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Inadequate   /ɪnˈædəkwət/  /ɪnˈædəkwˌeɪt/   Listen
Inadequate

adjective
1.
Lacking the requisite qualities or resources to meet a task.  Synonym: unequal.  "The staff was inadequate" , "She was unequal to the task"
2.
Not sufficient to meet a need.  Synonyms: poor, short.  "A poor salary" , "Money is short" , "On short rations" , "Food is in short supply" , "Short on experience"



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"Inadequate" Quotes from Famous Books



... but still inadequate, solution of the problem was offered by Karl Kautsky. [Sidenote: Kautsky] He, too, found the chief cause of the revolt in the spoliation of Germany by Rome. In addition to this was the new rivalry of commercial classes. Unlike ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... inadequate,' shouted Uncle Wattleberry. 'Nothing short of felling you to the earth with an umbrella could possibly atone for the outrage. You are a danger to the whisker-growing public. You have knocked my hat off, pulled my whiskers, and tried to remove ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... his brother, and never answered, containing such a scene of petty vexatious persecutions as is almost incredible; the cause being the refusal of Mr. Throp to compound, for a compensation totally inadequate, some of the rights of his living which affected Waller's estate. In 1739, a petition was presented to the House of Commons by his brother, Robert Throp, gentleman, complaining of this persecution, and applying to parliament for redress, relative to the number of attachments granted by the King's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... is an arduous and very expensive undertaking. The opening from Lake Ontario was formerly liable to great changes and fluctuations, and the provincial work, originally undertaken to fix the entrance more permanently, was soon found inadequate to the rapid commercial undertakings of the country. Accordingly, a very large sum was granted by the Parliament for rendering it stable and increasing the width, which is now 180 ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... while the other two were free to support Wellington. Mr. Ropes thinks it might have been diminished by one-half, but then a single Prussian corps could have dealt with it. It is difficult to discern in what respect the 6000 cavalry assigned to Grouchy should have been inadequate to such service as could reasonably have been expected of ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... be regarded as a mere mischance. But no such excuse can now be of any avail. According to some accounts of this second massacre, no escort whatever was furnished. According to others, the escort was a mere mockery, consisting of a totally inadequate number of French troops, who were very willing to see their enemies butchered, and who did not even make any attempt to restrain their allies. All that can be known for certain is, that if there was any escort at all it was wholly ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... Leipziger Strasse, as severe in inner details as in the sombre gray of its outer walls, was hastily constructed in 1871 for the accommodation of the newly consolidated German Empire, and has long been inadequate to the need. A single gallery surrounds three sides of the hall, and is occupied on the right by boxes for the Imperial household, the diplomatic corps, and high officials. The left is appropriated to English and American visitors; and ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... see, I do know them, and very well—and that they're quite capable of all you say, and more to boot. Adele Standish in especial I know far too well to believe for an instant she'd burden herself with benevolent intentions toward another woman without expecting to reap some wildly inadequate reward. That's all that bothers me. I can't understand what they wanted with you. But I'm not going to let my mystification lose me the services of a promising amanuensis—not in these days, when intelligence is ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... handled, provide the dramatic element. [Footnote: The use of terms like "sad" and "joyful" are only clumsy equivalents for the delicate spiritual vibrations of the new harmony. They must be read as necessarily inadequate.] ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky

... this alluring theme in a satisfactory manner. Ebers in his novel The Emperor, is inadequate. He laboriously loads its pages with his carefully verified material, but his imagination is wingless, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... it was a cultivated as well as an attentive eye that studied the movements of Lady Harman and an experienced ear that weighed the words and cadences of her entirely inadequate and extremely expressive share in their conversation. He had enjoyed the social advantages of a popular and presentable man of letters, and he had met a variety of ladies; but he had never yet met ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... past. He also gladly showed him the paper given him by the surgeon at the field hospital, telling how the American boys had worked like beavers in assisting him take care of the numerous cases he had been compelled to handle with such inadequate facilities at his command. Yes, there were still other documents which Rod allowed them to glance over, after ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow

... effort to remove it. The more he studied the structure, the more his admiration grew, and his appreciation of the reasoning intelligence of its builders; and he smiled to himself a little controversial smile, as he thought how inadequate what men call instinct would be to such a ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... were inadequate, hence new ones were necessary. We had a few, but none were big enough. We bought Valcartier, one of the best sites in the world, which was equipped almost over-night with water service, electric light and ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... certain manifestations the English language stops short. French only, the caryatid French of Victor Hugo, would have described it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily shuffling and discarding inadequate adjectives. The vehemence of the shock spent itself, and the sufferer half fell, half knelt, across the bench. He was calling now upon God and his wife, huskily, as the wounded bull calls upon the unscathed herd to stay. Curiously enough, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... resolved to lay siege to Granada, fortunately at a time when that city was a prey to civil dissentions, occasioned by the rival families of the Zegris and Abencerrages. The Moors, gradually weakened by their domestic broils, offered but an inadequate opposition to the enemy, who pressed them, on this account, with increasing ardour. After a protracted siege of eight months, in which a host of warriors distinguished themselves, Granada, the royal residence of the Moslems for seven hundred years, surrendered, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... uncommonly quick, as almost to resemble intuition, and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from overrunning his game, that is, from acquiring his knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner. And here the instructor had to combat another propensity too often united with brilliancy of fancy and vivacity of talent,—that indolence, namely, of disposition, which can only be stirred by some strong motive of gratification, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... Author.—The above statement of the confiscating law of Georgia gives a very inadequate idea of that law. Savannah was taken, and General Lincoln and his army were driven out of Georgia by Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, in 1778, who treated all classes with such kindness and generosity that the Legislature and Government, as previously existed, was restored and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... make a choice, the generations will be well served; but that is not yet, and what Walter was fit for was not yet quite manifest. It was only clear to the father that his son must labor for others with a labor, if possible, whose reflex action should be life to himself. Agriculture seemed inadequate to the full employment of the gifts which, whether from paternal partiality or genuine insight, he believed his son to possess; neither had Walter shown inclination or aptitude for any department of it. All Richard could do, therefore, was to give him such preparation ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... amazed when he had read this. A confusion of feelings were in his breast. He had blundered blindly into his long-studied reprisals whose inadequate execution he was now scarce willing to regret, and Olivia had thought him capable of throwing her to this colossal rogue! The document shook in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... to wait for activity. Meanwhile the streets down town were filled with hungry forms, the remnant of the World's Fair mob swelled by the unemployed strikers. The city was poor, too. The school funds were inadequate. The usual increase in salary could not be paid. Instead, the board resolved to reduce the pay of the grade teachers, who had the lowest wages. Alves received but forty dollars a month now, and had been refused a night school for which she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... from office half an hour earlier than usual, I was aware of a small figure in the dining-room—a tiny, plump figure in a ridiculously inadequate shirt which came, perhaps, half-way down the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... electrons, in their emanations and transformations, in their amazing potencies and activities, sees, or seems to see, the secret of the origin of life itself. But this view is distasteful to a large number of thinking persons. Many would call it frank materialism, and declare that it is utterly inadequate to supply the spiritual and ideal background which is the strength and solace of our ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... but true when it is associated with the concept of a sphere, or of some cause determining such a motion. (73:5) But if it be the nature of a thinking being, as seems, prima facie, to be the case, to form true or adequate thoughts, it is plain that inadequate ideas arise in us only because we are parts of a thinking being, whose thoughts - some in their entirety, others in fragments only - constitute ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]

... now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... was armed with introductions from William Taylor, and with some translations in manuscript from Danish and Welsh poetry. The principal introduction was to Sir Richard Phillips, a person of some importance in his day, who has so far received but inadequate treatment in our own.[49] Phillips was active in the cause of reform at a certain period in his life, and would seem to have had many sterling qualities before he was spoiled by success. He was born in the neighbourhood of Leicester, and his father was 'in the farming ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... illusions are so entrenched that if any impression is to be made on public opinion generally, effort must be persistent, permanent, and widespread. Mere isolated conferences, disconnected from work of a permanent character, are altogether inadequate for the forces ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell

... it became compulsory for farmers to allow only a limited number of native families to remain on the farms. This created considerable dissatisfaction among both farmers and natives, and the result was that native labour approached the inadequate in a very short time. Hundreds of native families left the State, and although the Law ultimately admitted of a wider interpretation, the native populace has not materially increased. The present attitude ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann

... of the continent are too much affected by the depreciation of our currency; scarce an officer, civil or military, but feels something of a desire to be concerned in mercantile speculation, from finding that his salary is inadequate to the harpy demands, which are made upon him for the necessaries of life, and from observing, that but little skill is necessary to constitute one of the merchants of these days. We are almost a continental tribe of ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... definition of Happiness given by some—"Happy is the man that has all he desires," or, "whose every wish is fulfilled," is a good and adequate definition, if it be understood in a certain way; but an inadequate definition if understood in another. For if we understand it simply of all that man desires by his natural appetite, thus it is true that he who has all that he desires, is happy: since nothing satisfies man's natural desire, except the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has published Books that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate to read. The members appear to be designated by a considerable diversity of names, according to their various places of establishment: in England they are generally called the Drudge Sect; also, unphilosophically enough, the White ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... to all this explanation, partly on what we think the inadequate ground that there is no necessary connection between the story of Urvasi (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred fire-lighting. Connections of that sort were easily invented at random by the compilers of the Brahmanas in their ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... for the parishioners, as well as for the minister, it was, about the year 1300, reduced to a vicarage, and the great tithes appropriated to the College of St. Elizabeth in Winchester. The small tithes which remained being inadequate to the support of the vicar and his necessary assistants, the church of Otterbourne was consolidated with that of Hursley, and the tithes of that parish, both great and small, were given to them to make up a sufficient maintenance—an arrangement which, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... duke's death, his widow paid frequent visits to the Continent. Pau was a specially favourite resort. There she found both English and French Protestants worshipping in places utterly inadequate for the purpose. She generously purchased a site for a church to be used by both congregations, the lower storey being fitted up for a French Protestant school. She also liberally subscribed towards the erection of the church. Her good works at this place were not few. Having heard that a man living ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... another; this they themselves admit. And thus their argument again is brought to naught, and they can produce nothing but uncertainty and doubt. Therefore they must either give up all three passages as inadequate to establish their case, since their meaning is obscure; or else they must cite others, which explicitly indicate that the two must be interpreted by the one. This they cannot do; I defy them to ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... weighed anchor on the morning of the 17th, under the impression, no doubt, that a more effectual attack would shortly be attempted. I am going to make a short tour, with a view, as far as I am enabled with the inadequate means at my disposal, to distract ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... at this time to encounter much unpopularity. He was accused of an undue leaning towards the Turkish Government, and an inadequate sympathy with the Christian populations, and it was alleged that if he had acted in firm concert with the other Powers in coercing the Porte—if he had not proclaimed so loudly and constantly his determination ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... any theory of progress which appeals to the sympathies, and to accept the wildest notions of social reorganization. We should be obliged to note also, among scientific men themselves, a disposition to come to conclusions on inadequate evidence—a disposition usually due to one-sided education which lacks metaphysical training and the ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner

... with a bright intelligence, her natural temper inclined to the nobler modes of life. Unfortunately, little care had been given to her education; her best possibilities lay undeveloped; thrown upon her inadequate resources, she nourished the weaknesses instead of the virtues of her nature. She was always saying to herself that life had gone by, and was wasted; for life meant love, and love in her experience had been a flitting folly, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... purity that, instantly, you are down on your face in utter despair, because of your own self—your impurity; your lack of purity; the sharp contrast between Him and you. You feel that young Isaiah's outcry in the temple that morning is wholly inadequate. "Unclean lips," is it? Why, the whole thing, from innermost recesses clear through and out, is unclean. Then it dawns upon you that this is really what Isaiah is feeling and trying to express in his ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon

... once saw that the funds at our disposal to pay the annuities and gratuities would be inadequate, and availed ourselves of the opportunity presented by the return of Major Irvine to Winnipeg, to forward a telegram on the 5th September, requesting a further amount of six thousand dollars to be placed to our credit; and we may state here, though ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... pernicious, pervading fee system beggars description and my vocabulary is inadequate to describe its deleterious and baneful effects. It increases in the management of our jails greed for the almighty dollar. Prisoners are arrested because of the dollar and, shame to say, are frequently kept in captivity for months in steel cages for ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... round to a few of the most beautiful and characteristic of the Oxford colleges. She was easily fatigued, but she delighted in what she saw. I remember admiring her pretty feet, clad in quite inadequate but most dainty black satin shoes, with very high heels, and fine silk stockings. When I put my admiration into words she just smiled upon me delightfully but ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... concentrated at my entrance and to him it now returned. He was an unpretentious person of kindly aspect. To any one accustomed to Washington residents, he bore the unmistakable signs of being one of the many departmental employees whose pay is inadequate to the necessities of his family. Of his personal peculiarities I noted two. He blinked when he talked, and stuttered painfully when excited. Notwithstanding these defects he made a good impression, and commanded confidence. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... everything that the mother's tenderness and the father's science could invent to save him. Two years later Mrs. Sloper gave birth to a second infant—an infant of a sex which rendered the poor child, to the Doctor's sense, an inadequate substitute for his lamented first- born, of whom he had promised himself to make an admirable man. The little girl was a disappointment; but this was not the worst. A week after her birth the young mother, who, as the ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... with most miserable weapons, such as a few stones, scarcely even rough-hewn, and a few flint arrows, that the cave-man did not hesitate to attack the most formidable animals, and with such apparently inadequate means he succeeded in wounding and even killing them. The French Museum possesses mammoth and rhinoceros bones bearing fine scratches produced by the weapons which had been used to despatch the animals. The metacarpus of a large beast of prey, found at Eyzies, retains marks no less clear, and the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... of all by severing them from the frayed traditions of worn plush and sequin, rid them of the so inadequate back drop such as is given them, the scene of Vesuvius in eruption, or the walk in the park at Versailles. They need first of all large plain spaces upon which to perform, and enjoy their own remarkably devised patterns of body. I speak of the acrobats, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... upon the first impulse or alarm, are grounds for suspecting that there exists a fallacy and disguise in the testimony given in this affair, in which case, a sentence conformable to the law against homicide, committed in an affray, would afford a punishment unequal and inadequate to the possible aggravation of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... had never been enthusiastic about the affair. As a man, Eustace Medlicott said absolutely nothing at all to her— though to be sure she was quite unaware that he was inadequate in this respect. No man had meant anything different up to this period of her life. She had seen so few of them ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... faith which reaches beyond the disturbance, some certitude which is untouched by the doubt. If, however, we once lose the consciousness that there is any such principle, or if we try to rest on a principle which we at the same time feel to be inadequate, our spiritual life, in losing its unity or harmony with itself, must at the same time lose its purity and energy. It must become fitful and uncertain, the sport of accidental influences and tendencies; it must lower its moral and intellectual aims. This, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... and surprise Margaret called to him. Her voice broke the spell; her eyes saw nothing, nothing but the shadows and the half-lights shed by her inadequate ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... accepted the appointment of deputy supervisor of the construction work on the Saint-Martin canal, under his brother-in-law, Surville, if he had been able to give the required security. But he had at his command only five hundred francs, which was an inadequate sum. The attraction of business, which was one of the characteristics of his temperament, enticed him into the most chimerical adventures, although the first business connection which he formed, and which was in the nature of publishing and bookselling, resulted in ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... inevitable companion, clearness of price, reduced the poor of the northern provinces, and especially of the capital and its neighborhood, to the verge of starvation. The king, queen, and princesses gave large sums from their privy purses for their relief; but as such supplies were manifestly inadequate, Louis ordered the minister to draw three millions of francs from the treasury, and to apply them for the alleviation of the universal distress. Calonne cheerfully received and executed the beneficent command. He was perhaps ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... the last session of Congress, on the subject of Indian affairs, have introduced important changes into those relations. Many of the provisions of former laws had become inappropriate or inadequate, and not suited to the changes which time and circumstances had made. In the act regulating the intercourse with the various tribes, the principles of intercommunication with them are laid down, and the ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... to render Apology unnecessary. I shall therefore without further Prelude proceed to the Subject in Question. You are not ignorant, that I have lately lived at considerable Expence, to support which my allotted Income by the 'sapient' Court of Chancery is inadequate.—I confess I have borrowed a trifling sum and now wish to raise L500 to discharge some Debts I have contracted; my approaching Quarter will bring me L200 due from my Allowance, and if you can procure me the other L300 at a moderate Interest, it will save 100 per cent I must pay my Israelite ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... imagination to picture the implication of events which were happening from week to week. The memories of those days are already becoming somewhat dim, and as a matter of history and a guide to the future, it is perhaps well that some account should be given, however inadequate, of the dangers which confronted the country and of the means which were adopted to avert the worst consequences of the enemy's campaign without ceasing to exert the increasing pressure of our sea power upon his fighting efficiency, and without diminishing ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... capitals; and the boundaries of the empire were left without protectors. The empire was created by strength, enthusiasm, and courage; when these failed, it melted away. And even if the old discipline were maintained, how inadequate the army against the overwhelming tide of barbarians, fully armed, and bent on conquest. In all the victories of Valerian, Constantine, and Theodosius, we see only the flickering lights of departing glory. Military genius, united with patriotism, might have delayed ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... embarrassment of this part of the kingdom. Now, to meet this state of things you have the poor-law relief, which is the only relief we can rely upon, except that which comes from our own voluntary exertions. Well, but any one who has read over this report of Mr Farnall, just laid before us, must see how inadequate this relief must be. It runs up from one shilling and a half-penny in the pound to one shilling and fourpence or one shilling and fivepence; there is hardly one case in which the allowance is as much as two shillings ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh

... it has completely checked inquiry, since we could never get any further than the fact of the adaptation. There was nothing more to be known about the matter. The second explanation was soon found to be quite inadequate to deal with all the varied phases of the phaenomena, and to be contradicted by many well-known facts. For example, wild rabbits are always of grey or brown tints well suited for concealment among grass and fern. But when these rabbits are domesticated, without any ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the presence of the burgesses justice was administered in the old English fashion, and the accused acquitted or condemned by the oath of his neighbours, the "compurgators," out of whom our jury was to grow. Rough and inadequate as such a process seems to us, it insured substantial justice; the meanest burgher had his trial by his peers as thoroughly as the belted earl. Without the borough bounds however the system of the Norman judicature prevailed. The rural tenants who did suit and service ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... state of affairs is obscure. True, that distinguished artists are very seldom born into the class. But such an explanation would be extremely inadequate. Artists often move creatively with ease far beyond the boundaries of their native class. Thomas Hardy is not a peasant, nor was Stendhal a marquis. I could not, with any sort of confidence, offer an explanation. I am, however, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... would not attach themselves to the latter because of their objections to its organization. But the Democratic Platform of 1852 contains no exception against criminals and paupers. The naturalization laws have, in practice, been found inadequate to their exclusion, and the platform, in effect, avows unqualified adherence to them without abridgement ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... I. 'In the first place, as a philosopher. This is the first time I have been at the head of a large sum, and it is conceivable—who knows himself?—that I may make it fly. In the second place, as a fugitive. Who knows what I may need? The whole of it may be inadequate. But I can always write ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Yes—because I was pitiably inadequate to design anything better for us. I didn't know how. I didn't understand. I, the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... and pave the way for his future. He has very little means. As governor his salary is ample. The Executive Mansion is free, with many contributory advantages, and the schools of Albany admirable for the education of his six children. While in Washington the salary of vice-president is wholly inadequate to support the dignity of the position, and it is the end of a young man of ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... troops proved inadequate, the plan was then to call on the United States—as locally represented by General Wool and Captain David Farragut—for assistance. With this armed backing three times the Vigilante force could be quickly subdued. As it was all legal, it could ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... weather the storm; The summons that took her dear father away Seemed her young heart to break, she could not here stay, And now in deep slumber they side by side lay. I have felt, my dear friend, as I've witnessed thy grief, How inadequate language to give thee relief; And that real relief could never be found Except from the hand that inflicted the wound. In the furnace of fire thou wert not alone, For walking beside thee had ever ...
— The Kings and Queens of England with Other Poems • Mary Ann H. T. Bigelow

... subvention of $1200 from the Carnegie peace fund is wholly inadequate to meet the growing needs of this association. Since this subvention was first granted, the number of states has been more than doubled, and it takes about $600 a year to run the secretary's office. Unless more money is secured from some source, the association ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... reply, that a special order had been issued by the War Department, that no post should be surrendered without battle having been given, and his force was totally inadequate to an engagement with the Indians; that he should unquestionably be censured for remaining, when there appeared a prospect of a safe march through; and that, upon the whole, he deemed it expedient to assemble the Indians, distribute the property among them, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... been realised; and I am proud possessor of a house. Really word "house"[61] seems too inadequate, too ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.

... as true of bears as of any other group of large mammals, that our views as to specific distinction are based upon data at present utterly inadequate, for all the zoological museums of the world do not contain sufficient material for exhaustive study and comparison. The present writer has examined many of these collections and has no hesitation in admitting that his ideas upon the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... on earth seems magical the more we reflect on it," returned the lady. "The fact that our Institute was conceived, planned, and carried into successful operation by an invalid lady, in spite of discouragement, and, at first, with inadequate means, is itself little short of miraculous, but what is even more surprising is the fact that the Government, which began by throwing cold water on her Portsmouth work, has ended by recognising it and by affording us ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... character which had crossed Bacon's path, and in the essay on Seeming Wise we can trace from the impatient notes put down in his Commentarius Solutus, the picture of the man who stood in his way, the Attorney-General Hobart. Some of them are memorable oracular utterances not inadequate to the subject, on Truth or Death or Unity. Others reveal an utter incapacity to come near a subject, except as a strange external phenomena, like the essay on Love. There is a distinct tendency in them to the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... inadequate to express my gratitude to all who were factors in making this one of the greatest days I ever experienced. It seemed that everybody was a friend. The newspapers vied with each other in their write-ups of the occasion. The Call, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... inadequate have been our efforts to depict the self-devotion of Captain Baker, and the courage and constancy of his crew. The following letter, addressed to Lieutenant Booth, formerly an officer of the Drake, will go farther than any panegyric we can offer, to display the right feeling of ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... of action to make it clear. The courier had heard in Florence that madame la marquise had a passion for automobiles. But with her inadequate fortune and the many demands upon it, it was a weakness not readily gratified. The machine she had used during the winter was by no means up-to-date. Possibly if Monsieur—yet it was ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... before it had a stage representation there on April 26, 1909, but this performance was fourteen years later than the first at the Metropolitan Opera House on February 8, 1895. The New York performance was scenically inadequate, but the integrity of the record demands that the cast be given here: Samson, Signor Tamagno; Dalila, Mme. Mantelli; High Priest, Signor Campanari; Abimelech and An Old Hebrew, M. Plancon; First Philistine, Signor Rinaldini; Second Philistme, Signor ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... cannot get beyond that; it isn't in human nature to do so. The Self is limited by this corporeal phenomenon and doubtless it perishes when the body perishes." But here again the conclusion, though specious at first, soon appears to be quite inadequate. For though it is possibly true that a man, if left alone in a Robinson Crusoe life on a desert island, might ultimately subside into a mere gratification of his corporeal needs and of those mental needs which were directly concerned with the body, yet we ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... time we could get near her, we would snatch some of the wool. When sewed on to cloth, this made a wonderful wig. The proceeds from this entertainment, we saved for firecrackers. Then we bought some maple sugar of the Indians—very dark and dirty looking. It looked very inadequate for a young merchant's whole stock of goods, but when it was added to by scrapings from the brown sugar barrel, when mother's back was turned, it ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... eminent professors who fill its forty- three chairs are free and open to the general public, and are attended mainly by a large number of women students and by the senior students from the University. The largest lecture room in the College was given to Bergson, but this became quite inadequate to accommodate his hearers. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... chiefly devoted to agriculture and the ancient trades cannot succeed in modern war, unless it can beg, borrow, or buy from sympathizers or allies the necessary artillery and munitions. No amount of courage and devotion in troops can make up for an inadequate supply of artillery, machine guns, shells, and shrapnel, or for the lack of ample means of rapid transportation. Only in a rough country without good roads, like the United States in 1861-65, or Serbia or Russia now, can the rifle, light artillery, and horse or ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... of the latter be ameliorated by the change! No Constitution has yet been established here; and Arguello's power, or perhaps ability, was inadequate to introducing that which he had proposed. Many changes are still necessary in the Californias before they can become the happy and flourishing countries for which ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... not with the Bible teaching as to Hell, but with modern inadequate conceptions of the evil and guilt of sin, and with many, the almost lost sense of justice, and of "stern moral indignation ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... half-dozen carts filled with provisions, carcases of sheep and oxen, turkeys and geese, pullets and capons, fish, bread, and vegetables, all bent for Hoghton Tower; for though Sir Richard had made vast preparations for his guests, he found his supplies, great as they were, wholly inadequate to their wants. Cracking their whips in answer to the shouts with which they were greeted, the purveyors galloped on, many a hungry wight looking wistfully ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... many voices, there is one which is most inspiring and supreme. When the Vorspiel to Parsifal breaks upon the ear it is as if all other music were inadequate and incomplete—as if a voice called from the confines of eternity, in the infinite spaces where no time is, and rolled onward to the far-off ages when time shall be no more. Even so, high and clear above the voices ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... Brumley was also agreeably excited and dispersed on this occasion. It was an occasion of which he had been dreaming very frequently of late, he had invented quite remarkable dialogues during those dreams, and now he too was conversationally inadequate and with a similar feeling of unexpected adventure. He was now no more ready to go to the roots of things than Lady Harman. He talked on the way down chiefly of the route they were following, of the changes in the London traffic due to motor traction and of the charm and amenity ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... soil erosion; desertification; inadequate supplies of potable water; poaching natural hazards: hot, dust-laden harmattan haze common during dry seasons; recurring droughts international agreements: party to - Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... verified. On the contrary, the County and District Councils have, with few exceptions, properly discharged the statutory duties devolving upon them. Instances have, no doubt, occurred in which these bodies have, owing to inexperience and to an inadequate staff, found themselves in difficulties and have had to receive some special assistance from us in regulating their affairs; but this has been of rare occurrence." (Annual Report of the Irish Local Government Board for year ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... continue to carry our flag, our merchandise, and our bibles, to the ends of the earth, and guard our shores, as in days of old, from the foot of every foreign foe. England can never fully appreciate how much she owes to her seamen. The thousands of our inland population have a very inadequate conception of the race of heroes by which our coasts are peopled. Bax is no exaggerated specimen, got up, in these sensation days, for effect. It is a glorious fact,—proved by the hard and bare statistics furnished annually by the Board of Trade, and from other ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... tedious and exhausting, and the malaria of the hot Corsican summer told heavily on men's health and patience. The supply of ammunition, and of material of war generally, for the army seems to have been inadequate; and heavy demands were made upon the fleet, not only for guns, which could be returned, but for powder and shot, the expenditure of which might prove embarrassing before they could be renewed. The troops also were ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... extracted in America. It would be far more economical to do all that on the spot, with cheap labour, and save freight, and I saw already the vast factories springing up on the island. Then the way they extracted it from the coconut seemed to me hopelessly inadequate, and I invented a machine which divided the nut and scooped out the meat at the rate of two hundred and forty an hour. The harbour was not large enough. I made plans to enlarge it, then to form a syndicate to buy land, put up two or three large hotels, and bungalows for occasional residents; ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... of his own country, he is indebted for an ungracious paltry annuity, inadequate to the display of ordinary consequence, and wholly unequal to the suitable support of that dignity, which ought for ever to distinguish such a being from the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... daybreak, with poor Kizzie dead in her hands. He died like Desdemona, smothered with pillows. All I can do in his honor has been done by this inadequate recital of his charms and his capacity. After a few days of sincere grief I reflected philosophically that if he had not passed away I must have gone soon, and naturally felt it preferable that I ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... material employed. Of all the materials stone is probably the least suited to their successful use, while clay utilizes them in its own peculiar way, giving to them a great variety of expression. They are copied in clay from various models, but owing to the inadequate capacities of the material, often lose their function and degenerate into mere ornaments, which are modified as such to please the potter's fancy. Thus, for example, the series of handles placed about the neck of the vessel become, by modification in frequent copying, a mere band ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes

... Timgad are the only two sites which have been planned well enough to provide accurate measurements. The large modern town-plans (e.g. of Turin, p. 86) are useful, but inadequate to our purpose; for one thing, they often exaggerate the width of the streets. One really needs actual measurements made on ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield

... wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and passionate feeling within the walls of those same Welsh hills. Nature, alone, however, is inadequate to the production of a true poet. Even Wordsworth, the most patient, absorbed of recluses, had his share of education in London and travel in foreign cities. Vaughan, too, early found his way, in visits, to the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... public opinion, in that great country. They relied upon my impartiality (for I had proved it, at the expense of proscription abroad, and persecution at home); and, desiring only to be represented as they are, they deemed even my humble talents not wholly inadequate to an enterprise whose first requisite was the honesty that tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... proficiencies, Flum turned to his worship, on which wonderful embodiment of statesmanship and experience he intended to return the compliments that functionary had so flatteringly bestowed. As disappointments will occur, even with the greatest of men, so did Flum find himself totally inadequate to the discharge of this duty. There was, however, a responsibility resting upon him, which he must, considering that it touched that which was an honor to England and the English nation, discharge. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... home at daylight. The Celebration made table talk and newspaper space for several days. No real attempt was made to punish the Indians. For once, the whites, moved by a sense of tardy and inadequate justice, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... Art, 1900. The main theory of the book the present writer believes to be inadequate, but it contains an excellent collection of facts relating to Art, Magic, Art and Work, Mimetic Dances, etc., and much valuable discussion ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... limited in number and confined in their operations, and were utterly inadequate to have produced the thousands of square miles of drift-dbris which we find ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... at times became censors of morals, and interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs for which a more refined and elaborate system of jurisprudence would have provided only cumbersome and inadequate remedies. Thus one of their entries is to the effect that a certain man is ordered "to return to his family and demean himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open court that he had left ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... on... It is the most inhospitable clime that ever mortal set foot on.' At first there was great distress among the refugees. The immigration of 1783 had at one stroke trebled the population of Nova Scotia; and the resources of the province were inadequate to meet the demand on them. 'Nova Scarcity' was the nickname for the province invented by a New England wit. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that some who had set their hand to the plough turned back. Some of them went to Upper Canada; some to England; some ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... of the Commission are most inadequate for its needs. I call your attention to its request for increase in those accommodations as will appear from the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... far beyond her own needs, she really hated to lend to her mother in the hour of necessity. She did lend, and she lent without spoken protest, but with frigid bitterness. Her youthful passion for order and efficiency was aggrieved by her mother's negligent and inadequate arrangements for coping with the inevitable plague. She now made a police-visit to the bedroom because she considered that her mother had been demanding handkerchiefs at a stage too early in the progress of the disease. Impossible that her mother ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... which you have evinced are so greatly at variance with the title that you bear and the lineage of which you spring that no authority that you can exercise and no threats that you are able to command shall deter me from expressing that for which, however poor and inadequate my powers of speech, all these of whom and for what I am what I am, shall answer to it for the integrity of that, which, whether or not, is at least as it is. My lord, I have done. Or shall I speak ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... a locality was made eventually upon ridiculously inadequate grounds. In a newspaper article dealing with charitable work, I came upon some such words as these: 'Life is supported upon an astoundingly small outlay of money among the poor householders, and even poorer lodgers, in these streets opening ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... war thus raged pretty equally in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, and while the force seemed everywhere sufficient for destroying considerable tracts of country, and accumulating a great deal of spoil, it was wholly inadequate to the main purpose of bringing matters to a conclusion. Thus numbers of brave men lost their lives without any equivalent result, and veteran battalions were worn down by fruitless exertions of valour, and by a series of most brilliant successes which produced no permanent result. On the other ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... demolished a canal used for military purposes. Then the two forces united at a town called New Market, but they could go no farther. The heavy rains and the melting snows had swollen the rivers enormously, all the bridges before them were destroyed, and their own pontoons proved inadequate in face of the great rushing streams. Then ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... about in the midst of some huge machinery: it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of steel to keep steady. It was hard to know where blame could be assigned; yet Percy's faith told him that there was blame due. In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The alliance ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... be redeemed from sin and eternal death, to enter into the kingdom of God and into happiness, his physical birth will not suffice; all which nature, reason, free-will and human endeavor may afford is inadequate. Physical birth, it is true, answers for everything in the way of temporal possession and achievement, everything great, powerful, noble, rich, wise, learned; in short, every exalted and desirable thing of earth. ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... years, when the poem was completed, the grand vizier, after counting its sixty-thousand couplets, concluded not to pay for it in gold, and sent instead sixty thousand small pieces of silver. On receiving so inadequate a reward, Firdusi became so angry that, after distributing the money among the bearers and writing an insulting poem to the king, he fled first to Mazinderan and then to Bagdad, where he lingered until shortly before his death, when he returned to Tous. Tradition claims ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... must hold of the outermost parts as well as the rest; it is argued that the rings successively detached will be more and more dense, and will form planets of higher and higher specific gravities. But passing over other objections, this explanation is quite inadequate to account for the facts. Using the Earth as a standard of comparison, the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... followed in what remains, it is altogether impossible for him to fulfil the engagements into which his father’s agents entered with Mr Rutlege, the gentleman who had the management of the country ceded by the Nawab vazir to the Company. This pension was altogether inadequate to support the number of persons by whom he was followed; and even his venerable grand-uncle Suravir, son of Makunda Sen, suffered such mortifications, that he had determined to perish on the place where his son had suffered death, for this ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... appearing for a moment and then vanishing again. They were the "cats-paws" that indicated a momentary stir in the stagnant air, and the appearances of which were always greeted by the foremast hands with execrations, for they meant "box-hauling" the yards—work for what they regarded as a ludicrously inadequate result. But on this occasion the cats-paws, instead of enduring for a few seconds and then being no more seen for hours at a time, lingered for as long, perhaps, as two or three minutes, then passing away only to be succeeded by others coming from the same quarter and enduring a little ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... which leads into the town, he stopped in front of a lonely, workman's cottage, and asked me if he could not stay there. I had the house examined by Councillor of Legation Count Bismarck-Bohlen, who in the meantime had followed me; when it was reported that the interior arrangements were very poor and inadequate, but that there were no wounded men in the house, the Emperor alighted and invited me to accompany him inside. Here, in a very small room containing a table and two chairs, I had about an hour's conversation with the Emperor. His Majesty emphasized especially the wish to obtain ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... another foot the question was put beyond all doubt, and to our great relief fresh water was obtained at a depth of six feet from the surface, on the seventh day of our distress, and after we had travelled one hundred and sixty miles since we had left the last water. Words would be inadequate to express the joy and thankfulness of my little party at once more finding ourselves in safety, and with abundance of water near us. A few hours before hope itself seemed almost extinguished, and those only who have been subjeet to a similar extremity of distress ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... bank system. In truth the country was wedded to the idea that the funds of the government should be so placed that they could be used to facilitate business. That idea and the practice arising from it were full of peril. In the infancy of a country, when the resources are inadequate, a national bank, assuming that it is managed honestly and wisely, may be an important aid, but time being given, it will inevitably become a political machine in a country, like the United States, where the political aspirations of the people are active ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... superfluities, more attractive and careful, with every year. I see, that, in our day, the life of the working- man, and, in particular, the life of old men, of women, and of children of the working population, is perishing directly from their food, which is utterly inadequate to their fatiguing labor; and that this life of theirs is not free from care as to its very first requirements; and that, alongside of this, the life of the non- laboring classes, to which I belong, is filled more and more, every year, with superfluities and luxury, and ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... Mr. Thomson's modesty, his untiring industry, and his devotion to his art. But in regard to that art, it may be observed that to characterise it solely as "packing the memory with pleasant fancies" may suffice for an exordium, but is inadequate as a final appreciation. Let me therefore note down, as they occur to me, some of his more prominent pictorial characteristics. With three of the artists mentioned in this and the preceding paper, he has obvious affinities, while, in a sense, he ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... Mrs. Robinson which have been effectually disproved, although they were implicitly believed by the Bronte girls, who, womanlike, were naturally ready to regard a woman as the ruin of a beloved brother. The recklessness of Mrs. Gaskell in accepting such inadequate testimony can be explained only on the assumption that she had a novelist's satisfaction in the romance which the 'bad woman' theory supplied. She wasted a considerable amount of rhetoric upon it. 'When the fatal attack came ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... to the steady, systematic mind of northern nations, and to their innate love of liberty, which could not brook the yoke of spiritual despotism imposed by the Church of Rome. But all this is mere supposition, inadequate to accounting for the fact. The Teutonic and Scandinavian mind is certainly more systematic and apparently more steady than the Celtic; but it is far less so than the Latin. No nation in the whole history of mankind has ever displayed more steadiness and system than the Romans, and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... steps that were, nevertheless, so many mile-posts in the progress to their final exhaustion. When one fell, he lay huddled, unable at once to rally his vital forces to attempt the exertion of regaining his feet. The day's journey was pitifully short, pitifully inadequate to the imperious demands of that onward-leading Trail, and yet each day's journey lessened the always desperate chance of a return to the game country. In spite of that, it never again crossed their minds that it might be well to abandon the task. They might die, but it would be on the Trail, ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... bring home to people some various aspects of one very startling proposition: that human society had arrived at a phase when the complete restatement of its fundamental ideas had become urgently necessary, a phase when the slow, inadequate, partial adjustments to two centuries of changing conditions had to give place to a rapid reconstruction of new fundamental ideas. And it was a fact of great value in the drama of these secret dreams that the directive force towards ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... no means dispenses with the logical faculty. Note his close and convincing reasoning on the development of the vertebrate eye, and how inadequate the Darwinian idea of the accumulation of insensible variations is to account for it. A closer and more convincing piece of reasoning would be ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... greater part of those who had taken up their abode on the western waters, continued to reside in the country. Others, deeming the means of defence inadequate to security, and unwilling to encounter the horrors of an Indian war, no better provided than they were, pursued the advice of government, and withdrew from the presence of danger. Those who remained, sensible of dependence on their individual resources, commenced ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... that the price of wheat held its own. Even if it could be established that the price of wheat fell as compared with that of wool after this date, the usually accepted version of the enclosure movement would still be inadequate. But as a matter of fact the price of wheat rose steadily after 1490, reaching a higher average in each succeeding decade, while the price of wool wavered about an average which rose very slowly until 1535. The entries on which these wool averages are based are few, and greater uncertainty therefore ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley

... great causes of worry. The careless man, the lazy man are each indifferent as to how their work is done; such men seldom do well that which they undertake. Everything carelessly or lazily done is incomplete, inadequate, incompetent, and, therefore, a source of distress, discontent, and worry. A careless or lazy plumber causes much worry, for, even though his victims may have learned the lesson I am endeavoring to inculcate throughout these pages, it is a self-evident proposition ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... drama—especially with the highest form of it—our own Elizabethan. It resembles, as has been often said in better words than mine, not statuary but painting. These dramas affect colour, light, and shadow, background whether of town or country, description of scenery where scenic machinery is inadequate, all in fact, which can blend the action and the actors with the surrounding circumstances, without letting them altogether melt into the circumstances; which can show them a part of the great whole, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... Allen was an interesting one, and worthy of being briefly sketched. Having taken Ticonderoga, he grew warm with the desire to take Canada, and, on September 25, 1775, made a rash assault on Montreal with an inadequate body of men. The support he hoped for was not forthcoming, and he and his little band were taken, Allen, soon after, being ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... impressions, at first vague and passionately resisted, were wrought into convictions in her soul. First, the Inspector, in spite of his light talk, was undeniably anxious, and in this anxiety her husband shared. Then, the Force was clearly inadequate to the duty required of it. At this her indignation burned. Why should it be that a Government should ask of brave men what they must know to be impossible? Hard upon this conviction came the words of the Superintendent, "Cameron is the man and the only man for the job." Finally, the ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... islands inhabited by several heathen races—surrounded by a sea exposed to typhoons, pirates, and Christian-hating Mussulmans—had to be ruled by a handful of Europeans with inadequate funds, bad ships, and scant war material. For nearly two centuries the financial administration was a chaos, and military organization hardly existed. Local enterprise was disregarded and discouraged so long as abundance of silver dollars came from across the Pacific. Such a short-sighted, unstable ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... should be the resolve of every honest and courageous man and woman to add to it the weight of their own power. Wonderful things have been accomplished before now by means which seemed, in their beginning, as inadequate ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... existence of which he gave no credit, but died, nevertheless, because he was overcome and heart-broken by its imaginary presence."—"I, my dearest doctor," said the sick man, "am in that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the presence of the persecuting vision, that my reason is totally inadequate to combat the effects of my morbid imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a wasted victim to an imaginary disease." The medical gentleman listened with anxiety to his patient's statement, and for the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... express myself, of insubordination. It is the work and it is a great part of the delight of any artist to contend with these unruly tools, and now by brute energy, now by witty expedient, to drive and coax them to effect his will. Given these means, so laughably inadequate, and given the interest, the intensity, and the multiplicity of the actual sensation whose effect he is to render with their aid, the artist has one main and necessary resource which he must, in every case and upon any theory, employ. He must, that is, suppress much and omit ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Inadequate" :   incompetent, short, adequateness, undermanned, wanting, understaffed, poor, short-staffed, adequate, adequacy, unequal to, lacking, short-handed, unequal, incapable, unsatisfactory, inadequateness, insufficient, deficient



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