"Unable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... especially jealous of Mdlle. d'Hautefort's passionate devotion to the queen her mistress, Anne of Austria. "You love an ingrate," he said, "and you will see how she will repay your services." Richelieu had been unable to win Mdlle. d'Hautefort; and he did his best to embitter the tiff which separated her from the king in 1635. But Louis XIII. had learned the charm of confidence and intimacy; and he turned to Louise de La Fayette, a charming girl ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in his court had all been rebels; the younger among them had never known what order, government, or loyalty meant. The Church was hesitating and timorous. To the people he was an utter stranger, unable even to speak their tongue. But from the first Henry took his place as absolute master and leader. "A strict regard to justice was apparent in him, and at the very outset he bore the ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... rigidly enforced. It is forbidden to drive, during Divine Service, or while the inhabitants are going to or returning from their several houses of public worship, any carriage at a greater rate than a walk or moderate foot pace; and masters and mistresses are responsible, if the servants are unable to pay the penalty incurred by them in ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... upset the place from one end to the other without ever having to pick up his things; Betty was never asked to do any housework, and her mother left the Saturday dinner dishes standing and began to sweep in the afternoon and then was unable to finish. Migwan was just about to suggest a search for the errant Betty, when she remembered the "Give Service" part of the Camp Fire Law. She rose cheerfully and took the broom ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... comes! Monica had risen with the lark, unable to lie abed with the completion of a sweet desire lying but a few short hours away from her, and had gone through the morning and afternoon in a dreamy state ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... I had been unable to get permission to teach in the little church, so I started my school in the open air. We were out under the big trees amidst the shrubbery. This would have made a very good schoolhouse but for its size. In such a schoolhouse ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... men of the conquering races, who were poor, and had embraced some mechanical pursuit; 2. The remnants of the Roman population, who followed some trade; 3. Freedmen from the rural districts, who, unable to gain a livelihood in the country, had come to reside in the cities, where they ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... another. Each of them sheds its glimmer, which ought, one would think, to light up its neighbours by reflexion and give us a clear view of each individual specimen. But not at all: the luminous party is a chaos in which our eyes are unable to distinguish any definite form at a medium distance. The collective lights confuse the link-bearers ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... When she was brought here from one of the vilest places in the city, taken away from a drunken mother, she was the saddest-looking child I ever saw. Dirty, emaciated, covered with vermin and pitiable to behold, I could hardly help crying when I saw her brought in. Now, though still unable to leave her bed, she has as bright and happy a face as you ever saw. The care and tenderness received since she came to us have awakened a new life in her soul, and she exhibits a sweetness of temper beautiful to see. After I had read a little story for her yesterday, she ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... italics). He proceeds to point out that drunkenness, and, still more, nitrous-oxide intoxication, will heighten the sense of belief: in the latter case, he says, a man's very soul may sweat with conviction, and he be all the time utterly unable to say what he is convinced of. It would seem that, in such cases, the feeling of belief exists unattached, without its usual relation to a content believed, just as the feeling of familiarity may sometimes ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... unable to proceed. It was terrible to him to witness her utter unconsciousness of her own position—more terrible still to be obliged to arouse her ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... species of property, transferrable from one man to another at any time and in any quantity. A system which seems to have had it's original in the state of Florence, A.D. 1344: which government then owed about 60000l. sterling; and, being unable to pay it, formed the principal into an aggregate sum, called metaphorically a mount or bank, the shares whereof were transferrable like our stocks, with interest at 5 per cent. the prices varying according to the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... quite unable to do anything. They shouted consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight just as the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... rebellious disposition held his own signed confession! Suppose he had even read it! Bas had never suspected the real course which Parish Thornton had taken to safeguard that other paper and he had not understood why Sim had been unable to locate it and abstract it from the house. Thornton had, in fact, turned it over to the safekeeping of Jase Burrell, who was to hold it, in ignorance of its contents, and only to produce it under certain given conditions. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... things—such as the development of one of them from another, or of all from a common stock—is highly compatible with their intellectual connection, namely, with their being designed and directed by one mind. Yet upon some ground which is not explained, and which we are unable to conjecture, Mr. Agassiz concludes to the contrary in the organic kingdoms, and insists that, because the members of such a series have an intellectual connection, "they cannot be the result of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... mysterious as that which we must now relate. The following facts, however, are vouched for by the entire editorial department of the Evening Post, and many of them by several hundred witnesses. We begin by apologising to the hundreds who have called at this office and have been unable to see the Werner infernal machine. We gave it that name in a thoughtless jest, but its subsequent actions have more than justified the title. Our reporter brought it from Berrien Springs, as directed, and deposited it in the court of the Evening Post ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... used, being merely fences or enclosures in which the animals are penned until the time for shipment. By far the greater number find their way to New York, being packed and crowded, often brutally, in the common fish-cars at the Fulton Market dock in such numbers that many are unable to rise, and consequently drown. The greatest injustice, however, to the long-suffering turtle comes when the miserable animal is propped up before some restaurant door, bearing upon its broad carapace the grim assertion, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... discomforts we have hitherto endured; but the weather is unpropitious. The driving snow sends us all into the cabin. The Danube is so fiercely agitated by the stormy wind, that it rises into waves like a sea. We are suffering lamentably from cold; unable to warm ourselves, we stand gazing ruefully at the place where the stove ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... discovered, and apologized for, the old gentleman merely saying, 'Don't let it happen again.' Next day he drank his Port, as usual, and the wheels of the Aurora went smoothly. The landlady was thus justified in averring that something had been done by somebody, albeit unable to point to anything specific. Women, who are almost as deeply bound to habit as old gentlemen, possess more of its spiritual element, and are warned by dreams, omens, creepings of the flesh, unwonted chills, suicide of china, and other ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... replied that they knew that such a belief and such a mode of speaking still exist in the world, and especially, to their surprise, within the church, where the Word is present to teach men about heaven and its conjunction with man; nevertheless, there is such a conjunction that man is unable to think the least thing unless spirits are associated with him, and on this his spiritual life depends. They said that the cause of ignorance in this matter is man's belief that he lives from himself, and that he has no connection ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... but seemed unable to comprehend the unseemly haste, as Jane dashed in, loosened the headstall of her intelligent mount, led him to the path and then sprang up ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... arguments do not lead to anything. Even if I had not the slightest doubt that I am doing wrong, if I were unable to give any conclusive answer to the tormenting spirit, I would not cease loving; and always following where a greater power leads me, I should go according to my feeling, and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... without having to fight for it; and the whole atmosphere of their existence must have been different from the strenuous life of Greece in the fifth century. Moreover, the Ionian Greek, influenced, even if subconsciously, by the spirit of Asia, was by temperament unable to maintain the intellectual level of the Doric architecture of the mainland; and a difference appears in the whole orientation of art, in sculpture perhaps even more than in architecture. The history of Hellenistic art has ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... were as yet too far off to see all these details, but the general outline I saw at once, and it astonished me considerably. Even old Indaba-zimbi, whom the Baboon-woman had been unable to move, deigned ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... all her books—The House of Mirth, the novels of Hall Caine and Marie Corelli—the operation for appendicitis upon her dollie, while very successful indeed, had left poor Flaxilocks without a scrap of sawdust in her veins, and therefore unable to play; and worst of all, her pet kitten, under the new city law making all felines public property, had grown into a regular cat and appeared only at mealtimes, and then in so disreputable a condition that he was not thought ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... duty lies. The only thing that is plain to me is, that I must ask you to release me from my engagement. I ask it most humbly, Major Luttrel," Gertrude continued, with warmth in her words, and a chilling coldness in her voice,—a coldness which it sickened her to feel there, but which she was unable to dispel. "I can't expect that you should give me up easily; I know that it's a great deal to ask, and"—she forced the chosen words out of her mouth—"I should thank you more than I can say if you would put some condition upon my release. You have done honorably by me, and I repay you with ingratitude. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Act whose eggs are protected breed in the Islands, or anywhere within ten or fifteen degrees of latitude of the Islands; in fact, a great many of them are not there at all during the breeding-season, except perhaps an occasional wounded bird which has been unable to join its companions on their migratory journey, or a ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... undoing probably, and in any case the final loss of the fortune for which he had plotted and planned, lied and masqueraded, killed a man and cheated a girl, that with the knowledge of all this, death descended upon him: so cold did he feel, so unable was he ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... weary, and Barbara, who had dismounted from the litter, seemed unable to stand. The padre was holding converse with those of his dark-skinned flock who had approached; so we two women crouched down under the chapel eaves and gazed around us ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... of reflection, but he was baffledly unable to figure out what the cat was reflecting on. Midge in turn licked a paw, rolled in the dust, arched her back against the warm stone of the steps and snapped cautiously at a low-flying wasp. She was a contented cat. The impression of ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... went on Calton, "that there is a little bit of professional curiosity about me. This case is such an extraordinary one, that I feel as if I were unable to let slip an opportunity of doing something with it. I don't care for your humdrum murders with the poker, and all that sort of thing, but this is something clever, and therefore interesting. When you are safe we will look together ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... The Chesapeake held on her course although this was repeated. The Leopard sent two shots athwart her bows. These were followed by a broadside poured into the hull of the Chesapeake. The American vessel, having no priming in her guns, was unable to return the fire, and after being severely bruised by repeated broadsides she surrendered to her assailants. Her crew was mustered by the British officers and the deserters carried away. One of them, a British subject, was hanged at Halifax and ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... Sometimes, too, they made raids upon them at night, 'howling like hyenas.' The men they killed and the women and children they took away. The Mazitu want to attack them but cannot do so, because they are not water people and have no canoes, and therefore are unable to reach the island, if it is an island. Also they told me about the wonderful flower which grows in the place where the ape-god lives, and is worshipped like the god. They had the story of it from some of their people who had ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... will close this long chapter. It is good for us to consider how unable we are to think and to do rightly ourselves: we must do so if we would be saved by Christ. When we have done all, we are unprofitable servants; but oh, how gracious—how incomprehensible is that love that puts into our minds good desires, brings the same to good effect, and rewards ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... the want of the bare necessities of life. Poor Law Commissioners were established, England was divided into Districts, and the Districts into Unions. Out-door relief was to be given, on the order of two justices, to poor persons wholly unable, from age or infirmity, to work. But there was much opposition to the new law; it was considered a grievance that old couples were refused relief at home, and that the sexes must be separated at the workhouse, to which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... enjoin the impossible on his subjects; as when Michael and Gabriel, at the head of the heavenly host, are ordered to drive Satan and his crew out of Heaven into the abyss—a task they prove wholly unable to accomplish. Sometimes orders are given merely as an assertion of power, and to test submission; as when Raphael is sent to keep the rebels confined in Hell, and explains ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... firm friends of the whites was Scolacutta, the chief of the Upper Cherokees. He tried to keep his people at peace, and repeatedly warned the whites of impending attacks, Nevertheless, he was unwilling or unable to stop by force the war parties of Creeks and Lower Cherokees who came through his towns to raid against the settlements and who retreated to them again when the raids were ended. Many of his young men joined the bands of horse-thieves and scalp-hunters. The marauders ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Giraud was unable in the nature of human affairs to take his wealth with him, it accompanied him, at all events, to the grave, where feathers made a fine show of grief, where priests growled consolatory words, and cherub-faced boys swung themselves and censers nonchalantly along. Some who ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... at last by men who did not appear to know, at the time they made them, what was in the Bible on the subject of slavery, and who now appear unwilling that the teachings of the Bible should be spread before the people—this last I take to be the case, because I have been unable to get the Northern press to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... have been much to blame; but afterwards, when you knew that you were putting yourself in danger of doing you did not know what, you were as much to blame as if you made a Frankenstein-demon, and turned him loose on the earth, knowing yourself utterly unable to control him." ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... What then? Unloved, unable to love, yet with an intense desire for affection, and an immense capacity for granting it, her heart is tempted to wander beyond the circle of her duty. A flattering shape approaches her dungeon-walls; a voice calls to her to come forth and ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... steps of the retreating army, for the road was marked by recumbent forms huddled on either side. Few vehicles had come so far, for the broken country near to Vilna and around Kowno had presented slopes up which the starving horses were unable to drag ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... downstairs, while I, blowing out the light, lay fully dressed on the bed, and with my weapons close at hand. In spite of Pillot's warning I fell asleep, but it was still dark when I wakened with a curious feeling that something was happening. Being unable to see, I lay still ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... reelected president by an electoral assembly after Parliament was unable to break a deadlock between MERI and RUUTEL; percent of electoral assembly vote - Lennart MERI ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... women were doing all they could for the marquise. Their first intention, as we have already said, was to put her to bed, but the broken sword blade made her unable to lie down, and they tried in vain to pull it out, so deeply had it entered the bone. Then the marquise herself showed Madame Brunei what method to take: the operating lady was to sit on the bed, and while the others helped to hold up the marquise, was to seize ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... work in the State, when a general secretary was employed, and rooms opened at Springfield by the Boston and Albany Railroad Company. This important work, carried on most vigorously at various railway centres in other States, had for some time been pressed upon the state committee, but they had been unable to obtain any footing till now. At the convention of this year, at Spencer, the advantage of association work in colleges was brought out in an able paper by our present state secretary, then ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... not less busy with the faces of his youthful auditors. Whenever his interpretation of any bump was a palpable hit, his success could be all too plainly read in the upturned faces before him. If the success was very marked and decisive, the youngsters were entirely unable to restrain their expressions of surprise and admiration. It was very evident, from his method of procedure, that he was guided by these expressions, quite as much as by his fingering of the bumps. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... respect I am unable to help you," he replied. "And in case I have not made myself sufficiently clear upon the subject, let me tell you that I deeply resent the plot by which you endeavoured to foist ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... remarkable fact in connection with "Hester," that an author with the good sense to propose to himself such a model, disregarding the more elaborate poets of a later date, should have proved himself so utterly unable to follow that model, except in a few phrases, which were quite appropriate as Scott used them, but are ludicrously out of place in his own verse. In adopting the brief lines and irregularly recurring rhymes of Scott, he has taken a hazardous step. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... willows. On these occasions he would talk to his dog with such earnestness that Whitefoot used to shake all over with sympathy, whining softly as he laid his shaggy muzzle on his master's knee as if in agony because he was unable to speak. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the heart of the secret from which came all his utterance, she could fit herself into most of the convolutions of the shell of his expression, and was hence able also to make others perceive in his verse not a little of what they were of themselves unable to see. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... vibrating through the walls into our hall and soon our ears were filled with divine melodies. They were playing Tosca, Puccini's most inspired composition and the translation of these people behind the walls it really contained that pathos which all artists agree, yet unable to explain how so many children of sunny Italy became world-wide famous for the embodiment of that musical and harmonious pathos of which Tosca is the favorite piece of ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... the station at Niagara—dark and silent. Our American tourists, who were accustomed to the clamor of the hackmen here, and expected to be assaulted by a horde of wild Comanches in plain clothes, and torn limb from baggage, if not limb from limb, were unable to account for this silence, and the absence of the common highwaymen, until they remembered that the State had bought the Falls, and the agents of the government had suppressed many of the old nuisances. It was possible now to hear the roar of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... breechcloth, skirt, or jacket. If a woman owns a blanket she uses it as a covering when the nights are cold. All wear basket-work nightcaps, called "kut'-lao." They are made to fit closely on the head, and have a small opening at the top. They may be worn to keep the hair from snarling, though I was unable to get any reason from the Igorot for their use, save that they were worn ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... post. The dogs followed, crowding and barking; sometimes the bear would upset them and trample them with its huge paws, but they would immediately scramble to their feet and make a dash for its head, clinging to its neck so that it was unable to shake off their wriggling bodies. With watchful eye, the two masters waited the moment when it looked as if the bear would be strangled; then they rushed at the dogs, tore them away, pulled their necks and bit their tails to make them unlock ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... Doctor went home to Dan. He found him in Denny's garden, with Denny enthroned on the big rock—listening to his fun, while Deborah, from the house, looked on, unable to believe that it was "the parson sure enough out there wid Denny,"—Denny who was to have been a priest himself one day, but who would never now be good for ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... tables, I've hearde say, though I am sure I can't guesse why, for it makes me sad to see fools laughed at; ne'erthelesse, as I get laughed at alreadie, methinketh I may as well get paid for the job if I can, being unable, now, to doe a stroke of work in hot weather. And I'm the onlie son of my mother, and she is a widow. But perhaps I'm ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... company with the editor of these letters and speeches, we feel that we have not done justice to the editorial industry and research which these volumes display. Our space would not permit it. For the same reason we have been unable to quote several instances of vivid narrative, which we had hoped to transfer to our own pages. And as to our main quarrel with him—this outrageous adoption of Puritanical bile and superstition,—we have been haunted all along by a suspicion we have occasionally expressed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... while, his vanity was pleased and his curiosity roused by the continued correspondence of his unseen Egeria. That correspondence (if so it may be called, being all on one side) had now gone on for a considerable time, and he was still wholly unable to discover the author: its tone had of late altered—it had become more sad and subdued—it spoke of the hollowness as well as the rewards of fame; and, with a touch of true womanly sentiment, often hinted more at the rapture of soothing dejection, than of sharing ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with even less caution, boldly declares that, "before their independence of England was asserted, they [the colonies] constituted a provincial people." To sustain this position—utterly contrary to all history as it is—he is unable to adduce any valid American authority, but relies almost exclusively upon loose expressions employed in debate in the British Parliament about the period of the American Revolution—such as "that people," "that loyal and respectable people," "this enlightened and spirited people," etc., ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... years there have been revolutions or acute social disorders in 19 countries, embracing more than half the population of the world. Ten countries have been unable to meet their external obligations. In 14 countries, embracing a quarter of the world's population, former monetary standards have been temporarily abandoned. In a number of countries there have been acute financial panics or compulsory ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that they have made a vow to God of even trifling privations. Their lives are so free and immodest that it might be suspected, with reason, that they had renounced only that which they could not, or were unable ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... ready to launch we took it to the edge of the water, and made ready to 'let her go,' when Walter Carman and John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck the water, each one anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they shot out from the shore they found they were unable to make any headway against the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Seamon was in the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to head up-stream and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves powerless against the stream. At last they began ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... they came to a wide belt of massive stones, fallen from the heights above, and their progress was slow. One had to measure the gaps between the blocks and step carefully across, while the stones were ragged and had sharp corners. Festing was unable to look up and followed Helen, but after a time Miss Jardine stopped, and he saw that the crags were smothered in leaden cloud and all ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... attacking the fortified camp. Here the Seraskier Ismail met them with a resistance so well managed, that he was able to conceal the attack he was preparing to make on their rear. Ali, guessing that the object of Ismail's manoeuvres was to crush those whom he had promised to help, and unable, on account of the distance, either to support or to warn them, endeavoured to impede Omar pacha, hoping still that his Skipetars might either see or hear him. He encouraged the fugitives, who recognised him from afar by his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... had been wounded in a duel, and alleged his wound as a sufficient reason for not attending in his place in the House of Commons when summoned. Dr. Brocklesby, a physician of considerable eminence, reported that he was unable to attend; but the House of Commons, as if they distrusted his report, appointed two other physicians to examine the patient, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... of Tokatmysch or Toktemysch-khan, got possession of the throne; but he was soon expelled by Timur-Khan, the son of Timur-Uduck, and brother of Pulad- Khan, who reified fourteen months. Thebak, the brother of Pulad-khan, took the field against Timur-khan, and killed him, but was unable to attain the sovereignty, as his brother Kerunhardin ascended the throne, which he only held for five months. Thebak again endeavoured to dispossess his brother Kerunhardin, but was unable to effectuate his purpose; for at this juncture, Ideku interposed, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... prejudice. I still revered the character, or rather the names of the saints and fathers whom Dr. Middleton exposes; nor could he destroy my implicit belief that the gift of miraculous powers was continued in the Church during the first four or five centuries of Christianity. But I was unable to resist the weight of historical evidence, that within the same period most of the leading doctrines of Popery were already introduced in theory and practice. Nor was my conclusion absurd that miracles ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... closer together, till, pressed up in one dense mass, even the most wary could no longer attempt to turn and fly. Fearful was the din of the shrieks and shouts which rent the welkin. The leading animals dashed madly forward, thinking to escape from their foes behind. The remainder followed, unable to see over the heads of those in front, but hoping that they had found a ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Marceline Valmore's immortal verse. In English poetry I do not remember anything that exactly parallels their resigned melancholy. Before the month of March was over, Toru had taken to her bed. Unable to write, she continued to read, strewing her sick-room with the latest European books, and entering with interest into the questions raised by the Societe Asiatique of Paris, in its printed Transactions. On the 30th of July she wrote her last letter to Mlle. Clarisse ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... their names, they put a seal at the end of a contract made by them; in other words, the seal supplied the place of a name. Each person's seal differed from the seal of every other. It had its origin really in the ignorance of the people. As they were unable to write their names these distinct signs or marks, called seals, were put ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... orchard was set out we began to mulch the trees with grass cut in the orchard, clover straw, pea straw—anything we could get. We were unable to mulch the entire orchard that year, and before we got the balance mulched you could tell as far as you could see the orchard which trees were mulched and which were not. The former not only made a better growth, but had a healthier ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... As to your summer movements, I am equally unable to give you advice. I think you need the sea for a month, and after that McLean's scheme is good. And a return to Mostyn to look after your affairs is equally good. If I were you, I should follow ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... other of our greatest poets——but I see no signs of that! and this poetasterism, this literary idleness, which perpetually either lifts young people above the clouds, or places them under the earth, so that for pure cloud and dust they are unable to see the good noble gifts of actual life—I would the devil had it! The direction which Henrik is now taking grieves me seriously. I had rejoiced myself so in the thought of his being a first-rate ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... the book was complete within four weeks. It possessed me. I wrote night and day. There were times when I went to bed and, unable to sleep, I would get up at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning and write till breakfast time. A couple of hours' walk after breakfast, and I would write again until nearly two o'clock. Then luncheon; afterwards a couple of hours in the open air, and I would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and in a most happy hour!" said the martial Dunois; and the guards in the hall, unable to resist the same impulse, stirred each upon his post, so as to produce a low but distinct sound of clashing arms. The King cast his eye proudly round, and, for a moment, thought and looked ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... properties that call for blame. For, in the first place, the magnanimous is unmindful of favors; secondly, he is remiss and slow of action; thirdly, he employs irony [*Cf. Q. 113] towards many; fourthly, he is unable to associate with others; fifthly, because he holds to the barren things rather than to those that are fruitful. Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... she heard a foot in the avenue, which, however, her acute ear, well accustomed to McCarthy's, soon told her was not that of her lover. On looking more closely she perceived, however, that it was Mogue Moylan; and, unable to restrain her impatience, she raised the window still higher, and called down as Mogue passed under it, on his way round to the kitchen, but in a low, earnest voice, with, as Mogue thought, a good deal of confidential in it, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... his Spanish fellow-countrymen, he was constitutionally unable to appreciate the fact that true religion and true faith are the natural fruits of penitence and effort, and that individual repentance and striving are the only sacrifices required ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... change has come over us. We have begun to realize that Judaism could not have transformed the spiritual history of mankind, as it did, if it were the negligible and insignificant thing we thought it was. We have been unable to discern its true character, because we did not know how to probe beneath the outward and often unattractive surface which it presented to us in the limited circle in which we moved. We have begun to surmise that the Jewish life we are familiar ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... had remained in their original positions—she on the doorstep, he on the sidewalk, bareheaded for the sake of coolness, and with the bandbox on his arm. But upon this last speech Harry, who was unable to support such point-blank compliments to his appearance, nor the encouraging look with which they were accompanied, began to change his attitude, and glance from left to right in perturbation. In so doing he turned his face toward ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... are there enough madmen among you to believe that they know all these things? No, there are not; no, at the bottom of your hearts you feel your nonentity as I render justice to mine. But you are arrogant enough to want people to embrace your vain systems; unable to be tyrants over our bodies, you claim to ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... to Arden. But what's that got to do with this? This is a wire from Miss St. Regis, saying she is ill and will be unable to fill her engagement here ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... most vile and pernicious vice. The drunkard, deprived of the sense and reason given us by God, profanes the donations of the divinity: he debases himself to the condition of brutes; unable even to guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... on his legs since daybreak, he began to feel very tired, and was plagued too with hunger, since he had eaten all his provision at once in his joy about the cow bargain. At last he felt quite unable to go farther, and was forced, too, to halt every minute for the stones encumbered him very much. Just then the thought overcame him, what a good thing it were if he had no need to carry them any longer, and at the same moment he came up to a stream. Here he resolved to rest and refresh himself ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... practice in striking fashion the policy they had discussed—namely, to appoint to Federal posts in the Southern States the best men available and to reward and recognize conspicuous merit among Southern Democrats and Southern Negroes as well as among Southern white Republicans. Being unable at the moment to return to Washington, he sent his secretary ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... poem. Collect and comminate the ugly words. Distinguish and condemn the CHEVILLES. State Mr. Stevenson's faults of taste in regard to the measure. What reasons can you gather from this example for your belief that Mr. S. is unable to write ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Putapichion in the small district of Piculgue near Arauco. The toqui placed a part of his army in ambush, and contrived with much skill to induce Cordova to give battle in an unfavourable situation. In this action, the Spanish horse, forming the van of the army, was unable to withstand the charge of the Araucanian cavalry, now become exceedingly expert, and was put to flight; and the infantry being thus left exposed and surrounded on all sides, was entirely destroyed after a combat of five hours, during ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... succeeding ages. [78] The second visit, in the year eleven hundred and ninety-three, is darkly implied in the fable of Electra, the seventh of the Pleiads, who have been reduced to six since the time of the Trojan war. That nymph, the wife of Dardanus, was unable to support the ruin of her country: she abandoned the dances of her sister orbs, fled from the zodiac to the north pole, and obtained, from her dishevelled locks, the name of the comet. The third period expires in the year six hundred and eighteen, a date that exactly agrees with the tremendous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... order, they have been unanimous in their generous efforts to assist the circulation of the Irish History, and of all our publications; and this kindness has been felt by us all the more deeply, because from our own poverty, and the poverty of the district in which we live, we have been unable to make them any return, or to assist them even by the sale of tickets for their bazaars. Such disinterested charity is, indeed, rare; and the efforts made by these religious—the true centres of civilization in Ireland—to promote the education and to improve the moral and intellectual ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Mercer would object to Roy's going. Roy's father had been sick and unable to work for some weeks, and Henry knew that the three dollars Roy earned each week were badly needed in the ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... disguise to penetrate into your house and to live near you; jealous, she glided in the shadow behind you; at the risk of being devoured by the crocodiles in the river she swam across the Nile. On arriving here she watched us through some crack in the wall, and was unable to bear the sight of our happiness. She loves you because you are very handsome, very strong, and very gentle. But I do not care, since you do not love her. ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... looked at him and sighed and then she looked at him and smiled, and said no more. So many times, in other days, had things like this occurred; so many times had she been quite unable to get any lucid exposition from him of the strange occurrences, that, lately, she never probed him for an explanation. She well knew, in advance, that she would get none, and was unwilling to compel him into laboring evasions. But such matters ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... every kind waited on this little band of heroic men—how hunger, and cold, and fever dogged their steps; how the Indians proved treacherous and hostile; how, having reached central Illinois after incredible exertion, they found themselves in the dead of winter unable to proceed further, and surrounded by tribes incited against them by some unknown enemy. A fatality seemed to hang over them; suspicious occurrences indicated that they had a traitor among their number, but he was never discovered. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... would hold no communication, and when in despair I again moved the party on we saw a number hastening to occupy a thick scrub through which we had to pass. The men now became so dissatisfied and alarmed that I found I should be unable much longer to restrain them from firing if I ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Charlotte's escapade had, by the confession of its Chief, placed the Cabinet. This tyrannical Government, in spite of its large majority, its strong party organization, and its bureaucratic powers, was unable to stand up against ridicule; a mere breath, and all its false pretensions to dignity would be exposed, and its dry bones, speciously clad in strong armor, would rattle down ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... least that Magda deliberately set herself to wile a man's heart out of his body. She seemed unable to help it! Apart from everything else, her dancing had taught her the whole magic of the art of charming by every look and gesture, and the passage of time had only added to the extraordinary physical allure which had been hers even as ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... meal I of course had a further opportunity to observe the behaviour of the skipper, and when I rose from the table I was obliged to confess to myself that I was puzzled, for I had been quite unable to arrive at any distinct impression of the character of the man. For while, on the one hand, his manner to me was cordial, with the somewhat rough and unpolished geniality of a man of a coarse and violent temperament striving to conquer his natural ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... dominions. He was tortured by a dozen different plans which suggested themselves for his next course of action, but neither of them commended itself for second consideration, while there he was, face to face with the one great difficulty, that he was cut off from his companions, and unable to stir without betraying his presence and being captured ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... of the West Yorkshire Regiment had been badly wounded, and was lying in the open unable to move, in full view of, and about 300 to 400 yards from, the enemy's trenches. Corporal Stirk, Royal Army Medical Corps, and Private Caffrey, at once started out to rescue him, but at the first attempt ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden |
