns with him, and was not merely on an accidental foray. At the same time, having learned that the garrison, which was commanded by Trivulzio, was composed of only a few regular ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at Portsmouth. He escapes from an English gun-brig to a Norwegian vessel, the Thor, which is driven from her course in a voyage to Hammerfest, and wrecked on a desolate shore. The survivors experience the miseries of a long sojourn in the Arctic circle, with inadequate means of supporting life, but ultimately, with the aid of some friendly but thievish Lapps, they succeed in making their way to a reindeer station and so southward to Tornea and home again. The story throughout is singularly vivid and truthful ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... how little had been done, as well as by the immensity of what was still to do. Making every allowance for the initial difficulties that had to be overcome, and the long process of preparing the soil, the net result of seventy years' effort seemed to her inadequate. There is only a Christian community of 10,800, and a communion-roll of 3412, and the districts contiguous to the coast have alone been occupied, whilst no real impression has been made on the interior. Over the vast, sun-smitten land she wept, as her Master wept over the great ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... process of time have come to be regarded as a mere mischance. But no such excuse can now be of any avail. According to some accounts of this second massacre, no escort whatever was furnished. According to others, the escort was a mere mockery, consisting of a totally inadequate number of French troops, who were very willing to see their enemies butchered, and who did not even make any attempt to restrain their allies. All that can be known for certain is, that if there was any escort ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... occupation, however, related to the scenes into which I was about to enter. My imaginations were, of course, crude and inadequate; and I found an uncommon gratification in comparing realities, as they successively occurred, with the pictures which my wayward fancy ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... I also presented a letter of introduction from that gentleman's private secretary, and I presume these London financiers called a meeting of the board of directors to consider this weighty matter. I waited for hours, and was finally ushered into a private office. It was as dingy and inadequate as are most London offices, and I was properly impressed with its age, traditions ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... has organic evolution been brought about?" Our misleading writer proceeds as follows: "The Darwinian theory of natural selection acting on minute differences is generally considered nowadays to be inadequate, but no alternative theory has taken its place." This is an entirely erroneous statement. Though Darwin held that natural selection acted most widely and largely on minute differences, he did not ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... One never says in a book what one wishes to say. It is impossible to express one's self. I know how to talk with my pen as well as any other person; but, after all, to talk or to write, what futile occupations! How wretchedly inadequate are the little signs which form syllables, words, and phrases. What becomes of the idea, the beautiful idea, which these miserable hieroglyphics hide? What does the reader make of my writing? A series of false sense, of counter ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... definite choice of a subject whereon to employ his intellect was at one and the same time a proof of how far his development had progressed and a warning of what lay before him. However chaotic the material in which he proposed to work, however inadequate his powers, it was yet a truth that, could he execute anything at all, it would be something of the kind thus vaguely contemplated. His intellect was combative, and no subject excited it to such activity as this of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... with which she feels she could be reasonably content; but again they pass them by. Finally they reach a small and mean dwelling in a small and mean thoroughfare. "This," says Saint Peter, "is your habitation." "This!" cries the indignant lady; "I could not possibly live in any place so shabby and inadequate." "I am sorry, madame," replies the saint urbanely; "but we have done the best we could with the materials ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... wherever our troops have been stationed or billeted the French people have everywhere received them more as relatives and intimate friends than as soldiers of a foreign army. For these things words are quite inadequate to express our gratitude. There can be no doubt that the relations growing out of our associations here assure a permanent friendship between the two peoples. Although we have not been so intimately associated with the people of Great Britain, yet their troops and ours when thrown ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... devoted his energies from the time when he laid down his arms at the close of the War between the States to the beginning of his last lingering illness, these "Observations" were for him but an inadequate outlet for the expression of the courageous and hopeful philosophy which was always his distinguishing characteristic. To cover his pain with a jest,—to preach without cant the gospel of love,—to do the best that he could do according to the lights before him—these generous motives and high ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... I enter into your sorrows, and painfully appreciate the pang of disappointment which must have followed this sad intelligence. But so inadequate are words to the consoling of such griefs, it were almost cruel to attempt ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... surprising to learn that in the legendary story of the first colonisation, the Jutish leaders who led the earliest Teutonic host into Thanet should bear the names of Hengest and Horsa, the stallion and the mare. They came in three keels—a ridiculously inadequate number, considering their size and the necessities of a conquering army: and they settled in 449 (for the legends are always most precise where they are least historical) in the Isle of Thanet. "A multitude of whelps," says the Welsh monk Gildas, "came forth from ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... they drew on their stockings, frozen stiff. They had their morning coffee in a chilly room downstairs, where sometimes their slatternly landlady appeared, lugubriously voluble. This morning they ate alone, in silence, and none too happily. Even Annie's buoyant spirits seemed inadequate. A trace of bitterness was in her tone ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... sterling, or three hundred and twenty thousand pounds of gold. [80] His example was neglected, and his treasure was abused, by the nephew of Justin. The riches of Justinian were speedily exhausted by alms and buildings, by ambitious wars, and ignominious treaties. His revenues were found inadequate to his expenses. Every art was tried to extort from the people the gold and silver which he scattered with a lavish hand from Persia to France: [81] his reign was marked by the vicissitudes or rather by the combat, of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Cambridge Press, is to say little. It is hardly too much to say that it is one of the most important contributions to the social and intellectual history of England which has ever been made by a Cambridge man. The title of the work conveys but a very inadequate notion of its wide scope, of the encyclopaedic learning and originality of treatment which it displays, and, least of all, of the abundance of human interest which characterizes it so markedly. It is because of this wealth of human interest that the book must needs exercise a powerful ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... "That is an inadequate answer to my question," she said; "but I will not find fault since you have so good-naturedly acceded to my request. Come to No. — Wabash Avenue at three this afternoon. Papa ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... war our force of light artillery was very inadequate, and rifled ordnance had scarcely been introduced. Our present immense force of the former has been almost entirely created since the commencement of the war; the splendid achievements in rifled artillery have been entirely accomplished within the last three years. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... one house, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. The one was a figure-dancer in Drury Lane Theatre; the other, a woman of professed libertinism. With these he passed all his hours that he could steal from me; and I found that my salary was at times inadequate to the expenses which were incurred by an enlarged circle of new acquaintance, which Mr. Robinson had formed since my appearance in the dramatic scene. Added to this, the bond creditors became so clamorous, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... routes of inquiry are inadequate. If modern views of selection are applied to the problem of explaining the appearance of temporal fenestrae, the ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox
... was extreme. The slender means of the first Oblates had been exhausted by the purchase of the house and the erection of a small chapel. Francesca had indeed made over to it her two vineyards of Porta Portese and of St. Paul without the Walls; but the trifling revenue they furnished was wholly inadequate to the support of fifteen persons; and moreover the religions were so endued with the spirit of their foundress, that they never could bring themselves to turn away a beggar from their doors as ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... might have been much different. Thousands of lives might have been spared. In other grey or marginal situations Rapid Dominance could make the difference between a politically acceptable response or inadequate action with consequences similar to ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... request, Arnold has never been made the subject for a biography. By means of his letters, his official reports, and statements of his friends, however, one is able to trace the successive stages of his career, as he steadily grew in honor and public usefulness. Though somewhat inadequate, the picture thus presented is singularly pleasing and attractive. The subjoined appreciations have been selected with a view of giving the student a glimpse of Arnold as ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... societies, with "pleasure clubs," with organizations connected with churches and factories which are filling a genuine social need. And yet the whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it. Who is responsible for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have emigrated from other ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... for journalists and 'literary persons.' The harvest will be plenteous indeed, but unless my advice be followed in some shape or another, the labourers will be comparatively few and superlatively inadequate. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... earnestly desired that the proposed monument should be ornamented with a carved border of marine plants, intertwined with twisted sea-shells, such as were probably waving over her lover's skeleton, or strewn around it, in the far depths of the Pacific. But Mr. Wigglesworth's chisel being inadequate to the task, she was forced to content herself with a rose, hanging its head from a broken stem. After her departure, I remarked that the symbol was none of ...
— Chippings With A Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the Lafourche country, and protection of the dense population from which recruits could be drawn, were objects of such importance as to justify the attempt to secure them with inadequate means. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... activity is the human intellect! My faulty reason could not define the impenetrable. Consequently it shattered one fruitless conviction after another—convictions which, happily for my after life, I never lacked the courage to abandon as soon as they proved inadequate. From all this weary mental struggle I derived only a certain pliancy of mind, a weakening of the will, a habit of perpetual moral analysis, and a diminution both of freshness of sentiment and of clearness of thought. Usually ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... rationalism which regards the data on which we can reason as a fixed quantity, known to all, and which bases itself on a formal logic, utterly unsuited to a spiritual view of things. Language can only furnish us with poor, misleading, and wholly inadequate images of spiritual facts; it supplies us with abstractions and metaphors, which do not really represent what we know or believe about God and human personality. St. Paul calls attention to this inadequacy by a series of formal contradictions: ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... on the day of your triumph was so inadequate, I wanted to do better to-day. By the way, I ordered the lunch. I trust you ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... passed in review the various influences bearing upon the treatment of the slave, and seen how utterly inadequate they are to protect him from ill-treatment, who can wonder that the tales of real or supposed cruelty inflicted upon slaves by the Southerners are received with indignation by both parties in the States?—the virtuous ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the alacrity to fulfil an humble office conveys more love than the acceptance of the honour of a higher one, and that better, therefore, than the signal service it was the dream of my boyhood to render to his fame and memory, may be the saying of a few, inadequate words upon these scarcely more important supplementary letters ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... through the iron sheathing-plates of the rudder, and not too safe at present, as the ice is treacherous. Hooke says that the conditions are normal now. I wish for his sake that he could get through. He is a good sportsman and keeps on trying, although, I am convinced, he has little hope with this inadequate aerial. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of imports, have made preparations with their usual thorough German completeness. At any given time there is sufficient foodstuff for man and beast stored in state storehouses and the large private concerns to feed the entire German army for twelve months. This might seem inadequate, but is not so, the authorities being well aware that war in Europe at the present time could and would not last longer than ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... His sleeping-room was an enormous one on the second floor, which, with two small anterooms, composed the apartment. The facilities for heating a room of that size, in those times must have been wholly inadequate. Several days elapsed before a physician could be found to attend him. He had quarrelled with two of his former physicians and each refused his aid. Finally, a professor from the medical college, a Dr. Wawruch, was summoned, who ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... 1796.[113] The first great problem was, of course, the general plan of the piece,—how to select, dispose and concentrate. To quicken his imagination Schiller commenced reading again upon the history of the period and soon perceived that what he already knew would be quite inadequate; that it would be necessary to go over the whole ground anew and more thoroughly. He found the material dry, chaotic and abstract; in short, lacking in nearly all the poetic elements which he would have thought indispensable a few years before. He could ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... we wish to reduce the number of mentally defective and socially inadequate individuals we must not only consider measures for preventing as far as possible the transmission of hereditary defect, but must also provide for the youth of the country an environment and training calculated to encourage the ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... wages. The competition even of those days made men beat each other down in clamouring for work to be given them, and afforded to the employers an opportunity of taking workers who willingly accepted an inadequate scale of remuneration. This state of things he considered to be unjustifiable and unjust. No one had any right to make profit out of the wretchedness of the poor. Each human being had the duty of supporting his own life, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... heaps of stones all about the beach, and, as we afterward found, in various other parts of the island, which showed that they had made some provision for the winter, though, with their enormous consumption of food, it proved a very inadequate one. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... idea with sardonic appreciation. Two days of inadequate food and such ideas came! But he and Jill wouldn't be the only ones to think such things if matters continued as they were going. The towns around Boulder Lake were being evacuated. The cordon about it had been made to retreat. There ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... deluge. Now, it is certainly true, that the Bible does describe things as they appear to men. It is, however, beginning to be discovered, that these popular appearances are closely connected with philosophical reality. Our purblind astronomy and prattling geology may be as inadequate to expound the mysteries of the Bible philosophy as was the incoherent science of Strabo and Ptolemy. The experience of another planet, now transacting before our eyes, admonishes us not to limit the resources of Omnipotence by our narrow experience, or to suppose that our young science ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Captain Newport before his return to England made a trip up the James River for the same purpose but on reaching the falls concluded that the way to India did not lie in that direction. These attempts which seem so preposterous to us now show what inadequate ideas then prevailed concerning the size of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... were dissatisfied with an inadequate, partial, unjust representation. The thought grew in them till it developed the broad principle of self-government by the people. They perceived and asserted that truth; they fought for it, and died or lived for it, as the case might be. So they constructed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one still had time to lift the heavy staff. As quickly, the American lowered his head and dove. It may not have been magnificent; it certainly was not war by the rules; but it was eminently effective. To say that the leader went down would be absurdly inadequate. He simply crumpled. Over and over he rolled on the cobbles, while the smirched flag flew clear of his grasp, and ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious, that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise, so vigorous, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... cannot be made to understand. Others, knowing that a university would necessarily be mainly in English hands and give instruction of an English type, fear to establish what would become another Anglifying influence. Thus several small colleges go on, each with inadequate resources, and the Cape youth who desires to obtain a first-rate education is obliged to go to Europe for it. He cannot even get a full course of legal instruction, for there is no complete law school. It is no doubt well that a certain number ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... points in which such an account of recognition is inadequate. To begin with, it might seem at first sight more correct to define recognition as "I have seen this before" than as "this has existed before." We recognize a thing (it may be urged) as having been in our experience before, whatever ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... wholly inadequate, so I slouched heavily after that impossible ball. Again I hit it away into the night, in what I supposed was the vague direction of the quite invisible stick. And in the dead silence I heard the stick rattle as the ball ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton |
