"Adequacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too much: so, by the same token, when we don't feel the excess (and I am contending, mind, that in "The Awkward Age" the multiplicity yields to the order) how do we know that the measure not recorded, the notch not reached, does represent adequacy or satiety? The mere feeling helps us for certain degrees of congestion, but for exact science, that is for the criticism of "fine" art, we want the notation. The notation, however, is what we lack, and the verdict of the mere feeling is liable to fluctuate. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... to catch, not at a straw, but at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay—strange as it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of thought—"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality; and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... between our nature and our environment, that we draw our conception of the divine life. There is, then, a real propriety in calling beauty a manifestation of God to the senses, since, in the region of sense, the perception of beauty exemplifies that adequacy and perfection which in general we objectify in ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... began by remarking that the subject of Colonial verse, and the immense future before the English-speaking poets, is allied to a question that is very great, the adequacy or inadequacy of English poetry—British, American, and Colonial—to the destiny of the race that produces it. The article enunciated the thesis that if the English language should not in the near future contain the finest body of poetry in the world, the time is now upon ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the author of "The Wings of Death," no forebodings disturbed the conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. "The Wings of Death" had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck's suggestion, been chosen as the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and each member had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to appropriate ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... cardinal need, there is no sort of experience in human life from which there does not come or has not come a contribution to men's religious ideas. At every challenge men have to put forth effort, feel doubt of adequacy, be thwarted, perceive the chill shadow of their mortality. At every challenge comes the possibility of help from without, the idea of eluding frustration, the aspiration towards immortality. It is possible to ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... reappraise our entire defense strategy—our ability to fulfill our commitments—the effectiveness, vulnerability, and dispersal of our strategic bases, forces and warning systems—the efficiency and economy of our operation and organization—the elimination of obsolete bases and installations—and the adequacy, modernization and mobility of our present conventional and nuclear forces and weapons systems in the light of present and future dangers. I have asked for preliminary conclusions by the end of February—and I then shall ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... been taken; and, while the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade had been announced, the success of the heavy cavalry was not yet known. Anxiety began accordingly to be felt at home as to the adequacy of the allied forces to encounter the Russian army, augmented as it now was by the troops which had recently evacuated the Principalities. Accordingly fresh efforts were being made to engage Austria in effectual alliance with the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Sir Job's attention to her nephew, now came forward with an offer to contribute towards Godwin's livelihood. Her supplement would eke into adequacy such slender allowance as the widow's purse could afford. Details were privately discussed, resolves were taken. Mr. Moxey, when it was made known to him, without explanation, that Godwin was to be sent to Whitelaw College, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... it is only in a few instances—as in the description of King's College, Cambridge—that these sonnets possess force or charm enough to rank them high as poetry, yet they assume a certain value when we consider not so much their own adequacy as the greater inadequacy of all rival attempts ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... vol. i p. 421.] Such sentences are of continual occurrence, and do duty in the argument as if they expressed ascertained facts. And not only this, but in the very part of the work which is devoted to establishing the adequacy of sexual selection to produce certain effects, that adequacy is assumed from the very beginning. Thus, we read, "That these characters are the result of sexual selection is clear," [Footnote: Ibid. p. 258.] before we have got six pages into an argument which occupies a volume and a half. ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... the port. "Great Britain," wrote Madison, "has already in a formal communication admitted the principle for which we contend." The difficulty turned on a point of definition, as to what situation, and what size, of a blockading division constituted adequacy. The United States authorities based themselves resolutely on the position that the blockaders must be close to the ports named for closure, and denied that a coast-line in its entirety could thus be shut off from commerce, without specifying ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... profess to be sure of that, however, nor have I unqualified confidence in the adequacy of musical notation, no matter how skillfully employed, to convey a truthful idea ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... now first felt. Optimism is the expression of man's new reconciliation with his world; as the opposite doctrine of pessimism is the consciousness of an unresolved contradiction. Both are a judgment passed upon the world, from the point of view of its adequacy or inadequacy to meet demands, arising from needs which the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... crowds will flock to them, that their very walls will seem almost to burst, and such songs of joy will continually pour forth as will make all people in love with the religion that makes for every-day life, and hence the religion that is true and vital. Adequacy for life, adequacy for everyday life here and now, must be the test of all true religion. If it does not bear this test, then it simply is not religion. We need an everyday, a this-world religion. All time spent in connection with any other is worse than wasted. The eternal life that we ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... grave discussion of mere frivolities and the arduous pursuit of intellectual will-o'-the-wisps. To say nothing of a little modesty, a little impartial pondering over personal experience might suggest a doubt as to the adequacy of this short and easy method of dealing with a large chapter of the history of the human mind. Even an acquaintance with popular literature which had extended so far as to include that part of the contributions of Sam Slick which contains his weighty aphorism ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... results; but there is no antagonism between the boldest originality and the most complete mastery of craftsmanship. There is, rather, a deep and vital relationship between the two. For every art is a language, and to secure power and beauty and adequacy of expression a man must command all the secrets and resources of the form of speech which he has chosen. The power of the great artist rests, in the last analysis, upon the freedom with which he uses ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... class are writing each different quality of composition. The use of such a scale will tend to make both teacher and pupil critical of the work which is being done not only with respect to the formal elements, but also with respect to the style or adequacy of the expression of the ideas which the writer seeks to convey. Probably in no other field has the teacher been so apt to derive his standard from the performance of the class as in work in composition. Even though some teachers find it difficult to evaluate the ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... abstract expression such as Euclid's Elements, Newton's Principia, or Peano's Formulaire, no matter how rigorous and complete, is a work of art. We admire the mathematician's formula for its simplicity and adequacy; we take delight in its clarity and scope, in the ease with which it enables the mind to master a thousand more special truths, but we do not find it beautiful. Equally removed from the sphere of the beautiful are representations or descriptions of mere things, whether ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... is probably the greatest world problem of the twentieth century, in which no great country is so largely and directly interested as is the United States. For the reason given it is essentially a naval question, the third in which the United States finds its well-being staked upon naval adequacy. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan |
