"Inability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through observance of her methods in restoring land to a fertile condition. Our best success comes only when we work with her. When a soil has been robbed by man, and has been abandoned on account of inability to produce a profitable crop, the first thing nature does is to produce a growth of weeds, bushes, briers, or aught else of which the soil chances to have the seeds. It is nature's effort to restore some organic matter—some humus-making material—to ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... miles away. Spencer-Smith, who had struggled forward gamely and made no unnecessary complaints, started with the party the next morning and kept going until shortly before noon. Then he reported his inability to proceed, and Mackintosh called a halt. Spencer-Smith suggested that he should be left with provisions and a tent while the other members of the party pushed on to Mount Hope, and pluckily assured Mackintosh that the rest would put him right and ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the request of General Lyautey, then at the head of the military force of France, took me to see that General. I had to wait for him some time, as he was appearing before a committee of the Chamber of the Senate. His inability to agree with the Chamber caused his ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Franc-tireurs was presented at the door of a chateau, the proprietor would gracefully excuse himself with many suave and flattering expressions. He would present the soldiers with two francs each and request them to get a room at the hotel, at the same time expressing regret at his inability to oblige the gallant defenders of Le Belle France. His house was just then filled by the unexpected arrival of some relatives. Feigning sorrow at being deprived of the supreme honor of sleeping under his roof, the Franc-tireurs would make their adieux. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... an instant, not greatly worried by the problem, as Jurgen could see, but mildly vexed by his inability to divine the solution out of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... went on for several nights, when Father Deveaux finding that my midnight devotions were rather too much for me, was so obliging as to prescribe another species of pious exercise, in a letter which he wrote to me with his own hand. The holy father, after deeply regretting my inability to keep awake, informed me that he had a new act of penitence to suggest to me by the performance of which I might still hope to expiate my sins. He then, in the plainest terms, advised me to have recourse ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... [*]It was an inability to discover and execute these concealed curves which give certain of the modern imitations of the Parthenon their unpleasant impressions of harness ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... we had just been reading and discussing. "Did you read that! Did you see the reference to stabilizing the industry? STABILIZING! It ought to be spelled stable-izing, for they lead all the donkeys into stalls and tie them up and let them kick." He stopped momentarily for sheer inability ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... himself as a great force, a granary on which the city depended for life; it pleased him to think of thousands of people, men, women and children, waiting for his loaves or perhaps suffering through the inability to buy them. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 1914-15, he was credited with being a personal emissary and friend of the kaiser, bearing letters of credit estimated to vary between $50,000,000 and $100,000,000. The figure probably was exaggerated in view of the acknowledged inability of the German interests in the United States to command anything like the lesser sum named to acquire all they wanted—control of the munition plants. His initial efforts appeared to have been directed to a wide advertising campaign to sway ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Every day the woman in the glass grew more repulsively powerful and sombre, more dreadfully like that portrait which George hated. She knew he couldn't stand her when she looked like that. Looking like that, and George's inability to stand her, and the celebrity that made her so absurd, she put it all down to the peculiar malice and mischief of the thing that had been, as she said, "tacked on" to her, the thing they ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... "This inability to assist us is really very singular. I had hoped, after Dr. Thornton's report, that we might at last count with some certainty upon arriving at fresh results as to the actual murder. I can see from what you tell me you're a young lady of intelligence—much above the average—and great ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... not affect to consider Hiram Doolittle a perfect empiric in his profession, being in the constant habit of listening to his treatises on architecture with a kind of indulgent smile; yet, either from an inability to oppose them by anything plausible from his own stores of learning, or from secret admiration, Richard generally submitted to the arguments ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... window to call again for help; he realized with a horrible shrinking that that hammer-like fist was again striking out for his face; he was conscious of a sickening impulse to run, a humiliating and overwhelming sense of his inability to cope with this brute and of even his ignorance how to try; yet most of all he felt the determination to defend Edith or to die in the attempt. In a wild and futile fashion he dashed against his assailant, striking blindly ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... connived at, such sales, have by the Company's agents, been frequently seized and imprisoned, confined in irons, fined considerable sums of money, flogged, and deprived, in the most ignominious manner, of what they esteem most valuable, their castes. Weavers also, upon their inability to perform such agreements as have been forced from them by the Company's agents, universally known in Bengal by the name of Mutchulcahs, have had their goods seized and sold on the spot, to make good the deficiency: and the winders of raw silk, called Nagaards, have ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... what they meant; the Indian's fear of telegraph instruments, and his inability to understand electricity, were known to every operator ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... Obj. 3: Further, inability to secure a proffered pleasure causes affliction. But if children had not full strength in the use of their limbs, they would often have been unable to procure something pleasurable offered to them; and so they would have been ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... for the most part, earn. After lingering, in the sickness of hope deferred, at several of the German courts, his destination was at last fixed for Paris. His chance of success as a courtier was probably diminished by the blunt though kindly frankness of his opinions, and by his inability to stoop to unworthy means of rising. He had also many rivals to encounter, particularly those of the more slender school of Italian melody; and few of the public had knowledge or independence enough to forsake the inferior favourites that were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... thus associating them together in its legislation; and after prescribing the punishment that may be inflicted on the slaves, proceeds in the following words: "And to punish such free negroes and mulattoes by penalties not exceeding twenty dollars for any one offence; and in case of the inability of any such free negro or mulatto to pay any such penalty and cost thereon, to cause him or her to be confined to labor for any time not exceeding six calendar months." And in a subsequent part of the same section, the act authorizes the corporation "to prescribe ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... to excuse himself with an embarrassed air, as though his inability to appreciate the delights of the table was a failing he despaired of curing. But, as he said, he had too many other things ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... light unto my paths. And so it was until other knowledge, the rudiments of which he had himself endeavoured to impart to me, threw glimmerings across my way and I passed through a distracted period of inability to distinguish the signals of danger from those of safety. Much the same thing has happened to many others and assistance has sometimes been found in compromise and accommodation. Thus the statement about 4004 ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... where they met, drank vile liquors, and, under the maddening influence of absinthe and alcohol, plotted their crimes and atrocities of every description. This man, another Quasimodo in point of hideous aspect, had been dismissed from the detective service because of his inability to keep sober, but he had not forgotten the resources of his profession, and money lavishly bestowed upon him made him Captain de Morcerf's most obedient and faithful slave. Cash in hand rendered him indefatigable and the prospect of obtaining ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... loves and admires all that is great and noble in the history of that famous republic, and can have no hereditary bias as to its ecclesiastical or political theories, may at least attempt the task with comparative coldness, although conscious of inability to do thorough justice to ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... born as to regard expulsion from it as the greatest of all punishments,—thus being much like those serfs who, in some other countries, are legally bound to the land, and are sold with it; and they are forever in debt, the consequence of reckless indulgence, and of that inability to think of the morrow which is the most prominent characteristic of the inferior races of men. This has caused the existence of the system of peonage, of which so much has been said in this country, in the attempts that have been made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... itself have supplied a reason for his inability to travel abroad and meet Cardan as he had agreed to do; but the real cause of his change of plan was doubtless the condition of public affairs in Scotland at the beginning of 1552. In the interval of time between Cassanate's first letter to Cardan and the end of 1551, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... agricultural chemicals, pesticides; salinization, water-logging of soil due to poor irrigation methods; Caspian Sea pollution; diversion of a large share of the flow of the Amu Darya into irrigation contributes to that river's inability to replenish the Aral Sea; desertification natural hazards: NA international agreements: party to - Ozone Layer Protection; signed, but not ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Seemed to Be Raised by the Demands of Great Station House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand I Can't Spare That Man, He Fights! Idealization Which So Easily Runs into the Commonplace If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong Ignored the Insult, but Firmly Established His Superiority Inability to Say "No" as a Positive Weakness Leave Us to Take Care of Ourselves Let Us to the End Dare to Do Our Duty as We Understand It Lincoln-Shields Duel Lost Townships Manifested His Courage to Stand Alone Marriage, Murder Case National Bank No Hanging ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... weakness, though, and look at him even as she had answered at noon; but, in the middle of dinner, while she yet strove against the physical inability, her resolution was disturbed by a strange occurrence. A wild scream of fear and horror came ringing from the nursery. Without a thought for anything but that it was Roddy's voice, Christine sprang from the table. Down the long passage and into the nursery she ran, and, almost ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... catch the fine warmth of her voice, and his inability to see handicapped him more at that moment than at any time ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... certainly a novel one, and could not in ordinary circumstances have been accepted. But it is also novel to charge an historian of the highest character and repute with inability to speak the truth, or to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman, signing himself "Mr. Froude's Saturday Reviewer," replied in The Pall Mall Gazette. The challenge he left to the editor of The Saturday, who contemptuously refused ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... quickly brought a low table from an inner room, and with deft hands placed the steaming soup and broiled fish before him. The knife and fork were a concession to Merrit's inability to wield the chopsticks, and sitting on his heels was Merrit's concession to the inability of the house to provide ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... positive means of liquidating them, on the strength of a contingency which, if he could but be taught to believe it, is of all earthly anticipations the most remote and uncertain. A passion for unnecessary expense is, under different circumstances, frequently repressed by an inability to procure credit; but it is the curse and bane of Mr. Omnium's nephew, and Miss Saveall's niece, that so far from any obstacle being opposed to their prodigality, almost unlimited indulgence is offered, nay, actually pressed upon them, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... satisfy ourselves that the wine-and brandy-drinking into which men and women are enticed at dinner-parties and fashionable entertainments is a fruitful source of evil. The effect upon body and mind after the indulgence is over is seen in headaches, clouded brain, nervous irritation, lassitude, inability to think, and sometimes in a general demoralization of both the physical and mental economy. Where there is any chronic or organic ailment the morbid condition is increased and sometimes severe attacks ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... some clothing and boots from the Tibetans, and the pigtail that I needed to make me pass for a Tibetan I intended to make myself, out of the silky hair of my yaks. To avoid betraying myself by my inability to speak Tibetan fluently, I thought of pretending ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... large differences to pay, caused much of this trouble to the brokers. Men with limited means had plunged into what they considered a certain speculation, and when pay-day arrived and the account was against them, they were obliged to confess their inability to scrape together the required funds. For instance, at the time Zumalacarregui was expected to die, a principal, a person who could not command more than L1,000, "stood," as the Stock Exchange phrase runs, to make a "pot of money" by the event. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... he sang them, with words of abuse in the meantime; but gradually his hoarseness grew better. He did not send word of his inability to appear in the evening, but sang, and better than ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... stole over him. He knew that the moment for Presents was approaching; he knew that very shortly he would have to kiss and be kissed by a multitude of persons, that he would have to say again and again, "Oh, thank you, thank you so much!" that he would have his usual consciousness of his inability to thank anybody at all in the way that they expected to be thanked. Helen and Mary never worried about such things. They delighted in kissing and hugging and multitudes of words. If only he might have ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... Ill health, inability for prolonged mental application, shut out the future correspondent, to his great grief, from all thoughts of attempting a collegiate course. While incapacitated from mental or physical labor he obtained a surveyor's compass, and more ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... would call for a treat. It so happened that to-night none of my cronies were present. When the landlord found that I was still unable to settle the 'old score,' as he termed it, he abused me in no measured terms; but I still lingered in sight of the coveted beverage; and knowing my inability to obtain it my appetite increased in proportion. At length I approached the bar, and begged him to trust me for one more glass of brandy. I will not wound your ears by repeating his reply; and he concluded ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... relief. His speech was delivered in a faint voice, and with every symptom of physical exhaustion. He was heard with the most profound attention and respect. His predictions, unfortunately, came to pass. His dissolution was hastened by his inability to procure an assent to his views in the house, and by the consequences which he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... though he would suggest that the unfortunate man was not quite right in his head, in order to arouse if not sympathy, at any rate indulgence towards the madman. The governor shrugged his shoulders, opened and shut his eyes, regretted his inability to do anything, but made some sort of promise in the end. "Tous les egards... certainement, tous les egards," the soft, pleasant words flowed through his scented moustache. "But you know the ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... smiling face, the while she fought one of the mental battles which seemed to meet her on every step of the road to recovery. She had been so much occupied grieving over the serious financial loss which her inability to work would involve, that she had taken little thought of the pleasures from which she was debarred; but, after all, she was but a girl, and a girl with a keen capacity for enjoyment, and it was a very ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... leaders preceding the final break. The awful shadow of the cross grows deeper and darker across His path. The hatred of the opposition leader gets constantly intenser. The conditions of discipleship are more sharply put. The inability of the crowds, of the disciples, and others to understand Him grows more marked. Many followers go back. He seeks to get more time for intercourse with the twelve. He makes frequent trips to distant points on ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... column of figures when others are talking. Habit and effort may reduce such disability, but in some instances it will never even approximately eliminate it. Such persons may be very efficient employees, and their inability to concentrate in the presence of distractions should be respected. Every business man is careful to locate every piece of machinery where it will work best, but equal care has not been given to locating men where they may work ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... This inability may either be concealed by meeting demands to the full, until it issue in bankruptcy, or in some form of national debt;—or it may be concealed during oscillatory movements between destructiveness and productiveness, which result on the whole in stability;—or it may be manifested by ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... contrary extreme into which many teachers are apt to run, and that is, to condemn every thing which is vehement and forcible as theatrical. It is an old trick to depreciate what we can not attain, and calling a spirited pronunciation theatrical, is but an artful method of hiding an utter inability of speaking with force and energy. But though school-boys ought not to be taught those nice touches which form the greatest difficulties in the profession of an actor, they should not be too much restrained from ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. The route of the travellers was directed by the course which the river had ploughed for itself down the valley, the banks of which bore in general that dark grey livery which Sir Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... recapitulation of the sufferings endured by the Spaniards on their retrograde march to Quito. They took a more northerly route than that by which they had approached the Amazon; and, if it was attended with fewer difficulties, they experienced yet greater distresses from their greater inability to overcome them. Their only nourishment was such scanty fare as they could pick up in the forest, or happily meet with in some forsaken Indian settlement, or wring by violence from the natives. Some sickened and sank down by the way, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... This inability or unwillingness to believe in one's self; the disposition to doubt one's powers, to admit defeat before trying, is nowhere more clearly apparent than in the attitude of many persons who possess the physical and mental qualifications ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... and, never being based upon any original choice of foundation or direction, they were exercised on whatever object chance might place in their way. Hence, whilst he sometimes reached the brilliant in speech because that was spontaneous, he fell below the commonplace in action, from inability to guide incipient effort. He had a quick comprehension and considerable force of character; but, being without the power to combine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities whilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself in useless ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... for the fact that PETER materializes after his death, it is written with plausibility and great care. The psychic phenomena are treated as though real, and our sympathy for PETER when he returns is a human sympathy for the inability of a spirit to get his message across. The theme is not etherealized; one does not see through a mist dimly. There was not even an attempt, in the stage production of the piece, which occurred at the Belasco Theatre, New York, on October 17, 1911, to use the "trick" of gauze ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... was supposed (perhaps falsely) to be the bad military administration of your only army. Secondly, and much more, by your apparent inability ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... other girl's inconsiderate mother whom you may find comfortably seated in a good position for criticism, and to make her suppose that you are an old rider, keep silence. Do not criticise your horse or his equipments, do not profess inability to mount, but when you master says "Now!" step forward and stand facing in the same direction of your horse, placing your right hand on the upper pommel of the two on the left ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... playing, confusion in playing, inability to follow when accompanying, accentuating too roughly or with lack of precision, all these faults have their origin in the child's muscular and nervous control, in lack of co-ordination between the mind which conceives, the brain which orders, the nerve which transmits and the ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... Afghanistan is extremely poor, landlocked, and highly dependent on foreign aid, agriculture, and trade with neighboring countries. Much of the population continues to suffer from shortages of housing, clean water, electricity, medical care, and jobs. Criminality, insecurity, and the Afghan Government's inability to extend rule of law to all parts of the country pose challenges to future economic growth. It will probably take the remainder of the decade and continuing donor aid and attention to significantly raise Afghanistan's living ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mystery? The outcome of it all for Hugh was the resolution that for himself, at all events, his business was to disregard the temptation to formularise his position. With one's limited vision, one's finite inability to touch a thought at more than one point at a time, one must give up all hope of attaining to a perfected philosophical system. The end was dark, the solution incomprehensible. He must rather live as far as possible in a high and lofty ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... splendid ecstasy! If you want to call hunger, continual envy, and the inability to live otherwise, ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... Instead, the words that came seemed to him somehow banal and commonplace. "I love you. I want to be with you all the time. When we are together things grow strange and desirable." Amorous mediocrities! So he edited them into a further banality and thus concealed his inability to give lofty utterance to his emotions by amusing himself with deliberately cheapened insincerities. "Saving my linguistic face," he thought suddenly, and ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... suspected things were going wrong for some time, and spoken of his suspicions to me repeatedly. He has just come back from a private meeting of the Redcross shareholders. He says in consequence of some additional losses in South America, I think, and inability to realize capital there, the bank cannot meet two or three heavy calls at home. I daresay I am not telling you rightly, for I don't understand business, and I don't suppose ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... and caused him to pause as if spell-bound in the centre of the room. No—his gaze was riveted upon a female form that reclined upon a sofa; and now we are almost inclined to throw down our pen in despair, for we are conscious of our inability to describe such a glorious perfection of womanly beauty as met the enraptured gaze of a man, whose sensual nature amply qualified him to appreciate such ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Federal Constitution so as to make effective the disapproval by the President of particular items in appropriation bills, the enactment of statutes in regard to the filling of vacancies in the Presidential office, and the determining of vexed questions respecting Presidential inability are measures which may justly ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... given away if she had remained with him another instant. Danglar's wife! It was dark here in the alley-way, and she did not know where it led to. But did it matter? And she stumbled as she went along. But it was not the physical inability to see that made her stumble—it was a brain-blindness that fogged her soul itself. His wife! Gypsy ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... noticed in examining their hands that few could move the forefinger without the second finger; indeed the fingers appeared useless as independent members of the hands. In connection with this may be mentioned their apparent inability to distinguish colours or count numbers, due alone to their want of words to express ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... wholly indifferent respecting the circulation of this protest; he merely wished to show the Emperor that he was better informed of passing events than Regnier, and to afford Napoleon another proof of the inexperience and inability of the Grand Judge in police; and Fouche was not long in receiving the reward which he expected from this step. In fact, ten days after the publication of the protest, the Emperor announced to Regnier the re-establishment of the Ministry of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... history a beautifully organized constitutional system; to contend that the most absolute monarchy in existence has maintained itself for centuries, without encountering a single serious insurrection, in a nation whose distinguishing characteristic is its inability to endure a ruler; to treat the introduction of a totally different and far more complex system of government, the product elsewhere of elements that have no existence in Russia, and of long struggles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... pronouncing the a in scatter as we do in skater, (one who skates,) I have no conception of what it meant; for if it meant that only the time of the syllable was prolonged, the vowel retaining the same sound, I must confess as ut er [sic—KTH] an inability of comprehending this source of quantity in the Greek and Latin as in English."—Walker on Gr. and L. Accent, Sec.24; Key, p. 331. This distinguished author seems unwilling to admit, that the consonants occupy time in their ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... but grieve at suffering the whole burthen of this clamorous imposition to fall upon the soft-hearted Mr Arnott, whose inability to resist solicitation made him so unequal to sustaining its weight: but when Mrs Harrel was again able to go on with her account, she heard, to her infinite surprise, that all application to her brother had proved fruitless. "He will not hear ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... two things that won't mix—metaphysics and natural science. It is full of word-splitting and conjuring with terms, and abounds in natural history facts. The style is wonderful, but the logic is not strong. He enlarges upon the inability of the intellect to understand or grasp Life. The reason is baffled, but sympathy and the emotional nature and the ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... in his dreams, and a beautiful "Sleeping Youth" was actually discovered beneath the descending Selene, thus completing the composition and verifying the assumption as to its subject. That the recumbent youth was not at once recognised as intended to represent Endymion is due to the inability of the scientific mind to grasp more than one idea at a time, for the features bore so marked a resemblance to those of Antoninus Pius that it was rightly considered a portrait of that Emperor in his youth. Only recently have ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... virtues of his brother Joseph. He who had been the victorious general crossing the Alps now found himself the Alp, with a dozen victorious generals crossing him; he who had been the gunner was now the target, and his present inability to express his feelings in language which his tormentors could understand, for he had not yet mastered the French tongue, kept him in a state of being which may well ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... the steepest ups and downs. As before, not only was the scenery that unfolded itself, as we rose from the valley of the Rio Chico, of great beauty, but it increased in beauty the farther north we travelled. And I can not but regret again my inability to give some idea, however faint, of these mountains and valleys and rivers, especially of those that paraded themselves before us on the second ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... have achieved congruity by use or custom. Consonance is an immediate and fundamental impression,—psychologically an ultimate fact. That it is ultimate is emphasized by Stumpf in his theory of Fusion. Consonance is fusion, that is, unitary impression. Fusion is not identical with inability to distinguish two tones from each other in a chord, although this may be used as a measure of fusion. Consonance is the feeling of unity, and fusion is the mutual relation of tones ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... unable to move anything except my fingers and toes. I did not appear to be hurt in the least, and my senses, instead of being dulled by the shock, seemed to be preternaturally sharp, and I realized in a moment that if this inability to move remained with me for five minutes I was a dead man—dead, not from the shock, but by drowning. I gazed up through that clear green water, and I could see the ripples on the surface slowly subsiding after my plunge into the tub. It reminded me of looking into an ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... school, he made a violent struggle against his physical inability to study. He sat gripped, making himself pale and ghastly in his effort to concentrate on the book, to take in what he had to learn. But it was no good. If he beat down his first repulsion, and got like a suicide to the stuff, he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... service were spent by the grown-up Jewish soldiers amidst extraordinary hardships. They were beaten and ridiculed because of their inability to express themselves in Russian, their refusal to eat trefa, and their general lack of adaptation to the strange environment and to the military mode of life. And even when this process of adaptation was finally accomplished, the Jewish soldier was never promoted ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... in the great questions of the day, only sought how to elude them, and to leave time, that inscrutable master, to settle them in his place. His indecision brought him to a state of impotence, and he ended by inability to do anything but dodge and lie, like his mother, and even with his mother. Whilst he was getting his sister married to the King of Navarre and concerting his policy with Coligny, he was adopting towards the three principal personages who came to talk over those affairs ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... some moral worth still left in me. But if I did not mean to kill the man—if his death was my misfortune as well as his—and if (as frequently happens) I am nevertheless troubled by remorse, the true cause lies in my own inability fairly to realize my own motives—before I look to results. I am the ignorant victim of false remorse; and if I will only ask myself boldly what has blinded me to the true state of the case, I shall find ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... inability to share my love with any other. The incident of Veronica had made that clear; but now that she chose to deny herself to me she seemed rather to wish than otherwise that I should seek adventures, experiences elsewhere. And ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... this unique faculty for yielding a melodious representation of the most intense moments of stationary emotion, was his inability to deal with a dramatic subject. The first episode of S. Catherine's execution, when the wheel was broken and the executioners struck by lightning, is painted in this chapel without energy and with a lack of composition that betrays the master's indifference to his subject. Far different is the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... due to forage poisoning, caused by the eating food infested with poisonous moulds. The symptoms are inability to swallow (paralysis of the muscles of deglutition) and paresis of the hind and forequarters. When the symptoms become advanced, treatment is of little avail. However, further troubles can be prevented by ascertaining the food which is infested with this mould. Ofttimes, ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... did useful work which none other could do in the University. That this was acknowledged was proved by his re-election, early in 1876: but his third term of three years was a time of weakened health. Repeated absence from his post and inability to fulfil his duties made it obviously his wisest course, at the end of that term, to ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... of the Brigadier the British tars were sweating and muttering imprecations at their inability to put a ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... But next, while we may deny this universal distribution of political wisdom, we may, if we are sufficiently under the sway of modern ideas about collective psychology, believe that it is necessary to poke up the political indifference and inability of the common man as much as possible, to thrust political ideas and facts upon him, to incite him to a watchful and critical attitude towards them, and above all to secure his assent to the proceedings of ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... of the political earthquake that was to shake the country made itself audible beyond denial on that morning of March 27th, when the news spread through England that, in view of the disorganized state of the Persian army and the Shah's consequent inability to suppress the open insurrection of the border tribes in the north-eastern districts of Meshed, Russia, with a great show of magnanimity, had come to the rescue by despatching a large armed force from her military station at Merv across the Persian frontier ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Its main difficulty. The main difficulty in producers' cooeperation is to get and retain managerial ability of a high order. Failure to do this results in inability to maintain and keep in repair the equipment and to pay the ordinary returns to the passive investment, and financial failure follows. There is no touchstone for business talent, no way of selecting it with any certainty in advance ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... from a modern confusion of thought with regard to the realms of the Divine and the Human that the amazing inability arises, on the world's part, to understand the respective principles on which the Catholic Church acts in these two and utterly separate departments. The world considers it reasonable for a country to defend its material possessions by the sword, but intolerant and unreasonable ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... effect. He betrayed his race nowadays by little more than his colour, a certain high-pitched intonation of his voice and an extraordinary skill in the game of polo. There had been a time of revolt against discipline, of inability to understand the points of view of his masters and their companions, and of difficulty to discover much sense in ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... brilliant future, or at least that the certainty of his consent to such a second union would momentarily please her. It was hard to say why he had spoken. It had been an impulse such as the most selfish people sometimes yield to when their failing strength brings upon them suddenly the sense of their inability to resist any longer the course of events. The vanity of man is so amazing that when he is past arrogating to himself the attention which is necessary to him as his daily bread, he is capable of so demeaning his manhood as to excite interest in his ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... "Inability to locate you until after somewhat exhaustive inquiries had been made explains the failure to notify you by wire in time to permit of your attending the funeral of your father and brother, which took place in this city on the eighth instant, and was marked ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... comprised in the following lines, which have every appearance of significance; and which, I have not the least doubt, bear as close application as those already explained: but, as yet, I must acknowledge an inability to understand the allusions. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... dimensions. The door of the air-tight stove has to be opened, under such circumstances, you may well suppose! So it happened that our young man had been obliged, from an early period, to do something to support himself, and found himself stopped short in his studies by the inability of the good people at home to furnish him the present means of support ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in Western New York, and have been found to answer a good purpose; and so it may be said of the sole-pipes. Indeed, it is believed that no instance is to be found on record in America of the failure of tile drains, from the inability of the water to ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... able to find out what the charges were on which he was recalled from his lucrative appointment, although repeated applications were made to the Governor who recalled him for a trial. All the subsequent Governors have professed their inability to give him the information, which, had such charges actually been framed, must have been found in the archives, so that no doubt can now exist but that this villanous trick was trumped up by the Governor to serve his own family by the bestowal ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... was in this first interview the sole effort of Napoleon to develop in the mind of Alexander the sentiments of anger and weariness by which he had been inspired by the selfishness which he imputed to Great Britain and the inability and weakness which he recognized in Prussia, and to engage the Russian emperor to become friendly with the only power which could offer him a glorious and profitable alliance. In the mind of the emperor, we have already ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... long time observed by others that all sorts of heavy bodies (allowance being made for the inability of retardation which they suffer from a small power of resistance in the air) descend to the earth FROM EQUAL HEIGHTS in equal times; and that equality of times we may distinguish to a great accuracy ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... power; and he would not abuse his power. The eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet and steady as stars. She trembled. Her dread of Armand was increased by a nightmare sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she felt as if she were turned to stone. She lay passive in the grip of fear. She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... defilement from his soul; Jasper wanted so to bury it there, so deftly, so cleverly to hide it within his very heart of hearts, that it should not appear to dishonor him in the eyes of his fellow-men. Of the final judgment and its disclosure he never thought. It was his inability to cover up the secret; it was his ever-growing knowledge that the garment was neither long enough nor broad enough to wrap it round, that caused his anxiety from day to day. In spite of his cheerful and ruddy face he was feeling quite worn and old. If this continues, if ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... to Tony's inability to balance the chafing-dish on Cristoforo Colombo's back—they filed from the gateway, an imposing cavalcade. The ladies were on foot, loftily oblivious to the fact that three empty saddles awaited their pleasure. Constance, a gesticulating officer at either hand, was vivaciously talking ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... went away. There had been no particular consequences of Johnny Simms' inability to remember what was right and what was wrong. But Holden felt like a normal man about men whose wives look patient. Even psychiatrists feel that it is somehow disreputable to illtreat a woman who doesn't fight back. This ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... which greeted the startling words had subsided, he spoke briefly of their immense natural advantages, in the event of war, the inability of England to gain any permanent advantage, and finally of the vast resources of the country, and its phenomenal future, when the "waves of rebellion, sparkling with fire, had washed back to the shores of England the wrecks of her power, her ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... well as to picturesquely lurid verbal illustration. But this was different; the language of these men was crammed with filth for filth's sake, and flat, pointless profanity. I have no doubt that my inability to avoid expressing disgust made them worse than ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... a curious sensation of weakness and emptiness in my head—as if it were hollow, and a strange disinclination, almost inability, to speak or think. Suddenly this passed away, and the events which I have related in the previous chapters rushed back upon my memory ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... that immediate judgment concerning numerous cases involving situations of this kind would be overhasty. It is often said that a witness was able to see this or that under such and such illumination, or that he was unable to see it, although he denies his ability or inability. The only solution of such contradictions is an experiment. The attempt must be made either by the judge or some reliable third person, to discover whether, under the same conditions of illumination, anything could be seen at the place in question ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... he belonged, he had received an intimation from the local "boss" that if Dumont's name were anywhere printed in connection with the case he would be held responsible. Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the filing of the decree the newspapers were grumbling over their inability to give the eagerly-awaited details of the great scandal. And Herron was Catonizing against ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... nearly converted to her side as the journey grew hotter and heavier, seeing her maintain her pace as well as himself, if not better, that he found himself stumbling every few yards sheerly through his inability to keep his eyes from her. He was bursting to talk; there was yet a problem unsolved in his mind; and when a stretch of level glade gave him ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... proposed modifications in the Draft Law with the Imperial Government or its representatives, before they were submitted to the Raad. The objection to the adoption of this course, which, according to Mr. Fischer's statement,[95] the Pretoria Executive did in fact make, was their inability to "recognise the right of the British Government to be consulted on the franchise, which was an internal matter." This objection, however, as Lord Milner pointed out to the members of the Pretoria Executive, both directly through ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... to her that she had never felt her poverty till now. Bitterly did she regret her inability to help them. From the abundance that had blessed her youth and middle age a mere pittance had been saved, scarcely enough to maintain herself, and altogether insufficient to enable her to gratify her ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... practical application of the microscopical examination of the surface, I would refer to two species of Amphipoda, classed by Leach under the name of Gammarus Locusta, from his inability to assign them any separate specific characters. In the structure of their integuments, however, these two forms will be found to exhibit ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... our people stood in. One day it rained in that plain a great shower of hail as big as oranges, which caused many tears, weaknesses, and vows.' The wanderer ventured as far as the Missouri, and would have gone still farther eastward but for his inability to cross the swollen river. Cooperating parties explored the upper valleys of the Rio Grande and Gila, ascended the Colorado for two hundred and forty miles above its mouth, and visited the Grand Canon of the same river. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... said Sanders. "Mildred is strangely constituted. If she loves this man, her love can be more deadly to the choice of her heart than her hate to one she abhors. The impatience of restraint you speak of and her very inability to brook opposition can be turned to good account now." And old Sanders again tapped in the rhythm of a ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... occasionally a fit of savage feeling against Elgar took hold of him, but his mood remained that of one who watches life's drama from a point of vantage. Sitting close by Cecily's side, he had been made only more conscious of their real remoteness from each other—of his inability to give her any kind of help. He wished she had not come to him, for he saw she had hoped to meet with warmer sympathy, and perhaps she was now more than ever oppressed with the sense of abandonment. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... intelligence from being fantastical. There must inevitably have been an element of broad farce in the veriest tragedy into which she might have been brought at that time, an element which was rendered all the more conspicuous by her own inability to perceive at the moment that she was behaving ridiculously, and making others ridiculous. But the bishop himself was not conscious of any absurdity or loss of dignity. It was only the inconvenience that he felt just then. For he was fresh ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Robert is a fair example of the worst type of men of the Norman-Angevin blood. Not bad in intention, and not without abilities, he was weak with that weakness most fatal of all in times when the will of the ruler gave its only force to law, the inability to say no, the lack of firm resisting power. The whole eleventh century had been nourishing the growth, in the favouring soil of feudalism, of the manners and morals of chivalry. The generation to which William ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... dawn, we tossed about, unable to sleep. After agreeing that it was the mattress, we took the covering and pillows and lay down on the floor, falling into a deep slumber almost instantly. "Well, wouldn't that jar your eccentric," said Dave to me the next morning, speaking of our inability to sleep in a bed. "I slept in one in Ogalalla, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... groups and people. Art in social relationships is contingent on broad sympathies and extended relationships, and it is contingent as well on ability to work for social ends while remaining in large measure disregardful of the personal stakes involved. Because of our inability to lose our personal attachment for our own work, because of what it may yield us in personal ways, the world never yet has experienced the joy and creative possibility of associated effort And because it has not we have still to experience ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot |
