"Inefficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under the cruel spell of drought. Now people regarded him suspiciously, dogs snapped at his heels, and farmers' women thrust him doles of food through half-opened kitchen doors. Here and there he picked up a stray job or two. But he was plainly inefficient for most tasks assigned him... In the small towns there were not enough jobs to go round ... young men were returning from overseas and dislodging the incompetents who had achieved prosperity because of the labor shortage. The inland cities were in the grip of strikes ... there were plenty ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the cutter. She came dancing back half full of water, and with two exhausted men washing about on her bottom boards. The tumult and the menace of wind and sea now appeared very contemptible to Jim, increasing the regret of his awe at their inefficient menace. Now he knew what to think of it. It seemed to him he cared nothing for the gale. He could affront greater perils. He would do so—better than anybody. Not a particle of fear was left. Nevertheless he brooded apart that evening while the bowman ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... national guard, no leader coming forward, and the proclamation of the magistrates cautiously abstaining from any allusion to the Prince of Orange. A brave officer, Captain Falck, had made use of many strong but inefficient arguments to prevail on the timid corporation to declare for the prince; the presence of a French garrison of sixty men seeming sufficient to preserve their ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... no easy matter. Things did not go as she wished; the servants were inefficient, sometimes refractory, and she loathed the task of keeping them up to their duties. Insomnia began to trouble her again, and presently she had recourse to the forbidden sleeping-draught. Not regularly, but once ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... little state of Prussia the railways pay well and are well managed, but they are clogged to a certain extent by inefficient and unnecessary employees, and were the system spread over the United States the chaos in a dozen years would be almost irreparable, and even here the complaints are many and vigorous. Probably one male over twenty-five years of age out of every four is in government ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... ignorance at every step. But Nabendu did not appear to be at all anxious to improve himself by practice and attention. On the contrary he thoroughly enjoyed the rebukes he received from his sister-in-law. He was at great pains to prove every day that he was inefficient and helpless as a new-born babe in mixing spices, handling the saucepan, and regulating the heat so as to prevent things getting burnt-and he was duly rewarded with pitiful smiles ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... I grew more and more to the inhabitants of our city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, who were separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the classification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed. Sometimes, when an important client would get into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... question arises by the unimpeachable truism, "God is great." Not to fall back on the gods, where a proximate principle may be found, has with us Westerners long since become the sign of an efficient as distinguished from an inefficient intellect. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... else's tea To us, while ours goes to the neighbours, And yet you dare demand from me Reward for inefficient labours! ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... sometimes fail to cross-fertilise the flowers is intelligible, for I have thrice seen humble-bees of two kinds, as well as hive-bees, sucking the nectar, and they did not depress the keel-petals so as to expose the anthers and stigma; they were therefore quite inefficient for fertilising the flowers. One of these bees, namely, Bombus lapidarius, stood on one side at the base of the standard and inserted its proboscis beneath the single separate stamen, as I afterwards ascertained by opening the flower and finding this stamen ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... to them was in these words. "We will have no share in a traffic, consisting in rapine, blood, and murder." He then took a survey of a system of duties progressively increasing, and showed, that it would be utterly inefficient; and that there was no real remedy for the different evils complained of, but in the immediate prohibition of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... and Venloo, Ruremonde and Maestricht in 1632. He was supported, in these last operations, by Louis XIII, who, prompted by Richelieu, took this opportunity of humiliating the Hapsburg dynasty. The Spanish commander, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, proved so inefficient that some Belgian patriots tried to take matters into their own hands and to deliver their country from a foreign domination which was so fatal to its interests. It soon became clear, however, that any step taken against Spain would ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... Madonna[224] yearns like a tigress as she holds up her child and gazes into its face; here again we have a composition for which Donatello must have been primarily responsible, though the full profile is attributable to inefficient handling of the marble rather than to deliberate intention. Signor Bardini's version of this relief has a delicacy lacking in the original; one touch of colour removes a certain awkwardness of the profile. The Madonna in the Via Pietra Piana at Florence belongs ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... hand, each convoy is usually provided with some guard of its own, though it is often absurdly inefficient. These valleys and ravines which branch out of the main pass are alive with Afridis and Pathans, who are keen robbers as well as religious fanatics. I wonder they don't swoop down on some of our caravans. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not accomplish. Work as they would, the paddles proved hopelessly inefficient, and after an hour's desperate effort they realized that they were nearly as far to seaward from the iceberg as the iceberg was ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... for the last time with these affectionate and generous people. I then bid my postilion drive on fast; and I never looked back, never once cast a lingering look at all I left behind. I felt proud of having executed my purpose, and conscious I had not the insignificant, inefficient character that had formerly disgraced me. As to the future, I had not distinctly arranged my plans, nor was my mind during the remainder of the day sufficiently tranquil for reflection. I felt like one in a dream, and could scarcely persuade myself ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... xxiv. 2; do not bury the dead, I. xi. 35, xii. 4; their set character, II. xxviii. 25; their trade in Indian silk, I. xx. 9; the arrogance of their officials, I. xi. 33; their custom of counting an army before and after a campaign, I. xviii. 52 ff.; their infantry inefficient, I. xiv. 25; their bowmen quick, but inferior to those of the Romans, I. xviii. 32; their skill in bridging rivers, II. xxi. 22; maintain spies at public expense, I. xxi. 11; suffer a severe defeat at the hands of the Ephthalitae, I. iv. 13, 14; pay tribute to the Ephthalitae ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... politician, and statesman; and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most rigorous and exacting standards to his work, was out of place and really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product, and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted an implied criticism on the easy methods of his neighbors. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Magyar. Serbia becomes conscious of a European destiny, but Hungary avers that a large stretch of Hungarian territory has been torn from Europe and is being Balkanized, despoiled of the old comfort and civilization of the Austro-Hungarian State and made dirty and inefficient by Slavs. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... attitude of Orthodoxy towards this part of Christianity to be singularly unsatisfactory and inefficient. The work of the Church, all admit, is to convert the world to God, and so save it from the power and evil of sin. But if this is a work which the Church has to do, it ought surely to have some fixed method or rule by which to act. It should not be a matter of accident ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... hands and knees before I would ask anyone to do things for me. If they can't see what's to be done, I'll not tell them." This was her declaration of independence. Needless to say, Mrs. M. had a large domestic help problem. Her domestic helpers were continually going and coming. The inefficient ones she would not keep, and the efficient ones would not stay with her. So the burden of the home fell heavily on her, and, pulling her martyr's crown close down on her head, she worked feverishly. When she ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... the sides of this hat, giving the brim, or coast, the full benefit of their precipitation; drifting over the plateau, or crown, with rapidly decreasing bulk. Thus, the great plain, in size the greatest, and in soil the richest part of us, is always labouring under the curse of irregular and inefficient rainfall; and whatever good we may do in the way of water storage and we may do so much-we have always the threat of many years of drought hanging over, during which our treasury of water will be drained, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... despatches of the almost heartbroken man, who poured out his grief in language which even to-day no man can read unmoved. To us he showed only a gravely tranquil face, which had in it something which reassured those starving and naked ones. Most wonderful is it, as I read what he wrote to inefficient, blundering men, to see how calmly he states our pitiful case, how entirely he controls a nature violent and passionate beyond that of most men. He was scarcely in the saddle as commander before the body which set him there ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... exports. The service sectors, including public administration, account for 48% of GDP and employ nearly 20% of the labor force. Basic problems facing the economy include a high population growth rate, a high unemployment rate, a lack of basic services, a large and inefficient public sector, and an export sector dependent mostly on coffee and bananas, which are subject to sharp ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... report. "Here we have some comments upon service in our restaurants, right here in Zagurest, from an evidently widely published American travel reporter. He contends that the fact that there is no tipping leads to our waiters being surly and inefficient." ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the outsiders, the chiefs, and the subordinates all begin to see the same facts, the same damning facts if you like, the obstruction will diminish. The reformer's opinion that a certain bureau is inefficient is just his opinion, not so good an opinion in the eyes of the bureau, as its own. But let the work of that bureau be analysed and recorded, and then compared with other bureaus and with private corporations, and the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... 'I repent; I am but an ox, bring the courbash, beat me, and let me go to finish cooking the Sitt's dinner.' I remitted the beating, with a threat that if he bullied the neighbours again he would get it at the police, and not from Omar's very inefficient arm. In half an hour he was as merry as ever. It was a curious display of negro temper, and all about nothing at all. As he stood before me, he looked quite grandly tragic; and swore he only wanted to run outside and die; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... me to ride, sending his link-boys to bring out all the farnoozes to supplement fair Luna's coy and inefficient beams; and after the performance, the old gentleman promises to send me round a dish of pillau. In due time the promised pillau comes round, an ample dish, sufficient to satisfy even my present ravenous appetite, and after this he sends round tea, lump sugar, and a samovar. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... What would you think of my logic, if I were to say to you (the idea is not mine—I found it in a book), if I were to say to you, 'I entertain a high regard for infantry, but, after all, the foot soldier is an incomplete soldier, deprived of his birthright, an inefficient body deprived of that natural complement of the soldier, called a horse! I admire his courage, I perceive that he makes himself useful in battle; but, after all, the poor devil has only two feet at his command, while we have four!' You see fit to consider a dragoon on foot ridiculous; ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Government knew nothing of the inefficient state and the endless difficulties of the great fleet concentrated at Cadiz, and regarded its presence there as a standing danger. Collingwood was reinforced, and it was decided to send Nelson out to join him, take over the command, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... filled with. Lord Rosebery, being a modern skeptic, probably prefers the spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox Christian, prefer the jam. But both are efficient when they have been effected; and inefficient until they are effected. A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back. If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle. For the man of action there ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... who raised me to it are wearied of seeing me there. The old members of the party will all recollect how clearly I foresaw and foretold that I should be found a very inconvenient as well as a very inefficient leader, so soon as the great Protection battle was brought to a close. I predicted all that has since occurred; and no one more cordially agrees than I do in the wisdom of the present decision, the spirit I presume of which ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... to Madrid, instead of Addington, who is so inefficient they are obliged to recall him, and at this moment Madrid is the most important diplomatic mission, with reference to the existing and the prospective state of things. The Portuguese contest, the chance of the King ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... specially characteristic of eighteenth century French dolls is strongly to the fore in Mr. Wells' treatment of war. In the conversations "after the Change" between Melmount, the famous Cabinet Minister, and the pitiful, cowardly, inefficient hero (?), Leadford, they both appear to be inexpressibly shocked at the unreasonableness of war. It is true it is somewhat difficult to tell just what Melmount did think or feel, for Melmount is in one particular like Boston's distinguished ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... with each reason, or run the risk of confusion. If under I in the brief on page go, for example, you began with the reason, "In the present system partisan politics determine nominations to office," and then added the result, "Therefore the city government is inefficient," you would have to repeat the result with B and C; and when you came to the third degree of support, the repetition would be ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... be out of place to say here that when the convalescence from these maladies seems to be slower than is common, and ordinary tonics inefficient, massage and the use of electricity are not unimportant aids towards health, but in such cases require to be handled with an amount of caution which is less requisite in more chronic conditions ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... furtive and puerile lasciviousness of which one hears so many hints nowadays—excitable people talk of it as though it was the most monstrous and singular of vices instead of a slightly debasing but almost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys together under the inefficient control of a timid pretentious class of men—of such uncleanness as I say, scarcely more than a glimpse and a whisper and a vague tentative talk or so reached me. Little more will reach you, for that kind of thing, like the hells of Swedenborg, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... which they are too much governed, will not yield to a more enlarged scale of politics, incompatibility in the laws of different states, and disrespect to those of the general government, must render the situation of this great country weak, inefficient, and disgraceful. It has already done so, almost to the final dissolution of it. Weak at home, and disregarded abroad, is our present condition, and contemptible ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... SAKE OF THE STATE.—If the home exists primarily for the sake of the individual, it exists secondarily for the sake of the state. Therefore, any home into which are continually born the inefficient children of inefficient parents, not only is a discomfort in itself, but it also furnishes members for the armies of the unemployed, which are tinkering and hindering legislation and demanding by the brute force of numbers that the state ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... inward still corrupt; for altruism is a policy and not an impulse, proceeding not from the heart but from the intelligence—the policy of enlightened selfishness. It has already been tried thoroughly, and proved thoroughly inefficient; it is the motive power behind charitable organization; it breeds a cold, impersonal, economic spirit in charity workers, and coldness, ingratitude and resentment in those who are worked upon. It will not do to speak of Tom, Dick and Harry as cases Nos. 1, 2 and 3. You must call ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... she is deprived of, or what she ought very reasonably to demand. There is no reason why London should remain telephonically deaf and dumb. There is nothing which strikes the visitor more forcibly, however, than the long-suffering patience of the Londoner. The exasperatingly slow, inefficient apology for a telephone service that would not be tolerated anywhere else is good enough for London. It is no excuse to plead in apology the great size of the City, when there is the example of New York before one, where there ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... doctor among the passengers, the child was turned over to me. I made up a bed on the seats and put the little patient there, but no woman in the car was able to assist me. The tragedy had made them hysterical, and on every side they were weeping and nerveless. The men were willing but inefficient, with the exception of one uncouth woodsman whose trousers were tucked into his boots and whose hands were phenomenally big and awkward. But they were also very gentle, as I realized when he began to help me. I knew at once that he was the man I needed, notwithstanding his unkempt hair, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... praise would be more fitting. The social worker has become an indispensable part of the hospital organization, an investigator to bring in facts, a social adjuster to bring about cure. For a hospital to be without a social service department is to confess itself behind the times and inefficient. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... here at the core of why all regimes end up becoming corrupt, inefficient and sick; their leaders take their privileges for granted and become more and more inattentive to the work which must be done if the people are to be kept at work and possible adversaries kept under ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient. Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be painted,—they can only be believed. But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. That which in comedy, or plays of familiar ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... overlook important precautions, they are, oftentimes, too credulous, too easily influenced. They usually make poor financiers; they do not make collections well; they are incautious in extending credit and in maintaining their own credit; often they are inefficient and wasteful in management; they do not take proper account of all the costs in fixing prices; they enter into foolish contracts; make promises which they are unable to keep, and oftentimes, as a result of too great optimism, undertake far ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to be a supply of substantially better seams which can be substituted for the worst of those in actual use. There is likely, on the other hand, to be available a supply of decent business capacity which can be substituted for the most inefficient of existing business men. The marginal concern, in other words, must be conceived as that working under the least advantageous conditions in respect of the assistance it derives from the strictly limited ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... nothing was seen but his tail. One thought one was to see no more of him, when, on one of the polling mornings, he suddenly emerged, like a rat out of a haystack, and voted for Round. The Heads, in fact, have been thoroughly inefficient. The election has literally gone on without them. They have ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... is generally known in only one or two aspects of his life. Standards of behavior are relative; the old primary controls have disappeared; the new secondary instruments of discipline, necessarily formal, are for the most part crude and inefficient; the standing of the family and of the individual is uncertain and subject to abrupt changes upward or downward in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... thought of reimbursement, sums, the amount of which he would not specify, on disinfectants. This he had done because he knew by bitter—by most bitter—experience that the management of the college was slack, dilatory, and inefficient. He might even add, almost as slack as the administration of certain houses which now thought fit to sit in judgment on his actions. With a short summary of his scholastic career, and a precis of his qualifications, including his degrees, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... a whit less inefficient as a moralist. He is a kindly soul, and in his easygoing way he has learnt something of the tricks of the world and something of the hearts of men. He writes as an unsuccessful courtier; and in that capacity he has remarks to offer which are not always valueless, and in which there is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... way for peace and security. At length the majority agreed to call back their Stuart kings. Charles II, son of the Charles I they had beheaded, was voluntarily replaced upon the English throne. Religion had once more proved inefficient as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... revenue, will enable the work to proceed under a national plan. Such a national plan will, in a generation or two, return many times the money spent on it; more important, it will eliminate the use of inefficient tools, conserve and increase natural resources, prevent waste, and enable millions of our people to take better advantage of the opportunities which ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was left out. The confectioner who supplied the cake, the head gardeners at Kencote and Mountfield who—obligingly—supplied the floral decorations; the organist who presided, as organists always do, at the organ, and gave a rendering, a very inefficient one, of Mendelssohn's Wedding March; the schoolmaster who looked after the children who strewed flowers on the churchyard path; the coachman who drove the happy pair to the station; the station-master who arranged for them a little salvo ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... States, the home functions are delegated in a very large degree to the preparatory school. It is a distinction that needs to be emphasized that many so-called schools are really homes, often very excellent homes, with which schools, often very inefficient schools, are united. All this we must lump together— it is, indeed, woven together almost inextricably—when we speak of home as a formative factor. The home, so far as its hygienic conditions go, we have already dealt with, and we have dealt, too, with the great neglected necessity, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... accumulation of bowers, groves, lawns, and hillocks, which is not imagination at all, but composition, and that of the commonest kind. Hence, if we take any passage in which there is real imagination, we shall find Stewart's hypothesis not only inefficient and obscure, but ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... temperature range, then rejects heat at the bottom of the range, and is finally brought back by adiabatic compression to the highest temperature at which it again takes in heat, and so on. An air-engine working on this cycle would be intolerably bulky and mechanically inefficient. Stirling substituted for the two stages of adiabatic expansion and compression the passage of the air to and fro through a "regenerator,'' in which the air was alternately cooled by storing its heat in the material of the regenerator and reheated by picking the stored heat ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... source. The heat, deep-seated in the interior of the earth, is transmitted through the superincumbent rocks, and slowly reaches the surface. It is true that the rocks and materials with which our earth is covered are not good conductors of heat; most of them are, indeed, extremely inefficient in this way; but, good or bad, they are in some shape conductors, and through them the heat must ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Franks, but was, on the contrary, of a dull blue colour, marked with ten millions of meandering lines, which showed how anxiously the metal had been welded by the armourer. Wielding this weapon, apparently so inefficient when compared to that of Richard, the Soldan stood resting his weight upon his left foot, which was slightly advanced; he balanced himself a little as if to steady his aim, then, stepping at once forward, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... great and crying mischief of the book. Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit, and more dangerous to exhibit from that prestige of principle and self-control which is liable to dazzle the eye too much for it to observe the inefficient and unsound foundation on which it rests. It is true Jane does right, and exerts great moral strength, but it is the strength of a mere heathen mind which is a law unto itself. No Christian grace is perceptible upon her. She has inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... lomi-lomi constantly. It is supposable, too, that in the wars which prevailed among the tribes the weaklings, if any such were among the chiefs, were pretty sure to be killed off; and thus a natural selection went on which weeded out the small and inefficient chiefs. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... standard of production, it is not a priori reasonable to expect this relation should be uniform as between two such countries as England and India, so that it should be a matter of economic indifference whether a piece of work is done by cheap and relatively inefficient Indian labour or by expensive and efficient English labour. Such a supposition could only stand upon one of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... purposes of the Commission democracy is an inefficient weapon. Nothing but disappointment is in store for men who expect a people to outrage its own character. A large part of the unfaith in democracy, of the desire to ignore "the mob," limit the franchise, and confine power to the few is the result of an unsuccessful attempt to make republics ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full: she became his confessor. He told her that for some time he had assisted at the meetings of an Irish Socialist Party where he had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score of sober workmen in a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had divided into three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret, he had discontinued his attendances. The workmen's discussions, he said, were too timorous; the interest they took in the question of wages was inordinate. He felt that ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Bowed down with shame at reverse where only triumph had been anticipated, the exultation over victory where disaster had been more naturally awaited produced a wild reaction. The effect was decisive. Inefficient and dilatory as was much of the subsequent administration of the navy, there was never any further question of its continuance. And yet, from the ship which thus played the most determining part in the history of her service, it has been proposed to take her ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... struggled upwards, and at last I reached a ledge several feet deep and covered with soft green moss, where I could lie unseen in the most perfect comfort. There I was stretched when you, my dear Watson, and all your following were investigating in the most sympathetic and inefficient manner the circumstances ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... saw the regent of the kingdom, surrounded by his cabinet, sauntering all a summer's afternoon under a blazing sun over the dusty mile that separates the monument from the Ayuntamiento. The Spaniards are hopelessly inefficient in these matters. The people always fill the line of march, and a rivulet of procession meanders feebly through a wilderness of mob. It is fortunate that the crowd is more entertaining than ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... to teach: perhaps, too, the practice it afforded in explaining difficulties to others, may even at that age have been useful. In other respects, the experience of my boyhood is not favourable to the plan of teaching children by means of one another. The teaching, I am sure, is very inefficient as teaching, and I well know that the relation between teacher and taught is not a good moral discipline to either. I went in this manner through the Latin grammar, and a considerable part of Cornelius ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Mississippi." Redemption from what? The reader is led to believe that the "redemption" is from bad to good government, from high to low taxes, from increased to decreased bonded indebtedness, from incompetent, inefficient and dishonest administration to one that was ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... commenced. There had been, indeed, during three or four years, a written Constitution, by which rights were defined and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly violated; and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws which had been framed to secure the distinct authority of the executive magistrates and of the legislative assemblies—the freedom of election—the freedom of debate—the freedom of the press—the personal freedom of citizens—were a dead letter. The ordinary mode in which the Republic ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... between Acroceraunian bandits and Samaritans. One may stare at a taxi scooting by and think with no incongruity of Carlyle's "Night of Spurs"—with Louis and his harried Antoinette flying the guillotine. And of other things which our inefficient memory prevents us from jotting down at this moment. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... offices have been accorded, from time to time, without any regard for the fitting qualifications of those to whom they were presented. The truth that such a state of things does occasionally exist has been brought before our eyes during the past few days by the abandoned and inefficient behaviour of one who will henceforth be a marked official; yet it has always been our endeavour to reward expert and unassuming merit, whenever it is discovered. As we were setting forth, when we were interrupted in a most obstinate and superfluous manner, the one who can guide and ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... other compressed gas carried by the torpedoes, and by means of electricity conveyed by a conductor leading from a controlling station to electrical apparatus carried by the torpedo. The first method has, to a considerable extent, failed on account of the inefficient way in which the compressed gas was employed to propel the torpedo. The second is open to the objection that by means of telephones placed in the water or by other signaling apparatus the torpedo can be heard approaching while yet at a considerable distance, and that a quick speeded dredger, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... weaker neighbor and particularly at the moment when the United States must be free to face European complications. But the Mexican crisis proved definitely the weakness of the military system. Though the regulars who accompanied Pershing proved their worth, the clumsy inefficient mobilization of the National Guard, on the other hand, indicated as plainly as possible the lack of ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... the weakness of the South throughout the war shown more fully than in her utterly inefficient transportation. Here were the demands of the army of Virginia and of a greatly-increased population in and around Richmond, supplied by one artery of communication! Seemingly every energy of the Government should ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... it is fundamentally essential to get the pupil started in the right way. A recent writer states that two thirds of the difficulty that the teacher meets fixing habits is due to the neglect of this principle. Inadequate and inefficient habits get started and must be continually combated while the desirable habit is being formed. How important this is in the initial presentation of material that is to be memorized or made automatic we are just now beginning to appreciate. One writer insists ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... brother of an enemy, but just like anybody else. Much anxiety was aroused for the safety of the city, where all classes feared danger. The leading members of the senate were old and infirm, and enervated by a long period of peace: the aristocracy were inefficient and had forgotten how to fight: the knights knew nothing of military service. The more they all tried to conceal their alarm, the more obvious it became. Some of them, on the other hand, went in for senseless display, and purchased beautiful armour and fine horses: others procured as ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... man, even far too busy. Commodus left the treasury empty and every department of the government inefficient. Pertinax refilled the treasury, but his attempts at reorganization merely disorganized everything and prepared for the general confusion which came about under Julianus. With insufficient funds I must fill the Treasury, reorganize the whole governmental machinery, get it to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... tyrannous and stifling; and monarchy, at first an austere necessity, had grown to be, beyond measure, arrogant, selfish, and luxurious. In science, the old methods had proved themselves puerile and inefficient, and the leading scientists were magicians and witches; in literature, no poet had arisen worthy to strike the lyre that Chaucer tuned to music. As for religion, the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of the monasteries and of the priesthood generally, had ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... violent but more instinctive and persevering; it manifests itself by quarrels, needle pricks, chicanery, petty tyrannies and all kinds of tricks which poison existence as much as man's jealousy, and are quite as inefficient against infidelity. In the highest degree of passion the jealous man uses violence or resorts to firearms, while the woman scratches, poisons or stabs. Among savages, jealous women bite off their rivals' noses; in civilized countries ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... establishing new firms has encouraged the development of the private business sector, but legal and bureaucratic obstacles alongside persistent corruption are hampering its further development. Poland's agricultural sector remains handicapped by structural problems, surplus labor, inefficient small farms, and lack of investment. Restructuring and privatization of "sensitive sectors" (e.g., coal, steel, railroads, and energy), while recently initiated, have stalled due to a lack of political will on the part of the government. Structural reforms in health care, education, the pension ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... conscience types might be depicted. From the over-conscientious who rigidly hold themselves to an ideal, who watch every departure from perfection with agony and self-reproach, and who may either reach the highest level or "break down" and become inefficient to the almost conscienceless group, doing only what seems more profitable, are many intermediate types merging one ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... reasons, a "loafer'' or a careless or inefficient workman will lower the efficiency or slow up the production of the men about him, no matter how earnest or industrious their natural habits. Night work by clerks, also, is taken by some office managers ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... owe it also, in a much higher way, to your Father who is in heaven. I now make bold to ask you whether you are doing your best to lead such a life as that?" And then he remained silent, waiting for an answer. He was a singular man; so humble and meek, so unutterably inefficient and awkward in the ordinary intercourse of life, but so bold and enterprising, almost eloquent, on the one subject which was the work of his mind! As he sat there, he looked into his companion's face from out his sunken grey eyes with a gaze which made his victim quail. And then ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... did not present an anxious face; on the contrary, he seemed plumply content as he replied to the ranger's greeting. He represented very well the type of officer which these disorderly communities produce. Brave and tireless when working along the line of his prejudices, he could be most laxly inefficient when his duties cut across his own or his neighbor's interests. Being a cattle-man by training, he was glad of the red herring which the Texas officer had trailed across the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... last position at Chancellorsville slowly and sullenly. Hayman's brigade, not far from the Chancellorsville House, finding the enemy a good deal disorganized, and coming forward in a languid and inefficient manner, turned—by Sickles' direction—and charged, capturing several hundred prisoners and several colors, and relieving Graham, who was now holding on with the bayonet, from a most perilous flank attack, enabling him ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... material, the ships were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of property and human life upon his hands, and no means of salvation except by compelling his inefficient and demoralized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judicious punishment, he therefore habitually left the whole ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fail in full honest efficient performance of their social service, which means their special kind of work, they sin—if we must call it sin—against society. Better drop the very name and thought of "sin" and say merely, "Why are we to-day so inefficient and unreliable in our social duty?" For reason good. We are not taught social duty. For further reason that we are taught much that militates against it. Our social instinct is not yet strong enough to push and pull us into perfect relation ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... and with intelligent persons conversant with policy, a foe that is disregarded and neglected, being all along unsubdued at heart, smites at the proper season, especially when the enemy makes a false step. By employing trusted agents of his own, such a foe would also render the other's forces inefficient by producing disunion. Ascertaining the beginning, the middle and the end of his foes,[309] a king should in secret cherish feelings of hostility towards them. He should corrupt the forces of his foe, ascertaining ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... world's business because of the development of the means of communication and information. The embassy in a foreign country, as a watching, remonstrating, proposing extension of its country of origin, a sort of eye and finger at the heart of the host country, is now clumsy, unnecessary, inefficient, and dangerous. For most routine work, for reports of all sorts, for legal action, and so forth, on behalf of traveling nationals, the consular service is adequate, or can easily be made adequate. What remains ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... energy to the Tract Society. She set on foot, and with the aid of a few friends, sustained the monthly distribution. There had been, for some time, a small temperance society in the town; but its movements were slow and inefficient. She undertook to impart to it new life and vigor. The plans and efforts which she, in conjunction with her friends, put in operation, produced a sensation which was felt in every part of the town, and in a few months the number of members was increased, from about fifty, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... except against the wheelhouses; they were so arranged as to let down on deck when desired. When ready for service, with guns and stores on board, these boats drew from five to seven feet of water; but they were so weakly built as to be dangerous and comparatively inefficient vessels, quickly "disabled," as is apt to be the case with such preparations for war as are postponed to the time of its outbreak. The contingency of civil war on our inland waters was not indeed to be anticipated nor prepared for; but what was ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... lists of their writings. Butzbach continued it with an Auctarium, into which he hooked almost every writer he could find, whether ecclesiastical or not. It is a large book, still remaining in manuscript at Bonn, as it was written out for him by two very inefficient novices. The date of its composition is abundantly indicated by the notes with which he terminates his notices of living authors: 'Viuit adhuc anno quo hec scribimus 158' or 159.[13] Such a compilation, in so far as it deals with contemporary writers, might have had considerable ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... mean that you find the Precentor inefficient?" said the Bishop, looking at the coffee with longing and then shaking his head. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... railroad constructors, managers and manipulators. Railroad managers are no more entitled to the special gratitude of the public for dispensing railroad transportation at much more than remunerative rates than is the Western Union monopoly for maintaining among us an expensive and inefficient telegraph service. No one believes that the disbanding of the Western Union would leave us long without telegraphic communication. In like manner railroads will be built whenever and wherever they promise to be profitable. ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... gave to his head a ridiculous appearance. He was gazing at the earth with an expression of absorbed and acute melancholy. When he reached the end of the path, he looked round, at a loss, then turned, as if on an inefficient pivot, and set himself in motion again. Edwin was troubled by this singular episode. And yet his reason argued with his instinct to the effect that he ought not to be troubled. Evidently the sturdy Darius was not ill. Nothing serious could be the matter. He ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... servants are so inefficient," she remarked as she peered into the water jars and shook the mosquito netting. "This is my third visit here, so they are as disposed to respect my orders as their limited intelligence and careless habits will permit. I should ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... chosen for kit inspection, but this hapless individual came out minus a toothbrush and comb, and the friend in need took his place in the freshly-formed ranks. Here, the helper found that his own kit was inefficient, he had forgotten to put in a pair of socks. That afternoon he had to do two hours' ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... This pure heart had nothing to fear of sorrow. Sorrow can only give the best it has to such as she. Grief may weaken the selfish and the weak; it may make children of the foolish and drivellers; by grief the inefficient may come to the fulness of their inefficiency;—but out of the bitter cup the strong take strength, though it may be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... to beat anything sensible through the shells of them quahaugs?" snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for the inefficient. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Albanians residing in Greece and Italy; this helps offset the towering trade deficit. Agriculture, which accounts for more than one-fifth of GDP, is held back because of lack of modern equipment, unclear property rights, and the prevalence of small, inefficient plots of land. Energy shortages and antiquated and inadequate infrastructure contribute to Albania's poor business environment, which make it difficult to attract and sustain foreign investment. The completion of a new thermal power ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... into a perfunctory habit, but it should not be so. Excellent service deserves a recompense just as slip-shod service does not. And no one has a right to spoil a waiter (or any one else) by tipping him for inefficient work. In hotels and restaurants the standard fee is ten per ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... from his lieutenants, and the mere fact that a lieutenant is considered inefficient and unable to do things properly, is no reason why he should not be required to do them. The captain is by Army Regulations responsible for the efficiency and instruction of his lieutenants regarding all matters pertaining to the company, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... bill, our mysterious friend soon found himself on board a train bound direct for Toronto, where he arrived in due course, amid hosts of rumors, and military movements which were being accomplished in that reckless and inefficient haste, that went to prove a screw loose somewhere. Here he found himself on the evening of the 29th, and being obliged to remain in the city all the next day, he started the following morning for the West, when he learned, while journeying onwards, that the Fenian forces ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... just the same, for we know you are wishing the doughboy good luck. How droll your antics when hard luck surprises. We swear and you grimace or paw wildly the air. And we share a common dislike for the asperity shown by the untactful, inefficient, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... day, to become a civilized and governing race, deputing ironmongery, coal-digging, and lucre-digging, to our slaves in other countries, it is quite conceivable that, with an increasing knowledge of natural history, and desire for such knowledge, what is now done by careful, but inefficient, woodcuts, and in ill-coloured engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures, with inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of buildings, where such pictures would be little costly to the people; and in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... despised an aid nor avoided a difficulty. The loss of imaginative liberty sometimes involved in a too scrupulous attention to methods of execution is trivial compared to the evils resulting from a careless or inefficient practice. The modes in which, with every great painter, realization falls short of conception are necessarily so many and so grievous, that he can ill afford to undergo the additional discouragement caused by uncertain methods ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... religion have pledged to each other our lives and fortunes here, and our hopes of happiness hereafter, in its defense and support. Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Was our devotion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance, which this new doctrine would make it? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing—a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection? Was this self-destroying, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... point out to him the land which had fallen to his share, in the general lottery of the Government. In many cases this was not done for one or two years after the formation of the colony, in consequence of the lamentably inefficient force placed at the disposal of the able and indefatigable surveyor-general; and even then, the boundaries of the different allotments were not permanently defined. This state of incertitude had the most ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... opportunities. Yet is the contest most unequal, and the ultimate result of discomfiture to them inevitable. The Federal Government, like a sluggish but powerful man scarcely yet aroused to the exertion of his full strength, moves slowly and awkwardly, and lays about him with careless and inefficient blows; while his active adversary, inferior in strength and in the moral power of his cause, but more fully aroused and more energetic, strikes with better effect, and makes every blow tell. Nevertheless, the strength of the one remains unexhausted, and even increases as he becomes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of education and the force of experience will confer on it better governing bodies, and better governing bodies will guarantee better curators. The actual generation of librarians, or so-called librarians, is the product of inefficient committees of control and selection; and the worst part is that some of these gentlemen receive salaries which would almost enable their employers to secure the services of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... That the industrially inefficient are often of subnormal intelligence has already been demonstrated in a number of psychological investigations. Of 150 "hoboes" tested under the direction of the writer by Mr. Knollin, at least 15 per cent belonged to the moron grade of mental deficiency, and almost as many more ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... Kenealy's first essay and in his second he came to final and irremediable grief. In a crowded House, he arose to impeach his enemies and traducers. He was ploughing along and I was fighting after him in my own gouty, inefficient shorthand, when one of the strangest premonitions of my life occurred to me. He said "If any of these unjust aspersions are cast anew upon me"—and I seemed to know as absolutely what he was going to say as if the whole thing were a play which I had seen rehearsed a score of times. I thought, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... government will occupy itself largely in preventing waste. All the resources of the nation must be used to the uttermost. Parks must be cut up into allotments; the unproductive labours of the scholar and thinker must be jealously controlled and limited. Inefficient citizens must be weeded out; wages must be low and hours of work long. Moreover, the State must be organised for war; for its neighbours, we must suppose, are following the same policy. Then the fierce extra-group competition must come to its logical ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the General impatiently, "but we cannot wait until we get an answer from your very slow and inefficient State Department. We must have a reply before tomorrow night at 12 o'clock. Have you nothing to say, Mr. Edestone? You are perhaps personally the most deeply interested, because I tell you," he grinned cruelly, "we will get your secret if we have to put you on the rack and go back five centuries ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... be fully scientific till we have definite knowledge to guide us at every step. What should we teach? When should we teach it? How should we teach it? How poorly we answer these questions at the present time! How inefficient and uneconomical our schools, because we cannot fully answer them! But they are answerable. We can answer them in part now, and we know how to find out the answer in full. It is just a matter of patient and extensive investigation. We must say, ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... headed 'Spiritual Pastors,' in which he had striven to follow the beautiful example set by Marcus Aurelius, in the anxiously loving acknowledgment with which he opens his meditations. I know he regarded it as miserably inefficient; but as it does actually indicate some of the more individual side of his experience, and is, moreover, characteristic in its style, I shall copy a few ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... powerful engines and longer runways than by refining the airplane. Fuel economy of an engine has ceased to be the deciding factor. Higher utilization of a high speed Jet at least in part offsets the inefficient use of fuel. The only time the Diesel had a chance was from the middle 20's perhaps on thru WW-2 for certain things due to gasoline shortage. To sum it up, the thing that licked them worst was the use of a single valve for inlet and exhaust ...
— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer
... a fascination for me, and going transversely across the nine-mile-broad rough Gaboon estuary in an unfinished canoe with an inefficient counterpane sail has none; but I return duty bound to this unpleasant subject. We started very early in the morning. We reached the other side entangled in the trailing garments of the night. I was ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the box and himself directing the musicians, keeping time earnestly with his right hand, in which was a long black opera-glass. This he occasionally used, but merely to look at the orchestra, not, assuredly, to detect a negligent or inefficient performer; for in the schooled orchestra of Reisenburg it would have been impossible even for the eagle eye of his Royal Highness, assisted as it was by his long black opera-glass, or for his fine ear, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... cooking of electoral rolls, illegal disqualifications, sham counts, official terrorism, and in many cases actual bloodshed—such are but a few of the methods which preserve a political monopoly in the hands of a corrupt and increasingly inefficient racial oligarchy, in a country where the absence of the ballot places the peasant peculiarly at the mercy of the authorities. Small wonder, then, if the non-Magyar races of Hungary, who on a basis of population would have ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... window. Now, her bright audacity gone, her ardors chilled, you saw how like a grave, straightforward boy she was, how illimitably tender, how inefficient. "It may be that I have decided wrongly in this tangled matter," she said now. "And yet I think that God, Who loves us infinitely, cannot be greatly vexed at anything His children do for love of ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... brigade be relied upon for a desperate charge? will that division hold the enemy in check? At such times, the good name, the valor, the bravery of the troops and of the officers who command them is reviewed. He weighs character. He knows who are reliable and who inefficient. He studies, examines papers, consults reports, makes calculations, sits abstractedly, walks nervously, and lies down to dream it all over again ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... to do at Cambridge was to get rid of the inefficient and the corrupt. Washington had never any belief in a militia army. From his earliest days as a soldier he had favored conscription, even in free Virginia. He had then found quite ineffective the "whooping, holloing gentlemen soldiers" of the volunteer ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong |
