"Incapability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quiet comfort and strength in it. Etta ceased sobbing, and sat with bowed head, looking through her tears into the gay wood fire. It is probable that she failed to realize the great charity of the man who was speaking to her. For the capacity for evil merges at some point or other into incapability for ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the various errors in our systems of society and commerce, which appear (I am not sure if they ever do more than appear) to force us to over-work ourselves merely that we may live; nor about the still more fruitful cause of unhealthy toil—the incapability, in many men, of being content with the little that is indeed necessary to their happiness. I have only a word or two to say about one special cause of over-work—the ambitious desire of doing great or clever things, and the hope of accomplishing ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... combined a constant overflow of emotions from a total incapability of controlling them, and thence a waste of that energy, which should have been reserved for actions, in the passion and effort of mere resolves and menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid alternations of unmanly despair and ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... this was done most of them were drunk, but none were so drunk as poor Macdermot. His intoxication, moreover, was unfortunately not of that sort which was likely to end in quiescence and incapability. It was a sign of the great degradation to which Macdermot had submitted, in joining these men, that in talking over the injuries which Ussher had inflicted on them all, he had quietly heard them canvass Ussher's conduct ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... unsettled, impracticable ordinances for the abominable management of the gold-fields; which ordinances, left to the discretion—that is, the caprice; and to the good sense—that is, the motto, 'odi profanum vulgus et arceo;' and to the best judgment—that is the proverbial incapability of all aristocractical red-tape, HOW TO RULE US VAGABONDS. Both those reasons, I say, must make even the most hardened bibber of Toorak small-beer acknowledge and confess, that the perfidious mistake at head-quarters was, their persisting to make the following Belgravian 'billet-doux' ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... bumps on my head have invariably told me that I lacked diplomacy. This, as I understand it, simply means an incapability of acting the hypocrite. And it does seem under the present system of human existence, that he who fails to practice hypocrisy finds innumerable obstacles to overcome, which otherwise might be avoided. ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered—vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative. Every ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... circumstances, and in different companies, fallen to my lot to propose a toast to those by whom, at the time, I have had the honour to be surrounded, I have sometimes, I will cheerfully own—for why should I deny it?—felt the overwhelming nature of the task I have undertaken, and my own utter incapability to do justice to the subject. If such have been my feelings, however, on former occasions, what must they be now—now—under the extraordinary circumstances in which I am placed. (Hear! hear!) To describe my feelings accurately, would be impossible; ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... nor men more sure than the development, among them or in them of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention or incapability of understanding it. I think that the central man of all the world, as representing in perfect balance and imaginative, moral and intellectual faculties, all at their highest is Dante; and in him the grotesque reaches at once the most distinct ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... me, into a similar fallacy when, after arguing in rather a curious way to prove that matter may exist without any of the known properties of matter, and may therefore be changeable, he concludes that it can not be eternal, because "eternal (passive) existence necessarily involves incapability of change." I believe it would be difficult to point out any other connection between the facts of eternity and unchangeableness, than a strong association between the two ideas. Most of the a priori arguments, both religious ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of representing either a man, a ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... resembling ostriches. Their incapability of flying is compensated by the exceeding speed with which they run. They ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... rather that you should have too much, than an atom too little. I am far from surprised that, having seen what you have seen, and suffered what you have suffered, you should have opened your soul to a sense of our fallen nature; and the incapability of man to heal himself. My opinions may not be in all points the same as yours; but I have experienced a similar alteration. I was for many years a Socinian; and at times almost a Naturalist, but sorrow, and ill health, and disappointment ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... surrounding conditions to perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless conduct. In this way, the public judgment would sift out incapability and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... (which in Venice takes a formidable size, and impresses you at first sight as ordnance); a patch-bag; a porte-monnaie; many lead-pencils in the stump; scissors, pincushions, and the Beata Vergine in a frame. Indeed, this incapability of throwing things away is made to bear rather severely upon us in some things, such as the continual reappearance of familiar dishes at table—particularly veteran bifsteca. But we fancy that ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... opened the folds of the letter; feeling, while I did so, the strangest incapability of fixing my attention on the very lines that I was burning to read. But why dwell any longer on sensations which I can't describe? It will be more to the purpose if I place the letter itself, for future reference, on this ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... children in Greater New York whose only playground is the street. Result, the street gang; and this gang is the really vital influence in the life of most boys in the large cities. It is this life, which develops, as Mr. Riis says, "dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, gambling propensities, absence of energy, and carelessness of the happiness of others." The great homeless, yardless tenement, where the children of the immigrants are condemned to live, is the nursery of sickness and crime. The child is left for good influence ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... ensuing month, and on the fulfilment of that promise it depended, whether my character as a gentleman was still preserved or irretrievably lost. Ellen, I cannot attempt to describe to you what I suffered at that time. The wrestling with an impossibility, the struggle after what was unattainable, the incapability of resigning myself to what seemed inevitable, the powerless rage, the smarting pride, the agonised self-reproach; it was dreadful, and no one to speak ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... moment I have not known one happy hour, and the first punishment dealt upon my sin was an incapability to enjoy that affection for which I have forfeited all claim to mercy, here and hereafter. The remembrance of Theresa, not in her present state of self-abstraction, but captivating as when she first received my vows before God, to 'love ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... himself to this. He said to himself, 'Fate has led me to love this sort of woman. I must accept her as she is, with all her defects, with her instinct for treachery, with her passion for the admiration of the world, with her incapability for being true to an ideal, or for isolating herself in the adoration of one man. I cannot get away from her. She has me fast. I cannot live without her. Then I must bear the torture that jealousy ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... I do most sincerely rejoice that 'the first condition is one to which you are not authorized to promise an acquiescence.' I could not deem acquiescence a remuneration, nor could I value it otherwise than as evidence of conviction, produced by facts and the tenor of a whole life, of my incapability of descending to base acts for gain at any period of my existence, especially at a moment when I can prove that I had objects of the highest national importance and the most brilliant personal prospects in view. In confirmation of disinterestedness, I further hold my retention of the 'secret ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... the Gewandhaus under my direction (for the Orchestral Pension Fund Concert). Perhaps this performance will serve as a definite warning for other concert-conducting, which might have been thought of, to question my "incapability as a composer," so often demonstrated (see the proof ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... counterfeit of modern manufacture; and he set himself to the work of filling a magazine with Saxon Poems,—counterparts of those of Ossian, as like his as one of his misty stars is to another. This incapability to amalgamate with the literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.—Contrast, in this respect, the effect of Macpherson's publication ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to Joanna Baillie, Scott makes some very sensible remarks as to the incapability of such a man as Jeffrey appreciating a work of the imagination, distinguished ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... but that desperate strain of forces does not deceive us: it is only a proof of the abdication of Austria-Hungary. We have lost all confidence in the vitality of Austria-Hungary, and we no more recognise its right to existence. Through its incapability and dependence it has proved to the whole world that the assumption of the necessity of Austria has passed, and has through this war been proved to be wrong. Those who have defended the possibility and necessity of Austria-Hungary—and at one time it was Palacky himself—demanded ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... from natural scenery strikes me as it does you. The total incapability which I have found in myself to associate any but the most languid feelings, with the God-like objects which have surrounded me, and the nauseous efforts to impress my admiration into the service ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the platform a few minutes after the train had arrived. That entire incapability of devising administrative measures for the management of large crowds, which is one of the characteristics of Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than at York. Three different ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... human succour is rendering to them. They cast a furtive glance around, and their countenances indicate all the horror of their minds at their late reverses, and to be thinking less of the bodily pains they are enduring, than of their incapability to revenge themselves upon their victors! Such was the scene exhibited this morning on the steps of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... not suffer to perish, has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to trace to their farthest limits the true laws and likelihoods even of such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various |
