"Inefficiency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coal is twice as much; and for those of any ordinary type it is usual to calculate 1 cubic foot, or 621/2 lb., of water evaporated per horse power. This would reduce the efficiency to about 6 per cent. for the best, and 3 per cent. for the ordinary non-condensing engines; and if to this we add the inefficiency of some boilers, it is certain that many small engines do not convert into power more than 2 per cent. of the potential energy contained ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... doctor—a peppery disappointed man, struggling with a wide-strewn country practice mainly prolific of bad debts, conscious of his own inefficiency and perpetually smarting under imagined injuries and slights—was the very last person to exercise a mollifying influence upon Sawyer in his existing angry humour. The latter recounted and enlarged upon the insults he had just now suffered. His hearer fanned the flame of indignation with ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... be expected, if they do not secure peace, then my prediction was all the more correct, for then I shall have proved to them that it is not the inefficiency of the Diplomatic Service but the conditions surrounding it that must be blamed for the war ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... the suppression of the rebellion. It was the opinion of America, indeed— and not of America alone, it may be said—that there would have been no rebellion in Cuba but for the gross corruption and inefficiency of the local government; and that the proper method of suppression was, not force of arms, but the introduction of reforms into the system of government. The fact is, that the state of affairs in Cuba was ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... have since met him several times in the streets; but for the last three or four years I have neither seen nor heard of him. With his habits it is scarcely probable that he still survives. Poor fellow! He furnishes another melancholy instance of the utter inefficiency of mere learning or intelligence in preserving a man from the most vicious and degrading abuses. He had neither religion nor moral principle; and that kind of gentlemanly feeling which from association he did possess, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... having made an effort to cleanse his face as well as his wound, but as Sally took hold of his hand before beginning her task, she was startled to discover that he was suffering from a fever through neglect of his injury. This made her the more determined. Although appreciating her own inefficiency and disliking the work, there was nothing to be done at present but to go ahead with her own simple first-aid treatment. She had a bottle of antiseptic and ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... legislature to interfere in purely local matters. The refusal of the state government to recognize an appropriate sphere of municipal activity which it would have no right to invade, has been the main cause of corruption and inefficiency in municipal government. ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... that in silence for a minute or two. "They talk about the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time. There are days when I feel as if I'd like to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... potency as a cause of connubial discord is the general inefficiency of a woman at the business of what is called keeping house—a business founded upon a complex of trivial technicalities. As I have argued at length, women are congenitally less fitted for mastering these technicalities than men; the enterprise always costs them more effort, and they are ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the world we live in sees in it nothing but waste and selfishness and inefficiency. He looks so long that a mist comes before his eyes. He loses sight of the supreme fact that after all, in its own poor, clumsy fashion, the machine does work. He loses sight of the possibility of our falling into social chaos. ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... have no hope of making his position clear to the constituency to which he was responsible. Debarred on the one side from taking an active part in the administration of state affairs, and bitterly arraigned on the other on the grounds of inefficiency, laxity, and indifference to duty, the second month of office found John Barclay in a fair way to be ground to powder between the millstones of impuissance and hostile criticism. The men of his party who had, both in private conviction and public statement, based their hopes of ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... their own lives as well as those of the public. Economy in the matter of railway servants—in other words, their reduction in numbers—necessitates increase of working hours, which, beyond a certain point, implies inefficiency and danger. But the general public are not free from a modicum of this shame, and have to thank themselves if they are maimed and killed, because they descend on railways for compensation with a ruthless ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the newspaper carefully while he collected his thoughts. "My dear Mr. Phelps," he stated, finally, "that is simply inefficiency. I doubt if it is anything criminal; certainly there is no connection with the death of Stella Lamar, my only interest ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... they refrained from echoing the idle tales which ran whispering in England that the Dardanelles campaign was a cruel blunder, that the blood of the Anzacs' bravest and best had been uselessly spilt, that their splendid young lives had been an empty sacrifice to the demons of Incompetence and Inefficiency. To those in Australia who in their hearts may feel that shreds of truth were woven in the rumours—that the Anzacs were spent on a forlorn hope, were wasted on a task foredoomed to failure—let this simple drawing bring the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... the public should be prepared for an inefficiency which can hardly fail to continue; and, in justice to the American squadron, it should be imputed to the true cause, and not to any lack of energy or good-will on the part of the officers. Whatever be their zeal (and hitherto they have been active and indefatigable), it is almost certain that ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... about 50 or 60 yards from Munich Trench followed by the barrage, the Germans could be seen lying in the trench in force. When the barrage was on the Munich Trench, the enemy machine guns played on the attackers from both flanks all the time. The failure of the attack was due to the inefficiency of the British supporting barrage, together with the condition of the ground—thaw having set in and rain falling on the snow, making it exceedingly slippery—the targets the men formed against the snowy background, and the ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... parents. This you will say is not his duty. That may be; but it is Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely to trust to duty. In this futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority) that has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the smallest degree of just correspondence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... whole scale from the "Admonition to Parliament," and the lectures of Cartwright and Travers, to the libels of Martin Mar-prelate: a system of attack which with all its injustice and violence, and with all its mischievous purposes, found but too much justification in the inefficiency and corruption of many both of the bishops and clergy, and in the rapacious and selfish policy of the government, forced to starve and cripple the public service, while great men and favourites built up their fortunes out of the prodigal ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... standing idle along the quay, shivering in the rain and snow, with for a background crumbling walls, gaping cellars, and hills buried under acres of fallen masonry, the picture was one of terrible desolation, of neglect and inefficiency. The only structures that had obviously been erected since the earthquake were the "ready-to-wear" shacks sent as a stop-gap from America. One should not look critically at a gift-house, but they are certainly very ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... constitutional battle was, notwithstanding these precautions, fought in Hanover, where Adolphus Frederick, duke of Cambridge, had, in the name of his brother, William IV., king of England, established a new constitution, which had received many ameliorations notwithstanding the inefficiency of the liberals, Christiani, Luntzel, etc., to counteract the overpowering influence of the monarchical and aristocratic party. William IV., king of England and Hanover, expired in 1837, and was succeeded on the throne of Great Britain by Victoria Alexandrina, the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... foreign exchange reserves. Yet this increased revenue has not eased economic hardships, which include double-digit unemployment and inflation - inflation climbed to 26% as of June 2008. The economy has seen only moderate growth. Iran's educated population, economic inefficiency and insufficient investment - both foreign and domestic - have prompted an increasing number of Iranians to seek employment overseas, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... apportioned this land among the Negro colonists in the counties of Franklin, Essex, Hamilton, Fulton, Oneida, Delaware, Madison, and Ulster. On account of the intractability of the soil, however, the harshness of the climate, and, in a great measure, the inefficiency of the settlers, the enterprise was a failure and offered no relief to the economic condition of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... frequently overturned. Meetings denounced the inaction of the authorities; a gigantic parade bearing placards calling for an end to procrastination marched past the cityhall. Democrats blamed Republicans for inefficiency and Republicans retorted that Miss Francis had done her research during a ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and its author was shortly afterwards appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginian regiment, Colonel Fry commanding. Now began that long experience of human stupidity and inefficiency with which Washington was destined to struggle through all the years of his military career, suffering from them, and triumphing in spite of them to a degree unequaled by any other great commander. Dinwiddie, the Scotch governor, was eager enough to fight, and full of ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to responsibility, and seemed paralyzed into complete inefficiency. He took nearly the whole of the 25th to move slowly to Cross Lanes, though he met no opposition. He did nothing that evening or night, and his disposal of his troops was so improper and outpost duty so completely neglected that on the morning of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... capitalistic system; and when once it had been adequately organised, as it first was, in England, it proceeded, they go on to observe, to spread itself with astonishing rapidity, all other methods disappearing before it, through their own comparative inefficiency. But when socialists or their opponents turn from capitalism to socialism, and speak of how socialism has risen and spread likewise, their language, as thus applied, has no meaning whatever unless it is interpreted in a totally new sense. For in the sense in which socialists speak of the rise and ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... anthropology the basis of criminal legislation. Man is so complex that if we were to eliminate one of his apparently worse qualities, we might develop others still worse, or throw the whole machine into inefficiency. By taking away what the phrenologists call combativeness, we could doubtless stop prize-fight, but we might have a springless society. The only safe way is that taught by horticulture, to feed a fruit-tree generously, so that it has vigor enough ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... after she had been North several weeks, "I have a theory that every woman ought to know how to earn her own living. I believe that a great amount of sin and misery springs from the weakness and inefficiency of women." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... failed, he would return to Walmer for another kind of contest. The joint assault by Fox and Pitt against the Ministry on 23rd April produced a great sensation, the speech of Pitt being remarkable for its suppressed sarcasm and thinly veiled charges of inefficiency. As a call to arms, it stands without a rival. Ministers were utterly beaten in argument, and escaped defeat only by thirty-seven votes. Addington became alarmed, and advised the King, who was now convalescent, to instruct ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Wellesley makes no mention of the sufferings which they must have undergone from lack of food and supplies of all kinds. He purposely puts the best face on it, and bears his troubles stoically. But young as he was, he marvelled at the inefficiency and lack of coordination of the high command. Once when a despatch was received by the General during dinner, from their ally, Austria, he tossed it aside unopened with the remark, "That will keep ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... my entire character from this exhibition. A man, she would reflect, who could be so feeble and miserable a failure at tennis, could not be good for much in any department of life. She would compare me instinctively with my opponent, and contrast his dash and brilliance with my own inefficiency. Somehow the massacre was beginning to have a bad effect on my character. All my self-respect was ebbing. A little more of this, and I should become crushed,—a mere human jelly. It was my turn to serve. Service is my strong point at tennis. I am inaccurate, but vigorous, and ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... occur without intervention into individual lack of intelligence and irresponsibilities. The opposite is our current path—an attempt to regulate and control away all dangers. But this overcontrol results in institutionalized violence and cruelty, inefficiency that is not checked or exposed by the bright light of a better way. As Churchill said, 'democracy is the worst form of government there is—except for all the others.' What he meant is that we must accept that this ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... fairs, markets, and sea-ports in Ireland. These tolls and customs had been granted to particular individuals and corporations, and great evils existed in the levying of them, whence the motion for inquiry. It was opposed both on the general merits of the measure, and on the inefficiency of the particular mode of inquiry proposed; but the motion was carried, and a select committee ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... resulted from inefficiency on their part that so many of the transferred officers had left their own regiments. Many had requested the move; many more were rendered supernumerary as being the juniors of their grades; but there were others still who ranked well up in their old regiments, and yet were mysteriously ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... functions which by common consensus of opinion are conceded to each individual. In a very real sense, therefore, they must be won or created by each for himself. The individual or the group, which through ignorance or inefficiency or thriftlessness or racial discrimination is incapacitated for measuring up to the demands of an aggressive and virile democracy, will inevitably find these inalienable and unalterable rights merely a name so far as they are concerned. Actual ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... space of time.(1658) Any inhabitant of the city assessed in the subsidy-book at L50 in goods, and who, being under fifty years of age, was called upon to serve, and refused, was forthwith committed to Newgate.(1659) If any fault was to be found with the city's force it was the inefficiency of its officers, whom the municipal authorities always claimed to appoint. The Earl of Leicester, who was in command of the camp which had been formed at Tilbury, held but a poor opinion of Londoners as a fighting force.(1660) "For ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... they had obtained, after all those years of training, a declaration for which they had so eagerly waited. France was in their power, conquered already, they told themselves, for was she not utterly unprepared for war? And as for Russia, Russia the Colossus, the steam-roller, inefficiency reigned in her ranks, and she, too, in her turn, would ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... what preachers and what pastors Christ gave to Kidderminster, and to Bedford, and to Down and Connor, and to Sodor and Man, and to Anwoth, and to Ettrick, and to New England, and to St. Andrews, and places too many to mention. With all its infirmity and all its inefficiency, what a truly heavenly power the pulpit is when it is filled by a man of God who gives his whole mind and heart, his whole time and thought to it, and to the pastorate that lies around it. His mind may be small, and his heart may be full of corruption; his time may be ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... homage to it. In that head of his a flame burnt that was like an altar-fire, a miraculous and beautiful phenomenon, than which nothing is more miraculous nor more beautiful over the whole earth. Whence had it suddenly sprung, that flame? After years of muddy inefficiency, of contentedness with the second-rate and the dishonest, that flame astoundingly bursts forth, from a hidden, unheeded spark that none had ever thought to blow upon. It bursts forth out of a damp jungle of careless habits and negligence ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... ideas as to the value he set upon it, but he had been content to take shares in the building instead of the "cash down" which he had demanded before. In this way, and in other ways, he came by and by to be the largest shareholder in the concern, and when later, partly through the inefficiency of the person who had charge of the business, and partly for other reasons, paper-making began to look like a losing concern, the value of the shares went down, and in course of time most of them fell into his hands. So it was "Holt's Paper-mill" now, and there was no other ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... badly organised army. The "We are betrayed" theory was caught up alike by republicans and conservatives, who accused each other of ruining the country rather than give the victory to the rival faction. Whatever grain of truth there was in these taunts, the military inefficiency of the forces which Charles Albert led across the Ticino in March 1848 remained the main reason why Radetsky was able to get back Lombardy and Venetia for his master. This Cavour knew, and he was anxious not to precipitate matters till La Marmora, to whom he privately gave ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... clenched fists raised above his shoulders, at times he threw back his head, flung his outstretched hands at arms' length in front of him, as though he were appealing to the earth, to the sea, to the air, to the remote canopy of the sky to hear his denunciation of man's inefficiency; at times he paused, laid a hand on my arm, and fixed his eye upon me as if he expected the darkness to yield him some image of my thought. It was almost impossible to believe at such a moment that he was totally blind, that he could not distinguish ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... fifty years, will be unfit; and, in one hundred years, the American race will have ceased to exist. We mean by this that every second child born will be born to die in infancy, or, if it lives, will be incapable of self-support during its life, because either of mental degeneracy or physical inefficiency. This appalling situation immediately becomes a problem of civilization. No state can exist under these conditions. If these statistics are reliable—and we know they are true and capable of verification by any individual who will go to the trouble of [xxi] investigating ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... one of the ex-pewholders had said, nor that it was badly situated, as another had claimed; it was something of deeper, wider significance, a broken foundation, that made the ugly, widening crack all through the height of the tower. It was his own inefficiency. The church was going steadily down, and he was powerless to lift it. His old enthusiasm, devotion, confidence—what had become of them? They seemed to have slipped by slow degrees, through the unsuccessful years, out ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... reorganised as an imperial province with an elaborate hierarchy of civil and military officials. The change was welcome to the orthodox clergy, the more so because Justinian gave large powers in local administration to their bishops. Of outward pomp there was enough to gild corruption and inefficiency with a deceptive splendour; but in fact the restored Empire was little more civilised, in the true sense of the word, than the barbarian states of the past and future. Upon the Italians the Emperor conferred the boon of his famous Corpus Juris, a compendium of that legal wisdom which constitutes ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... effort. Then he returned to Boston and got up a duplex telegraph—for sending two messages at once over one wire. He tried to demonstrate it between Rochester and New York City. After a week's trial, his test did not work, partly because of the inefficiency of his assistant. ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... of the inefficiency of the machine that led the applicant to make his invention of 1847, which, by a modification of pre-existing elements, provided an advantageous location for the raker's seat. Upon this his fame as an inventor rests, and to this ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... Englishmen and Englishwomen receive their first indelible impressions. Can one expect them to escape the contagion of its cramped pretentiousness, its dingy narrowness, its shy privacy of social degradation, its essential sordidness and inefficiency? ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... but they were teaching him how not to eat it. Privily, he thanked God that he was not made as they. He came to dislike them to a degree that bordered on hatred. Their malingering bothered him less than their helpless inefficiency. Somewhere in him, old Isaac Bellew and all the rest of the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... little from her friends in Thurston Square. In three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat fatiguing effort of the will to believe. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... governments, in all these changes, are seen working smoothly, we have next to observe, by contrast, the clumsiness and inefficiency of the federal ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... England making a clean sweep of nine-tenths of the clerks, &c., at the Treasury, Foreign-office, Post-office, Custom-house, Dockyards, &c., &c. Conceive the jobbing such a system must lead to, not to mention the comparative inefficiency it must produce in the said departments, and the ridiculous labour it throws upon the dispensers of these gifts of place. The following quotation may ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... He wasn't exactly caked with mud; rather, he seemed to ooze it out of every pore. He had been assigned to Binalbagan, ten miles further down. I stared when he told me this. Binalbagan was the worst post on the island, a musty, pestilential hole with a sullenly hostile population, and he—well, inefficiency was branded all over him in six-foot letters. I tried to stop him overnight, but he would not do it, and I saw him splash off in the darkness, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... thrice fifty mouths that depended on those hands' labor, and was not unfrequently visited with the punishment due to such guilt. No demonstrated fruitlessness of similar fears in the past served to allay fears for the future; no inefficiency of brute force permanently to stay the enterprise of the mind prevented brute force from making its futile and sometimes fatal attempts. It is no matter that increased facility of production has been attended by an increased demand for the product; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... "O thou Inefficiency! Ineptitude garbed as woman! Must I then teach thee the elements of thy business? Hast thou not observed the pump? Go to it, and draw water. Cause the water to flow into buckets. Carry these buckets—need I go on? Will not Nature herself ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the fifth morning, when Virginia awoke, that she found Bulan rolling and tossing upon the wet ground before her shelter, delirious with fever. At the sight of the mighty figure reduced to pitiable inefficiency and weakness, despite the knowledge that her protector could no longer protect, the fear of the jungle faded from the heart of the young girl—she was no more a weak and trembling daughter of an effete civilization. Instead she was a lioness, watching over and protecting her sick mate. The ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... finding their rifles useless and very short of ammunition, waited until they came near enough to start bombing, and then gave them a volley of Mills grenades. But once again we were ruined by the inefficiency of those in rear; the bombs had no detonators. In a few minutes the Company would have been completely surrounded, so slowly and in good order they withdrew, first to the edge of the heap, and then ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... health trusts, which we hold, not merely in our own behalf, but for the benefit of others. If we discharge the obligations of our trusteeship, we shall enjoy present strength, usefulness, and length of days; but if we fail in their performance, then inefficiency, incapacity, and sickness, will follow, the sequel of which is pain and death. Let us, then, prove worthy of this generous commission, that we may enjoy the sweetest of all pleasures, the delicious fruitage of honest toil and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... discussion which the nature and inefficiency of the Government evoked several modes of relief from these embarrassments were warmly espoused, among them none more prominent than annexation to the United States. It was urged with much force that the great want of the country, immigration and responsible government, would ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... gentlemen than for lazy monks. All were young, few had any prudence or conduct, and the history of the league more than justified the disapprobation of Orange. The nobles thus banded together, achieved little by their confederacy. They disgraced a great cause by their orgies, almost ruined it by their inefficiency, and when the rope of sand which they had twisted fell asunder, the people had gained nothing and the gentry had almost lost the confidence of the nation. These remarks apply to the mass of the confederates and to some of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... attempted a tardy retaliation with the Spanish Armada. Its naval inefficiency was matched by political miscalculations. Philip never imagined that a united England could be conquered; but he laboured under the delusion, spread by English Catholic exiles, that the majority of the English people only awaited a signal to rise against their queen. When this delusion was exploded ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... qualifications, Grant had very few. He was egotistical, a poor judge of men, without experience in statesmanship, and unwilling to submit to guidance. As a result, his administration was marked by inefficiency and extravagance, and ended in a ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... stimulates thought, leads to inquiry, and results in understanding and mastery. Poor questioning leaves the mental powers unawakened, cripples thought, and results in inefficiency ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... local self-government, the subject which demanded most urgently the attention of reformers was the judicial organisation, which had sunk to a depth of inefficiency and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... uniform in his reactions. The reaction to praise is on the whole an increased happiness and vigor, but of course it may, when undeserved, demoralize the character and lead to a foolish vanity and to inefficiency. To those whose conscience is highly developed, undeserved praise is painful in that it leads to a feeling that one is deceiving others. Speaking broadly, this is a rare reaction. Most people accept praise as their due, just as they attribute success to their merits.[1] The reaction to blame ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... those who must struggle to survive; because the theories of good men who are enthralled by its delusions are made the excuse of the wicked who would rather plunder than work; because it stops enterprise, promotes laziness, exalts inefficiency, inspires hatred, checks production, assures waste and instills into the souls of the unfortunate and the weak hopes impossible of fruition whose inevitable blasting will add to ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... personal enjoyment. It never takes long in business to relieve their minds of this delusion, but they sometimes accomplish a tremendous amount of damage before it happens. For a pert, know-it-all manner coupled with the inefficiency which is almost inseparable from a total lack of experience is not likely to make personal contacts pleasant. Every young man worth his salt believes that he can reform the world, but every old man who has lived in ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... down upon the upper room, but Gridley made no move to go. Out in the yards the night men were making up a westbound freight, and the crashing of box-cars carelessly "kicked" into place added its note to the discord of inefficiency ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... of modified dismissal from College. This punishment "is usually the consequence of mental inefficiency rather than moral obliquity, and does not hinder the student so dismissed from entering at another college or at Cambridge."—Lit. World, Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... efficient than they ought to be; that some of them are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the post-shaving exercises. But let the same ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... each area is divided into halves by a narrow white line. This is to emphasize the fact that the first halves of areas below the X-Y line are really reactions from the extravagance, inefficiency and corruption which existed during the latter half of the preceding "prosperity" area. Contrariwise, the first halves of areas above the X-Y line are really reactions from the economy, industry and righteousness developed ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... great thirst. It is in these cases that the patient continually grows worse, and the appearance of suppuration at the top of the hoof in about two weeks after the inception of the disease proves the inefficiency of any treatment which may have been used and the hopelessness of the case. These patients die usually between the tenth and twentieth days either from ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... survivors reeled in confusion back on their supports. Never before had volley so crushing been fired by British troops. Up to that day, musketry had seldom been blasting in effect; firelocks then in use were singularly clumsy weapons, noted for anything but accuracy, and, to add to their inefficiency, it was not the practice to bring the cumbersome piece to the shoulder, and thus to take aim, but rather, the method was to raise the firelock breast high and trust to chance that an enemy might be in the line of fire. Now all was changed. During ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Russians studying natural science and chemistry, with whom Heidelberg is crowded, and who, astounding the naive German professors at first by the soundness of their views of things, astound the same professors no less in the sequel by their complete inefficiency and absolute idleness. In company with two or three such young chemists, who don't know oxygen from nitrogen, but are filled with scepticism and self-conceit, and, too, with the great Elisyevitch, Sitnikov roams about Petersburg, also getting ready to be great, and in his own conviction continues ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... Dismissal, the only remedy at present, is no remedy when any other laborer who may be engaged does no better than his predecessor: the power of dismissal only enables an employer to obtain from his workmen the customary amount of labor, but that customary labor may be of any degree of inefficiency. Even the laborer who loses his employment by idleness or negligence has nothing worse to suffer, in the most unfavorable case, than the discipline of a workhouse, and if the desire to avoid this be a sufficient motive in the one system, it would be sufficient in the other. I am not undervaluing ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... expressed angry astonishment that, after the approval they had shown of my Rienzi, I had paid no attention to their taste in writing my new work, there were may kind and judicious friends who were utterly perplexed at its inefficiency, the principal parts of which they had been unable to understand, or thought were imperfectly sketched and finished. The critics, with unconcealed joy, attacked it as ravens attack carrion thrown out to them. Even the passions and prejudices of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... tenderly dealt with in the investigation, his criminality was conclusively established. The affair deeply shocked the nation. After all, it was only another of many tragic events demonstrating both the utter inefficiency of capitalist management, and the consistent capitalist program of subordinating every consideration of human life to the mania for profits. Vanderbilt was only a type of his class; although he was found out he deserved condemnation no more than thousands of other capitalists, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... preferred against me. Outrageous charges in which that woman figured." Up to this point Gray had spoken smoothly, rapidly, but now his tone changed, his words became hesitant, jerky. "I was amazed! Joke, I called it at first. Sort of a blanket indictment, it was, charging me with inefficiency, negligence, exceeding my authority, dishonesty—and things even worse. Those were some of the least serious, the least—nasty. It was all too absurd! Being peculiarly vain and sensitive, my impulse was to shoot Henry Nelson. But I couldn't ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of weakness or exhaustion of the nervous system, giving rise to various forms of mental and bodily inefficiency. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... may become possible. Then will the employer and employee find a common ground on which each can benefit. There lives no engineer who has not seen insensate dispute as to wages where the real difficulty was inefficiency. No administrator begrudges a division with his men of the increased profit arising from increased efficiency. But every administrator begrudges the wage level demanded by labor unions whose policy is decreased ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... would go. Who, if any, besides Messrs. Blow, Vogle, and O'Reilley actually composed the committee, I was never informed. On August 10, Halleck, then general-in-chief, telegraphed me from Washington: "There is a deputation here from Colonel Blair and others asking for your removal on account of inefficiency." ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... too much license, take the matter into their own hands, not waiting for the courts, but executing a swifter justice. It is the terror of lynch law which has, in countless instances, been the foundation of the later courts, with their slow moving and absurdly inefficient methods. In time the inefficiency of the courts once more begets impatience and contempt. The people again rebel at the fact that their government gives them no government, that their courts give them no justice, that their peace officers give them no protection. Then they take matters into their ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... and jollity over the reversal of the usual order of things, and we carried out our programme to the farthest; while our gentlemen displayed a degree of inefficiency and helplessness which would have disgraced a six-year-old girl with a moderate amount ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... inefficiency, not helpfulness. Poise reveals itself more in voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... an exchange of inefficiency for deliberate wickedness, and in the excess of continued misery the more reasonable of the victims arose as a man and put Smith at the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... argument by drawing a comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate: "It was but a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the Senate of France. He had no disposition to cut down our tribunal to that ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the table before him the statements and accounts of his newly-augmented options. The papers, to his clerical inefficiency, presented a bewildering mass of inexplicable details and accounts. He brought them, with vast difficulty, into a rough order. In the lists of the acreages of timber controlled there were appended none of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... investigated with partiality, on the principles of liberty and equality. Discipline accordingly became more and more relaxed; and the dissolution of several of the old corps, under the pretext of their being tainted with an aristocratic feeling, aggravated the confusion and inefficiency of the war department. Many of the most effective regiments during the last period of the monarchy had consisted of foreigners. These had either been slaughtered in defence of the throne against insurrections, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... with the Duke, in which he evidently felt embarrassed, because he admitted the folly of suspending any measures, but was forced to admit, at the same time, he was compelled to it. He talked over and admitted the inefficiency of many members of the Cabinet, but then said there were reasons which made it difficult to remove them, particularly when adverting to Lord Sidmouth—said he knew how "silly a fellow he was," but that a great following of the country attended him, and he would bring more "public opinion" to the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... wide diversity in human beings ranging from herculean physical strength to pitiable weakness; from the mental power of genius to the nonentity of imbecility; from outstanding and unquestionable talent in arts and letters to illiteracy and clumsy inefficiency. This wide diversity in human capacity is one of the outstanding features of human nature, recorded again and again in history and encountered in ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... that without her governance the machine would come to a disastrous standstill: the fact being that she had grown feeble and superfluous. Sarah had taught all she knew to two highly intelligent pupils, and had survived her usefulness. She had no right place on earth. But in her morose inefficiency she had developed into an unconscious tyrant—a tyrant whose power lay in the loyalty of her subjects and not at all in her own soul. She was indeed like a deity, immanent, brooding, and unaware of itself!... Thus, the question of Florrie's bed had been discussed and settled ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of the Medici, either from some previous hatred or for having endeavored to render assistance to Giuliano; and not content with these murders, he ran in pursuit of Lorenzo, intending, by his own promptitude, to make up for the weakness and inefficiency of the others; but finding he had taken refuge in the vestry, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... They had been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his behaviour on the discovery of 'Waller's plot', the purpose of which was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them. To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are transparent. 'His company was acceptable, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... Louis XVI., a mere boy, began to reign, the whole French administrative body was corrupt, self-seeking, and in the hands of lawyers, a class that dominated almost every phase of government. In general, inefficiency, idleness, and dishonesty had obtained a ruling place in the governing body; the few honest men who had a minor share in the administration either fell into a sort of disheartened acquiescence or lost their fortunes ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... were on record as favoring woman suffrage. Men trying to bring about civic or political reforms in the old parties or through new ones and feeling their weakness turned to women with their great organizations but soon realized their inefficiency without political power. The old objections were losing their force. The lessening size of families and the removal of the old time household tasks from the home left women with a great deal of leisure which they were utilizing in countless ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... wants and instincts of the human heart, or if it had attained the least knowledge of eternal truth and immutable right, upon this Christianity placed its imprimatur. And at those points where human reason had been made conscious of its own inefficiency, and compelled to own its weakness and its failure, Christianity shed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Petrograd in 1836. Gogol is one of Russia's classics. This play is a humorous treatment of bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... developed nations. Its economy is overwhelmingly agricultural, with the cultivation of rice the single most important activity in the economy. Major impediments to growth include frequent cyclones and floods, the inefficiency of state-owned enterprises, a rapidly growing labor force that cannot be absorbed by agriculture, delays in exploiting energy resources (natural gas), and inadequate power supplies. Excellent rice crops and expansion of the export garment industry led to real growth of 4% in 1992 and again ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... on the left bank of the Chateauguay River at the distance of two or three leagues above its Fork with English River, where he threw up his works of defence, with the approval of General De Watteville. The plan of the British commanders, owing to the smallness and inefficiency of their forces, was the stern one of burning and destroying all houses and property, and retreating slowly to the St. Lawrence, harassing the enemy in his advance.[18] The position chosen was as strong as the nature of that flat and wooded country and the route of the ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can only be acquired by the lapse of time. Some will say that this Modernism has no sense of obligation, no sense of veneration, makes no allowance for ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... do any more talking to Thad," Persis repeated, as Mrs. West looked at her with the instant confidence of inefficiency in one who indicates a readiness to take the helm. "Don't make him feel that he's so awfully important just because he's making a fool of himself. Most boys attract more attention the first time they kick over the traces than they ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... still possessing some of the brightness but lacking the snap and glisten of those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow with fever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in bare feet, the same listless inefficiency showing in their weak, unproductive, unshaven features. The car grew so crowded I went to sit on the platform rail, as had a half-dozen already, though large signs on the door ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... whether he is not persuaded that the present confederation is as feeble as the government of Virginia would be in that case; to the same reason I appeal, whether it be compatible with prudence to continue a government of such manifest and palpable weakness and inefficiency. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... unction.) You will find the solution in the drink traffic. It is liquor, alcohol, that is undermining our industry, our institutions, our faith in God—everything. Yearly the working people drink greater quantities of alcohol. Naturally, through resulting inefficiency, the cost of production is higher, ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... aware that all these constitutional enactments are not likely to obtain much credit in England. It is not only that grand phrases fail to convince us, but that they carry to our senses almost an assurance of their own inefficiency. When we hear that a people have declared their intention of being henceforward better than their neighbors, and going upon a new theory that shall lead them direct to a terrestrial paradise, we button up our pockets and lock up our spoons. And that ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... dwell on the Mesopotamia Commission and its condemnation of the bureaucratic system prevailing here. Lord Hardinge vindicated himself and India. The bureaucratic system remains undefended. I recall that bureaucratic inefficiency came out in even more startling fashion in connection with the Afghan War of 1878-79 and 1879-80. In February 1880, the war charges were reported as under L4 millions, and the accounts showed a surplus of L2 millions. On April 8th the ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... Trading Company of the German steamer Valkyrie, had, to Cappy's mind, atoned for the loss and humiliation he had suffered in that grape stake deal. His honor was clean again and for weeks he taunted Redell with the latter's inefficiency, insufficiency and general business debility, until, having extracted the last shred of triumph from the affair, a vague sympathy for Redell commenced to surge up in Cappy's kindly heart and he commenced ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... formed by a naval force, has hitherto been treated with a neglect highly impolitic, or supported by a spirit so languid, as, while it has preserved the existence of the establishment, has had the effect of loading it with the imputations of wasteful expense, and comparative inefficiency.... Such a course is impolitic under any circumstances." This was the condemnation of the party's past. Clay found his delight in dealing with some of the oratory, which on the present occasion still sustained—and for ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... him,—if she could feel sure that obedience to him was a duty. Could it be a duty to sin against her father's wishes, and to assist in profaning his house and abusing his hospitality after this fashion? Then her mind again went back to the troubles of Mrs. Parker, and her absolute inefficiency in that matter. It seemed to her that she had given herself over body and soul and mind to some evil genius, and that ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... trying to do, as opposed to the way in which they are trying to do it, makes one a Socialist," said the Professor, "then I am a Socialist." Here also we may sympathise with the aim, but the results are largely dependent on the method; and that method is the offspring of ignorance and inefficiency. The results may be summed up in one word—superficiality. I have elsewhere warned readers not to think that this word means simply a slight knowledge of, a subject. A slight knowledge is all that most of us possess, or need to possess, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... be shown us," they replied; and with this answer, with his organization yet uneffected, his plans more than ever chaotic, the Maccabee began another day. Shrewd and resourceful as he believed himself to be, he beheld plan after plan reveal its inefficiency. Forced by some act of the city to abandon one idea, the next that followed found a new intractability. It seemed that there were no two heads in Jerusalem of a similar thought. Whoever was not demoralized by panic was fatally stubborn or mad. The single purpose that seemed ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... that Mrs. Graham broke up her boardinghouse, Markland, her daughter's husband, was discharged from his situation as clerk, on account of inefficiency. For six months previous, the time he had been married, he had paid no boarding, thus adding himself as a dead weight to the already overburdened family. As he had no house to which he could take Ellen, he very naturally felt himself authorized to ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of service to the community, they have never been trained nor their imaginations touched to any social purpose. A great proportion of small shopkeepers, for example, are people who have, through the inefficiency that comes from inadequate training and sheer aimlessness, or improvements in machinery or the drift of trade, been thrown out of employment, and who set up in needless shops as a method of eking out the savings ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... know as I have been just right about it," said Mrs. Underhill. "But Mrs. Whitney's carelessness and inefficiency have always tried me. Still, the children have turned out well. Delia is smart, and capable; and ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... assurance, first, that all capitalists shall share in the opportunity to employ this more efficient and more profitable labor; and second, that the supply of cheap labor, which has cost almost nothing to produce, is either exhausted or, on account of its inefficiency, is less adapted to the new industry than it was to the old. The impending reorganization of governments to protect the smaller capitalists from the large (through better control over the banks, railroads, trusts, tariffs, and natural resources) will furnish the first ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the sporangia have failed to go forward to what was evidently a possible, though apparently not an essential destiny in form and figure. For the care and dispersal of the spores, achievement must surely be somewhat impaired. Whatever the measure of such inefficiency, among the Stemonitales Amaurochaete shows the acme, as Reticularia ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... neighbors. First of all, therefore, we should know ourselves. Dr. Kallen then took up the condition of the Jews in Russia. He discussed the frightful persecutions there as the result of a great anti-Jewish conspiracy to cover up the graft, the corruption and the inefficiency of the government. He spoke on the great drive of the Jews from the Pale by the military authorities and then the drive back again by the civil authorities. This, he pointed out, involved not only a Jewish problem, but a great international one besides. The second phase of the Jewish question ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... and well named the Hope, he was given the use of the Cumberland, a mere barge of only twenty-nine tons, in which to carry himself and part of his shipwrecked company to England. Compelled by the leaky condition of the crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the French governor, General Decaen, for six and a ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... known to differ widely. The commission can neither reconcile nor change these variant opinions resting on conviction, nor will it be authorized to decide the difference. Under these impressions of the inefficiency of such a commission was the inquiry made in the letter of the undersigned of 5th March, 1836, as to the manner in which the report of the commission, as proposed to be constituted and instructed by Her Majesty's Government, was expected to lead ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... more men than there is work to be done, a sifting-out process must obtain. In every branch of industry the less efficient are crowded out. Being crowded out because of inefficiency, they cannot go up, but must descend, and continue to descend, until they reach their proper level, a place in the industrial fabric where they are efficient. It follows, therefore, and it is inexorable, that the least efficient ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... out, through a series of simple illustrations, the great loss which the whole country is suffering through inefficiency in almost all ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... credulity of the uninitiated. The land on which these record yields were secured had been raising twenty, forty, and fifty bushels of corn to the acre. Over great sections, the per acre average was well under twenty. Into this desolation of agricultural inefficiency, a few thousand school boys entered. Under careful supervision and proper guidance, with little additional expenditure of money or of time, they produced results wholly unbelievable to the old-time farmer. Yet he saw the crop, husked, and watched it through the sheller. There was no ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... and coffee, without change of clothes, and without any shelter whatever." From this admission of the commanding general it is clear that the wrecking of the army was not due primarily to uncontrollable climatic conditions, but rather to lack of foresight, mismanagement, and inefficiency. This conclusion is supported and greatly strengthened by the record of another body of men, in a different branch of the service, which spent more time in Cuba than the Fifth Army-Corps spent there, which was subjected to nearly all ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... connected with each other, I have never been able to determine. It is one of the rhetorical exaggerations which have impaired the utility of the Question Romaine, that M. About, in his remarkable work, always treats the malaria as if it was solely due to the inefficiency of the Papal Government, and would disappear with the deposition of the Pope. This unphilosophical view is generally adopted by liberal opponents of the Papacy, who lay the malaria to its doors, while Papal advocates, on the contrary, always treat the malaria as ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... girls of her own age, who looked at her as if with contempt for her diffidence. She wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of knowing much in order to do anything in it at all. Dread at her own inefficiency crept upon her. She would not know how, she would not be quick enough. Had not all the other places refused her because she did not know something or other? She would be ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... battles which he was set to fight, but he furnished himself the instruments by which they were won, or rather, I should say, he was the last and perhaps by the nature of the circumstances the most efficient of a list of distinguished men whose task it has been to rescue the Egyptian army from inefficiency and contempt in order to put it on the pinnacle of glory it ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... responsibility that characterized the old-style army machine with its bureau chiefs competing with each other, with the navy, and with the Allies. Quartermaster Department, Ordnance Department, Signal Corps, and the other bureaus were uncooerdinated, and inevitable waste and inefficiency followed all their operations. It was the crisis that arose from the problem of supplies, in the winter of 1917, that furnished the President with the opportunity to cut red-tape and secure the centralization he desired. That opportunity ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... already the centre of a considerable industry, was a mere village as compared with its present extent. People who travelled went about armed, by reason of the abundance of highwaymen and the paucity and inefficiency of the police. Stage coaches had not reached Birmingham, and it took three days to get to London. Even canals were a recent and ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... prepared, as we took it, to resist our entrance. They out-numbered us and were, in the main, heavier but we had a foot or more of good stiff material between each head and harm. Of just what befell us, when we got to the enemy, I have never felt sure. Of the total inefficiency of the stove-pipe hat as an article of armour, I have never had the slightest doubt since then. There was a great flash and rattle of canes. Then the air was full of us. In the heat of it all prudence went ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... strong natures, rich and deep natures, in lives that were meagre or unsuccessful. Again, from lack of perspicacity, she sometimes saw nothing but inefficiency in people with wide intellectual gifts; thus, she considered that her son-in-law, Henrik Ibsen, who at that time had not become either known or celebrated, had very imperfect poetic gifts. "What he writes is as flat as a drawing," she would say. Or ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... a moment darkened the face of the sleeper as he thought of his own inefficiency. But it soon passed away. There was wisdom for the asking; and his bright red ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the small lower middle-class household knows how often the life of the little "general" resembles that of an animal rather than a human being. All day long she drudges in a muddling, inefficient way, continually scolded for her inefficiency yet never really taught how to do anything properly. Her work is never done, for she is always at the beck and call of her employers; yet she lives apart in social isolation, is referred to contemptuously ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... priori case for supposing, what our experience of contemporary life abundantly verifies, that the so-called representative assemblies of the world are not really representative at all. I will go farther and say that were it not for the entire inefficiency of our method of voting, not one-tenth of the present American and French Senators, the French Deputies, the American Congressmen, and the English Members of Parliament would hold their positions to-day. They would never have been ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... believe that I did a foolish thing in coming to your rescue, but I can't see that I did. I don't see why it shouldn't last as long as Lemuel chooses. And he seems perfectly contented with his lot. He doesn't seem to regard it as domestic service, but as domestication, and he patronises our inefficiency while he spares it. His common-sense is extraordinary— it's exemplary; it almost makes one wish to have common-sense one's- self." They had now got pretty far from the original proposition, and Sewell returned to it with ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... impartially, and from a more elevated point of view, and recognise in the number of trophies taken by the enemy, and their relation to the number of killed and wounded, only too easily and well, the measure of their own weakness and inefficiency. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... national defense and safety for which it was framed had been painfully felt during the war. Independence had been achieved under it rather than by it, the patriotic action of some of the States supplying the deficiencies of others less able or less willing. By the radical inefficiency of the Confederation the war had been protracted, its success repeatedly imperiled, and, at its close, the results gained by it were constantly menaced. The more perfect union which was the outcome of the deliberations ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... administrative geniuses. Facts point altogether the other way. Great national catastrophes, like the blunders and miscalculations that have characterized the conduct of the war in South Africa, have always resulted in making the most uncomfortable revelations concerning the inefficiency of more than one ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... Kemble's husband had been left. But in one respect its disastrous effect was everywhere felt. By associating manual labor with the stigma of servitude, it bred, in free men, a strong disrelish for work,—a most demoralizing and ruinous influence. Inefficiency and degradation were the marks of the non-slaveholding whites. The master class missed the wholesome regimen of toil. Nature is never more beneficent than when she lays on man the imperative command "Thou ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... meeting that evening, at which they demanded that the ten per cent. should be restored, and the running of double headers abolished. In the meantime, the railroad authorities, perceiving the inefficiency of the local police powers, and alarmed at the still-increasing mob and the vicious spirit which it displayed, invoked the aid of the sheriff of the county. At midnight Sheriff Fife came to Twenty-eighth Street with a hastily summoned posse, a part of which deserted him before he reached the ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... claim that it is natural. Your only claim can be that it is the best possible artifice for the perpetuation of life, or that it is the only perfect, all-sufficient, and all-satisfying artifice that man can devise. On the one hand, for the perpetuation of life, man demonstrates the inefficiency of romantic love by his achievements in the domestic selection of animals. And on the other hand, the very irrationality of romantic love will tend to its gradual elimination as the human grows wiser and wiser. Also, because it is such ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... reply of an ex-governor of one of our blackest states to those who contend that the negro is a problem, a "burden carried by the white people of the South," because of his ignorance and consequent inefficiency; and that the lightening of the burden depends upon more money spent, more earnest efforts made, for the schooling of the black people. According to this ex-governor, and there are thousands who agree with him ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... this calamity, the Sierra Leone Company had to lament the inefficiency of its superintendants, their want of unanimity, and various other disasters and unforeseen difficulties which operated to augment the charge in their establishment, and diminish its funds; and with every deference to the benevolent undertakers, whose motives ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... but Roman and not Jew. A bullying voice and a respectful chauffeur in a glittering car completed the picture. She had nothing favorable to say for the location of the Meeker house; indeed, she complained pretty generally, in her loud, assertive tones, about the inefficiency of city administration in America, but she held out hopes of improvement in the near future. She grew impatiently mysterious—hints were not her habit—in regard to the good shortly to enfold the entire earth. Lizzie gathered somehow that this was bound up with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that the most sagacious and matured arrangements are of little avail; that no one is present when he is wanted, and that nothing occurs as it was foreseen. Nor should we forget that the principal cause of all these mischances might perhaps be recognised in the inefficiency of the third person whom the parents of Tancred had, with so much solicitude and at so great an expense, secured to him as a companion and counsellor in his travels. It cannot be denied that if the theological ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... stupendous failure. It cost us about four thousand men, mostly, however, captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander and the incompetency of the division commander who was sent to lead ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... restraint had impaired the power of all who were subjected to it; and as in the works of Giotto, so in the rarer works of Duccio, one often finds an effort after truth of expression, which is almost pathetic in its character, from its revealing the inefficiency of the hand to carry out the thought, and the resolute will striving half in vain to overcome the impediments of bad teaching and imperfect knowledge of the materials and limits of painting. It is this groping effort after truth which results often in the naive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... lamentable that, owing to the miserable inefficiency of the Spaniards, to their want of exertion, and the deficiency of numbers, even, of the allies, much more of discipline and every other military quality, when compared with the enemy in the Peninsula, the glory of the action is the only benefit we have derived from ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... instead of standing by and talking about inefficiency, the "gentleman" had said, "Get out of there a moment!" and throwing off his coat and rolling up his silk shirt sleeves, he had operated the lathe with a smoothness and rapidity that could only have been acquired ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... encountered her alone in the office. They were all thoroughly kind and nice, and they were supported with surpassing intelligence and ability by the chico, a radiant boy of ten, who united in himself the functions which the amiable inefficiency of the porters ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... intention to push forward, they requested their discharge, affecting fear to enter on a strange land, but in reality seeing I had no cloths left to pay them, as afterwards transpired. This deficiency I visited on the Abban, who, in trying to excuse himself for inefficiency in his protectorship, meekly said he had been grieved to see the very rapid decline of my property, but he could not help it, as I had so many thieves in my employment!!! Mrs Awado now came over from Birhamir, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... startling character, covering over 1,000 printed pages. The majority of the committee, Messrs. Bocock, Groesbeck and Ready, submitted a report condemning the glaring abuses proven, and, while reporting the inefficiency and incompetency of subordinate officers and employees, yet declared that nothing had been proven which impeached the personal or official integrity of the Secretary of the Navy. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... poor a teaching establishment it was. Those who had natural genius, and the advantages of previous scientific training, who were sons of medical men, or had served apprenticeships to them, need not have suffered so much through its utter inefficiency. But men in my position suffered quite unconsciously a terrible handicap, and it was only the influences for which I had nothing whatever to thank the hospital that saved me from the catastrophes which overtook so ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... vital needs of the Park as a public institution, {p.075} give especial emphasis to the recommendation made by Secretary Ballinger on his last annual report. Owing to the great number and extent of the National Parks, and the inefficiency of the present "perfunctory policy" in their administration, Mr. Ballinger asked Congress to put the management of these institutions under a Bureau of National Parks, conducted by a competent commissioner, and organized for efficient field administration ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... been expended on the Great Roads of this Province; but their condition shows the inefficiency of the present system, in appropriation and execution. This arises, chiefly, from having tried too much, and in such attempts dispersing limited means, to superficial and endless labor; on works far too numerous and costly, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... they labor under an idea that nothing can be done without an extraordinary number of officers, soldiers, policemen, and employes of every description—upon the principle, I suppose, that if two heads are better than one, the ignorance or inefficiency of a small number of employes can be remedied by having a very great number of the same kind. In other words, they seem to think that if five hundred men can not be industrious, skillful, and economical, five thousand trained in exactly the same ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... thought propitious to throw down the gauntlet to the overwhelming power of America rather than to face what the writer terms the "cabbage-headed riff-raff of the Plaza de la Cevada" of Madrid. Again and again was the absolute inefficiency of the fleet pointed out to them. Even the few ships there were, all of them vastly inferior to those of the United States' navy, were without their proper armament; they might have been of some service in defence of the ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... beside the ubiquitous "Judge" Billings, who cheerfully and persuasively sought to "swap" horses with him when not otherwise employed in discoursing upon the vast inefficiency of certain specifically named officers who rode in all their plump glory at or near the head of the column. He was particularly out of ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... us have sighed over our inefficiency! How frequently, in default of apparent results, we have been forced to console ourselves with the thought that we are "sowing seed" and that there will be an abundant harvest at no distant date! Thank God! there is success for ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... as he loathed inefficiency and as he loathed dirt. They were all three brothers with Drink in his eyes and as he leaned back in the chair now, his gaze travelling about the room, he could not but perceive little things that would have brought exclamations from the soul of a careful housekeeper. The furniture ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... wholly faultless; and it is true that the Second Empire became contaminated with cosmopolitan spies and swindlers, justly reviled by such democrats as Rochefort as well as Hugo. But there was no French inefficiency that weighed a hair in the balance compared with the huge and hostile efficiency of Prussia; the tall machine that had struck down Denmark and Austria, and now stood ready to strike again, extinguishing the lamp of the world. There was a hitch ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton |
