"Incompetence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... initiation of a project which Lord Cochrane, knowing that he would oppose it, had purposely kept secret from him, and assign the whole merit of its completion to the army which his vacillation and incompetence were ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... in Gondour which one could not shut his eyes to. One was, that ignorance and incompetence had no place in the government. Brains and property managed the state. A candidate for office must have marked ability, education, and high character, or he stood no sort of chance of election. If a hod-carrier ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... compassion, evocative of that intense yearning look in his usually guarded, irresponsive countenance. A painfully humiliating sense of her own personal incompetence to arouse the feeling, so legibly printed on her lover's features, jarred upon Leo's heart like a twanging dissonance breaking the harmonious flow of minor chords; but a noble pity strangled this jealous thrill, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... example of public stupidity had of course a bad effect on the demoralized multitude, which threatened to grow unruly, as well as terrified. No, the graceless stampede of educated foreigners to the railway-station, the incompetence of the Municipality, and the behaviour of the Neapolitan crowd do not appear very creditable to the supposed enlightenment of the twentieth century. It had been confidently predicted that nearly fifty years of State education and liberal government would work wonders in dispelling the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Maupin, Notre-Dame de Paris, Salammbo, Madame Bovary, Adolphe, M. de Camors, l'Assommoir, Sapho, etc., still can be so bold as to write "This or that is, or is not, a novel," seems to me to be gifted with a perspicacity strangely akin to incompetence. Such a critic commonly understands by a novel a more or less improbable narrative of adventure, elaborated after the fashion of a piece for the stage, in three acts, of which the first contains the exposition, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... She vanished, and he woke to find her a vision. Despair of the Prince; despair of the King; despair of the Queen, not unmixed with rage, to judge from her voice and gestures. Consultation of an astrologer. Flight of the Prince in search of his beloved. Universal bewilderment and incompetence, such as may be witnessed any day in the East when anything happens at all out of the ordinary way. At this point enter the comic relief, in the form of woodcutters. I am inclined to suppose, from the delight of the audience, that there was something genuine here. ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... freshly starched summer gown, and the geraniums on the veranda bloomed as simultaneously as the flowers in a bonnet. The garden was prospering absurdly. Seed they had sown at random—amid laughing counter-charges of incompetence—had shot up in fragrant defiance of their blunders. He smiled to see the clematis unfolding its punctual wings about the porch. The tiny lawn was smooth as a shaven cheek, and a crimson rambler mounted to the nursery-window of a baby who never ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... Bunny Bunny, who hitherto had only distinguished himself by shooting a keeper in the leg, by frightening village children gathering violets and daisies, and by going to the wars with a troop of horse raised in the neighbourhood, only to be sent back again for incompetence. He had, since then, been the chief support of the press-gang in the neighbourhood, and, if he had not been so much despised, might have been hated. But he had enough sense to restrain from active interference with the Free Traders, for, owing to a personal dislike for violence ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Then with a large air of erudition: "The law, however, provides for such cases as this. When the security of the mortgager is in jeopardy through incompetence or other ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... employed in scattering "Saints' Lives" throughout this country, greatly to their own profit. Thus, too, I am myself engaged in a similar work, either laughing in my sleeve at the credulity on which I practise, or submitting from sheer intellectual incompetence to be the tool of some wily Jesuit who enjoins the unhallowed task. Such, when drawn out into details, and stripped of the pompous declamation of the platform, is, in serious truth, the idea which innumerable persons imagine to be the Catholic system ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... two couplets executed in the initial heat of enthusiasm, even my most strenuous efforts refused to produce another one. I began to read different poems in our books, but neither Dimitrieff nor Derzhavin could help me. On the contrary, they only confirmed my sense of incompetence. Knowing, however, that Karl Ivanitch was fond of writing verses, I stole softly upstairs to burrow among his papers, and found, among a number of German verses, some in the Russian language which seemed to have come from ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... he spoke, seemed to have lost the musical timbre that had earlier distinguished it; it was grown harsh and rasping. Disappointment after disappointment, set down to ill-luck, but in reality the fruit of incompetence, had served to sour him. The climax had been reached in the serious desertions after the Philips Norton fight, and the flight of Paymaster Goodenough with the funds for the campaign. The company sat about the long oak table on ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... he demanded. Walter's silence seemed assent. "Laws-a-massy, ye tomfool," Justus cried, "let it be a sign ter them ez run ag'in' ye! Count the comic in like a qualified voter—it kem hyar on account o' the incumbent's incompetence in office. Signs! Rolf Quigley is sign enough,—if ye want signs in 'lections,—with money, an' frien's, an' a term of office, an' the reg'lar nominee o' the party, an' ye jes' an independent candidate. No star a-waggin' a tale aroun' the sky air haffen ez dangerous ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... staff [a slight impediment in his speech adds to the impression of incompetence produced by ...
— Augustus Does His Bit • George Bernard Shaw
... easily disquieted by the incompetence and disaster of our typically modern things. Rotten aeroplanes for fools to ride to destruction, motorcars for drunkards and imbeciles to use as the ancient war-chariots were used, telephones and a thousand other ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Bibulus would all have had to walk at the heels of Caesar. When Pompey declared that he would contest the point, he declared for them all. Cicero was bound to go to Pharsalia. But when, by Pompey's incompetence, Caesar was the victor; when Pompey had fallen at the Nile, and all the lovers of the fish-ponds, and the intractable oligarchs, and the cutthroats of the Empire, such as young Pompey had become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to Asia, some to Illyricum, some to Spain, and ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... single lake, the director of labour who so misused any portion of this fluid stock that the products of labour, as directed by him, failed to replace the wages, would not thereby be incapacitated from continuing his misdirections further; for the wage-capital dissipated by his incompetence could, under these conditions, always be replaced, and its loss more or less concealed, by fresh supplies which had a really different origin. It was only in consequence of conditions resembling these that the ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... remnant of the expedition came supinely home, reporting utter failure. It is impossible to acquit the commanders of the two ships engaged in this abortive relief expedition of a lack of determination, a paucity of courage, complete incompetence. They simply left Greely to his fate while time still remained for his rescue, or at least for the convenient deposit of the vast store of provisions they brought home, leaving ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... through a life of office-seeking and office-holding without a particle of real leadership, and are forgotten the moment they leave the stage unless circumstance throws them into a place so responsible as to reveal their glaring incompetence. He had escaped the odium which Pierce and Douglas had incurred, through his absence as Minister to England. There he had distinguished himself chiefly by his part in a conference at Ostend, in 1854,—incited by ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... and told them her first and prettiest story of sacrifice and country love. They listened gravely, but they were not thrilled. Struggling against a growing sense of incompetence, Eveley talked on and on, one story after another, pretty word following pretty word. But each word fell alike on stony ground. They sat like graven images, except for the bright suspicious gleam ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... scatter during the night, thus saving me at least ten thousand of my soldiers. I shall also settle upon him a pension of fifty louis a year, for the loss of his hand. I will send him to Spain, having had several complaints from the Duke of Orleans" (who, as you know, is now in command there) "of the incompetence ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... another chapter. There is plenty of other gossip in these letters, and gossip often about unsavoury matters which need not be noticed here. It lets in a flood of light upon the causes of the general incompetence and inefficiency; the life of the ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... German skin remedy had insidiously crept on to the market. Wholesale houses wanted impossible discounts, and retail chemists could not be inveigled into placing any but the most insignificant orders. He gave dismaying details, terribly anxious all the while lest his chief should attribute to his incompetence the growing unpopularity of the Cure. But to his amazement Sypher listened smilingly to his story of disaster, and ordered a bottle ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... decision, and under the influence of his young consort, the beautiful Queen Marie Antoinette, who had the imperious temper of her house, wedded to light and frivolous manners; she brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment and a steadfast incompetence ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... statesmen and generals to the law-courts.[6] Any citizen might accuse them upon charges nominally limited in scope, but often serving in reality to bring their whole career into question. Had it been certain that the courts would only punish incompetence or misconduct, and not failure as such, little harm would have resulted. But although there were very many acquittals in political trials, the uncertainty of the issue was so great, and the sentences inflicted upon the condemned so ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... and in some respects growing out of it, are the shortcomings on the employment side that contribute to marital instability. Most of these can be referred back to lack of education or opportunity in youth, or to defects of character. Laziness, incompetence, lack of skill in any trade, lack of application, or, on the other hand, the possession by a man with no business "stake" in the community of a trade at which he can work wherever he takes a fancy to go, or of a trade which is seasonal and shifting—all these ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... the Duvillard mansion. Nearly every reporter in Paris had called at the Grandidier factory and interviewed both workmen and master. Some had even started on personal investigations, in the hope of capturing the culprit themselves. There was no end of jesting about the incompetence of the police, and the hunt for Salvat was followed all the more passionately by the general public, as the papers overflowed with the most ridiculous concoctions, predicting further explosions, and declaring even that all Paris would some ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... join them, as if a sudden thought had struck her. "You are discussing our plans?" she said. "A certificated master to supersede poor old Rivett must be the first consideration in our rearrangement of the schools. The children have been sacrificed too long to his incompetence. We must be on the look-out for a superior man, and make up our minds ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... temper is under perfect control; and in his favourite part of the angels' advocate he finds palliations and makes allowances for all those defections in the servants of the public which goad men to fury and which, since the War came in to supply incompetence with a cloak and a pretext, have been exasperatingly on the increase. Thus, serene and considerate, has X. gone his uncomplaining way ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... critical moment Maurice of Saxony came into action. Hitherto his conduct had been ambiguous. This was probably due less to deliberate deceit than to genuine hesitation. The incompetence of the Lutheran leaders and Ferdinand's expressed intention of invading Ernestine Saxony determined him. Persuading his estates with difficulty that it was necessary to save the Electorate for the house of Wettin, he undertook ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in the Russian people. Its soul is sound; and after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert itself. There will be builded a new Russia that will be one of the ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... days of battle at Pittsburg Landing, had sullenly retired to Corinth, whence he had come. For manifest incompetence Grant, whose beaten army had been saved from destruction and capture by Buell's soldierly activity and skill, had been relieved of his command, which nevertheless had not been given to Buell, but to Halleck, a man of unproved powers, a theorist, sluggish, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... his letter to the D.T., complained that, should the Music Halls obtain their wicked way, through the incompetence of the County Council to deal with the matter—(but is not DRURIOLANUS a Counti-Counciliarius, and ready to see justice done to the poor player, author, (and manager alike? Sure-ly!)—then a play at a Hall of Music (they used to be "Caves of Harmony" in THACKERAY's time, and the principal Hall ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... funds to its agents abroad. Bullock, especially, required large amounts in furtherance of his ship-building contracts and was embarrassed by the lack of business methods and the delays of the Government at home. The incompetence of the Confederacy in finance was a weakness that characterized all of its many operations whether at home or abroad[1048] and was made evident in England by the confusion in its efforts to establish credits there. At first the Confederate Government supplied its agents abroad with drafts upon the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... were urged against the Jews with great pertinacity by their enemies, and the sovereigns were importuned to adopt a more rigorous policy. The inquisitors, in particular, to whom the work of conversion had been specially intrusted, represented the incompetence of all lenient measures to the end proposed. They asserted, that the only mode left for the extirpation of the Jewish heresy, was to eradicate the seed; and they boldly demanded the immediate and total banishment of every unbaptized ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... listened, accepting the priest's opinion without question. And their submission was pathetic. It was the submission of a primitive people clinging to religious authority, and Bryden contrasted the weakness and incompetence of the people about him with the modern restlessness and cold energy of the people he had left ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... was this prophetic promise made to Abraham. At the time it was given Abraham had, by command, offered his only son Isaac, which offering, to all human appearance, would leave the old patriarch again childless; but his faith staggered not, for human incompetence does not circumscribe the bounds of Divine sufficience. The God who commanded Abraham to offer, recalled the command at a certain stage of the fulfilment, counting the faith of Abraham for righteousness. In Abraham's faith Isaac was really sacrificed; ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... to be believed in by anybody so ignorant!' said Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier's crass incompetence to apprehend the conditions ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... to expose his ignorance by triple bucketfuls. He creaks to high Heaven that he is hopelessly behind the common order of things! He invites the streams of Five Watersheds to witness his su-su-su-pernal incompetence, and then he talks as though there were untold reserves of knowledge behind him that he is too modest to bring forward. For a bland, circular, absolutely sincere impostor, you're a miracle, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... was not a real musician Kreutzer knew. Too often had his trombone trespassed, with its brazen bray, upon the time which the composer had allotted to the soft, delightful flute, to leave the slightest doubt of its performer's rank incompetence. That he had failed was, therefore, easily understood; in no way did it indicate that all he said about the chances of a real musician in the land of skyscrapers and mighty distances (which he also told about at length) was of necessity untrue. It ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Cabildo of Mexico and many of the principal Spaniards were very solicitous that Cortes should be associated in the government; and on his peremptory refusal, they recommended that Sandoval, who was then alguazil-major, should act in conjunction with Estrada, which accordingly was the case. The incompetence of Estrada for conducting the government in the present conjuncture, particularly appeared from the following circumstance. Nuno de Guzman, who had held the government of Panuco for two years, conducted himself in a furious and tyrannical manner, arbitrarily extending ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... you know I picked up the other day an old Longman's where I found an article of yours that I had missed, about Christie's? I read it with great delight. The year ends with us pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours of wars, and a vast and splendid exhibition of official incompetence.—Yours ever, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rodney pocketed the letter and elaborately looked at his watch. Although the action meant that he resigned Cassandra, for he knew his own incompetence and distrusted himself entirely, and lost Katharine, for whom his feeling was profound though unsatisfactory, still it appeared to him that there was nothing else left for him to do. He was forced to go, leaving Katharine free, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... thousands of knowledge-prisons over the country, and says: "Who are you that dares speak a word against our sacred, school system?" Education is in a hurry. Because she fails in fifteen years to do what half the time should accomplish by better methods, she should not be too boastful. Incompetence is not always a reason for pride. And they hurry the children into a hundred textbooks, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, then into a diploma, then into life,—with a dazed mind, untrained and unfitted for the real ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... What work had it been the custom for the heir apparent to perform? What work had his father and grandfather and great- grandfather performed when their positions were his position to- day?... Vaguely he recognized his incompetence to administer anything of importance. Probably, little by little, detail by detail, matters would be placed under his jurisdiction until he was safely ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... battle the siege of Stirling was renewed; but owing to the gross incompetence of a French engineer, who had come over with Lord Drummond, the batteries were so badly placed that their fire was easily silenced by that of the castle guns. The prince, in spite of the advice of Lord George Murray and the other competent ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... incompetence, malpractice and conduct unbecoming to a physician which I am lodging against your colleague in the Red Service here," the Black Doctor said angrily. "Of course, I was confident that neither of you two could have contributed very ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... competent Filipino physicians or surgeons in the islands. This condition was due not to natural incompetence on the part of the Filipinos but to the previous lack of adequate educational facilities. The government has established a thoroughly modern college of medicine and surgery, well housed, and provided with all necessary laboratory facilities. It furnishes the best of theoretical instruction, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... not cite further cases of the incompetence of the lay public to deal with technical questions of school methods. Instances are plentiful to show that well-meaning people, competent enough to judge of the aims and results of school work, make a mistake in insisting upon ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... swords which he makes to pieces upon the anvil as though they were toys. Siegfried now comes in, blithe and boisterous, and treats Mime's new sword like its predecessors, blaming the unfortunate smith for his incompetence. Mime reproaches Siegfried for his ingratitude, reminding him of the care with which he nursed him in childish days. Siegfried cannot believe that Mime is his father, and in a fit of passion forces the dwarf to tell ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... "... They are sending a group of picked men to Russia to inoculate the grasses on the steppes with this Francis stuff. Sheer waste of trained men; bungling incompetence. Why not send a specially selected group of hypnotists to persuade the Russians to sue for peace? It would be better to have given them Mills bombs and let them blow up the Kremlin. Time and effort and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... bankrupt? you ask. Partly through incompetence; partly through corruption. In every case of declared bankruptcy Government has sent down vice-Guardians receiving three hundred pounds to five hundred pounds a year, and notwithstanding this additional burden to the rates the vice-Guardians in every case ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... them. It was a vast delight to make them fly. At this feat no one was ever more accomplished. Here we have the man and his mistakes, and the troubles that came, and came to stay. Some might have grown rich from his financial opportunities. Whilst making the most and the worst of his prudential incompetence, it is easy to estimate too highly his rewards. It is an exaggeration to speak of his having made in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... of 1896 affairs declined from bad to worse. The state of tension between the oppressed Uitlanders and the now suspicious Boers became from day to day and year to year more acute, till at last it was almost unbearable. The incompetence of the police showed that robbery, and even murder, might at any moment be perpetrated and go unpunished, and alarm on this score was not allayed by the action of a constable in shooting dead a Uitlander named Edgar for having met ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... with moral significance and grandeur. Of no other man can the same thing be said in the same degree. His romances are not to be confused with "the novel with a purpose" as familiar to the English reader: this is generally the model of incompetence; and we see the moral clumsily forced into every hole and corner of the story, or thrown externally over it like a carpet over a railing. Now the moral significance, with Hugo, is of the essence of the romance; it is the organising principle. If you could somehow despoil ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anyway?" men would ask him angrily, when some instance of his incompetence had added to the work of the others. To this, if they would hear him, he had always an answer. He was a Portuguese, it seemed, of some little town on the coast of East Africa, where a land-locked bay drowsed below the windows of the houses under the day-long sun. When he spoke ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... his own fashion, then, the trackers crossed the swamp, and soon were hunting among a network of moose-trails, which criss-crossed one another through the burnt wood. John, aware of his incompetence, contented himself with watching the Indians as they picked up a new trail, followed it for a while, then patiently harked back to the last spot of blood and worked off on a new line. Barboux had theories of his ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... see evidence to warrant Mr Mill's judgment (p. 554) that Sir W. Hamilton was 'indifferent to the [Greek: dihoti] of a man's opinions, and that he was incompetent to draw up an estimate of the opinions of any great thinker,' &c. Such incompetence, if proved to be frequent and considerable, would deprive an author of all chance of success in writing a history of philosophy. But the study of Sir William Hamilton's works does not prove it to us, though Mr Mill has ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... himself to be cleverer, more perceptive, wilier, than she; and he ought to have been able to muster the diplomatic skill necessary for smooth and felicitous intercourse. Any friction, whether due to her stupidity or not, was a proof of his incompetence in ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... as those of Descartes and Kant, have been largely acquainted with its details. On the other hand, the founder of Positivism no less admirably illustrates the connexion of scientific incapacity with philosophical incompetence. In truth, the laboratory is the fore-court of the temple of philosophy; and whoso has not offered sacrifices and undergone purification there, has little chance of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... sense of the present in the imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds, that it had "in petto," but which it did not yet want to bring to the scratch. The heroes, who ever seek to refute their established incompetence by mutually bestowing their sympathy upon one another and by pulling together, had packed their satchels, taken their laurels in advance payments and were just engaged in the work of getting discounted "in partibus," on the stock exchange, the republics for which, in the silence of their unassuming ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... paltry. In other lands, in the delightful isles of Oceania, in the old lifeless quarters of Stamboul, it seemed as if mere words could never express all I felt, and I vainly struggled against my own incompetence to render, in human language, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... since a discontented marriage partner offers fair game to a predatory third person; a link with our sexual taboos, since difficulties in marital adjustment often have a sexual component, and any suggestion of sexual incompetence is deeply wounding to our pride. It could reflect the traditional tendency to regard the family as a closed "in-group"—an attitude not without advantages ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... minute, incisive methods are still unchanged. But to the careless, stupid, or lazy person he is a terror for the short time they remain around him. Honest mistakes may be tolerated, but not carelessness, incompetence, or lack of attention to business. In such cases Edison is apt to express himself freely and forcibly, as when he was asked why he had parted with a certain man, he said: "Oh, he was so slow that it would ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... it, look at matters as they stand. Look at the incompetence of our public officers, look at our ruined carrying trade, at those vile enactions of fools, and worse than fools, the Navigation Laws of the United States, and tell me whether things are as they should be. Tell me what has ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... just verdict is likely to be reached. But there can be neither doubt nor mistake as to the President's management of foreign affairs during the two years preceding the declaration of war against England; nor of the remarkable incompetence which he showed in rallying the moral and material forces of the nation to meet an emergency of his ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... abate, and the Manchester Operatives be got to spin peaceably! The idea is more distracted than any placard-pole seen hitherto in a public thoroughfare of men! My friend, if thou ever do come to believe in God, thou wilt find all Chartism, Manchester riot, Parliamentary incompetence, Ministries of Windbag, and the wildest Social Dissolutions, and the burning-up of this entire Planet, a most small matter in comparison. Brother, this Planet, I find, is but an inconsiderable sand-grain in the continents of Being: this Planet's poor temporary interests, thy interests ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... further to be remarked, that all these rights suppose corresponding duties, and where there is an incompetence for the duty, the claim to exercise the right ceases. No man can justly claim the exercise of any right to the injury of the community of which he is a member. It is because females and minors are judged (though for different ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... respectability of his country were placed on a well-regulated and well-disciplined militia; and his sentiments on this subject are entitled to the more regard as a long course of severe experience had enabled him to mark the total incompetence of the existing system to the great purposes of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... classical music. I have shewn that plausible objections can be urged against such modifications, so long as they are not accompanied by corresponding modifications of tone and expression; and I have further shewn that such objections have no foundation other than the incompetence of conductors, who attempt to perform functions for which they are not fit. In fact, there is but one valid objection which can be urged against the mode of procedure I advocate, namely this: nothing can ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... nothing to hinder their progress to the African shore. The enemy hastened with the remainder of their fleet to protect Carthage, and the conflict was transferred to Africa. Regulus prosecuted the war with vigor, and, owing to the incompetence of the generals opposed to him, was successful to an extraordinary degree. Both he and the senate became intoxicated to such an extent, that when the Carthaginians made overtures for peace, only intolerable terms were offered them. This resulted in prolonging the war, for the Carthaginians ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... autograph letter asking whether I would accept one of the positions on the new Interstate Railway Commission. I felt it a great honor to be asked to act as colleague with such men as Chief Justice Cooley, Mr. Morrison, and others already upon that board, but I recognized my own incompetence to discharge the duties of such a position properly. Though I had been, some years before, a director in two of the largest railway corporations in the United States, my heart was never in that duty, and I never prepared myself to discharge it. Thinking the matter over fully, I felt obliged to decline ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... quarter covered; further, that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day's travel. His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a simple matter to give the dogs less food; but it was impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under way earlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not only did they not know how ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... Apart from that, his incompetence is a scandal, and I have wondered more than once how my father put up with it. In justice to the public using the ferry, and to Lady Killiow as owner of the ferry rights—But, excuse me, I prefer not to argue the matter. He must go. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and good at first, and they had been happy. But he had began to drink again—drink had always been his trouble, and at last everything had to be sold and he went away West, leaving her and her grandfather alone. Then commenced a sorrowful story—the story of incompetence struggling with greed and want. They would have starved she declared only for Charles Stuart. It was he was the good kind lad. He had met her on the street one day last autumn and for a long while he had done everything to help them. He had found ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... been taught to Helen, nor has any effort been made to force religious beliefs upon her attention. Being fully aware of my own incompetence to give her any adequate explanations of the mysteries which underlie the names of God, soul, and immortality, I have always felt obliged, by a sense of duty to my pupil, to say as little as possible about spiritual matters. The Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks has explained to her ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... then spoke, and paraphrased what his Royal Highness had said more briefly; he explained in what manner the Parliament had the right to remonstrate, showed the distinction between its power and that of the Crown; the incompetence of the tribunals in all matters of state and finance; and the necessity of repressing the remonstrances of Parliament by passing a code (that was the term used), which was to serve as their inviolable guide. All this explained ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... against the prisoner, whose career he traced through the successive steps of the rebellion, and indicated the weight and character of the evidence to be brought against its wicked instigator and chief leader. The plea of the defence of the incompetence of the Court to try the case, was first answered by the learned counsel, who remarked, that the character, and composition of the Court, as well as the provision for the trial of capital offences by a jury of six men instead of twelve, were in harmony with the Dominion Law enacted for the Government ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... concentrate his every faculty on that alone. The lessons of experience were never thrown away upon him, and his faith in an overruling Providence rendered him calm at all times, except on the rare occasions when some subordinate's incompetence or negligence at a critical moment caused to burst forth in him that terrific wrath which was more appalling to its object than the guns of a battery. There was always great personal dignity in Washington, insomuch that nothing like comradeship, in the familiar sense, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... trust and respect, he must show himself equal to their tasks, a true comrade, who accepted their code of courage and honor. The fact that he wore spectacles was against him at the outset, because they associated spectacles with Eastern schoolmasters and incompetence. They called him "Four Eyes," at first with derision, but they soon discovered that in him they had no "tenderfoot" to deal with. He shot as well as the best of them; he rode as far; he never complained of food or tasks or hardship; he met ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... neither means nor craft and fails to marry, she is one of the most tragic figures in our confused social hierarchy, difficult to help, superfluous. She sets her hand to this and that, but she has no grip on life. To think of her is to invoke the very image of failure and incompetence. She flocks into every opening, blocking and depressing it; as a "help" she becomes a byword, for she has grown up without learning to help herself or anybody else. If she is a Protestant she has no haven. Only people who have set themselves to help poor ladies know the difficulties of the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... better why foreigners are so offensive in the East. They do not know the language; they find themselves impotent where their instinct is to domineer; and they visit on the Oriental the ill-temper which is really produced by their own incompetence. Yes, I must confess that I had to remind myself severely that it was I, and not the Japanese, who was stupid. At last the station-master came to my rescue—the station-master always speaks English. He endured my petulance with the ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... standard? To allow the school child to deteriorate whether before or after going to work is only to waste potential citizenship. Citizens who use themselves up in the mere getting of a living have no surplus strength or interest for overcoming incompetence in civic business, or for achieving the highest aim of citizenship,—the art of self-government for the benefit ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... barrister disappeared. "What does he mean by these absurd goings-on? Some disagreeable business that disturbs him, indeed! I suppose the unhappy creature has had a brief forced upon him by some evil-starred attorney, and is sinking into a state of imbecility from a dim consciousness of his own incompetence." ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... becomes of vital practical moment to clarify the atmosphere as far as possible with conceptions borrowed from the natural life. Few things are less understood than the conditions of the spiritual life. The distressing incompetence of which most of us are conscious in trying to work out our spiritual experience is due perhaps less to the diseased will which we commonly blame for it than to imperfect knowledge of the right conditions. It does not occur to us how natural the spiritual is. We still strive ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... better administrators than half a dozen lawyers who have got themselves elected to a legislative assembly by the gift of the gab were likely to be; but still this system of sacrificing the leaders whenever any disaster takes place, and accusing them of treachery and incompetence, is one of the worst features in the French character. If it continues, eventually every man of rank will be dubbed by his own countrymen either ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... forth and elaborately illustrated by Mr. Buckle; and we the more readily refer to this author, because he stands high in the esteem of Mr. Wilson, who, in order to prove his own especial fitness for historical composition, and the incompetence of all who have preceded him in the attempt, refers to a passage in Buckle, containing an enumeration of the qualifications which he considers indispensable for the historian. This enumeration includes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Nawab's cannon annoyed us, not to much harm, for they were most villainously served; their fire arrows did us more mischief, flying into the thick of the crowds of screaming women and children. It made my heart sick to think of the poor innocent people suffering through the weakness and incompetence and the guilty neglect of our Council. The heat and the glare, the want of food, the uproar and commotion—may I never see or hear ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... In 1886 and 1893 the Unionists pointed out, not without some heat and passion, two main difficulties in the path to Home Rule. One was the incompetence of the Irish people for local government. "They are by character incapable of self-rule," was the cry; and we all remember how Mr. Gladstone humorously described this incapacity as a "double dose of ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... blackmail the Allies, because their sympathies were with Germany, they believed Germany would win, and they filled their newspapers with scurrilous attacks on the British, accusing them of cowardice and military incompetence.[71] ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... Xerxes, once again against Artaxerxes I., and a third time against Artaxerxes II. The last insurrection was more successful than those which had preceded it, and Egypt remained independent for sixty-five years. Then the crimes and incompetence of its last native king, Nektanebo II., opened the way to the Persian, and the valley of the Nile once more bowed its neck under the Persian yoke. Its temples were ruined, the sacred Apis slain, and an ass set up ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... earl was astounded by the incompetence of Lord Galway and the Portuguese generals. They had twenty thousand men, while to oppose them there were but five thousand under the Duke of Berwick; and yet after entering Spain they fell back, without doing anything, into Portugal—their retreat beginning on the 11th of ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... able to state them to others. And yet this is the point on which, in one view of the case, the whole question turns. I confess that, in my own individual opinion, there is another point distinct from that of forms, on which I should be disposed to maintain the incompetence of any English revocation of your ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... not too sure of you, yet, but if I become so, you can go far—very, very far with me. This Rellos I sent for is the man who was shadowing you today. I cannot—I will not!" he spat venomously, "abide failure or incompetence. I am assigning you the pleasant little task of seeing that some sort of an ... uh ... accident happens to Rellos. And as I think about it, it might as well be a ... ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... exacting in their demands upon us. They make no concessions to half-heartedness, incompetence, or plodding mediocrity. But for the man who has proved his worth and can do the exceptional things with originality and sound judgment, they are eagerly watchful and ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... was the proper moment, whether he to whom it was to be done was really needy, or were we the fit doer, or should it be done in this way or that. We hesitated, and the moment was gone. Self-consciousness had again demonstrated its incompetence for superintending a task. Many of us, far from regarding self-consciousness as a ground of goodness, are disposed to look upon it ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... that this example of achieving Shock and Awe is directed against military targets, it requires skill if not brilliance in execution, or nearly total incompetence in the adversary. The adversary, finding front lines broken and the rear vulnerable, panics, surrenders, or both. Hitler's campaign in France and Holland and the seizure of the Dutch forts and the occupation of Crete in 1940 are obvious illustrations. The use of ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... invested. Such incompetence deserves an even stronger term. If my own money didn't earn more for me than that—well, I'm afraid you wouldn't have seen Vienna ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... opinions of others, and an actual usurpation of their text; and it is incredible that these should ever be satisfied with any mere compilation of grammar, or with any such authorship as either confesses or betrays the writer's own incompetence. For it is not true, that, "an English grammar must necessarily be," in any considerable degree, if at all, "a compilation;" nay, on such a theme, and in "the grammatical part" of the work, all compilation beyond a fair use of authorities regularly quoted, or of materials either ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that he will either run away from the city out of sheer desperation, or else humbly beg for his deposition and confess his incompetence. It is only for this purpose that I have come to you, Master Sanderus, to beg your help in putting this scheme into operation, for I know that you are skilful at that ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... were properly tended, and our Public Health service adequately extended and manned. We should therefore treat our Red Cross department as if it were destined to become a permanent service. No charity and no amateur anarchy and incompetence should be tolerated. As to allowing that admirable detective agency for the defence of the West End against begging letter writers, the Charity Organization Society to touch the soldier's home, the very suggestion is an outrage. The C.O.S., the Poor Law, and the charitable amateur, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... corresponding time the imported workmen have been here. In other words, the new men have, while shortening the time of completion, given twice as much work for exactly the same wage paid your Mexicans. In other words, too, your local laborers cancelled our agreement by their own incompetence." ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... its beauty away, its destroyers have not been either the philanthropist or the Socialist, the co-operator or the anarchist. It has been sold, and at a cheap price indeed: muddled away by the greed and incompetence of fools who do not know what life and pleasure mean, who will neither take them themselves nor let others have them. That is why the death of that beauty wounds us so: no man of sense or feeling would dare to regret ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... and they talked the same pigeon-English, as the patriots of Bengal. Then his mood changed, and he delivered a solemn warning against what he called "the treason begotten of restless vanity and proved incompetence." He sat down, leaving a House ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... they were employed, as pregnant with the most dangerous consequences to Athens; and, though it must be admitted that in this respect his views were sound, it cannot at the same time be concealed that his own want of energy, and his incompetence as a general, were the chief causes of the failure of the undertaking. His mistakes involved the fall of Demosthenes, an officer of far greater resolution and ability than himself, and who, had his counsels been followed, would in all probability have conducted the enterprise ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... proclaimed his own incompetence. For some time it had been obvious that the Republicans were about to attack Fort Mulgrave, which everybody knew to be essential to the defence of the fleet. Yet he took no steps to strengthen this "temporary post" so that it might resist a determined attack. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... posts; and finally, as we shall see, Pitt approved their action in the case of Malta. Meanwhile matters went from bad to worse. Ministers complained of Pitt's aloofness; but his friends agreed that he must do nothing to avert from Addington the consequences of his own incompetence. Even the cold Grenville declared Pitt to be the only man who could save England. But could even he, when under an incompetent chief, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... view to some great orders which he had in hand. The strike had thrown him terribly behindhand, as to the completion of these orders. Even with his own accustomed and skilled workpeople, he would have had some difficulty in fulfilling his engagements; as it was, the incompetence of the Irish hands, who had to be trained to their work, at a time requiring unusual activity, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of its goodness has been preserved by its having an official and party protector in the House of Commons. Without that contrivance we should have drifted back into the errors of the old Poor Law, and superadded to them the present meanness and incompetence in our large towns. All would have been given up to local management. Parliament would have interfered with the central board till it made it impotent, and the local authorities would have been despotic. The first administration ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... go the round of society. He keeps the crooked weathercock in the summerhouse to perpetuate the story of a legend. And then he lay in wait with his evil eye and wicked gun, safely ambushed behind the legend of his own incompetence. ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... that would be sufficient for your wants, while I would be poor in spite of the fact that I labored with you, and next to yourselves did the most to protect your interests. In view of my approaching incompetence (no matter how far off it is), I am working at a disadvantage. Would it not be right to enable me to protect ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... events, saying little, listening to all sides, conversing with a naivete which was genuine but not quite artless, seemingly obdurate to the pressure of wise counsels on one side and on the other—all this struck many anxious observers as sheer incompetence, and when there was just and natural cause for their anxiety, there was no established presumption of his wisdom to set against it. And this effect was enhanced by what may be called his plainness, his ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... going all over her touch for touch with a brush like the point of a pin. If the early masters had been able to do all they would have liked to have done, no doubt they would most of them have been as vulgar as we are; fortunately their incompetence stood them in good stead and saved them from becoming the Guidos, Domenichinos, and Guercinos, that so many of their more competent successors took so much trouble to become. Incompetence, if amiable and painstaking, will have with it an unconscious ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... salaries, as the organization in every instance more than lived up to its agreement. No great criticism can be found with the organization. A man who wanted to work and serve had the opportunity. Just criticism for incompetence was local, and for discourtesy and ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... moment she attempted to be somebody else. Her delivery was unnatural and pompous; her motions were stiff, strained, ridiculous. The whole of the first act was unsatisfying to the intelligence, but instead of dominating it by the force of her personality, Cleo, by the incompetence of her acting, set up its silliness in relief. If she had not talked as much as all the other characters put together—for every word that even the Basha managed to steal in elicited ten against it—there would have been nothing to suggest she was the leading ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... never stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the handling of Irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. It was only later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for direction and control sank into unimagined depths of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... misleading than in the case of trained nurses, because more is expected of the latter. My experience has taught me that patients form particularly unreliable opinions of practical nurses, and I have frequently witnessed incompetence in such women which ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... existence of parties in the Church also proves its incompetence. On that matter, too, I entertain a contrary opinion. Parties have always existed in the Church; and some have appealed to them as arguments in favor of its divine institution, because, in the services and doctrines of the Church have been found representatives ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... interesting. Do you know, I picked up the other day an old LONGMAN'S, where I found an article of yours that I had missed, about Christie's? I read it with great delight. The year ends with us pretty much as it began, among wars and rumours of wars, and a vast and splendid exhibition of official incompetence. - Yours ever, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dreams of explaining these indubitable facts by the notion of the existence of unknown and undiscoverable adaptations to purpose. And we would remind those who, ignorant of the facts, must be moved by authority, that no one has asserted the incompetence of the doctrine of final causes, in its application to physiology and anatomy, more strongly than our own eminent anatomist, Professor Owen, who, speaking of such cases, says ('On the Nature of Limbs', pp. 39, 40): "I think it ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... helplessness, inability, incompetence, stupidity, dulness, imbecility, inaptitude, inefficiency, unskilfulness, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... will do a stroke of useful work in all their lives. In the North there are, I believe, no men who would make such a boast; but I think there are many women—beautiful, fascinating lazzaroni of the parlor and boudoir—who make their boast of elegant helplessness and utter incompetence for any of woman's duties with equal naivete. The Spartans made their slaves drunk, to teach their children the evils of intoxication; and it seems to be the policy of a large class in the South now to keep down and ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... against abolitionists with the total incompetence of my agent, caused a financial failure of my lecture, but I made pleasant friendships with Gov. Harvey, Prof. Carr ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... English Prince with whom they were always in secret communication, when opinion forced them to consent to his restitution, had tacked to the amnesty a clause as cowardly as it was unconstitutional, and declared his incompetence to sit in the parliament of his country. Burke on the contrary fought the whig fight with a two-edged weapon: he was a great writer; as an orator he was transcendent. In a dearth of that public talent for the possession of which the whigs have generally been ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... his Soul was mov'd, And bubbled up with Jewels, and he said; "Oh Shah, I am the Slave of thy Desire, Dust of thy Throne ascending Foot am I; Whatever thou Desirest I would do, But sicken of my own Incompetence; Not in the Hand of my infirmer Will To carry into Deed mine own Desire. Time upon Time I torture mine own Soul, Devising liberation from the Snare I languish in. But when upon that Moon I think, my Soul relapses—and ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Parents profess that they have done their best with this or that child and that they have failed, but the fault largely lies in the parents undertaking the task with every expectation of failure, and the chief characteristics noticed by the child have been the parental irritability, impatience and incompetence. Having estimated these the child then knows exactly how to gain its own ends and has sufficient determination to persevere until it does. A certain amount of harsh treatment will suffice, until the child is old enough to rebel, in order to keep it in check, or, as is just as often ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll |
