"Incapable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curious to say, we are told that the keenest eye has not yet been able to detect any peculiarity in these plants to account for these strange motions. It has been suggested that they are due to changes in the weather of such a slight character that, "our nerves are incapable of appreciating them, or the mercury of recording their ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Miss Howard," said Katherine, checking her uneasy footsteps, her light form swelling with pride; "Mr. Barnstable is equally incapable of murdering an enemy or of deserting ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... One might as well forbid the hand to grasp, the eye to see, nay, more, it will not do to confound the child of genius with the fool, or to suppose that the one needs not a mental aliment of which the other is incapable. Feed well the hungry mind, lest it perish of inanition. It is a sponge in infancy that imbibes ideas without an effort; it is a safety-valve through which fancy and poetry conduct away foul vapors; it is an alembic, retaining ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... only those facts about which, after much attention and inquiry, I could satisfy my own mind. That they are ignorant savages cannot be disputed; but I hope they do not in the foregoing pages appear to be wholly incapable of becoming one day civilized ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... condition, but that they are individually under condemnation before God (Jno. 3:18); their borrowed interest in morality and charity being a poor commendation, in view of their fallen and Christ-rejecting attitude before God. They are also incapable of comprehending the standards of God, whose thoughts and ways are above their thoughts and ways as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isa. 55:8,9). The quality and incapacity of the fallen race is accurately described in Rom. 3:10-18; this description of them being ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... and only observe that Mrs. Pickle's mother and aunt stood godmothers, and the commodore assisted at the ceremony as godfather to the child, who was christened by the name of Peregrine, in compliment to the memory of a deceased uncle. While the mother confined to her bed, and incapable of maintaining her own authority, Mrs. Grizzle took charge of the infant baby double claim, and superintended, with surprising vigilance, the nurse and midwife in all the particulars of their respective offices, which were performed by her express direction. But ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to the camp occupied the best part of an hour, and the latter part of the journey was made through a belt of pine wood, the timber of which left the human figure something so infinitesimal that its passage was incapable of disturbing the abiding silence. The scrunch of the springy carpet of needles and pine cones under heavily shod feet was completely lost. The profoundness of the gloom ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... at all points, incapable of being either surprised or exhausted, courage achieves results which seem miraculous. It is an element of inspiration, something superadded and incalculable, when all the other forces are exhausted. When ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... among the number. That he had been dropped overboard at an early stage in the lady's career seemed probable from the fact that neither his wife nor his daughter ever mentioned him. Mrs. Newell was incapable of reticence, and if her husband had still been an active element in her life he would certainly have figured in her conversation. Garnett, if he thought of the matter at all, had concluded that divorce must long since have eliminated Mr. Newell; but he now saw how he had underrated ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... some natures so great a hoard of generosity, that it often dulls their acuteness. Maltravers could not believe that frankness could be wholly a mask—it was an hypocrisy he knew not of. He himself was not incapable, had circumstances so urged him, of great crimes; nay, the design of one crime lay at that moment deadly and dark within his heart, for he had some passions which in so resolute a character could produce, should the wind waken them into storm, dire and terrible effects. Even ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circulating currents of dry air in and around wet wool, the absorbing power of the air draws off the moisture. For continuous drying free circulation is a necessity, as otherwise the air would soon become saturated and incapable of taking up more moisture. Warming the air increases its capacity to absorb moisture; thus a higher temperature is capable of drying the wool much quicker than the same volume of air would at a low temperature. A free circulation of air at 75 to 100 degrees F., evenly distributed, ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... treating them as children to whom education must be given little by little instead of throwing down before them a mass of dangerous knowledge which their minds, unaccustomed to such strong food, are incapable of digesting. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... of his state; he had kept a serious eye upon the activities of all the politicians of note; he had kept his mind open and free from party prejudice. He knew that the present governor of the state was incapable, or swayed by invisible and malign influences. He was aware that the state railroad commissioner lacked aggressiveness, or that he had been directed to keep in the background. And he was also aware that for a year ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... not go to the fire at first, and when Michel called to him that Mr. Hood was dead a considerable time had elapsed. Although I dared not openly to evince any suspicion that I thought Michel guilty of the deed, yet he repeatedly protested that he was incapable of committing such an act, kept constantly on his guard, and carefully avoided leaving Hepburn and me together. He was evidently afraid of permitting us to converse in private and whenever Hepburn spoke he inquired if he accused him ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... will prompt a conduct which as far transcends the necessity of human sanction. Miss Walladmor had learned through Grace the discovery which Mrs. Godber had made of the prisoner's relation to Sir Morgan Walladmor. That gentleman was incapable of acting: and, apart from her own love to Edward Walladmor, she knew under these circumstances, how it became her to act as the person on whom the interests and power of the unhappy parent had devolved. She had taken her resolution at once: all ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... of what we esteem virtue than according to the fashion of the savage. As bright examples of great qualities are but too uncommon among Christians, so are they singular and solitary with the Indians; though, for the honor of our common nature, neither are incapable of producing them. Let us then hope that this Mohican may not disappoint our wishes, but prove what his looks assert him to be, a ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... many kinds of lies, as well as many degrees of them. A child that is branded a liar has undoubtedly given abundant occasion for mistrust, and has lied aplenty; but undoubtedly also he has specialized in his lying, and would be incapable of certain kinds of lies that are common enough with other children. As we are the judges of our children in all of their misdeeds, we must preserve not only a judicious attitude, but we must really be just. And to this end it is essential that we take into consideration all ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... years' nerveless reign of the Doctrinaire Democracy had left us impotent for attack and almost as feeble for defence. Jefferson, though a man whose views and theories had a profound influence upon our national life, was perhaps the most incapable Executive that ever filled the presidential chair; being almost purely a visionary, he was utterly unable to grapple with the slightest actual danger, and, not even excepting his successor, Madison, it would be difficult ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... was far from perfect) in that chamber, a little flush of offence. The Rector rose abruptly, waving his hand, and went to join Miss Wodehouse in her corner. There the two elderly spectators looked on silent at ministrations of which both were incapable; one watching with wondering yet affectionate envy how Lucy laid down the weakened but relieved patient upon her pillows; and one beholding with a surprise he could not conceal, how a young man, not half his own age, went softly, with all ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... ever cease from the land, or that the compassionate will fail to find objects for their compassion; but at present the supply vastly exceeds the demand: the land is overstocked and overburdened with the listless and the incapable. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... convict's escape, the breaking open of the gunsmith's shop, the finding of the front door of Cashing's store ajar, and the discovery by Cashing that at least one suit of valuable clothing had been taken, came upon the astonished villagers and rendered them incapable of reason, and of every other ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the legal distinctions between slave and free as a line of cleavage between different kinds of men. It was a social arrangement and no more. Most of the slaves were, indeed, still chattel, bought and sold; many of them were incapable of any true family life. But there was nothing uncommon in a slave being treated as a friend, in his being a member of the liberal professions, in his acting as a tutor, as an administrator of his master's fortune, or a doctor. ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... go out filibustering, then, thinks that more territory is needed. Whoever wants wider slave-fields feels sure that some additional territory is needed as slave territory. Then it is as easy to show the necessity of additional slave-territory as it is to assert anything that is incapable of absolute demonstration. Whatever motive a man or a set of men may have for making annexation of property or territory, it is very easy to assert, but much less easy to disprove, that it is necessary for the wants ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... could succeed in this, it was necessary to dispose of the pacha already in possession. Fortunately for Ali, the latter was a weak and indolent man, quite incapable of struggling against so formidable a rival; and his enemy speedily conceived and put into execution a plan intended to bring about the fulfilment of his desires. He came to terms with the same Armatolians whom he had formerly treated so harshly, and let ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... they to carry the flag of their beloved Admiral again into battle, and so sanguine in the expectation of victory, notwithstanding the disparity of force,—nearly two to one! This I could not consent to, as they would have been worn out and incapable of further exertion; but I directed that all hands should be employed during the day, and that they should work watch and watch during the night. They immediately commenced their various duties, with all the energy and zeal that could be expected from men under such powerful causes ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... into a lower tone full of meaning, and which said to me that his very inmost soul was pouring itself out, with the awful words he used. I felt utterly helpless and undone—like an ant in the pathway of a giant—incapable of resistance or escape. I suppose all this was visible in my countenance. I said nothing; and Aurelian, after pausing a moment, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... though the brakes had let go, she could not endure the bleak platform, and even less could she endure sitting in the chair car, eyed by the smug tourists—people as empty of her romance as they were incapable of her sharp tragedy. She balanced forward to the vestibule. She stood in that cold, swaying, darkling place that was filled with the smell of rubber and metal and grease and the thunderous clash of steel on steel; she tried to look out into the fleeing darkness; she tried to imagine ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... de Hautlieu, "the Bruce, the Douglas, Malcolm Fleming, and others of that party, although they are incapable of abusing such an advantage to any dishonourable purpose, might nevertheless, under a strong temptation, consider you as an hostage thrown into their hands by Providence, through whom they ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... actually have), that in no case should a chief of platoon tolerate any intercourse between his men and the enemy other than that of the rifle; this duty is explicit and not to be departed from except in the case of the wounded and prisoners incapable of doing harm. ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... have escaped, but now you shall pay for your vile and cowardly acts. It would be a sin to allow a creature like you to remain at large. It is far better to settle with you immediately and thus make you incapable of doing more harm in the future. You took it upon yourself to enter Glen West to ruin my daughter, and you must ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... creation of things, but are designated by the name "heavens" or of "light." And they were either passed over, or else designated by the names of corporeal things, because Moses was addressing an uncultured people, as yet incapable of understanding an incorporeal nature; and if it had been divulged that there were creatures existing beyond corporeal nature, it would have proved to them an occasion of idolatry, to which they ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... tired that his legs seemed incapable of support. He wiped the razor blade and put it away with a lax nerveless hand. He realized that he had been again at the point of murder. He had been saved by the narrowest margin in the world. For a moment the fact that he had been saved absorbed him, and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... improbable to obtain credence, and would be more likely to draw upon him severe punishment, or perhaps the torture, with the view of inducing him to confess its falsehood. Bewildered by his terror, Antonio sat trembling, and utterly incapable of deciding as to the course he should adopt, when the trusty gondolier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... also subject to the law of Malthus. It is continually living beyond its means, it increases in proportion to its means, and draws its support solely, from the substance of the people. Woe to the people who are incapable of limiting the sphere of action of the State. Liberty, private activity, riches, well-being, independence, dignity, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... much greater, and the pulse is much quicker than in measles.—In scarlatina the throat is inflamed, usually the brain affected, and the patient smells like salt-fish, old cheese or the cages of a menagerie; in measles, the eyes are affected, inflamed, and incapable of bearing the light; the organs of respiration likewise (thence coryza, sneezing, hoarseness, cough); the perspiration smells like the feathers of geese freshly plucked.—In scarlatina the period of incubation is a day less than in measles; namely, in scarlatina the rash ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... law is held to be decision in these wrangles, and as wrangling is subject to artistic elaboration, the business of the barrister is the business of a professional wrangler; he is a bravo in wig and gown who fights the duels of ordinary men because they are incapable, very largely on account of the complexities of legal procedure, of fighting for themselves. His business is never to explore any fundamental right in the matter. His business is to say all that can be said for his client, and ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... impressed upon my brain as actinic light upon a photo-screen. Close by Elza, partially behind her, I saw something small, no taller than Elza's waist. A naked thing of sleek, glistening skin. The monstrosity of a human child; a bulging head, wavering upon a neck incapable of supporting it; a thick round body; twisted, misshapen limbs. A face ... human? It made my gorge rise with its gruesome suggestion of humanity. Nostrils—no nose; a mouth, lipless, but red like a curved gash with upturned ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... that an Egyptian deity could inspire the Hebrews of Goshen with courage for the struggle against the Egyptians, or that an abstraction of esoteric speculation could become the national deity of Israel. It is not inconceivable indeed, although at the same time quite incapable of proof, that Moses was indebted to the Egyptian priests for certain advantages of personal culture, or that he borrowed from them on all hands in external details of organisation or in matters of ritual. But the origin of the germ which developed into Israel is not ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... Hamilton rather than of Jefferson. He was the sound thinker, the constructive statesman, the candid and honorable, if erring, gentleman; while Jefferson was the amiable enthusiast, who understood his fellow-countrymen better and trusted them more than his rival, but who was incapable either of uniting with his fine phrases a habit of candid and honorable private dealing or of embodying those phrases in a set of efficient institutions. But although Hamilton is much the finer man and much the sounder thinker and statesman, there were certain limitations in his ideas and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... he soon discovered that his recruits, enlisted at Montreal, were fit to vie with the ragged regiment of Falstaff. Some were able-bodied, but inexpert; others were expert, but lazy; while a third class were expert and willing, but totally worn out, being broken-down veterans, incapable of toil. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... you think of me as clearly as if you had spoken. Let me say what I think of you. You are a gallant gentleman, full of the ideas of the past, and incapable of changing; you will be a loyal servant to your own cause, and it will be beaten. To you I owe my life. Possibly it might have been better for you to have let me fall by the sword of one of Conde's dragoons, but we are all in the hands of the Eternal, Who doeth ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... I could neither forget past feelings nor show such sensibility as this beast reputed incapable of feeling! Things that happen lay hold of my heart, and when my heart is moved, I cannot control it. Therefore, smiling at myself, I called this song "A Song of ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... was one of the party.) To any one else such a subject would have been appalling: not so to Hook. He rose, glanced once or twice round the table, and chanted (so to speak) a series of verses perfect in rhythm and rhyme: the incapable theme being dealt with in a spirit of fun, humor, serious comment, and absolute philosophy, utterly inconceivable to those who had never heard the marvellous improvisator,—each verse describing something which the world considered great, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... composer at all but as a pianoforte player; and certainly Beethoven regarded Haydn as being behind the age. That he was unjust to Haydn cannot be gainsaid. He even went so far as to suspect Haydn of willfully trying to retard him in his studies, a proceeding of which Haydn was altogether incapable. For many years he continued to discharge splenetic remarks about his music, and he was always annoyed at being called his pupil. "I never learned anything from Haydn," he would say; "he never would correct ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... small poodle, the production of some unknown and disadvantageous cross with the true poodle. It has all the sagacity of the poodle, and will perform even more than his tricks. It is always in action; always fidgety; generally incapable of much affection, but inheriting much self-love and occasional ill temper; unmanageable by any one but its owner; eaten up with red mange; and frequently a nuisance to its master and a torment to ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the north, near Diego Suarez, by Misson, a Frenchman, and the most humane of pirates, with whom was allied Tew, the English pirate. Misson's aim was to build a fortified town "that they might have some place to call their own; and a receptacle, when age and wounds had rendered them incapable of hardship, where they might enjoy the fruits of their labour and go to their graves in peace." The settlement was named Libertatia. Slavery was not permitted, and freed slaves were encouraged to settle there. The harbour was ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... intrusions and offences an annoyance. But when Mr. Frothingham gratifies the public with those most interesting personal recollections which I have had the privilege of looking over, it will be seen that his equanimity, admirable as it was, was not incapable of being disturbed, and that on rare occasions he could give way to the feeling which showed itself of old in the doom pronounced ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his projects. He had humbled Francis, but Henry had most signally avenged his father. He had trampled upon Philip of Hesse and Frederic of Saxony, but it had been reserved for one of that German race, which he characterized as "dreamy, drunken, and incapable of intrigue," to outwit the man who had outwitted all the world, and to drive before him, in ignominious flight, the conqueror of the nations. The German lad who had learned both war and dissimulation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that the young lady preserved her presence of mind, for Bruce seemed incapable of connected thought or action. He roused himself, indeed, at his daughter's call, but gazed stupidly about him, stammered in his speech, and faltered in his step when he crossed the room. The shock of grief had evidently overmastered ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... by a number of torches, thanks to which the duchess and Mayneville could see cuirasses and swords shining. Incapable of moderation, she cried—"Go down, Mayneville, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... The sound was incapable of being described, for outside the laboratory the sound of the advance of the Moon-cubes eating into the dwellings of men, tumbling them down, grinding them to powder, was cataclysmic in its mighty volume. A million ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... have observed, exerts a more degrading influence upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds expression in flowers and children, while the former seem to be rendered incapable of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism is intensely exclusive and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact, sealed-up body of people could hardly be found on the face of the earth than is gathered here, notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs, and the penetrating lights that go ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... times of the day, and sometimes directly beneath one's feet. When kept in a room, the tucutucos move both slowly and clumsily, which appears owing to the outward action of their hind legs; and they are quite incapable, from the socket of the thigh-bone not having a certain ligament, of jumping even the smallest vertical height. They are very stupid in making any attempt to escape; when angry or frightened they utter the tucu-tuco. Of those I kept alive, several, even the first day, became quite tame, not attempting ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... impressed by the occult powers and seek short cuts to health, or goodness, or wisdom. They delight to build up, out of their own inner consciousness, systems which have little contact with reality and which, through their very tenuousness, are as incapable of disproof as through their disengagement from normal experience they are capable of verification. They are the people of what the alienist calls the "idee fixe." Everything for them centers about one idea; they have ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... matter before her, but paused and sat down on the little chair before her writing desk. Covering her eyes with her clenched hands she tried to think. Tante Lydia was worse than useless, scatterbrained, self-centered, incapable. What would she do? Lament and call all her friends in conclave; send in the police; acknowledge her fright, and give this nameless writer the satisfaction of knowing that his shaft had found ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... says,[348] Antiochus Philopappus, that all men pardon the man who acknowledges that he is excessively fond of himself, but that there is among many other defects this very grave one in self-love, that by it a man becomes incapable of being a just and impartial judge about himself, for love is blind in regard to the loved object, unless a person has learnt and accustomed himself to honour and pursue what is noble rather than his own selfish interests. This gives a great field ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Julius Caesar[1] once more, puts in to hinder our passage. The Moone (saith he) is not altogether opacous, because 'tis still of the same nature with the Heavens, which are incapable of totall opacity: and his reason is, because perspicuity is an inseparable accident of those purer bodies, and this hee thinkes must necessarily bee granted, for hee stops there, and proves no further; ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... with the consent of the Master, could expulse a Scholar for rebelliously and obstinately withstanding the Master or Usher; but if any scholar, upon proof first had, should be found altogether negligent or incapable of learning, at the discretion of the Master he could be returned to his friends to be brought up in some other honest trade ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... and immoral, sunk almost to one dead social level, and totally uninteresting because, in their new life of peaceful tillage—a life far more suited to their English law-givers than to themselves—they were apparently incapable of maintaining that complete, vigilant interest in their ordinary surroundings which makes for ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... things, as becometh one that hath received grace and redemption by his blood, is true; but that it is in our power, as is here insinuated, to become new creatures, is as untrue. The new creature, is of God; yea, immediately of God; man being as incapable to make himself anew, as a child to beget himself (2 Cor 5:17,18). Neither is our conformity to the revealed will of God, any thing else, if it be right, than the fruit and effect of that. All things are already, or before, become new in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... obstacle, would gladly negotiate her acquiescence. To spur on this, she is coquetting it with England. The King of Prussia, too, is playing a double game between France and England. But I suppose the former incapable of forgiving him, or of ever reposing confidence in him. Perhaps the spring may unfold to us the final arrangement, which will take place among the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the beating of drums, gongs, etc., with the object of delivering the Sun from the monster which threatened to devour it. The two astronomers by virtue of their office should have superintended these rites. They were, however, drunk and incapable of performing their duties, so that great turmoil ensued, and it was considered that the land was exposed to the anger of the gods. By way of appeasing the gods, and of suitably punishing the two State officials for their neglect ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... long as he is known to have loved any one in the past, or to love any one in the present, or to be even likely to love any one in the future, he may be pardoned. But if it is firmly believed that he is incapable of love, woman-kind arises in a body and abuses him in unmeasured terms. He is selfish. He is arrogant. He is so conceited that he thinks no one good enough for him. He is a stone, a prig, a hypocrite, a maniac, a monster, a statue, and especially he is a bore. In other words, he is ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... d'honneur." L'abbe commence a se pencher sur un petit pont et le prince aussitot le saisit et le fait culbuter a l'eau, d'ou l'abbe se tire non sans peine, et non sans colere, car il court sur le prince avec un fouet pour le corriger, declarant a qui veut l'entendre ce qu'il pense d'un prince incapable de tenir parole. Les practical jokers de ce genre n'etaient pas rares: le duc de Cumberland fit partager le meme sort a une jeune fille qui servait de dame de compagnie. Les ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of intelligence, or of fibre, or of all three, they are inefficient or unwilling workers, and consequently unable to support themselves . . . They are often so degraded in intellect as to be incapable of distinguishing their right from their left hand, or of recognising the numbers of their own houses; their bodies are feeble and without stamina, their affections are warped, and they scarcely know what family ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... through the town dispelled the Lord George Sanger illusion at one fell blow, the rustic-urban mind being incapable of conceiving that that self-named nobleman could demean himself to the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... ship, or cut off a politician's head. No excitement quickened his moderation. Even the most biting of personal sarcasms failed to ruffle a temper that seemed incapable of ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... his power of endurance; and a hard gallop of five miles was about the extent of his capacity. The rude jolting of his arm made it extremely painful, while his system, reduced by the fever attending the wound, was incapable of supporting such a heavy draft upon his strength. He bore up against the pain and faintness which beset him as long as he could; but at last, to the oft-repeated inquiries of Captain de Banyan in regard to his condition, he was compelled ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders and impatient exclamation, turned back to the table. Fred, shivering and helpless, stood by the fire, uttering confused directions, and rubbing miserably his own flabby hands; his wife, crying, scolding, and incapable, stood at the end of the table, offering no assistance, but wondering when ever Nettie would come back. Dr Rider took the patient in his arms, and, beckoning Mrs Smith to go before him, carried the child up-stairs. There the good mistress of the ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... prehistoric geniuses whose names the night of antiquity has covered up; they may have been verified by the immediate facts of experience which they first fitted; and then from fact to fact and from man to man they may have SPREAD, until all language rested on them and we are now incapable of thinking naturally in any other terms. Such a view would only follow the rule that has proved elsewhere so fertile, of assuming the vast and remote to conform to the laws of formation that we can observe at work in ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... a gentle, patient soul, living for her family, wholly unselfish and incapable of complaint. She was placid and cheerful, courageous and trusting. I had four fine aunts, two of whom were then unmarried and devoted to the small boy. One was a veritable ray of sunshine; the other, ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... freely. He spent one hundred and five days exploring the gulf; then he continued his voyage round the west coast and back to Port Jackson by the south. He returned after a year's absence with a sickly crew and a rotten ship. Indeed, the Investigator was incapable of further service, and Flinders decided to go back to England for another ship. As passenger on board the Porpoise, early in August 1802, he sailed from Sydney for the Torres Strait accompanied by two returning transports. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... escape, is committed to the care of a third person—usually a kinswoman of the husband, and in many cases his mother; and that the wife as a rule only recovers it when it is given to her, or at least when that which contains it has been opened by another: she seems incapable of finding ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Barbarians of the land and sea, the Scots, the Picts, and the Saxons, spread themselves with rapid and irresistible fury, from the wall of Antoninus to the shores of Kent. Every production of art and nature, every object of convenience and luxury, which they were incapable of creating by labor or procuring by trade, was accumulated in the rich and fruitful province of Britain. A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and you ought to have taken that into consideration, if you had had any sympathy for him. But I dare say you were incapable of that sort of consideration. Your starting-point is so very widely-removed from ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... extent to supply his glasshouse with fuel. He has erected a theatre for his workmen, supplied them with scenes, dresses, etc.; and they have acquired such a taste for theatrical amusements, that it has conquered their violent passion for drinking which formerly made them incapable of work three days in the week; now they work as hard as possible, and amuse themselves for ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... purse!" cried Cibot. "I am incapable of taking the worth of a single pin; you mind that, Remonencq! I am known in the neighborhood for an honest ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Bloemfontein Conference, had been at once opened—and opened in another way. What Lord Milner had learnt at Bloemfontein was not merely that President Krueger was unwilling to yield, but that he was psychologically incapable of yielding. He had learnt, that is to say, not that Krueger was determined to refuse the particular reform which the Imperial Government demanded, but that his whole system of thought was irreconcilably opposed to that of any English statesman. It is the knowledge ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the choice between surrender and death; for nothing, as has been said, but their hearts' blood would satisfy the vindictive cravings of their foes; and, when the king's captivity became known, many of those who had formerly been most intrepid, remained motionless and incapable ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... understand. And when one remembered that her father was in prison shut up together with a lot of criminals and so on—it made one uncomfortable. If the child had only tried to forget her troubles! But she obviously was incapable or unwilling to do so. And that was somewhat perverse—wasn't it? Upon the whole, she thought it would be ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... among the peoples of eastern Mindano certain individuals who are known by a special name and who are reputed to be incapable of sexual intercourse. The individuals whom I saw were most feminine in their ways, preferring to keep the company of women and to indulge in womanly work rather ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... assault on Senator Hanna, one would have thought that he was a man incapable of patriotism or of far-sighted devotion to the country's good. I was brought into intimate contact with him only during the two and a half years immediately preceding his death. I was then President, and perforce watched all his actions at close range. During that time he showed ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... a business in the Old iron Ages. Of which, in the form of Carrousel or otherwise, down almost to the present day, there have been examples, among puissant Lords;—though now it is felt to have become extremely hollow; perhaps incapable of fully entertaining anybody, except children and their nurses ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... these vacuous tricks he would be struck with admiration of Ethelberta's wisdom, foresight, and self-command in refusing to wed such an incapable man: he felt that he ought to be thankful that a bright memory of her was not also denied to him, and resolved to be content with it as a possession, since it was as much of her as he could ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... that it may fairly be contended that under the provisions of this section any soldier whose faculties of mind or body have become impaired by accident, disease, or age, irrespective of his service in the Army as a cause, and who by his labor only is left incapable of gaining the fair support he might with unimpaired powers have provided for himself, and who is not so well endowed with this world's goods as to live without work, may claim to participate in its bounty; that it is not required that he should be without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... opportunity, unprecedented in history, of displaying his power of design and reconstruction. Writing of this great architect, Macaulay says, "The austere beauty of the Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was, like most of his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our side of the Alps has imitated with so much success the magnificence of the palace churches of Italy. Even the superb Louis XIV. has left to posterity no work which can bear ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... it has been blown out of the bolt-ropes," replied Hop, coolly; and he seemed to be incapable of anything like fear. "We have lost the reefed foresail, and that is what makes her roll so much worse than she did five ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... this prince, henceforth incapable of serving the throne, was equally incapable of serving the republic. Odious to the royalists, put aside by the demagogues, suspected by the constitutionalists, there only remained to him the stoical attitude in which he took refuge. He had abdicated his rank, abdicated his own faction; ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... France, but his father supplanted him. Subsequently he expected to marry the arch-duchess Anne, daughter of the emperor Maximilian, but her father opposed the match. In 1564 Philip II. settled the succession on Rodolph and Ernest, his nephews, declaring Carlos incapable. This drove Carlos into treason, and he joined the Netherlands in a war against his father. He was apprehended and condemned to death, but was killed in prison. This has furnished the subject of several tragedies: ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... was awake again, dry-mouthed, feeling stupid and drowsy, yet incapable of dozing off for more than several minutes at a time. He abandoned the idea of sleep, ate breakfast in bed, and devoted himself to the morning papers and the magazines. But the drug effect held, and he continued briefly to doze through ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... JOBS ARE BONES. The phrase was an incessant iteration in Saxon's brain. Much as she might have wished it, she was powerless now to withdraw from the window. It was as if she were paralyzed. Her brain no longer worked. She sat numb, staring, incapable of anything save seeing the rapid horror before her eyes that flashed along like a moving picture film gone mad. She saw Pinkertons, special police, and strikers go down. One scab, terribly wounded, on his knees and begging ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... impatiently that she did not know. In ordinary circumstances she would not have been so short with the colonel's nonsense. She thought that was the way all men talked when they got well acquainted with you; and, as coming from a sex incapable of seriousness, she could have excused it if it had not interrupted her in her solution of so nice a problem. Colonel Kenton, however, did not mind. He at once possessed himself of much more than his share of the cylinder, extorting a cry of indignation from his wife, who now ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... brought Max flying back to the bosom of his family; and then the Charlotte episode had followed, over which Max had not been at all sympathetic, for in spite of his emancipated views about things in general, he had still the particular notion that revolution belonged only to men, and that women, incapable of conducting it efficiently, had far better ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... that she was in the hands and at the mercy of an unscrupulous villain, who was incapable of performing a noble or magnanimous act, but base enough to resort to any means in the use of which to carry an end, or gain a point. She but too well knew the fate before her, if no means of resistance were placed in her hands; and where to find these she knew not. She was, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... proceeded at once to Transylvania, and the Vaivode himself had indulged in the delightful hope that the first person he should embrace at Croia would be his long-lost child. When, therefore, they met, and were mutually incapable of imparting any information on the subject to each other, they were filled with astonishment and disquietude. Events, however, gave them little opportunity to indulge in anxiety or grief. On the day that Hunniades and his lances arrived at Croia, the invading ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... intermittently through the brain, and the outer world apprises us of its existence only by successive impulses, it must result that our sense of things will be rhythmic. The brain being alternately stimulated and relaxed we must think—as we feel—in waves, apprehending nothing continuously, and incapable of a consciousness that is not divisible into units of perception of which we make mental record and physical sign. That is why we dance. That is why we can, may, must, will, and shall dance, and the gates of Philistia shall not ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... distinguishable, to hear that our secret was a secret no longer. I was bound to show myself, and yet shrank from all gatherings of men. I transacted my business with an absent mind and a face of such superhuman innocence that, had anyone been watching me, he must at once have suspected something wrong. I was incapable of adding up a row of figures, and Jones became most solicitous about the state of my brain. In a word, my nerves were quite shattered, and I registered a vow never to upset a Government again as long I lived. ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... "that you don't judge me incapable of that high art. But it is not so very long since Malcolm used to hint something much the same ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... brother-in-law, who had tried to kill the girl he deceived, another. But before he gave voice to his thoughts he recognized them as springing only from panic. They were of a part with the acts of men driven by sudden fear, and of which acts in their sane moments they would be incapable. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... delighted especially in a certain air known as the elf-dance, which was so irresistible that no one who heard it could refrain from dancing. If a mortal, overhearing the air, ventured to reproduce it, he suddenly found himself incapable of stopping and was forced to play on and on until he died of exhaustion, unless he were deft enough to play the tune backwards, or some one charitably cut the strings of his violin. His hearers, who were forced to dance as long as the tones continued, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... with their powerful impulses, and the organism would become incapable of activity of any kind; it would lie inert and motionless, like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed, or a steam-engine ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... objects, and never signed a subscription paper for their relief,—he was never a member of a charitable society, and never contributed a cent to the Missionary funds, whether for the Valley of the Mississippi or the Island of Borneo, where there are nothing but monkeys, or Malays as incapable of being christianized as the monkeys. Had he lived at the present time, and in this section of the country, he would have been prayed for and prayed at, at least once a day, and been, besides, occasionally held up in the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... nakedness, a little diversified by now and then a stream rushing down the steep. An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care and disinherited of her favours, left in its original elemental state, or quickened only with one ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... found that, in their own matters of rural business, he had always a fund of curious information to impart; and whoever, young or old, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was given with not more humility than wisdom. In the common affairs of life he seemed incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or, if taken unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in those very affairs, if another consulted him, his eye brightened, his brow cleared, the desire ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pressed against the panes. It was the hero of the evening. The knightly beard curled crisply about the chin; but there were tears in the man's eyes, for he had been hissed off, and indeed with reason. The poor Incapable! But Incapables cannot be admitted into the empire of Art. He had deep feeling, and loved his art enthusiastically, but the art loved not him. The prompter's bell sounded; 'the hero enters with a determined air,' so ran the stage direction in his part, and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen |
