"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Aldermen, fourteen policemen, seventeen officers in the fire department, four deputy sheriffs, and forty Negro magistrates besides. It is probable that not one of these was qualified to fill his office. The new government soon found itself incapable of governing. It could not control its own. The homes of the people were at the mercy of thieves, burglars and incendiaries, and the police were either absolutely incapable of preventing crime, or connived ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... rougher puff blows out the flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion. Then on her dazed senses there supervenes—so she swore—the consciousness that some object is moving in the room—moving apparently of its own accord—moving in direct opposition to all the laws of nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm—a strange something—globular-white—looking, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... approaches thrusts his hand, armed with the splinter of wood, into his terrible mouth, which the creature closes directly, and by these means forces the sharp points into each of his jaws, where they stick fast. He is then incapable of doing hurt, and they pull him to the shore by the cord. "Pray, sir," said Tommy, "is this dreadful animal capable of being tamed?" "Yes," answered Mr Barlow; "I believe, as I have before told you, there is no animal that may not be rendered mild and inoffensive by good usage. There ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... temporary occultation. His own, no doubt, have not always been in their primitive vogue. Even at first, English readers complained of the difficulty caused by his Scotch, and now many make his I "dialect" an excuse for not reading books which their taste, debauched by third-rate fiction, is incapable of enjoying. But Scott has never disappeared in one of those irregular changes of public opinion remarked on by his friend Lady Louisa Stuart. In 1821 she informed him that she had tried the experiment of reading Mackenzie's "Man ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wife being one person could not contract nor enter into a business partnership with each other; neither could one convey property to the other without the intervention of a third party. The wife was incapable of receiving a legacy unless it was willed to another person as trustee, for her use and benefit, and if a legacy were paid directly to her, the husband could compel the executor to ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... bad as Madame de Serizy; you laugh justice to scorn," said Camusot, who was incapable of flouting his profession. "Madame de Serizy seized the minutes and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... formed a part of the penitentiary procedure, and by which the crown and Holy Office made pecuniary gains. The second secured secrecy in the action of the tribunal, whereby a door was opened to delation, and accused persons were rendered incapable of rational defense. The third elaborated the judicial method, so as to leave no loophole of escape even for those who showed a wish to be converted, empowering the use of torture, precluding the accused from ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... approaching procession, with its sizzling band and its abhorrent orange-and-blue flags, following in the wake of Bill Kenna, whose proud post was at the head of the procession, carrying a cushion on which was an open Bible. The fact that Bill was a notorious ruffian—incapable of reading, and reeling drunk—had no bearing on his being chosen as Bible carrier. The Bible fell in the dust many times and was accidentally trampled on by its bearer, which was unfortunate but not important. Bill ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and supposed that Waally's fleet had intercepted her, Betts coming back for reinforcements. But, as the boat drew near, the fluttering of female dresses was seen, and then his unerring glass let him get a distant view of the sweet face of his young wife. From that moment the governor was incapable of giving a coherent or useful order, until Bridget had arrived. Vessels that came in from the southward were obliged to pass through the narrow entrance, between the Reef and the Hog Lot, where was the drawbridge so often mentioned. There was ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... become more acutely accentuated with each passing year. Finally, it has furnished a signal proof of the fairness and good will with which two friendly nations can approach and determine issues involving national sovereignty and by their nature incapable of submission to a third ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... be represented in a modern play or novel as a kind of degenerate; a shifty-eyed moral maniac with a twist in his soul's backbone and green blood in his veins. The mediaevals were quite capable of boiling him in melted lead, but they would have been quite incapable of despairing of his soul in the modern fashion. A striking a fortiori case is that of the strange mediaeval legend of Robert the Devil. Robert was represented as a monstrous birth sent to an embittered woman actually in answer to ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... look into Eleanore Leavenworth's face would have been enough to satisfy you that she is incapable of crime," was her unexpected answer; and, lifting her head with a proud gesture, Mary Leavenworth fixed her eyes steadfastly ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... about it, he had always supposed this to be the case. But now it struck him as a very strange thing that Miss Annie did not attend to her husband, but allowed his mistress and himself to do everything that was done for him. It was a question which his mind was totally incapable of solving, but when he reached the house, he spoke to Letty on the subject. "Bress your soul!" exclaimed that well-nourished person, "dat's not Mister Null, wot married Miss Annie. Dat's Mister Crof', an' he aint married to ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... have perhaps suffered more hitherto than any of the brave men who have risked their lives in this house. It is a horrible feeling to be obliged to sit still when honor summons one to the foremost ranks. But, for this very reason, I have no right to dictate to you. He who is incapable of fighting has no right to decide when the fighting shall cease; nay, I have hardly a right to tell you my views, because I fear that they may influence your high-hearted minds; besides which, unfortunately, I do not know the men who defend ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... there, however. Excessive childbearing is now recognized by the medical profession as one of the most prolific causes of ill health in women. There are in America hundreds of thousands of women, in good health when they married, who have within a few years become physical wrecks, incapable of mothering their ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... to lead out the water either of the Zambesi or any of its tributaries; no machinery has ever been used to raise it even from the stream, but droughts and starvations are endured, as if they were inevitable dispensations of Providence, incapable of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... well-marked seasonal sexual rhythm in animals. Most of the higher animals breed only once or twice a year, and at such a period that the young are born when food is most plentiful. At other periods the female is incapable of breeding, and without sexual desires, while the male is either in the same condition or in a condition of latent sexuality. Under the influence of domestication, animals tend to lose the strict periodicity of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... them and him. They hung there in all weathers, with the wind and rain driving in upon them; facing only the outsides of all the houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and shone upon the windows or came puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of participating in any of the good things that were constantly being handed through the street doors and iron railings to prodigious cooks. Being but a simple man, he invested the Bells with a strange and solemn ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... application, and cannot be abandoned while government by the people endures." In 1904, the Democratic party, while professing adherence to fundamental principles declared in favor of casting into the outer darkness of the fictitious "independence" every people "incapable of being governed under American laws, and in consonance with the American Constitution," but the Populists still held to the principles of the Declaration, while the Republicans held to ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... and laughing, carrying out rebellions and little plots as though the centuries that stretch ahead were still her willing slaves, has in the end become to onlookers a veritable nightmare. Puzzled by a phenomenon which is so disconcerting as to be incapable of any clear definition, they have ended by declaring that an empty Treasury is an empty rule, adding that as it is solely from this monetary viewpoint that the New China ought to be judged, their opinion is the one which will finally be accepted as authoritative. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... time to time, tried to maintain some sort of friendly relations with him; but it seemed as the years passed that he grew ever lonelier and more bitter, and not only more friendless, but seemingly more incapable of friendliness. In times past I have seen what men call tragedies—I saw once a perfect young man die in his strength—but it seems to me I never knew anything more tragic than the life and death of Old Toombs. If it cannot be said of a man when he dies that either ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... bear me beyond his reach I had not. I could not vanish with a thought. The door was open, but my murderer was interposed between that and me. Of self-defence I was incapable. The phrenzy that lately prompted me to blood was gone; my state was desperate; ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... gayety is not to be despised, considering that we had been sitting still for hours in cold and darkness, and had had nothing to eat or drink since our early breakfast. Even the one disconsolate member of our company was perhaps really incapable of exerting herself so much as we younger and naturally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... artillery. With what silent eagerness the newspapers are devoured in war-time when the details of a battle appear! If two cocks in a farm- yard get at one another the heaviest bumpkin from the plough-tail, who seems incapable of an emotion, grows animated. I suppose it is because of the animal nature of which we partake which frequently excites us to prey on other animals and quarrel with one another. Fights were very rare at Weston, but they took place occasionally, and ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... another the choice between the imitation and the real. The rightful pill and the cork ball are placed together on the floor of the jar. Will the Spider be able to know the one that belongs to her? The fool is incapable of doing so. She makes a wild rush and seizes haphazard at one time her property, at another my sham product. Whatever is first touched becomes a good capture ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... as the channel filled. Whilst I was thus employed, Mr. Poole and Mr. Stuart were on the ranges, and both, as well as the men generally, continued in good health; but I was exceedingly anxious about Mr. Browne, who had a low fever on him, and was just then incapable of much fatigue; nevertheless he begged so hard to be permitted to accompany me on my contemplated journey, that I ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... it was, her policy taught her to endure whatever Miss Debby might choose to inflict. So she leaned back hopelessly in her chair, while the old lady snapped and cracked a plate of candied fruits with a vigor of which her teeth looked incapable. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... sword. But, as in the revolution of 1648, so in the revolution of 1653, no thought of military despotism can be fairly traced in the acts of the general or the army. They were in fact far from regarding their position as a revolutionary one. Though incapable of justification on any formal ground, their proceedings since the establishment of the Commonwealth had as yet been substantially in vindication of the rights of the country to representation and self-government; and public opinion had gone fairly with the army ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... balance, and weighing off the proper amount of silver, larger payments being made in sycee. This want of a currency arises from their utter lack of confidence in the coinage of their own country. No currency that the Imperial Government might issue, not like the copper cash, or tsien, incapable of adulteration, would be above suspicion; and while the shameless system of mandarin plunder and fraud continues, it is hopeless to expect a proper currency in China, unless the foreigners interfere or obtain the control in this part of the national ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Herr Haskins to his fine home, where they were splendidly entertained that night. Tubby ate so much dinner that he was incapable of joining in the conversation that immediately followed, though that fact was of minor importance, because, as a rule, he only made himself a nuisance when there was any serious discussion ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... and losing himself in the subtleties in which the Ibn Ezras and the Nahmanides were entangled. His common sense rendered him the same service in the interpretation of many a Talmudic passage that Saadia and Nissim had thought incapable of explanation unless wrested from its literal meaning. Since justice requires the admission, I shall presently dwell upon the points in which Rashi's lack of philosophic training was injurious to him. Here ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... that the passion of Maurice was unrequited. He had been puzzled in what manner to interpret Madeleine's determined rejection of her cousin. He was unable to comprehend a purity of motive which his narrow mind was equally incapable of experiencing. He finally attributed her conduct partly to a dread of her aunt's and his own displeasure, partly to a desire to render herself more highly valued by Maurice, and to gain a ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... elusive; stone walls are not elusive, but they do not lend themselves to an easy way across country. As to women, theoretically Estelle desired their friendship just as much as that of men; but in practice she generally found them unsympathetic, and incapable of the finest type of intimacy. They did not seem to know what the word devotion meant. Men did, especially young men, though the older ones talked more about it. Estelle had already seen herself after marriage as a confidante ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... been saying too," remarked the woman called Mrs Wishing in a hesitating voice, "for Mrs James White is a very strict woman and holds herself high, and 'Lilac' is a fanciful kind of a name; but I dunno." She broke off as if feeling incapable of dealing ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... before the shaking approach of Booverman's frantic club. Incapable of speech, he waved him feebly to drive. He began incredulously to count up again, ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... wasn't by any means incapable of supporting herself; and at the fresh, youthful age of seventy-nine she went into the business of providing teas for perspiring cyclists, and storing the cycles of those travellers who decided that they had better return by train. Her first customers were four young men who left their cycles ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... understand me better. I handed the whole affair over to Nevin, and to you that seems like ennui, I know. But it does not mean that; it simply means that as a hopeless man of business I appoint another to do what I know myself incapable of doing. Once I am committed to the production of a book, Don, I cease to exist outside its pages. I live and move and have my being in it. But please don't misunderstand. Anything within my power to do for Flamby I will do gladly. I only learned to-day of her second bereavement. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... of ranch life, the social triumphs of her sister making her a little restless. She was incapable of feeling jealous, but material ambitions made her anxious that her children should not bring up the rear of the procession in which the other grandchildren were ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... uses to which they ultimately contribute. Now that the time has come to establish for ourselves an organ in the press, addressing higher orders of intelligence than those which are needed to destroy and incapable of reconstructing, the time has also arrived for the reappearance in his proper name and rank of the man in whom you take so gracious an interest. In vain you have pressed him to do so before; till now he had not amassed ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Noachites by the Tyrian branch of the spurious system, in the symbols, myths, and legends which the former received from the latter, but which it so modified and interpreted as to make them consistent with its own religious system. One thing, at least, is incapable of refutation; and that is, that we are indebted to the Tyrian Masons for the introduction of the symbol of Hiram Abif. The idea of the symbol, although modified by the Jewish Masons, is not Jewish in its inception. It was evidently borrowed from the pagan mysteries, where Bacchus, ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... work (30th June, 1837), he said, "By one set of intimate acquaintances, especially well informed, he has been killed outright; by another, driven mad; by a third, imprisoned for debt; by a fourth, sent per steamer to the United States; by a fifth, rendered incapable of mental exertion for evermore; by all, in short, represented as doing anything but seeking in a few weeks' retirement the restoration of that cheerfulness and peace of which a sad bereavement had ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sun that melted the frozen torrents and set them boiling; with that sun removed, they froze again, and the army and all France became what they had been before, mere dead corpses—that and nothing more; incapable of thought, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... language of Indian philosophy it is the delusion or misconception which makes the soul imagine itself a personal agent and think, I see, I hear, I slay, I am slain, whereas the soul is really incapable of action and the acts ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was called so invariably, even outside of the family, and, in truth, he was indeed one of those good men who seem to be the born cousins of all the world—Cousin Benedict, always impeded by his long arms and his long limbs, would be absolutely incapable of attending to matters alone, even in the most ordinary circumstances of life. He was not troublesome, oh! no, but rather embarrassing for others, and embarrassed for himself. Easily satisfied, besides being very accommodating, forgetting to eat or drink, if some one did not bring him ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... us; but notwithstanding all his merry quips as we went home, not once could we be moved to laughter. My heart was indeed right heavy; a bitter drop had fallen into it by reason of Cousin Maud. I had ever deemed her incapable of anything but what was truest and best, and she had proved herself a double-dealer; and young as I was, and rejoicing in life, I said, nevertheless, in my soul's dejection, that if life was such that every ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... her heart would burst with its palpitations of fear, but she was incapable of flight. Her limbs seemed like leaden weights. Some force working without the zone of her mental control ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... possible for two natures so incapable of disguise—the one from simplicity and frankness, the other from ungovernable temper,—to have continued in relations of amity, notwithstanding their disagreement upon a question which was at that moment setting the world in arms, both themselves and the country would ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... do spring. The skipper sprang four yards, and let off a screech which was the subject of much comment on the barque which had just passed. When Bob, who came shuffling up at the double, reached him he was leaning against the side, incapable of ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... disliked Zanetti's soft and delicate treatment, so characteristic of 18th-century work, and considered his interpretation of Parmigianino and Raphael little short of sacrilege. Since Jackson was incapable of hiding his feelings a quarrel became inevitable. The first rift came when Zanetti let Jackson have for a few weeks a drawing by Parmigianino, the Venus and Cupid with a Bow, to be executed in four blocks. The print was done "intirely in Hugo's [da Carpi's] manner, with ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite of themselves. They simply endure our laws and our yoke. They are impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray us and return to their former wild and mischievous liberty. The rose and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... But you have no right to judge so unfavorably of my heart. If I have spoken to my aunt with boyish petulance when she vexed me, at least it was to her face, and regretted and atoned for to her satisfaction. I am incapable of deceiving her, much less of ridiculing her either behind her back or before her face. I respond to her love for me with sincere gratitude, and the sister of my grandmother shall never want any attention that an own grandson could render ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... startled eyes he beheld a young girl, clad after the manner of a settler's daughter, standing a few yards away, staring at him with wild horrified eyes. The girl's fingers were clutching her hair, her face was white, her limbs convulsed, she seemed glued to the spot, incapable of movement, but power of screaming remained with her, and she exerted it to the utmost—she screamed, and screamed, and screamed again, the bush resounded with the echoes ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... is pointed out elsewhere (see p. 94), is arranged in patterns after the fashion of a kaleidoscope. This arises from the fact that the fragments of which it is composed are entirely disjointed, and probably incapable of being pieced together. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... I should," continued Hester, "if I were in political life. If a man threw in his lot with me, and then, when some means of worldly advancement seemed probable from the other side, deserted to it, I should not in consequence think him incapable of being a good husband and father and landlord. But I should never again believe that he cared for what I had staked my all on. And when he began to talk as if he cared (as they always do, as if nothing had happened) I should not show ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... acquires some knowledge of one or two foreign languages; a knowledge, however, which is seldom sufficient to enable him either to speak or write them with propriety. In other respects he commonly returns home more conceited, more unprincipled, more dissipated, and more incapable of any serious application, either to study or to business, than he could well have become in so short a time had he lived at home. By travelling so very young, by spending in the most frivolous dissipation the most precious years of his life, at a distance from the inspection and controul ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... to reply, but his speech was unintelligible both to the Indian and the negro. In fact, terror had so paralysed his tongue, as to render him incapable ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... entitled women property holders to vote for representatives in Parliament, and who claimed that the word "man" in Parliamentary statutes should be interpreted to include women. In the case of the 5,346 householders of Manchester, the court held that "every woman is personally incapable" in a legal sense.[288] This legal contest had been fully reported in The Revolution, and disappointing as the verdict was, Susan looked upon this attempt to establish justice as an indication of a great ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... or thing, the said trust so as aforesaid to convey and assure the said last-mentioned tract or parcel of land and premises to the said 'Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning,' in the manner herein before directed, should be incapable of being accomplished or carried into effect, or otherwise become, or be, or be deemed or construed to be invalid, illegal, or inoperative, then and in either or any of those cases upon trust, and that they the said John Richardson, James Reid, John Strachan, and James Dunlop, or the survivors ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... reverence, in the minds of many," replied the philosopher of Academus. "As for the multitude, they consider all principles of right and wrong as things that may exist, or not exist, according to the vote of the Athenian people. Of ideas eternal in their nature, and therefore incapable of being created or changed by the will of a majority, they cannot conceive. When health is restored, they will return to the old worship of forms, as readily as they changed from Pericles to Cleon, and will again change from ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... to a word against Captain Parsons, Mrs. Jackson. Whatever he did, he had a perfect right to do. He's incapable of acting otherwise than as ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... hard to entirely agree with Lamb here. Hissing seems to me to proceed for the most part from ill-temper, or at least from the dissatisfaction of the head. Applause is often the outburst of the heart, the gush of a feeling, an enthusiasm incapable of restraint. No wonder that the retired actor longs for a sniff of the footlights and for the echo of the reverberating plaudits to the accompaniment of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... bolsters; and for the new Wilkins's a bathroom was not more modern than a bolster.) Also, other hotels resembled Wilkins's. The Majestic, too, had a chamberlain at its portico and an assortment of pages to prove to its clients that they were incapable of performing the simplest act for themselves. Nevertheless, the difference between Wilkins's and the Majestic was enormous; and yet so subtle was it that Edward Henry could not immediately detect where it resided. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... dark by five o'clock; that wan darkness caused by the snow, and I shook my men. Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable oi moving or of standing upright, and their joints were stiff from the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... struck with a thousand new amusing Objects around it, and born away as a Feather before the Wind; and, on the other hand, how, when Distempers seize it, the feeble Powers are over-born in a Moment, and render'd incapable of any Degree of Application and Attention. And, Lord, wilt thou open thine Eyes on such a one, to bring it into strict Judgment with thee[c]? Amidst all the Instances of thy Patience, and thy Bounty, to ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... Rostopchin said: "In France the shoemakers want to become noble; while here, the nobles would like to turn shoemakers." But, in spite of all, the greater part of this caste, with its essential conservative instincts, was nothing more than an inert mass, without initiative, and incapable even of defending its own interests except by the aid of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... and gen. thing, to hinder, render incapable of, restrain: inf. ic hine ne mihte ... ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... logicians state, that one cannot have a concept of an individual, but only a representation. The so-called concept of the individual is always a universal or general concept, full of details, very rich, if you will, but however rich it be, yet incapable of attaining to that individuality, to which historical knowledge, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... thought that Negroes were incapable of education, but we have found ourselves mistaken, and now favor the education of the race, trusting that with better edification ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... the tubers are of most value when cooked, although some authors affirm to the contrary. It seems possible to prove this on philosophical principles; for it is well known that the starch contained in the potato is incapable of affording nourishment until the containing globules are broken, and one of the most efficient means of doing this seems to ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... you that this is not a company of teetotallers." "Ask them what wine they would like," whispered the waitress behind me, who saw my plight, and who evidently pitied it, for she added, "Don't let that nasty man at the other end of the table bully you." But I was incapable of maintaining the deception in which I had been innocently involved, and, taking my courage in both hands, I frankly told the company that I was not a commercial traveller, had never in my life dined at a commercial table, and, as I knew nothing of the usages ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... he were really underfed. I never saw a German prisoner who was except for the intervals when battle kept the food waiting at the rear away from his mouth, though some who were under-sized and ill-proportioned looked incapable of absorbing nutrition. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... councils of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in a readjustment. He was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through with his purpose, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... members of society some taste of the advantages arising from commerce, from public order, and from personal security, the human mind became conscious of powers which it did not formerly perceive, and fond of occupations or pursuits of which it was formerly incapable. Towards the beginning of the twelfth century, we discern the first symptoms of its awakening from that lethargy in which it had been long sunk, and observe it turning with curiosity ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... quality, which they had in common, had been the root of their sin; and was now the instrument of their suffering. Stronger people could have borne up better; worse people might have found a certain evil solace in evil ways and with evil associates: but Jim and Sally were incapable of any such course; they were simply two utterly broken-spirited and hopeless children whose punishment had been greater than they could bear. In a dogged way, because they must live, Jim went ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man incapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence, the Lilliputians think nothing can be more absurd than for a prince to employ such men as disown the authority ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... separated them from the German army, three days' march; they did not exactly know where it was; they believed it scattered, possessing little unity, badly informed, led somewhat at random upon several points at once, incapable of a movement converging upon one single point, like Sedan; they believed that the Crown Prince of Saxony was marching on Chalons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia was marching on Metz; they were ignorant of everything appertaining ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... government (on the contrary, its influence causes their continual degradation), but through the fact that all men are constantly growing better and better of themselves, so that even the most wicked, who are in power, will become less and less wicked, till at last they are so good as to be incapable ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... was in the hands and at the mercy of an unscrupulous villain, who was incapable of performing a noble or magnanimous act, but base enough to resort to any means in the use of which to carry an end, or gain a point. She but too well knew the fate before her, if no means of resistance were placed in her hands; and where ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... we may thus greatly deceive ourselves, for to ascertain whether a small isolated area, or a large open area like a continent, has been most favourable for the production of new organic forms, we ought to make the comparison within equal times; and this we are incapable ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... beyond Example, in an unusual Scene of Life, whom no Temptations, or Sufferings, could subdue. It is a fine, and glorious Original, for the Fair to copy out and imitate. Our own Sex, too, require it of you, to free us, in some measure, from the Imputation of being incapable of the Impressions of Virtue and Honour; [del. 8th] {and to shew the Ladies, that we are not inflexible ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... immediately after death.' I do not know how he has found this out, but he is a man of science—how then can it be objected against the future vitality of the machines that they are, in their present infancy, at the beck and call of beings who are themselves incapable ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... dreams; yet not more forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held converse—whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead—hands so often grasped—arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes—have long ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... this proposition is self-evident; for no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. To require of an artist that he should always reproduce the same picture, would be not one whit more base than to require of a carver that he should ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... it highly probable you know nothing about it," snapped Clara. "You are incapable ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... the method of disputation, which Mr. Kingsley thinks it right to adopt. Observe this first:—He means by a man who is "silly" not a man who is to be pitied, but a man who is to be abhorred. He means a man who is not simply weak and incapable, but a moral leper; a man who, if not a knave, has everything bad about him except knavery; nay, rather, has together with every other worst vice, a spice of knavery to boot. His simpleton is one who has become such, in judgment for his having ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... mighty tropical river were to pour its fertilizing inundation over the country, the result would be the impartation of a vigorous and gigantic growth to the vegetation already in existence, and at the same time the development of life in seeds and germs which had long lain latent in the soil, incapable of vegetation in the unkindly climate of their birth. Exactly in the same way, the flood of a Divine life, poured suddenly into the souls of men, enlarged and ennobled qualities which had been used already, and at the same time developed ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... him orders to use his utmost endeavours to break off the action and retire at the earliest possible moment, as it was impossible for me to send him any support, the 1st Corps being at the moment incapable of movement. ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... siliceous nature a man of iron was needed. After standing, but without enduring, the shock of Lady Dudley, Felix was the fitting mate to Natalie. There is no great merit in divining that to you she was indifferent. In love with her yourself, you have been incapable of perceiving the cold nature of a young woman whom you have fashioned and trained for a man like Vandenesse. The coldness of your wife, if you perceived it, you set down, with the stupid jurisprudence ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... Statute Book, by the laws now in force for the regulation of the tribe. Fearing, in the plenitude of its benevolence, that the Indians would never rise to be men, the Commonwealth has, in the perfection of its wisdom, given them over to absolute pauperism. Believing they were incapable of self-government as free citizens, it has placed them under a guardianship which is sure to keep them in the chains of a servile dependance. Deprecating partial and occasional injustice to them on the part of individuals, it has shrewdly deemed it lawful to plunder them by wholesale, ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... secretly to his master's bedside, and assured him there was treachery. The Marquis answered he could believe no gentleman capable of such baseness, and at any rate he was incapable of escaping through such defiles as they had passed; he told him in that case it could only aggravate his sorrow to see him also betrayed; and advised him to go off immediately, which he did. Early in the morning a party from Dumbarton, summoned ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... malice or inspired by the natural chagrin which animates a man of spirit when he reflects upon the undeserved humiliation which he has endured from her who was once dearer to him than life itself. Mine is a nature susceptible and sensitive, yet, I natter myself, incapable of harbouring sentiments unworthy of a gentleman and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... three girls who had constituted Saint-Castin's household at the fort passed complacently back to their own homes laden with riches, Madockawando's daughter was unreasonably angry, and felt their loss as they were incapable of feeling it for themselves. She was alien to the customs of her people. The fact pressed upon her that her people were completely bound to the white sagamore and all his deeds. Saint-Castin's sins had been open to the tribe, and his repentance ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Comte he knew him to be absolutely incapable of telling a deliberate lie, and absolutely incapable of bartering his word of honour for the sake of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... not pleasant. But if you use exactly the proper quantity, and no more, there is no perfume which is more lovely. "Shy as musk" thus refers to that kind of girlish modesty which never commits a fault even by the measure of a grain—beautiful shyness incapable of being anything but beautiful. Nevertheless the comparison must be confessed one which should be felt ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... according to Epicurus, was a subtle but energetic compound (of air, vapour, heat, and another nameless ingredient), with its best parts concentrated in the chest, yet pervading and sustaining the whole body; still, however, depending for its support on the body, and incapable of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... kind of courage which leads to quick heroic action in great emergencies is apt to be lost by the habit of balancing arguments for and against action. The gentleness which comes from quiet study often makes one incapable of decision when severity is necessary. I was shocked not long ago by hearing a group of sweet, high-bred girls discussing the scene in "William Tell" where the wife of the hero tries to prevent him from going out with his bow and arrow while Gessler is in the neighborhood. With one accord the ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... trouble would be the problem of determining what wages should be paid to shirkers and those incapable of working with efficiency. Would wage courts decide the value of their services? If so, how many thousands of such courts would be required? If not, would state officials or politicians decide the cases? The wages of such persons, no matter how ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... is mainly a question of confidence and balance. As said before, it is better at first to avoid straight running down a steep slope, because the Skis may go so fast that the beginner is quite incapable of keeping up with them and a fall at very high speed is somewhat upsetting and may ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... many months afterwards any cold which the child may catch will be attended by a paroxysmal cough undistinguishable save by its milder character and shorter duration from the previous hooping-cough, though I believe incapable of communicating that disease. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... salination - the process through which fresh (drinkable) water becomes salt (undrinkable) water; hence, desalination is the reverse process; also involves the accumulation of salts in topsoil caused by evaporation of excessive irrigation water, a process that can eventually render soil incapable of supporting crops. siltation - occurs when water channels and reservoirs become clotted with silt and mud, a side effect of deforestation and soil erosion. slash-and-burn agriculture - a rotating cultivation technique in which trees ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... impulse was to try and restore the boy to consciousness; but his second, and the one upon which he acted, was to assure himself that the animal he had shot was really dead, and incapable of making another attack. Holding his rifle in one hand, and cautiously parting the bushes with the other, he peered, with a loudly beating heart, into the thicket. There, stretched out stiff and motionless, he saw the body of a huge alligator. It was dead—dead as a mummy; there ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... the poop and the prow. A galley of this length would only have a beam of 19 feet and a depth of hold of 7 feet 6 inches. The sailing ship of contemporary times would for the same length have had a beam of about 40 feet and an extremely high freeboard; she was in consequence necessarily slow and incapable of sailing ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... sciences of treaty, war, military campaigns, maintenance of posts against the enemy and stratagems by ambuscades and reserves. He was a thorough master of every branch of learning, fond of war and music, incapable of being repulsed by any science or any course of action, and possessed of these and numberless other accomplishments. The Rishi, having wandered over the different worlds, came into that Sabha. And the celestial ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... that he was incapable of moving, of helping himself, at any rate until assistance came. And the water was rising, of course. Would rescue or ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... them and ourselves. I have a twofold object in view, and believe that, by guiding our missionary labors so as to benefit our own country, we shall thereby more effectually and permanently benefit the heathen. Seven years were spent at Kolobeng in instructing my friends there; but the country being incapable of raising materials for exportation, when the Boers made their murderous attack and scattered the tribe for a season, none sympathized except a few Christian friends. Had the people of Kolobeng been in the habit of raising the raw materials of English commerce, the outrage would have ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... France, M. le Blond, had been charged with the affairs of the embassy, and after the arrival of M. de Montaigu, continued to manage them until he had put him into the track. M. de Montaigu, hurt at this discharge of his duty by another, although he himself was incapable of it, became disgusted with the consul, and as soon as I arrived deprived him of the functions of secretary to the embassy to give them to me. They were inseparable from the title, and he told me to take it. As long as I remained with ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... officers were so surprised at the suddenness of the incident and the overthrow of their companion, and for a moment so amused at the latter's appearance, covered as he was from head to foot with the sticky liquor and bleeding from a cut inflicted by the edge of the can, that they were incapable ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... were lolling, ichoglans and pages, with lazy looks and shabby dresses; and among them, sunning himself sulkily on a bench, a poor old fat, wrinkled, dismal white eunuch, with little fat white hands, and a great head sunk into his chest, and two sprawling little legs that seemed incapable to hold up his bloated old body. He squeaked out some surly reply to my friend the dragoman, who, softened and sweetened by the tarts he had just been devouring, was, no doubt, anxious to be polite: and the poor worthy fellow walked away rather crestfallen at ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a piece of integument was hardly a desirable possession. And yet, how many of us have at this very moment a peau de chagrin of our own, diminishing with every costly wish indulged, and incapable, like the magical one of the story, of being ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Solano, and the establishment of the missions on the banks of the Rio Negro, put an end to it. Old laws of Charles V and Philip III* (* 26 January 1523 and 10 October 1618.) had forbidden under the most severe penalties (such as the being rendered incapable of civil employment, and a fine of two thousand piastres), the conversion of the natives to the faith by violent means, and sending armed men against them; but notwithstanding these wise and humane laws, the Rio Negro, in the middle of the last century, was no further ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the Boy. "Why didn't you confide to me before, that you were physically and mentally incapable of packing? I've often noticed that your hold-alls looked like overfed boa constrictors, but I didn't dream things were as bad as this. You had better let Innocentina and me do the work for you. We're what you call 'nailers' ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... as Schopenhauer and so many others have done, down to Sir Almroth Wright's recent hysterical wail in The Times, that woman, on account of her womanhood is incapable of intellectual or social development, paying her sole debt of Nature in bearing and caring for children, is really to state a belief in decay for humankind. Any stigma attached to women is really ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... cried victory, the field of battle and some of the enemy's baggage remaining in my occupation. As a matter of fact, my moral sufferings during the engagement had rivalled those of Mr. Sebright. I was left incapable of fresh hostilities; I owned that the navy of old England was (for me) invincible as of yore; and giving up all thought of the doctor, inclined to salute her veteran flag, in the future, from a prudent distance. Such was my inclination when I retired to rest; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Slow and Bideawhile's office,—from whom no slightest rumour emanated; and as they had been in part collected by Squercum, who was probably less prudent. The Bideawhiles were still perfectly sure that Dolly had signed the letter, believing the young man to be quite incapable of knowing on any day what he had done on ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... "louping-on stane." These were necessary in the olden days of heavy armour, and at a time when women rode astride. Men can now mount alone, although the struggles of a small man to climb to the top of a big horse sometimes are mightily entertaining; but women have to trust to any capable or incapable man who can ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... out into the hall before he could remonstrate, had he had the energy to do it. But Mr. DeVere seemed incapable of thinking for himself, now that this trouble had come ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... pocket-money from a tinker who was ill-using him, and then claimed for him the hospitality of their parents; so, though Atherley often spoke of the dog as a disgrace to the household, he remained a member thereof, and received, from a family incapable of being uncivil, far less unkind, to an animal, as much attention as if he had been high-bred and beautiful—which indeed he plainly supposed himself ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... fix the type of the epigram for the future. For pure poetry he had small gifts. He was endowed with a warm heart, a real love for simplicity of life and for the beauties of nature. But he had no lyrical enthusiasm, and was incapable of genuine passion. He entered heartwhole on all his amatory adventures, and left them with indifference. Even the cynical profligacy of Ovid shows more capacity for true love. At their best Martial's erotic epigrams attain to a certain shallow prettiness,[655] for the most part ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Mahomet, although harmonizing well enough with his faith in general, that women have no souls; or take the ground that truth in this, its widest extent, is not as essential to their highest welfare as it is to ours; or assert, that possessing inferior intellects, they are incapable of deriving advantage from the general pursuit of knowledge, and therefore must be confined to a few primary truths, of which man is to be the judge. The first supposition we leave with the fanaticism that may have given it birth, and with which ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... testimony on this point for the satisfaction of H.R.H. Archduke Ludwig. As for the conduct of the mother of my nephew, it is easily to be inferred from the fact of her having been declared by the Court wholly incapable of undertaking the guardianship of her son. All that she plotted in order to ruin her poor child can only be credited from her own depravity, and thence arises the unanimous agreement about this affair, and the boy being entirely withdrawn ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... which may happen to you from his present situation. And this is the cause of the melancholy which I could not so well dissemble, but that you soon perceived it. I would believe that prince Ahmed, by his own good disposition, is incapable of undertaking anything against your majesty; but who can answer that the fairy, by her attractions and caresses, and the influence she has over him, may not inspire him with the unnatural design of dethroning your majesty, and seizing the crown of the Indies? ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... tired that his legs seemed incapable of support. He wiped the razor blade and put it away with a lax nerveless hand. He realized that he had been again at the point of murder. He had been saved by the narrowest margin in the world. For a moment the fact that he had been saved absorbed him, and then the imminent ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... see a distinct stage of moral downfall in the character of the Conqueror. Yet it is thoroughly characteristic. All is calm, deliberate, politic. William will have no more revolts, and he will at any cost make the land incapable of revolt. Yet, as ever, there is no blood shed save in battle. If men died of hunger, that was not William's doing; nay, charitable people like Abbot AEthelwig of Evesham might do what they could to help the sufferers. But the lawful ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... notoriously with all the most lovable and livable summer places which the artists and authors find out and settle themselves cheaply and tastefully in. The Philistines, a people wholly without invention, a cuckoo tribe incapable of self-nesting, stumble upon those joyous homes by chance, or by mistaken invitation. They submit meekly enough at first to be sub-neighbors ruled in all things by the genius of the place; but once in, they begin to lay their golden eggs in some humble cottage, and then they hatch out broods ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... charge. "I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence. I beseech your Lordships," he added, "to be merciful to a broken reed." Though the heavy fine laid on him was remitted by the Crown, he was deprived of the Great Seal and declared incapable of holding office in the State or sitting in Parliament. Fortunately for his after fame Bacon's life was not to close in this cloud of shame. His fall restored him to that position of real greatness from which his ambition had so long torn him away. "My conceit of his person," says Ben Jonson, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... regal bearing and youthful aspect; beardless face of the finest chiselling, a profile as beautiful as if created for the coin-maker; all the lines sharp and yet pleasing; every inch an aristocrat; but the very mirror of a cold nature, incapable of any lofty aspiration, any warm emotion, any tenderness of feeling. All in all, a handsome, haughty, calculating man, whose friendship would hardly benefit the heart, but from whose enmity may the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... titled imbecile had succeeded distinguished incapable at London in the task of humiliating and bullying us into subjection. Now it was Granville, now Townshend, now Bedford, now North—all tediously alike in their refusal to understand us, and their slow ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... clearly a party which wished to make the rule of his order more severe and, had he consented, the religious world of his day would have approved. But by so doing he would have made Buddhism an Indian sect like Jainism, incapable of flourishing in lands with other institutions. If Buddhism has had little influence outside Asia, that is because there are differences of temperament in the world, not because it sanctions anachronisms or prescribes observances of a purely local and temporary value. In ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... solemn man, and he did not appear to relish the picture I so graphically drew of him, when in truth I was thinking only of his own comfort; so I changed the subject with an alertness of mind which perhaps he was incapable of appreciating. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane |
