"Aptitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the edge of things are too remote for the answer. One imagines something in the way of that interview, 'toil ungrudgingly and unsparingly given, Madam, and, perhaps—I don't know—but perhaps a little special aptitude.'" ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... objects than the buildings themselves, so fixed and inflexible are they. Such figures as these only detract from the interest of the drawing, instead of adding to it, and the draughtsman who has no special aptitude is wise in either omitting them altogether, or in using very few, and is perhaps still wiser if he entrusts the drawing of these to one of his associates more accomplished ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... at Mrs. Sawyer's. The repast consisted of bits of mutton in palm-butter, mutton roasted, rice, palm-cabbage, chicken, and papaw, with coffee, but no wine. There are thirty children in the Mission-school, mostly boys, who show considerable aptitude for learning. It is an obstacle in the way of educating girls, that many of them are betrothed before entering school, and, just when their progress begins to be satisfactory, their husbands claim them and take them away. Mr. Wilson adopted the plan of taking the pair of betrothed ones; and, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... all the more difficult. Miss ESME HUBBARD gave us pathos skilfully reserved in her clever study of an old, old countrywoman turned trousers-maker; and little DINKA STARACE showed quite astonishing aptitude (or the most wonderful training) in the part of her granddaughter. Miss BABS FARREN also did well with her rather intrusive ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... are in other cases founded. They can show that it is a matter of dispute whether some of these modified forms are varieties or separate species. They can show, too, that the changes daily taking place in ourselves—the facility that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases—the strengthening of passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually curbed—the development of every faculty, bodily, moral, or intellectual, according to the use ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... keeps foisting a flag upon me. Pyotr Verhovensky, too, is convinced that I might' raise his flag,' that's how his words were repeated to me, anyway. He has taken it into his head that I'm capable of playing the part of Stenka Razin for them, 'from my extraordinary aptitude for crime,' ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the post of instructor, been delighted with the invention, and astonished at the freedom and boldness of the lad's play. It was, then, thanks to these masks, as well as to his teachers' skill and his own aptitude, that Rupert had obtained a certainty, a rapidity, and a freedom of style absolutely impossible in the case of a person, whatever his age, who had been accustomed to fence with the face unguarded, and with the ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... which this precious son belonged would be called on for military service. Then very hideous weeks followed for Antoine, weeks of nervous suspense and dread. Day by day, as the lad grew in proficiency and aptitude, as he became more and more expert in the matters of his trade, as he learned a delicate, sure touch with the most refractory hair, and could expend the minimum of gas on the drying machine, and the minimum of soap ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... an indefinite period, as to be lost in the mist of futurity; if, on the contrary, Texas remains an independent province, or is restored to its legitimate owners, and in either case slavery is abolished, she then becomes, from the very circumstance of her fertility and aptitude for white labour, not only the great check to slavery, but eventually the means of its abolition. Never, therefore, was there a portion of the globe upon which the moral world must ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was on the "inside," and it was a cold day when I did not "clean up" a goodly amount to waste uptown in the evening. I may say that I gave this over through sheer disgust of acquiring so much and such easy and useless money, for, having no natural love of money—no aptitude for making money breed—no taste for getting it except to spend it—earning by my own accustomed and fruitful toil always a sufficiency—the distractions and dissipations it brought to my annual vacations and occasional visits, affronted ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... second view are set down by the supporters of the first as opponents of what is, after all, borne out by "ascertained facts." But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is "inherited" in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... had run to its close, the Arabs were in possession of all the science of the Greeks; they had produced from their own ranks students of the first order, and had raised among their initiators men who, without them, would have been groping in the dark; and they showed from this time an aptitude for the exact sciences, which was lacking in their instructors, whom they ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... was, that in the course of a few generations, these schools, working steadily upon the minds of the young, all of whom passed under the hands of the teachers, educated the population into a state of intelligence and aptitude greatly in advance of their material well-being; and it is in this circumstance, we apprehend, that the explanation is to be found of the rapid start forward which the whole country took, dating more particularly from ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... for one good reason for not writing a play, that I cannot form a plot. But the truth is, that the idea adopted by too favourable judges, of my having some aptitude for that department of poetry, has been much founded on those scraps of old plays, which, being taken from a source inaccessible to collectors, they have hastily considered the offspring of my mother-wit. Now, the manner in which I became possessed of these fragments is so extraordinary, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... foresee such a fate, but they seem sufficiently to have realised that their son had unusual aptitude for him to be sent to study law at the University. But he meant from the first to paint, and when he should have been studying text-books he was studying nature. The old miller, having a wise head, gave way, and Rembrandt was allowed to enter the studio of Jacob van Swanenburgh. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... curtain rises. The actors are their own townspeople—young men and women who have shown an aptitude for the art; they have been trained at the cost of the town, and are paid a small stipend for their services once a week. How the lights shine! How sweet is the music! What a beautiful scene! And what lovely figures are these, clad in the picturesque garb of some far-away country ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... his Infancy. Sickness, Ill-humour, and Idleness, will have robbed him of a great Share of that Space we ordinarily call our Life. It is therefore the Duty of every Man that would be true to himself, to obtain, if possible, a Disposition to be pleased, and place himself in a constant Aptitude for the Satisfactions of his Being. Instead of this, you hardly see a Man who is not uneasy in proportion to his Advancement in the Arts of Life. An affected Delicacy is the common Improvement we meet with in those who pretend to be refined above others: They do ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... played whist. For the latter have played not whist, but Bumble-puppy, and the former have only frequented a watering-place for a time. Your true staying at the seaside is an art, demanding not only railway fares but special aptitude, and, moreover, needing culture, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... command was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee. But considerations of rank made the appointment inexpedient, and "Mad Anthony" Wayne was named instead. Wayne was the son of a Pennsylvania frontiersman and came honestly by his aptitude for Indian fighting. In early life he was a surveyor, and in the Revolution he won distinction as a dashing commander of Pennsylvania troops at Ticonderoga, Brandywine, Germantown, Stony Point, and other important engagements. Finally he obtained ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... he met with a race not darker than the Portuguese, and a remarkably handsome people, who seemed to have a peculiar aptitude for commerce. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... balloon. This with admirable patience was all unpicked by Gideon Spilett and Herbert, for Pencroft had been obliged to give this work up, as it irritated him beyond measure; but he had no equal in the sewing part of the business. Indeed, everybody knows that sailors have a remarkable aptitude for tailoring. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... must publish my whole shame, 'tis not above a month ago, that I was trapped in my ignorance of the use of leaven to make bread, or to what end it was to keep wine in the vat. They conjectured of old at Athens, an aptitude for the mathematics in him they saw ingeniously bavin up a burthen of brushwood. In earnest, they would draw a quite contrary conclusion from me, for give me the whole provision and necessaries of a kitchen, I should starve. By these features of my confession men may ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Southey hoped. But there are, in the present world, a host of excellent, sensitive readers, whose natural taste is perfectly susceptible of Chaucer, if he spoke their language; yet who have not the courage, or the leisure, or the aptitude, to master his. They must not be too hastily blamed if they do not readily reconcile themselves to a garb of thought which disturbs and distracts all their habitual associations. Consider, the 'ingenious feeling,' the vital sensibility, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... virtue that is only to be found to any considerable extent among the protozoa. Compare, for example, the integrity, sincerity and absolute refusal either to deceive or be deceived that exists in the germ-cells of any individual, with the instinctive aptitude for lying that is to be observed in the full-grown man. The full-grown man is compacted of lies and shams which are to him as the breath of his nostrils. Whereas the germ-cells will not be humbugged; they will tell the truth as near as they can. They know their ancestors meant well and will tend ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... her, and was told that she was one Miss Busy-Body, a member in good standing of a radical church. She came to her grief in this strange manner: she had a special aptitude for sweeping before other people's doors, and could always find dirt, even if she could not ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Sudanese, Somalis, and various negroes coming from the White and Blue Niles, that is, from the region which previous to the Mahdi's insurrection was occupied by the Egyptian Government. Stas lived with all on intimate terms and having, as is usual with Poles, an extraordinary aptitude for languages he became, he himself not knowing how and when, acquainted with many of their dialects. Born in Egypt, he spoke Arabian like an Arab. From the natives of Zanzibar, many of whom worked as firemen on the steam dredges, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... named him. Bess might have brought Mr. Fopling, for he was asked, could she have trusted that young gentleman on this point of Storri. But Mr. Fopling was prone to bring up the one subject which others were trying to forget; and, realizing his tenacious aptitude for crime of that character, Bess sent him home and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and a breath of chivalry intoxicated this room full of bureaucrats; they praised and exalted the superior beauty of woman, the delicacy of hex soul, her aptitude for exquisite things, the correctness of her judgment, and the refinement of her sentiments. Monsieur Rade began to protest, energetically refusing to credit the so-called "fair" sex with all the qualities ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... took correct and especially prompt measures in maneuvering to avoid the torpedo. Lieutenant Kalk was a very able officer, calm and collected in emergency. He had been attached to the ship for about two months and had shown especial aptitude. His action in this emergency entirely justified my confidence in him. I deeply regret to state that he was lost as a result of the torpedoing of the ship, dying of exposure on one of ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... character of the Apothecary, had been as yet wholly unable to get any more of the part into his head than the general idea that he was very hungry, which—perhaps from old recollections—he had acquired with great aptitude. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... system, and wise social arrangements without telling how it was brought about, and how it is sustained against the vanity and self-indulgence, the moody fluctuations and uncertain imaginations, the heat and aptitude for partisanship that lurk, even when they do not flourish, in the texture of every man alive, is to build a palace without either ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... level of his own conceptions; and, in every age in which Art has gone to decay, it has fallen through its professors. The People need feeling alone, and feeling they possess. They take their station before the curtain with an unvoiced longing, with a multifarious capacity. They bring with them an aptitude for what is highest—they derive the greatest pleasure from what is judicious and true; and if, with these powers of appreciation, they deign to be satisfied with inferior productions, still, if they ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... or brown, civilised or uncivilised, in Africa, Asia, or Australia, who, being unprovided with surveying instruments, and trusting to his memory alone, has produced a chart comparable in extent and accuracy to that of this barbarous Eskimo. The aptitude of the Eskimos to draw, is abundantly shown by the numerous illustrations in Rink's work, all of which were made by self-taught men, and are ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... son of a banker at Lyons named Particelli, who, after becoming a bankrupt, chose to change his name to Emery; and Cardinal Richelieu having discovered in him great financial aptitude, had introduced him with a strong recommendation to Louis XIII. under his assumed name, in order that he might be appointed to the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on October 24, 1804, at Wittenberg, where his father, Michael Weber, was professor of theology. William was the second of three brothers, all of whom were distinguished by an aptitude for the study of science. After the dissolution of the University of Wittenberg his father was transferred to Halle in 1815. William had received his first lessons from his father, but was now sent to the Orphan Asylum and Grammar School at Halle. After that he entered the University, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I have fed on bread and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) and I await the morning Church in humble hope. It will begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the country. So you will be able exactly to measure my aptitude and fullness for letter writing by the quantity written now, before I bolt off for hat, gloves, and prayerbook. I always put on my thickest great coat to go to our Church in: as fungi grow in great ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... this necessary of life differs considerably throughout the island, not only from the circumstances of the season but according to the general demand at the places where it is purchased, the degree of industry excited by such demand, and the aptitude of the country to supply it. The northern parts of the coast under the influence of the Achinese produce large quantities; particularly Susu and Tampat-tuan, where it is (or used to be) purchased at the rate of thirty bamboos (gallons) for ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... style is the very man). Buffon also anticipated Thomas Carlyle's definition of genius ("which means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all") by his famous axiom, "Le genie n'est autre chose qu'une grande aptitude ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... example of this in politics; Da Vinci in painting; and the great Goethe in literature. Even if he does not reach these heights, the superior man is one of the most useful instruments of society. For universal comprehension usually includes a universal aptitude. Is not this demonstrated in England, where favorable conditions have developed many examples? What are great political characters like Disraeli and Macaulay, who could apply an ever-ready intelligence to literary composition and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... wore away, the two girls laughing gaily as Marie made her first bungling attempts to drive; but later, Marie was aglow with exultation and Eveley with deep pride, because the little foreigner showed real aptitude for handling the car. ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... rule," he said, "to avoid the advertisement columns of all newspapers. These skilfully worded announcements only serve to remind us how a man may prostitute an aptitude, if not an art, for sheer purposes of gain. It is my theory, Mrs. Burton," he went on, addressing her, "that no one has a right to use his peculiar capacities for the production of any sort of work which is in the ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... solitude. My life was divided between the care of providing topicks for the entertainment of my company, and that of collecting company worthy to be entertained; for I soon found, that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressions; and that as some bodies, indissoluble by heat, can set the furnace and crucible at defiance, there are minds upon which the rays of fancy may be pointed without effect, and which no fire of sentiment can agitate ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... obligations to China and of the energetic protest of Japan. As a result, to the surprise, almost to the consternation of the world, Japan boldly engaged in war with the huge colossus which bestrode Asia and half of Europe, and to the amazement of the nations showed a military aptitude and preparation and a command of resources which enabled her to defeat the armies of Russia in every engagement, to capture the great stronghold of Port Arthur, to win victories on the sea as notable as those on the land, and in the end to impose upon ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... time of the scene at St. Cloud, fortune was preparing for the First Consul another matrimonial trouble. His youngest brother, Jerome, then aged nineteen years, had shown much aptitude for the French navy, and was serving on the American station, when a quarrel with the admiral sent him flying in disgust to the shore. There, at Baltimore, he fell in love with Miss Paterson, the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, and sought her hand ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... trace the revolt of this boyish heart from the intrusive, ever present mentor who not only shared his father's affections but made use of them to influence that father against the career he had chosen, in favour of one he not only disliked but for which he lacked all aptitude. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the case. Peters had but little natural aptitude for foreign languages; and after working hard, for a time, with the moonshee, he found that he was making so little progress, in comparison with Charlie, that he lost heart; and although he had continued his lessons with the moonshee, he had done so only to the extent of an hour or ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... tormented puppets, moving and capering, not at all from will and desire of their own, but agitated violently and incessantly by some hidden hand, forced into playing parts they did not want to play, saying words they had no wish to speak, cutting antics for which they had no aptitude or liking. Cruelties lurked everywhere, waiting in the confused mummery. Reality was being left and with it the practical grasp of those powerful simplicities that alone can guide life through confusion. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Highlander. He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being the bagpipe and fiddle: but unlike the Greek be shows little aptitude for trade; and unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in agricultural operations. All this corresponds with the Scottish Celtic character; and without absolute dishonesty, a certain low cunning in the prosecution of his material interests ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... creeds, who have had an almost impassable gulf between them all their lives, will be brought together for the first time in the working of this scheme of Local Government.... On every one of the juries in Ireland there have been county gentlemen who have shown the greatest aptitude for business, the greatest industry, and the greatest ability; and I say it would be a monstrous thing if, by working the election of these County Councils on narrow sectarian or political lines, men of that class were excluded from the ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own page with the individual character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything does) some patience and some pains. That these are not usually given to it, - that numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of the face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that are truest, - that ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... some can solve with ease a mathematical problem that others could never grasp. So it is here. Perhaps I was in a favourable frame of mind on dying, for the so-called supernatural always interested me on earth, or I had a natural aptitude for these things; for soon after death I was able to affect the senses of the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... permitted to keep a separate establishment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the King, and partly, no doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude for affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Pavlushka made his first attendance at school. But no special aptitude in any branch of learning did he display. Rather, his distinguishing characteristics were diligence and neatness. On the other hand, he developed great intelligence as regards the PRACTICAL aspect of life. In a trice he divined and comprehended how things ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... representative of reviving Art Ennobling effects of Art when inspired by lofty sentiments Brilliancy of Art in the sixteenth century Early life of Michael Angelo His aptitude for Art Patronized by Lorenzo de' Medici Sculpture later in its development than Architecture The chief works of Michael Angelo as sculptor The peculiarity of his sculptures Michael Angelo as painter History of painting ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... of raw, half-drilled recruits from Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort, men who had never fired a shot, but all that morning they had fought with a bravery and firmness that would not have disgraced veteran troops. They had not shown much aptitude for marching on the road from Rheims to Mouzon, weighted as they were with their unaccustomed burdens, but when they came to face the enemy their discipline and sense of duty made themselves felt, and notwithstanding ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... accurate observation of nature, and requires patient and precise labor in reproducing her models; the other appeals powerfully to the imagination and emotions, and charms almost in proportion as it excites its votaries. With regard to natural aptitude, the most musical of nations—the German—shows by the impartial training of its common schools how universal it considers a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... day. Later, while he was at work in the room which she had set aside for his daily writing, she would answer the letter on the typewriter, having taught herself to write by position and touch, and he would take her reply for posting. Her nurse and companion, an elderly woman with a natural aptitude for silence and discretion, was Banneker's partner in the secret. The third member of the conspiracy was the physician who came once a week from Angelica City because he himself was a musician and ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on the part of too many of our people, an aptitude to betray a jealous sensitiveness on the subject of being presented at foreign courts. I have known some claim it as a right when it is yielded to the minister himself as an act of grace. The receptions ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fifteen, whose ability raised him above the general level of his pupils. "When he came to me as a poor boy," says Bacon in recommending him to the Pope, "I caused him to be nurtured and instructed for the love of God, especially since for aptitude and innocence I have never found so towardly a youth. Five or six years ago I caused him to be taught in languages, mathematics, and optics, and I have gratuitously instructed him with my own lips since the time that I received your mandate. There is no one at ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... once towards the Crown an amount of popularity which it had never enjoyed under his predecessors. The qualities and dispositions of the King were favourable to the cultivation of these opportunities. Without being profoundly versed in the philosophy of character, he possessed a remarkable aptitude in the discrimination of persons suited to his purposes. He had considerable skill (to which Lord Shelburne bears special testimony) in extracting the opinions of others, and turning the results to account. If his mind was not vigorous and original, it was ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... friendliest terms with sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of letters; endowed with a facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear of singular acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry and singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;—he had by the exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render inestimable services to the Republic which he represented. Of respectable but not distinguished lineage, not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is Mr. Vail had no natural aptitude for executive work, and he had a temper somewhat variable and unhappy. He and I got along very well together until I determined to order my own instruments, his being too heavy and too difficult, as I thought, for an operator to handle while receiving. We had our instruments ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... was born in Northumberland, was first taught grammar at Newcastle, and afterward removed to Cambridge, where his aptitude in education raised him gradually till he came to be the head of Pembroke college, where he received the title of Doctor of Divinity. Having returned from a trip to Paris, he was appointed Chaplain to Henry VIII. and Bishop of Rochester, and was afterwards translated ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a profession may be best determined by his parents. I am, of course, ignorant whether his relatives possess influence likely to be of use to him. That is often the chief point to be considered, particularly in cases like your son's, where no special aptitude ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... its own form. The resemblance of the two effects would then be explained by the identity of the cause. The more and more complex eye would be something like the deeper and deeper imprint of light on a matter which, being organized, possesses a special aptitude for receiving it. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... also, to have ascertained how much of all that ever existed can teach us nothing. We have a signal improvement in the fashion of wisdom, when that high endowment may be possessed as a thing distinct from compass of thought, from study of causes and effects as illustrated on the great scale, from aptitude to be instructed by the past, and from contemplation of the divine government as carried over a wide extent of time. But indeed this is not a privilege peculiar to this later day. In any former age there were men ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... inclined to award the palm to our chaplain. There was not a better man in the regiment than the chaplain, and there could not have been a better chaplain for our men. He took care of the sick and the wounded, he never spared himself, and he did every duty. In addition, he had a natural aptitude for acquiring mules, which made some admirer, when the regiment was disbanded, propose that we should have a special medal struck for him, with, on the obverse, "A Mule passant and Chaplain regardant." After the surrender of Santiago, a Philadelphia clergyman whom I knew came down to General ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... administration of Rome in the absence of his imperial master. Cicero wrote letters to his freedman Tiro in terms of friendship and affection. The master of a great household selected a slave for his ability and aptitude, and had him trained to be the medical adviser of the household; and the skill shown by the doctor sometimes gained for ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... is the bewildering vastness and multifariousness of the details with which it is concerned. The modern city has come to be a huge corporation for carrying on a huge business with many branches, most of which call for special aptitude ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... spoken. We have now to speak of Semitic religion as found in the lands bordering on the eastern Mediterranean in a more original form. The Semitic peoples outside of Babylonia founded no lasting empires, and showed no great aptitude for art or for literary style; but, in point of religion, they communicated to the world impulses of immeasurable force, which will act powerfully on the world as long as the Prophet ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... judgment from his subsequent activities. The history of literature has given us so many instances of poetic genius being unaccompanied by ordinary worldly wisdom, and so few instances of a combination of business aptitude with poetic genius, that some so-called biographers, enamoured of the conventional idea of a poet, seem almost to resent our great poet's practical common sense when displayed in his everyday life, and to ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... nothing but high praise can be written. He was but a young man when he died. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would have filled an important place among French men of science, for his diligence was coupled with insight, and his love of research was as deep as his aptitude for it was keen. A pleasant picture of the man was penned by Kerandren, who had been one of the surgeons on the expedition to Australia. "Peron," he said* (* Moniteur, January 24, 1811. The Moniteur of June 7, 1812, also contained a eulogy on Peron delivered before the Societe Medicale d'emulation ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... from my birth I had no aptitude for the sciences. I received from fifty to a hundred birch rods nearly every day, but they ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... regulations they might, no doubt, be rendered serviceable; but every alteration of their condition, with regard to the hospitals, to be an improvement, must bring them nearer to the superior condition of responsible nurses, chosen for their aptitude, and remunerated according ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... House filled up, not only with the contingent attracted by the prospect of anything spicy, but by grave, financial authorities, Ministers and ex-Ministers, who listened attentively to his acute criticism. His public speaking benefited by a rare combination of literary style and oratorical aptitude. There was no smell of the lamp about his polished, pungent sentences. But they had the unmistakable mark of literary style. Had his physical strength not failed, and his life not been embittered by the episode alluded to, Louis Jennings would have risen to high ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... first place Beethoven was not a pure-blooded German, but partly Flemish on his father's side. His paternal grandfather, Ludwig van[133] Beethoven, was a man of strong character and of a certain musical aptitude, who had migrated from the neighborhood of Antwerp to Bonn where he served as court musician to the Elector of Cologne. The paternal grandmother early developed a passion for drink and ended her days confined in a convent. The son of this couple, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... is not felicitous, and the ending is unsatisfactory. The Italian critics of the book are not, on the whole, complimentary. George Eliot essayed to do, with prodigious labor, what she had no special aptitude for. Carlyle in ten sentences would have made a more graphic picture of Savonarola. None of her historical characters stand out with the vividness with which Scott represented Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, or with which even Bulwer ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... this, he became acquainted with some of the more intimate details of her life—minute and troublesome details, for which she had no aptitude. From her scat at the stove, Louise watched him sorting and reckoning, and she was as grateful to him as it was possible for her to be, in her present mood. No one had ever done a thing of the kind for her before; and she was callous to the fact of its being a stranger, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... restrictive limits of evil, or the punishment of overt wrong; if anywhere it may exercise a positive ministration for good; it is here, where it does not interfere on the one hand with those outward pursuits which should be left to individual choice and aptitude, nor on the other, with those inward sanctities which pertain to conscience and to God; it is here, in that region of our personality from which we can best discern our duty and fill our place. For the intellect is the most neutral of all our qualities. Man is swayed by the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... diligent reading of good verse can in time correct. "Candy and Health," and "If You Were Down and Out," by James Mather Mosely, are two typical newspaper interviews with representative men. Mr. Mosely shows much aptitude as a reporter, having an almost professional ease and fluency. This is not literature, but it is good journalism. "The Dinner Never Paid For," by Viola Jameson, is a piece of characteristic light fiction; commendably innocuous, and not at all overburdened ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... do? I can make beds and clean rooms—all that sort o' thing. As for cooking, I've got a natural aptitude for it. You ask Emma; she'll tell you. You ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... misconduct; so also he was entitled to prescribe their mode of education.... He remains prima facie the guardian of his children, to the exclusion of the mother" [the italics are my own]. "Alone of the learned professions, the medical is open to women...." (She constantly proves her aptitude to take the same honours as man as regards the others, but he still growls over his share and keeps her out.) "A husband is not bound at Common Law to cohabit with or ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... November 10, 1759. His short life was one great heroic struggle. His first inclination was to study for the ministry, but the rigorous and arbitrary discipline of the Duke Karl Eugen, whose school the boy as the son of an officer had to enter, considered neither aptitude nor desire, and thus Schiller had to study medicine and become an army surgeon. That he might shape his own destiny he fled from Wrttemberg in 1782. The following years, in which Schiller gradually gained the recognition he deserved, were a bitter ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Melanesians or at all events exhibit a strong infusion of Melanesian blood. They cultivate the ground, live in settled villages, build substantial houses, construct outrigger-canoes, display some aptitude for art, possess strong commercial instincts, and even employ various mediums of exchange, of which shell-money is ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Dermot proved to be a painstaking and able teacher. Miss Benson, who had returned to Ranga Duar and remained there longer than she had originally intended, owing to fever contracted in the jungle, joined him in these studies and astonished her fellow-pupil by her aptitude and quickness of apprehension. But her presence proved disastrous to him. Thrown constantly together as they were, spending hours every day side by side, the subaltern realised to his dismay that he was falling in love ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... personages suddenly emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into one of pre-eminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been correctly informed, the Lord ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... continued here till 1855, when, largely through the influence of the late Hon. John Davis, of Kansas, he entered the preparatory department of Illinois College at Jacksonville, Illinois. Thus far he had shown no special aptitude for the natural sciences, though he was always a close observer of natural phenomena. His ambition at this period, which was also in accord with the dearest wishes of his parents, was to complete his college course and enter the ministry. Illinois College not possessing a theological atmosphere ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... will not be in the picture as an imitation of it, but will be due to the execution or colouring or some similar cause. Imitation, then, being natural to us—as also the sense of harmony and rhythm, the metres being obviously species of rhythms—it was through their original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for the most part gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry out of ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... a beneficial thing when you look at it the right way. By fashion all kinds of new things are started throughout the country, and you discover certain people who have a special aptitude. It becomes the fashion to do various things, and in many cases people become interested and develop their ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... precursory types sees nothing but organic resemblances and disdains the differences of aptitude. By consulting only the bones, the vertebrae, the hair, the nervures of the wings, the joints of the antennae, the imagination may build up any sort of genealogical tree that will fit with our theories of classification, for, when all is said, the animal, in its widest ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... burlesque, or gay; is devoted to those who treat him worthily, his affections being easily won; and there is something touching, soothing, and delightful in his inherent respect for gentleman and lady. His aptitude for domestic service; his love for and his power of amusing children and winning their fickle heart, their attachment to him being one of the most delightful traits of Southern life; his impressible, religious and devout nature, mark him as ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Wiltshire the pampered favorite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to the desert? This is like the unhappy persons who live, if they can be said to live, in the statical chair,—who are ever feeling their pulse, and who do not judge of health by the aptitude of the body to perform its functions, but by their ideas of what ought to be the true balance between the several secretions. Is a committee of Cornwall, &c, thronged, and the others deserted? No. You have an equal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... compensation for any little sacrifices she might have made in this—a reflection that often consoled her under a too prolonged course of prayer and meditation, for which, to say the truth, she had little aptitude—and for the rest, she was universally allowed to be the best compote-maker (the nuns were famous for their compotes, which were in great demand), the best embroiderer, the best altar-decorator in the convent. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... that she was the Swift One, that she had that amazing aptitude for swift flight through the trees. She needed all her wisdom and daring in order to keep out of the clutches of Red-Eye. I could not help her. He was so powerful a monster that he could have torn me limb from limb. As it was, to my death I carried an injured shoulder ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... alone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris he had just exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry. He had what was called under the old regime, the double hand, that is to say, an equal aptitude for handling the sabre or the musket as a soldier, or a squadron or a battalion as an officer. It is from this aptitude, perfected by a military education, which certain special branches of the service arise, the dragoons, for example, who are both cavalry-men and infantry ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a blind, was not pushed. But Henry gave his apprentice, Billy, instruction, and the youth began to show an aptitude which contrasted ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... before the feet of Elizabeth. School was filled with wonder and delight. She absorbed knowledge like a sponge in the water, and rushed eagerly from one study to another, showing marvellous aptitude, and bringing to every task ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... such a time, ministers recommend their measures as experiments, and parliaments are ever ready to rescind their votes. Find a man who, totally destitute of genius, possesses nevertheless considerable talents; who has official aptitude, a volubility of routine rhetoric, great perseverance, a love of affairs; who, embarrassed neither by the principles of the philosopher nor by the prejudices of the bigot, can assume, with a cautious facility, the prevalent tone, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... as she murmured, "I wish we had more money." For money was necessary, as votes had been, and—her eyes strayed to old Foster's portrait on the mantelpiece. The election had cost a lot; no salary was to be looked for now; both by policy and by instinct Quisante was lavish; she herself had no aptitude for small economies. Money was wanted very much indeed ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... of it, the native ring of it in our ears after five centuries of linguistic and metrical development. To whom, besides Chaucer himself, do we owe this? For while Chaucer has remained substantially the same, apparently we have an aptitude that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had not. The answer surely is: We owe it to our nineteenth century poets, and particularly to Tennyson, Swinburne, and William Morris. Years ago Mr. R.H. Horne said most acutely that the principle of Chaucer's rhythm is "inseparable from a full ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Ware, Massachusetts. He was put into the dyeing and bleaching department, and was thoroughly trained in it by Mr. William T. Smith, a scientific man, and one of the best practical chemists in New England. Young Holt manifested a remarkable aptitude for chemistry, and when but a mere boy was known as one of the most successful and dexterous ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... in the Rectory Umbrella was a parody on Lord Macaulay's style in the "Lays of Ancient Rome"; Charles had a special aptitude for parody, as is evidenced by several of the best-known verses ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Edinburgh days was a conceited, egotistical youth, but a true and honest one: a youth full of fire and sentiment, protesting he was misunderstood, though he was not. Posing as 'Velvet Coat' among the slums, he did no good to himself. He had not the Dickens aptitude for depicting the ways of life of his adopted friends. When with refined judgment he wanted a figure for a novel, he went back to the Bar he scorned in his callow days and then drew in ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp |
