"Unfitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... war-sword, with his fair and heroic features—so different, in their frank, bold, fearless expression, from the dark and wily intellect that characterises the lineaments of the South—eloquent at once with enthusiasm and thought—he might have seemed no unfitting representative of the genius of that northern chivalry of which he spake. And Adrian half fancied that he saw before him one of the old Gothic scourges of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as if he—as if I had been given a new frock." She altered the "as if he had given me" which was upon her tongue because the proposition, even for purposes of illustration, that a nobleman could ever have offered her a new frock seemed to have in itself something of the scandalous and unfitting. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Those who descended to him were oppressed by the darkness of his abode, but were subjected to no other trials; nor were they sent thither as a punishment, but merely from having died of diseases unfitting them for Tlalocan. Mictlanteuctli was said to be the most powerful of the gods. For who is stronger than Death? And who dare defy the Grave? As the skald lets Odin say to Bragi: "Our lot is uncertain; even on the hosts of the gods gazes the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... years together, understanding very little of it, but perhaps prizing and loving it the more for that. Of late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect of Flagellants settled in the neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by them, but judged it unfitting to go over to the new faith. His habit of theological reading gave him an expression ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... came not to destroy but to complete (for what he completed was not alien to Him, but yet it was not perfect); secondly, the part comprising evil and unrighteous things, which the Saviour did away with as something unfitting His nature; and thirdly, the part which is for types and symbols, which is given as a law, as images of things spiritual and excellent which, from being evident and manifest to the senses, the Saviour changed into the spiritual ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp, dirty rag,—yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the heart of things,—at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,—even more fit to be a type of her class. Deeper yet if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... science, sacrificing its best loved object to its curiosity. And may we not turn the whole tale into a parable of the isolation produced by a peculiar and unnatural rearing, say in heterodox beliefs, or unconventional habits, unfitting the victim for society, making her to ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... more than any other calling for sympathy and care, we see him cast among strangers and mercenaries, without either nurse or friend;—the self-collectedness of woman being, as we shall find, wanting for the former office, and the youth and inexperience of Count Gamba unfitting him wholly for the other. The very firmness with which a position so lone and disheartening was sustained, serves, by interesting us more deeply in the man, to increase our sympathy, till we almost forget admiration in pity, and half regret ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "It were unfitting," he said; "I shall take a lowlier seat." Then he drew a stool to him, and sat down before her, and said: "What ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... that subject, they are hardly worth considering; but the fact is that the regulation of industry, the distribution of wealth—these and all other questions derive their importance solely from the manner in which they affect individual men, women and children, fitting or unfitting them for the life that now is and that which is to come. A good deal might be said of {72} the temper which makes fun of the idea of God's "solicitude to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness"; ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... new development in sociology. She has many lessons to learn, but one has hopes of her. It is said that she is unfitting herself to be a wife and mother. If the ideal helpmeet for a man be an animated Dresden china shepherdess—something that looks pretty on the table, something to be shown round to one's friends, something that can be locked up safely in ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... serious misunderstanding I ever had with my noble and lamented friend Lord George Bentinck, which I am happy to say was thoroughly removed before his untimely death—was upon a full and frank expression of my opinion that nothing could be more unfitting nor more impolitic than to load with terms of vituperation those from whom we are compelled conscientiously ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... tone was good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cardinal, "in the disguise you speak of—in his feathered hat, and cloak, and military boots—I will get a sight of him for your Highness;" and they roared at the idea of discovering the intriguer in so unfitting an apparel. But shortly afterwards in the wintry gloom of a January midnight (1650), disguised beyond the reach of detection, and guarded by a passport from the Cardinal himself, De Retz was admitted at midnight by a secret door into the Regent's ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... higher education is unfitting numbers of young men from following the humbler pursuits, while at the same time it is not making them as efficient as are their ambitions; and such men are recognized as the most potent chemical in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... few words of preface to this collection of poems must be my excuse for obtruding myself upon the reader. Having frequently had the pleasure as editor of The Canadian Monthly, of introducing many of Mrs. MacLean's poems to lovers of verse in the Dominion it was thought not unfitting that I should act as foster father to the collection of them here made and to bespeak for the volume at the hands at least of all Canadians the appreciative and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... mocked him, yet very seriously, "I am to wait until he dies of old age to make quite sure that he has no such sins as must render him an unfitting husband?" ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... cut under water they will last a wonderfully long time. "One of the most interesting characteristics of the woody tissues in relation to the transfer of water is the immediate change which the cut surface of a stem undergoes upon exposure to the air, unfitting it for its full conductive work. De Vries has shown that when a shoot of a vigorous plant, for instance a Helianthus, is bent down under water, care being taken not to break it even in the slightest degree, a clean, sharp cut will give a ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... really the root of his trouble. The passing recoil from an ardent avowal is no uncommon experience with the finer types of men. But, to Roy, it seemed peculiarly unfitting that the son of his mother should, as it were, stumble into marriage in a headlong impulse of passion, on a superficial six weeks' acquaintance; and the shy, spiritual side of him felt alarmed, restive, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Committee have already ordered some vessels to France, under your direction as to their future operations, and more, we expect, will be sent. But our frigates are not capable of carrying much bulky commodity for commercial purposes, without unfitting them for war; besides, there is the consideration of our being obliged to get them away, how, and when we can, or endanger their being taken, which prevents our sending them to those staple Colonies, where the commodities wanted are to be obtained. The reciprocal benefits of commerce cannot flow ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... although much more practical in the present than in the past century, are still far from having freed themselves from the unjust, unfitting, and inconvenient situation into which they have fallen as ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... defenceless settlements, she had conquered safety and peace with her own blood and her own slender resources; but now, as the proposed capture of Quebec would inure to the profit of the British crown, Bradstreet and his council thought it not unfitting to ask for a supply of arms and ammunition, of which they were in great need. [Footnote: Bradstreet and Council to the Earl of Shrewsbury, 29 Mar., 1690; Danforth to Sir H. Ashurst, 1 April, 1690.] The request was refused, and no aid of any kind came from ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... laugh because we hear such pretty expressions, though it is indeed true that every one is disposed to laugh on seeing anybody stumble or on hearing any one utter an unfitting word, as often happens. The tongue will trip and cause one word to be used for another, even by the discreetest and most excellent speakers. But when you men talk viciously, not from ignorance, but by reason of ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to him, the entireness of his trust in the spotless purity of her whole nature. And in him we have presented all those essential and fundamental elements of nature which give assurance that, Dorothea by his side, he shall be no unfitting helpmeet to her, no drag or hindrance on her higher life; that he shall rise to the elevation and purity of her self-consecration, and shall stand by her side sustaining, guiding, expanding that life of ever-growing fulness and ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... for morning service drew near, the drummer took his accustomed stand before the church and began to thunder forth his summons,—a summons not unfitting those stern Puritans whose idea of religion was that of a life-long warfare against the world, the flesh, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which was fitting for every one else was unfitting for a clergyman; but he would not in this matter overstep the line of decorum as drawn in that part of Wessex, which did not exclude his sanction of the young people's acting charades in his sister-in-law's house—a very different affair from private ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... feet three he added a breadth of shoulder and expansion of chest seldom equalled among men of more highly-favoured climes; and his real bulk being very greatly increased by his costume, he appeared to be a very giant—no unfitting tenant of such giant scenery. The said costume consisted of an extremely loose coat or shirt of deerskin, having the hair outside, and a capacious hood, which usually hung down behind, but covered his head at this time, in order to protect it from a sharp north-west breeze ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... therefore to be that the discourse has come down to us in a mutilated form. This MAY be due to the "Tale" having remained unfinished at the time of Chaucer's death: in which case it would form last words of no unfitting kind. As for the actual last words of the "Canterbury Tales"—the so-called "Prayer of Chaucer"—it would be unbearable to have to accept them as genuine. For in these the poet, while praying for the forgiveness ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the attempt should be made by the noblest of Teutonic races, under the noblest chief it ever produced. Nor is it unfitting here to recur to the opinion of another great Goth, not indeed the equal of Theodorich, yet of the same race and the nearest approach to him, one of those conquerors who showed a high consideration for the Roman empire. Orosius records "that he heard ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... The Moor spake to the twain: "For what do ye take me? Am I a lesser or a weaker man than either of ye that Sir Gawain must needs ride with me? I will not have it so. There is no knight so bold but I dare well withstand him. I know well what is unfitting. Now say whither ye will betake ye, and send me what road ye will; I will dare the venture, be it never so perilous. By my knighthood, and by all who follow Christendom, I shall adventure alone, and take that ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... woman, and no less a person in this instance than a titular queen of England, was the means of dragging the crown itself through the mire of a disreputable scandal. That Caroline of Brunswick was an uncongenial and unfitting consort; that she was an utterly unfit and improper person to occupy the exalted position of Queen of England, there can be no manner of doubt. But to the question whether it was wise, politic, or dignified to subject her conduct (however morally criminal) ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... her head. "No," said she. "It would only do harm. But I wish ministers knew and felt that at the communion table there is a Real Presence that makes many words unfitting. When we are on the mount of Transfiguration, we do not care much for Peter, James or John. And so, dear, I recommend you to do as I do—if the minister must give us a doctrinal disquisition, or a learned argument, ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... disproportionated[obs3]; inharmonious, unharmonious[obs3]; inconsonant, unconsonant[obs3]; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper; unsuited, unsuitable; inapplicable, not to the point; unfit, unfitting, unbefitting; unbecoming; illtimed, unseasonable, mal a propos[Fr], inadmissible; inapposite &c. (irrelevant) 10. uncongenial; ill-assorted, ill-sorted; mismatched, misjoined[obs3], misplaced, misclassified; unaccommodating, irreducible, incommensurable, uncommensurable[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... work, or even if the two of them, Melinoff and the Pippin, were in it together, and the word "squeal" implied that Melinoff was to be held strictly up to his full share of some mutual villainy should he show any inclination to waver, it might not be an altogether unfitting exit from the stage if the Gray Seal should make his final bow to the underworld by playing a role in the Pippin's little drama, whatever that drama ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... comes back, little woman, and then it will be time enough to see about his ring, though I quite agree with his mother that it would be most unfitting." ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... planned by the JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA, the first issue of which was devoted to Maimonides. The biography of Rashi is the second of the series. It is not for the author to endorse the order adopted, but he hazards the opinion that the readers will find the portrait of Rashi no unfitting companion-piece even to that of ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... there is one character of Byzantine work which, according to the time at which it was employed, may be considered as either fitting or unfitting it for distinctly ecclesiastical purposes; I mean the essentially pictorial character of its decoration. We have already seen what large surfaces it leaves void of bold architectural features, to be rendered interesting merely by surface ornament or sculpture. In this respect Byzantine ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... air filled with odor of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a religious brotherhood—or if this should not be conceded, at all events it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of the cloister; nor will the institution ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that it was unfitting for a democratic poet to be hampered by the verse forms of the Old World. He discarded rhyme almost entirely, but he did employ rhythm, which is determined by the tone of the ideas, not by the number of syllables. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... brown dress and brown cloak. It became an obsession with him, and, as he now recognized, there was even more in it than a mere hunt for a spy. This woman troubled him; he wished to know who and what she was and why she, a girl, had undertaken a task so unfitting. Yet war, he remembered, is a destroyer of conventions, and the mighty upheaval through which the country was going could account ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... as it was, was wholly unexpected. I was surprised and disconcerted. In my previous reasonings I had certainly considered her sex as utterly unfitting her for those scenes and pursuits to which I had destined myself. Not a doubt of the validity of my conclusion had insinuated itself; but now my belief was shaken, though it was not subverted. I could not deny that human ignorance was curable ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... successful. She had indeed exceptional qualifications for this missionary work. Just over twenty years of age, her youthful beauty and grace, the tender, yearning love which lit up her expressive features, the ready utterance and sweet voice, and the charm of manner which never left her, were no unfitting media to convey the tidings of mercy to many a benighted seeker ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... quiet studious life he led, almost lonely, had grown to be very pleasant to him. He read a great deal outside his law, and enjoyed his days as he had never done before. Unconsciously he had fallen into a mode of life and a habit of thought which were unfitting him for a politician's career. He gave very little thought to that, however; his ambition for the time had taken a new form. He wished to be well read; to be a scholar such as he imagined Miss Wilbur ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... irregularity, and occasionally the excessive duration, of these periods of unemployment too often makes unemployment not a beneficent vacation (comparable to shorter hours), but a period of tragic anxiety, demoralizing and unfitting for return to work. Irregular work is generally recognized to be a greater cause of poverty and of actual pauperism than is a ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... two ladies, she had but scant toleration for Mrs. Otway's restless, ill-concealed unhappiness. Even in the old days Anna had disapproved of Major Guthrie, and she had thought it very strange indeed that he came so often to the Trellis House. To her mind such conduct was unfitting. What on earth could a middle-aged man have to say to the mother of ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... uttered by the Lord:— "Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed, Goodly and splendid—whom I crowned the king. For at this hour my servant doth a thing Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight; Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight, Before the palace, where he gazeth now Filling his heart with pride ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Hissing noises supervened, and then a hoot, proclaiming that a brood of young owls were residing there in the company of older ones. In spite of the habitable and more modern wing, neglect and decay had set their mark upon the outworks of the pile, unfitting them for a more positive light than ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... is that I hold, and hold strongly, that the study of physical science, far from interfering with an officer's studies, much less unfitting for them, must assist him in them, by keeping his mind always in the very attitude and the very ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility, and unfitting them for the chase." Similarly some of the Brazilian Indians would eat no beast, bird, or fish that ran, flew, or swam slowly, lest by partaking of its flesh they should lose their ability and be unable to escape ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... her head. Nor do I see here, in his abandonment of the obvious, any proof of the childlikeness and innocence of Emily, however childlike and innocent she may have been. I see only a tremendous artistic uprightness, the rejection, conscious or unconscious, of an unfitting because extraneous element. Anne, who was ten times more childlike and innocent than Emily, tackles this peculiar obviousness unashamed, because she needed it. And because she did not need it, Emily let ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Our Subjects there, of all degrees. For preventing of all division and trouble hereafter, We did intend in Our Own Royall Person, to have been present at this Assembly; but conceiving it to be unfitting, to detaine the Ministers from their particular charges, till the time of Our coming to the Parliament. We have resolved to make knowne unto you by these, and by Our Commissioner, That in the approaching ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... confession of faith, which is contained in the symbol, concerns all the faithful. Now the faithful are not all competent to believe in God, but only those who have living faith. Therefore it is unfitting for the symbol of faith to be expressed in the words: "I believe in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Miss Browning with some severity. For she had got many of her notions of the metropolis from the British Essayists, where town is so often represented as the centre of dissipation, corrupting country wives and squires' daughters, and unfitting them for all their duties by the constant whirl of its not always innocent pleasures. London was a sort of moral pitch, which few could touch and not be defiled. Miss Browning had been on the watch for the signs of deterioration in Cynthia's character ever since her return home. But, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... rapidly than the way back to phenomena. A free road, a fresh start, a straight course—such is the motto of French thinking. Whatever is inconsistent with rectilinearity is ignored, or opposed as unfitting. The line drawn by Descartes through the world between matter and spirit, and that by Rousseau between nature and culture, are distinctive of the philosophical character of their countrymen. Dualism is to ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... malformations, the limbs of the operatives suffer in still another way. The work between the machinery gives rise to multitudes of accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for the operative the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single joint of a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger, half or a whole hand, an arm, etc., ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... ground. "Before those next ten years are gone," she would say, "common-sense will have interfered to let folks live out their lives properly." It had been quite useless for me to attempt to make her understand how unfitting was such a speech for the wife of the President of the Republic. My wife's opposition had been an annoyance to me from the first, but I had consoled myself by thinking how impossible it always is to imbue a woman's mind with a logical idea. ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... go any further until he had ascertained the truth concerning her, and he was sure that Prince Saracinesca would tell him everything at the first mention of a proposal to marry her. The old gentleman had too much pride to allow his cousin to make an unfitting match. Accordingly, on the day following the events last narrated San Giacinto called after breakfast and found the prince, as usual, alone in his study. He was not dozing, however, for the accounts of the last night's doings ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... she has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons of intelligence were compelled to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley's famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason is a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... satisfying them should be equally within the reach of all. Fit a man's education to his real self, not to what is no part of him. Do you not see that in striving to fit him merely for one station, you are unfitting him for anything else, so that some caprice of Fortune may make your work really harmful to him? What could be more absurd than a nobleman in rags, who carries with him into his poverty the prejudices of his birth? What is more despicable than a rich man fallen into poverty, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Staring wants there were, and many discrepancies and incongruities, but no vulgarities nor coarseness nor tawdriness. What they had was fitting. What was fitting but beyond their means these brave home-makers did without, and all things unfitting, however cheap, they scorned. And Shock, though he knew nothing of the genesis and evolution of this home and its furnishings, was sensible of its atmosphere of quiet comfort and refinement. The welcome of the McIntyres was radiant with good cheer ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... poor Tookey, serious amidst the general laughter, "I undertook to partially fill up the office of parish-clerk by Mr. Crackenthorp's desire, whenever your infirmities should make you unfitting; and it's one of the rights thereof to sing in the choir—else why have you done the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... the military art are both in a state of transition; the last discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic discovery to-morrow. Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go on side by side: one says, "We have not ships enough, no 'relief' ships, no NAVY, to tell the truth"; the other cry says, "We have all the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... our County Council system would operate also to break up sectarian cliques. The feeling of organized classes, farmers, or industrialists, concerned about their own well-being, would oppose itself to sectarian sentiment where its application was unfitting. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... It has hardly seemed necessary to inquire how the learner would know when his work was finished, or to what extent he should pass judgment on thoughts presented, for her questions and other tests would insure proper thoroughness, and her presence would check unfitting boldness in judging. It has hardly seemed necessary to consider how far he should proceed in the mastery of a topic, or how he should avoid being dogmatic, for she would let him know when the endpoint was reached—if he did not stop too soon ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of Aristotle, that to seen ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... distraught, And hurried here and there with fruitless speed: But when he had recalled the ring to thought, Foiled and astounded, cursed his little heed. And now the vanished lady, whom he sought, Of that ungrateful and discourteous deed Accusing stood, wherewith she had repaid, (Unfitting ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... thinks the emotion of the player too absurd; but Hamlet respects it; and afterwards, when he is alone (and therefore can hardly be ironical), in contrasting this emotion with his own insensibility, he betrays no consciousness that there was anything unfitting in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... so called! And she, who could not divest herself of a certain pride taken in the austere morality of her own life, she who was now a widow anxious to devote her life solely to God, had persuaded the man to this sin, in order that her successor as Countess of Scroope might not be, in her opinion, unfitting for nobility! The young lord had promised her that he would be guilty of this sin, so damnable, so devilish, telling her as he did so, that as a consequence of his promise he must continue to live a life of wickedness! In the agony of her spirit she threw herself upon her knees and implored ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... wise few. We hear the corruptions of the times attributed to universal suffrage. Yet these corruptions certainly are not peculiar to the United States: It is also said here, as it is in England, that our diffused and somewhat superficial education is merely unfitting the mass of men, who must be laborers, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... where, like some of the evil genii or sprites in the Arabian tales, it can reach from afar the object of its malignity, striking him down unawares in the most unaccountable manner; making him a victim to all manner of ills, sufferings, and tribulations; unfitting him for marriage or the cares of business; making him miserable and an object of continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with all kinds of physical distortions and ailments, nocturnal pollutions, and other ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... attacked her with blunt questions, had he demanded of her up and down what had brought her this strange road at such amazing hour and in such unfitting company, she must needs have answered, and, once started, she would quickly have kindled her fire again. Had he, on other part, with a smile, an encouraging word, given her ever so little a push, she had gone on easily enough. But he ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... is to choose or to reject; to run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose." There was in Spenser a facility for turning to account all material, original or borrowed, an incontinence of the descriptive faculty, which was ever ready to exercise itself on any object, the most unfitting and loathsome, as on the noblest, the purest, or the most beautiful. There are pictures in him which seem meant to turn our stomach. Worse than that there are pictures which for a time rank the poet ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... other occasions the hostility of the Republican Administration provoked a trial of strength with the Federalist judiciary. The impeachment in 1804 of John Pickering, District Judge in New Hampshire, on charges of intoxication and habits unfitting him for his duties, amounted to little short of a tragedy. When the trial opened, Judge Pickering did not appear, but representations made by his son showed beyond a doubt that he was and had been for two years of unsound mind. To convict ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... confined to the southern portion of the province of San Paulo, and are called by the Brazilians Bugres — that is, slaves. A more unfitting name it would have been impossible to hit upon, as all efforts to civilize them have proved abortive, and to-day they still range the forests, attacking small parties of travellers, and burning isolated farm-houses. The Brazilians assert that they ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... of popular education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly carried out, ought rather to expel nonsense. Above all, it ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... much too anxious to see his daughter married to listen to any excuses, and he declared that a dress must be put together somehow for the bride to wear. But when he went to look at the princess, she was such a figure that he agreed that it would be unfitting for her position to be seen in such a gown, and he ordered the ceremony and the banquet to be postponed for a few hours, so that the tailors might take the dress to pieces and ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... restored in this life "an hundredfold." How is it to be wished that these half measures were abandoned, and that if we have put our hand to the plough, we might not look back, as we so often have done, to the unfitting ourselves for that kingdom which is not only righteousness, but peace and joy. "That your joy may be full," is plainly the purpose of our Saviour towards His children; and yet how many, as Macaulay says, "have just enough religion to make them unhappy ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... sciences advance, and as education extends to the lower classes, so as to supply sources of mental enjoyment and exercise, it will be almost altogether extirpated from society. Let this and other vices be held as positively dishonourable, because unfitting for professional duty, and inconsistent with professional dignity—let them be visited by certain punishment—give free scope to the emulation of intellect and to the cultivation of proper self- interest—and vindicate to popular opinion, the claims of this most useful class, to the character ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the whole church during a great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that though since that time they had by subtle practices begun to fall into disuse, and in place thereof other foreign and unfitting usages by little and little to creep in, yet in the royal chapels and many other churches most of them had been ever constantly used and observed) it was declared that the standing of the communion table sideway under the east window of every chancel was in its ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... the first of the great ironmasters who had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of manufacturing iron invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting commentary on the sad history we have thus briefly described. It shows how, as respects mere money-making, shrewdness is more potent than invention, and business faculty than manufacturing skill. Richard Crawshay was born at ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... great—and with him went from me that sphere of labour which was to witness the triumph of my pride. I saw the estate pass into other hands; a mighty change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting, for me to analyse. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was so: there is a divine insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers worlds. At least, when that period was past, I had done, and suffered so strangely, that nothing henceforth could seem strange ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... in the solitary sphere to which it is doomed must fail to find that contentment which only life can afford. Sappho is not assailed by life on all sides as Tasso is; but she makes an egregious mistake in her search for the satisfactions of womanhood, thereby unfitting herself for the priesthood of poetry as well as forfeiting ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed. It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had had to promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, they regarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was at that time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the deprivation of the freedom without which it was impossible to write. Still, he never mentioned these strictly ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... and importance. The discussion has hitherto been limited to the lesser evils attributable to the forcing upon the masses of the people a useless and unsuitable kind of education. But there are far graver possibilities than the mere unfitting of large numbers of individuals for the occupations their natural propensities intended ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... he has done? I sent to him in a friendly way to have him come to me and deliberate in my company about present conditions, and he neither came nor promised that he would appear. And yet what did I do that was unfair or unfitting or arrogant in summoning him as a friend and ally? What insolence and wantonness rather, has he omitted in refusing to come? Is it not inevitable that he did this from one of two reasons, either that he suspected he should ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... one has abused you or spoken in an unfitting way about you, do not listen to any one who brings such an accusation nor investigate it. It is disgraceful to believe that any one has wantonly insulted you who are doing no wrong and benefiting all. Only those who rule badly will credit these reports. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... it or despise it, English society was there, and he must fill his place in it. And things are seemly and unseemly, fitting and unfitting—as well as good and bad. This inexperienced girl, with her prettiness, and her art, and her small world—was it fair to her? Is there not something in the unconscious training of birth and position, when, bon gre, mal gre, there is a big part ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and through faith and patience inherit the promises." The instrument used in this ordeal is generally our brother-man. Yet, while with hope and confidence, we look forward to a glorious issue of temporal affliction in eternal glory, let us beware of unfitting ourselves for the future recompence by extreme resentment against those who are the agents that Almighty Wisdom uses to improve us. Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives. Do we not often afflict others undesignedly, and, from mere ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... existence accomplished—the son of my old captain established in his rights—I purpose throwing off my allegiance to France, and becoming once more a Spaniard. I have told you all this, at a moment so unfitting, because I am anxious that you should endeavour to prevent any of the persons who were on board my frigate from escaping. Tacon will certainly make the attempt. He does not know of what crimes he may be found guilty, and instinctively will do ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... happen that both the lady and her suitor are willing; but that the parents or guardians of the former, on being referred to, deem the connection unfitting, and refuse their consent. In this state of matters, the first thing a man of sense, proper feeling, and candour should do, is to endeavour to learn the objections of the parents, to see whether they cannot be removed. If they are based on his present insufficiency ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... who are appointed as Judges should know something of law, and most unfitting that he whom so many officials (milites) obey should be seen to be dependent for his law on some one ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... "It seems unfitting," she said quietly. "He is almost like your uncle. Of course, one may marry one's uncle—but he is too old for you, dear. And, after all, with your name, and all ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... is going to fail are numerous. Among them is the deep disappointment of the settlers, few of whom probably realized not only the monotony and drudgery of labor in the fields—these things can be borne by men with stout hearts and strong arms—but its effect in unfitting a man for any kind of amusement. There has been much delusion on this subject in this country, where far more is known by the reading class about all kinds of manual labor than is known in England. The possibility of working hard in the fields and keeping up at the same ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin |
