"Incompetent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... melody, and to the gross ear it seems a mere tinkle of inanity. That is simply because the crowd who worship at the shrine of the Sminthean Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... assembled at Carthage petitioned the Emperor to take exceptional measures against the Donatists, who laughed at all the laws directed against heretics. When they were summoned before the courts they demonstrated to the judges, who were often pagans incompetent to decide in these questions, that it was they who really belonged to the only orthodox Church. Something must be done to end this equivocal position, and to bring about once for all a categorical condemnation of the schism. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... found trouble of his own in explaining his frequent bursts of laughter while they ate their breakfast in the cabin. And Florrie found trouble in accepting his explanations, for they were irrelevant, incompetent, and inane. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... appeared, however, one of the weaknesses of execution which constantly interfered with the success of his plans. He did not know how to sacrifice politics to statesmanship, and he appointed as his agents men so incompetent that they aggravated rather than settled the difficulty. Later he saw his mistake and made a new and admirable appointment in the case of Mr. William H. Trescot of South Carolina. Blaine himself, however, lost office before new results could be obtained; and Frelinghuysen recalled Trescot ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. "He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. * * * * * But he did for them both by ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... "competent critics" will tell him it is most improbable. The assertion of the second quotation is simply untrue; Mr. Knight has not admitted what is stated therein, and if I recollect right, an Edinburgh Reviewer has concurred with him in judgment. Neither of these, I presume, will be called incompetent. I cannot suppose that either assertion would have been made but for the spirit to which I have alluded; for no cause was ever the better for allegations that ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... prouder we are. Well, well, our pride is about all we can keep in these times. You need have no fear, however, that Ella will hesitate in helping you, except as she may very naturally think herself incompetent, or that you are wronging yourself ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... country house and, with her daughter, settled in one of the suburbs of Montpellier. In the January of 1876 a theft occurred in her household which obliged Madame Boyer to communicate with the police. Spendthrift and incompetent in the management of her affairs, she was hoarding and suspicious about money itself. Cash and bonds she would hide away in unexpected places, such as books, dresses, even a soup tureen. One of her most ingenious hiding places ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... life of some commercial or industrial community and trying to forecast its future development, one of the first things we should note would be its general business methods. No manufacturing concern with a defective office administration and incompetent travellers could survive, even if it had an Archimedes or an Edison in supreme control. I cannot see any reason why an agricultural community should expect to prosper while the industry by which its members live retains its present business organisation. ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... were bound to work for the good of the church and the convenience of the incumbent. The commercial schools, which were independent of the church, to which Non-conformists sent their boys, were satirised by Dickens, and they deserved the satire. The masters were generally incompetent, and the assistant teachers or ushers were the most miserable in regard to payment and status. William Ellis expended large sums of money, and almost all his leisure, in establishing secular schools that were good for something. He called them Birkbeck schools, thus doing honour to the founder ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... made; and, most probably, he will acquit him with unusual brilliancy and power, supposing his native ability to be good. But he can not or will not seek and find for himself such work and such position. He feels helpless, and incompetent to stir about and hold himself upright amid the jostling, competitive throngs that crowd the world's paths, and there seek life's prizes by performing life's duties and executing its requisitions. Solitude, with his ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... same. He has merely exchanged several excellent tones below for some very poor ones above. I repeat, one who aspires to be a lyric artist requires the best possible teacher to guide his first steps; he may consult an inferior or incompetent professor, when so firmly established in the right path that he cannot possibly ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... any other Eastern people in the earliest times. No sooner had the Assyrians arrived, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of five or six generations, at the very summit of their ambition, than some incompetent, or perhaps merely unfortunate, king appeared on the scene, and lost in a few years all the ground which had been gained at the cost of such tremendous exertions: then the subject races would rebel, the neighbouring peoples would pluck up courage and reconquer the provinces ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a passionate storm of anger and denunciation had arisen from the Opposition when he had been raised to the peerage some months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera, and how, that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward, but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity of the war in England, knew that the Government—ignorant of what he was so laboriously preparing—was chafing at his inactivity of the past few months, so that a member of the Cabinet wrote to ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... militia of the adjoining counties, and the establishment of a line of forts and block-houses, dispersed along a considerable extent of country, and occupied by detachments of British colonial troops, or by militiamen. All these were utterly incompetent to effect security; partly from the circumstances of the case, and somewhat from the entire want of discipline, and the absence of that subordination which is absolutely necessary to render ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Incompetent men and hungry demagogues had clamored for high positions in the army. Their influence had been so great he had been forced to find berths ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... right side; but Jobst the Kohler, and the other serfs who had been called in for the defence, were more likely to hold with the elder than the younger lady. And Frau Kunigunde herself, knowing well that the five-and-twenty men outside would be incompetent to avenge their master, confident in her narrow-minded, ignorant pride that no one could take Schloss Adlerstein, and incapable of understanding the changes in society that were rendering her isolated condition ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paid than it deserved; but I shall continue to cling tenaciously to that property until I am convinced that it will be applied for the benefit of every one; I should not think it just if it was taken from me for the benefit of the idle and incompetent; and I should be reluctant to part with it unless I felt sure that it would pass into the hands of those who are as just-minded and disinterested as myself, and be fairly administered. I should not think it just if it were taken from me by people who intended to misuse ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the chateau, up and down, at different times from nine o'clock until midnight. The streets of Montreal at that time made brave pretense of lighting by virtue of the new gas works; at certain intervals flickering and wholly incompetent lights serving to make the gloom more visible. None the less, as I passed for the last time, I plainly saw a shaft of light fall upon the half darkness from a little side door. There emerged upon the street the figure of a woman. I do not know what ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... you what I'd do; follow the advice of a sensible little friend of mine, who has four children all of an age, and has incompetent service to rely on, when she has any ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Cornelia trembled; she blushed, she smiled, she suffered herself to be drawn close to his side; and, at last, in some sweet, untranslatable way, she gave him the assurance of her love. Then they found in delicious silence the eloquence that words were incompetent to translate; time was forgotten, and on earth there was once more an interlude of heavenly harmony in which two souls became one and Paradise ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... supersede the bad moral effect of the recent one, which is said to be considerably injurious. Have you already in your mind a plan wholly or partially formed? If you have, prosecute it without interference from me. If you have not, please inform me, so that I, incompetent as I may be, can try and assist in the formation of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... "If there is one kind of person in the world dad considers wholly useless and incompetent, it's an artist ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... learn the Christian religion, appoint a time, and hear me." The proconsul said: "Persuade the people." The martyr replied: "I addressed my discourse to you; for we are taught to give due honor to princes as far as is consistent with religion. But the populace is an incompetent judge to justify myself before." Indeed, rage rendered them incapable ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... days of Clovis to the days of Charles Martel and Charlemagne the history of the Frankish realm, so far as its kingship is concerned, is almost a blank. It was an era of several centuries of incompetent and sluggish monarchs, of whom we can say little more than that they were born and died; they can scarcely be said to have reigned. But from the midst of this dull interregnum of Merovingian sluggards comes to us the story of two queens, women of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... ready to give a helping hand to those who were trying to advance our knowledge, ever willing to own to a mistake and give up even his most cherished ideas if truth required them at his hands. No conception can be more wantonly inexact. I grant that if a writer was sufficiently at once incompetent and obsequious Mr. Darwin was "ever ready," &c. So the Emperors of Austria wash a few poor people's feet on some one of the festivals of the Church, but it would not be safe to generalise from this yearly ceremony, and conclude that the Emperors ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... class of physicians that they would be glad often not to prescribe alcohol if patients and their friends would not insist upon its use. There is a deep-rooted prejudice in favor of alcohol as a remedy in the minds of the great multitude of people, and they are ready to distrust as fanatical, or incompetent, any physician who does not use it. Dr. Norman Kerr, a well-known physician of England, says, that during a ten years' residence in America, he found people unwilling to pay him as much for his services as they were willing to pay one ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... rights which had been proclaimed, the half-hearted leaders proceeded to look about for a King; and from that time till now they have been in this quest, as if it were the Holy Grail, or happiness on earth. The royal family of Spain was declared incompetent. Therefore a king must be found outside,——and so the quest was continued in other lands. One day the throne is offered to a prince of Portugal, then to a prince of Italy, but declined by each,——how wisely ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... wise and beneficent despotism is that its creator is not immortal. The trouble with the Alexanders and the Charlemagnes and the Peters is that the span of human life is too short for their magnificent designs, which fall, while incomplete, into incompetent or vicious hands, and the work is overthrown. Peter's rest in his mausoleum at Sts. Peter and Paul must have been uneasy if he saw the reigns immediately succeeding his own. Not one man capable of a lofty patriotism like his, not one man working with unselfish energy for Russia; but, ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... will be necessary for the long extract which we are about to give, to any person who will read it with attention. It is from a lecture on Agricultural Science, by Dr. Madden, and we confess ourselves incompetent to condense or improve the language of the ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... on my recollections of what took place at the University of Michigan during the Civil War. I had then seen large numbers of my best students go forth insufficiently trained, and in some cases led to destruction by incompetent officers. At a later period, I had heard the West Point officer whom I had secured from Detroit to train those Michigan students express his wonder at the rapidity with which they learned what was necessary to make them soldiers and even officers. Being ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... methods and defective materials. Such people are numbered among the bitterest opponents of Post-Impressionism, and indeed it is difficult to see how they could be otherwise. "Painting," they say, "which seeks to learn from an age when art was, however sincere, incompetent and uneducated, deliberately rejects the knowledge and skill of centuries." It will be no easy matter to conquer this assumption that Primitive art is merely untrained Naturalism, but until it is conquered there seems little hope for a sympathetic ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... a good plan, and make ample arrangements for the supply of funds, but if he does not know how to choose, or where to find good builders, his scheme will come to a miserable end. He may choose builders that are competent but dishonest, or they may be honest but incompetent, or they may be subject to some other radical defect; in either of which cases the house will be badly built, and the scheme will ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... willing to accept the position of nurse, for he welcomed her with leaps and squeals of joy, and wept loudly and bitterly whenever she dared leave him. His mother was relieved greatly by her sister's help. For Mrs. John Coulson was suffering from the chronic housekeeping malady, an incompetent maid. A faithful servant of two years' standing had gone off in a temper the week before because her mistress had announced that henceforth they should have dinner at six o'clock in the evening. Everyone on Sunset Hill had evening dinners and Annie had long ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the late constitution in France, by removing so integral a part of it as the King, the National Assembly, to whom a part only of the public authority had been delegated, appear to have considered themselves as incompetent to transact the affairs of the nation legitimately. They invited their fellow-citizens, therefore, to appoint a National Convention. In conformity with this their idea of the defective state of the national authority, you were desired from hence to suspend further payments of our ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... fulness of years the pontiff of Luciferian Freemasonry himself passed on to the higher life of fire, which is the Palladian notion of beatitude, and in the peace and joy of Lucifer, the sovereign pontificate itself, after resting for a short period upon incompetent shoulders in the person of Albert George Mackey, was transferred to the Italian; the seat of the Dogmatic Directory was removed to Rome; a split in the camp ensued, inspired by a lady initiate, since famous under the name of Diana Vaughan, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... 1528, with a well-equipped army of three hundred men and forty horses, just half the force he sailed with from Spain the previous June, and of the three hundred men whom he led into Florida, only four lived to reach civilization - the rest perished. That is but one example of incompetent leadership. When Portola organized his expedition for the march from San Diego Bay to Monterey, many of his soldiers were ill from scurvy, and at one time on the march the sick list numbered nineteen men, including the governor and Rivera, his chief officer. Sixteen men had to ...
— The March of Portola • Zoeth S. Eldredge
... circumstance already mentioned, that descent was counted, not through the fathers, but through the mothers. The home and the children were {41} the wife's, not the husband's. There she lived, surrounded by her female relatives, whereas he had come from another clan. If he proved lazy or incompetent to do his full share of providing, let the women unite against him, and out he must ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... did not prove so favourable to the measures of the minister as he expected: Monsieur DE CALONNE was displaced, and the assembly was soon after dissolved, having declared itself incompetent to ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... the real master of the State he was just as incompetent as before. All his application was directed towards his master, and it had for sole aim that that master should not escape him. He wearied himself in watching all the movements of the prince, what he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... its temper, that teases, that is petulant and disobedient, and a nuisance to everybody, is merely a victim, poor little thing, of parents who have been too incompetent or negligent to train it to obedience. Moreover, that same child when grown will be the first to resent and blame the mother's mistaken "spoiling" and lack ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... tell me," he once demanded, in the days of the dreadfully incompetent maids who preceded Lizzie, "that it is becoming practically impossible to ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... would be very much to my advantage to take charge of a band of sheep under conditions that might look as if I needed somebody to plug for me. Your father might think of me as an incompetent and good-for-nothing person." ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... but to admit in general terms that evil is only apparent and not real. But see to what such an admission commits us: if we have no grounds for saying that evil is evil, we can have no grounds either for saying that good is good; if our faculties are incompetent to diagnose the one kind of phenomena accurately, they cannot be any more competent to diagnose and deliver reliable verdicts upon the other kind. It is quite a mistake to think that by getting rid of the reality of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... back with a gasp. Was it genius or was it madness? He felt incompetent to decide; and Mrs. Lethbury's next words showed that she shared ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... chief, under the new titles of President, Governor, and Captain-general. Don Melchior Bravo de Saravia was invested with this triple character in 1568; a man well qualified to act as president of the court of audience and civil governor of the kingdom, but utterly incompetent to sustain the charge of captain-general; yet he was anxious to signalize the commencement of his government by the attainment of a splendid victory over the redoubtable Araucanians, for which an opportunity soon offered, but which redounded to his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... In the Origin, Ed. vi. p. 275, the author replies to Mivart's criticisms (Genesis of Species, 1871), referring especially to that writer's objection "that natural selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Weekes, to attack Vingorla. They carried a company of sepoys under Stanton, one of the Company's military officers. On the way they were joined by the Revenge, and they also had with them ten or twelve gallivats. Weekes appears to have been timid and incompetent, while the force was altogether insufficient for the purpose. Several days were spent in trying to find a landing-place, without success, on the rocky, surf-beaten shore, while the fortress was bombarded from ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... political grounds, and catastrophes have been met by blundering incapacity. The political appointee has been made the scapegoat, and the appointing officer, whether mayor, governor, or president, has regained public confidence by replacing an old with a new incompetent. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... flown out into the hall to settle this matter, but she realized that she was on exhibition. Had she done so, the Ladies would have set her down forever after as thoroughly incompetent,—she could not go! But Lark must ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... playing at bowls, and his facetious conversation over a pipe and tankard of October. For these latter accomplishments, the Doctor had the honour to be recorded by old Century White amongst the roll of lewd, incompetent, profligate clergymen of the Church of England, whom he denounced to God and man, on account chiefly of the heinous sin of playing at games of skill and chance, and of occasionally joining in the social meetings of their ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... present mellow condition of Ireland, Egypt, India, and South Africa is proof of their honesty and obedience. Over and above this, their mere presence in office produced all along our lines the same moral effect as the presence of an incompetent master in a classroom. Paper pellets, books, and ink began to fly; desks were thumped; dirty pens were jabbed into those trying to work; rats and mice were set free amid squeals of exaggerated fear; and, as usual, the least desirable characters in the forms were ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... final vindication of his theories he made another stately obeisance and went his way. Theos looked after his tall, retreating figure half in sadness, half in scorn. This proudly incompetent, learned-ignorant Mira-Khabur was no uncommon character—surely there were many ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... man replied, gravely: "The police, my dear boy, is the most incompetent thing on this earth, and government the feeblest in all matters concerning individuals. Neither the police nor the government can read hearts. What we might reasonably ask of them is to search for the causes ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... his inactivity by the fact that the War Department neglected to furnish him with the necessary pontoons. How, in fact, was Burnside to move a great army without pontoons? But it was the duty of Halleck, and his lazy or incompetent, or traitorous staff, to have seen to the sending on of the pontoons. However, supposing Burnside and his staff to have as much wit as an average twelve-year-old school boy, they could have found in the army ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... 'I know what I know,' she kept repeating, not uncivilly, but with extreme gloom. In vain I asked her what she did know. Some knew what others knew, and others didn't, and if they didn't, then others again had better be careful. Oh dear, she was incompetent! She had a face like a silkworm, and the dining-room reeks of orris-root. We chatted pleasantly a little about husbands, and I wondered where hers was too, and advised her to go to the police. She thanked me. We agreed that ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... was the advocate of sending a powerful force to the Baltic coast at the critical moment between Jena and Eylau, that he was not altogether responsible for the delays which rendered the Walcheren expedition abortive or for the choice of its incompetent commander, that his prime object was to strike a crushing blow at Napoleon's naval power, and that, if his instructions had been obeyed, this would have been effected by a rapid advance upon Antwerp when nearly all the French ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Frost—James Frost—as he curtly signed himself, in spite of all Louis's wit on Rolands and Olivers—and yet those soft satirical speeches did more than all direct attacks to shake his confidence in his own magnanimity; more especially because Fitzjocelyn always declared himself incompetent to judge, and never failed to uphold that he was so far right, that his ministry must stand above all ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... violent opposition of the Anglo- Indian. It will be difficult to carry reform against the advice of The only class which seems competent to advise, viz., such Englishmen as have had experience of India. I hold such to be Totally incompetent as a class to take proper views of Indian problems—such men as Sir Richard Temple are the exception. His articles upon India seem to me most salutary and to denote a statesmanlike grasp of a subject of paramount importance to England. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the regeneration of our fleet begins. From today Ottoman hearts must again rejoice. We must work hard now for the strengthening of our navy. We must know that our fleet, which till yesterday was lifeless, is no longer in incompetent hands and under the leadership of lazy minds. New Turkey has intrusted her navy to iron hands. At the head of our fleet is Djemal Pasha, whose naval successes it is unnecessary to mention. The commander ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... provincial pride began to operate powerfully in dissolving the union of the states. The Congress, doubtful of their power, and but little relied upon by the great mass of the people as an instrument for the promotion of national prosperity, were incompetent to execute treaties, to regulate commerce, or to provide for the payment of debts contracted for the confederation, amounting in the aggregate, foreign and domestic, to a little more than forty millions of dollars. And that body itself was often distracted by party dissentions, and rendered ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to the woodlands, and to which it always retreats if by accident it is found straggling in the hills, confiding no doubt in its wonderful fleetness. We also killed a few young geese, but as this game is small and very incompetent to the subsistence of the party, we have forbidden the men any longer to waste their ammunition on them. About four and a half miles above Gass's creek, the valley in which we have been travelling ceases, the high craggy cliffs again approach the river, which now enters or rather leaves what appears ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... field, they idly supposed that these were armies in the accepted sense of the word and not a mere collection of peasants, undisciplined and chiefly unarmed, officered by men as ignorant of their profession as themselves and commanded by a General yet more incompetent.—And with armies so composed they actually sent a British force to co-operate! ... Sir John Moore had not been long in Spain before he discovered the mistake that had been committed and the danger of his situation; he saw at once that the course he ought to adopt was to retreat upon Portugal, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... by William de Powerie, their spokesman, that the exposure of the enormities permitted in England called up a deep blush on the face of Innocent, and he allowed that he had been wrong in thrusting in these incompetent Italians. There was one good effected at this council, namely, the appointment of Richard Wych to the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... strange riddles of multiplex personalities, and, most startling of all, vivid intensities of mental action when the brain, that should be the generator of thought, was reduced to a comatose state. Fact after fact came hurtling in upon me, demanding explanation I was incompetent to give. I studied the obscurer sides of consciousness, dreams, hallucinations, illusions, insanity. Into the darkness shot a ray of light—A.P. Sinnett's "Occult World," with its wonderfully suggestive letters, expounding not the supernatural but ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... kettle of fish Tommy was pitchforked, and when I arrived he was just beginning to understand how unpleasant it was. As I said before, I did not know him very well, and I was amazed to find how bad he was at his job. A more curiously incompetent person I never met. He was a long, thin man, with a grizzled moustache and a mild sleepy eye-not an impressive figure, except on a horse; and he had an odd lisp which made even a shrewd remark sound foolish. He was the most industrious ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... wades chin-deep through flattery and loving attentions. Then, after the judging is over, he is about as popular with those same exhibitors as a typhoid germ. No one can say bad enough things about him. He's 'incompetent,' he's 'a grafter,—'he's 'afraid of the big kennels,'—he's 'drunk.' He's any of these things; or all of them put together. Nobody's satisfied. Everybody has had a raw deal. Everybody's hammer is out for the poor slob of a judge. Well, not everybody's, ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... in the two reports upon the cause of the accident. Mr Chippindale considered the probable cause to have been pilot error. On the other hand the Royal Commission exonerated the pilots completely and spoke instead of "incompetent administrative airline procedures". Since this case is concerned with allegations by the Commissioner that the affected officers of Air New Zealand had engaged "in a pre-determined plan of deception ... to conceal a series of disastrous administrative ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... the institution of which it is the organ, as directed by "envy, malice, and uncharitableness," and intimates that it is occasioned by the inability or unwillingness of the committee to purchase the trashy productions of incompetent painters constantly offered to them. We submit to the gentlemen connected with the Art-Union, that they should not suffer the hirelings they may sometimes employ upon the Bulletin, thus to refer to such artists and such men ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the captain to weigh or serve out the stores, and many a mean trick was adopted at the expense of the poor sailor by the use of false scales, weights, or measures. I have seen instances of this most wretched and meanest of all thieving more than once. One incompetent conniver at inexpiable wrong thought by cheating his men out of a portion of their meagre allowance he would make the insufficiency of stores put aboard by the owner spin out till the voyage ended. The water ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... the fact that Francis of Anjou, now dead, had betrayed them. For the German Protestants were of no use, and they did not expect vigorous aid from Elizabeth. But France herself was on the verge of a division into three, between the incompetent Henry III. on the throne, Henry of Guise of the Catholic League, and Henry of Navarre, heir apparent ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... which to build; every Bulgar will tell you that he is full of admiration of the Serbian army, and the Serbs will speak in a similar strain of the Bulgars. Also the Serbs will tell you that, no matter what else they may be able to do, they are, as compared with the Bulgars, quite incompetent in the diffusion of propaganda; while the Bulgars will explain to you that in propaganda the Serbs are immensely their superiors. (Balkan propaganda does not confine itself to using, with violence, the sword and the pen. In its higher flights it will, in a disputed district, bury ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... been in the past, it has, through its Lord Chancellor's Visitors, performed its duty towards its "worn-out lunatics," not only "in every mad-house," but in many a home in which they enjoy as much liberty as possible, while the property of which they are incompetent to take charge, is carefully administered by the Lord Chancellor. In his Address at the eighth section of the International Congress, Dr. Lockhart Robertson pointed out that 34.6 per cent. of the Chancery lunatics ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... time on their last legs. If Wegg had been worse paid for his office, or better qualified to discharge it, he would have considered these visits complimentary and agreeable; but, holding the position of a handsomely-remunerated humbug, he resented them. This was quite according to rule, for the incompetent servant, by whomsoever employed, is always against his employer. Even those born governors, noble and right honourable creatures, who have been the most imbecile in high places, have uniformly shown themselves the most opposed (sometimes in belying distrust, sometimes in vapid insolence) ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... present Legislature will go down in history as the most incompetent body of lawmakers that ever sat in the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... plumber to mend it, I must mend it myself; and so through a long range of occupations, with which I had had no previous acquaintance. The immortal Captain Davis, of the Sea Ranger, remarks to the incompetent landsman Herrick, whom he has engaged as first mate on the Farralone, 'There ain't nothing to sailoring when you come to look it in the face,' and I am inclined to think that the observation ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... literary history, the reader shall see, in some sort, what profit there is in grammar. Is the common language of two of the largest and most enlightened nations on earth so little understood, and its true grammar so little known or appreciated, that one of the most unscholarly and incompetent of all pretenders to grammar can have found means to outrival all the grammarians who have preceded him? Have plagiarism and quackery become the only means of success in philology? Are there now ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... purposes! mysterious thy movements! inscrutable thy operations! An atom of thy creation, wildered in the mazes of ignorance and woe, would bow to thy decrees. Surrounded with impenetrable gloom, unable to scrutinize the past, incompetent to explore the future——fain would he say, THY WILL BE DONE! And Oh, that it might be consistent with that HIGH WILL to call this atom from a dungeon of wretchedness, to worlds of light and glory, where his ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... provided that at the end you lament your faults, God will have only tenderness for you, and will receive you with open arms. I should like to know if by chance their Jesus had taken a wife, what would have been his opinion then of the woman taken in adultery; but he remained single and consequently incompetent to decide upon that delicate matter. All that, you see, is an encouragement to debauchery and a stimulant to lewdness. A devout woman, when she is young and pretty, is on a slope which leads quite straight ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... is neglected. Boys are told these diseases are no worse than a cold and so do not realize the necessity for prompt and adequate treatment. The ordinary boy treats himself, following the advice of some of his friends or some incompetent person. He has a feeling of shame which prevents him from going to the family physician, who would give him honest advice. If he goes to any physician he usually goes to some advertising physician who claims ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... me that the post of conductor had been offered to me by the Magdeburg Theatre Company. This company during the current summer month was performing at a watering place called Lauchstadt. The manager could not get on with an incompetent conductor that had been sent to him, and in his extremity had applied to Leipzig in the hope of getting a substitute forthwith. Stegmayer, the conductor, who had no inclination to practise my score ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... afterward she button-holed people in the street to tell them about Mary, or to read them scraps of her letters. If they had said she was vain and idle, and selfish and incompetent, just like the half of their own daughters, Belle could have forgiven them. It was their determination to shove her into the gutter which made ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... administered with a liberal hand; and much more might have been done to augment these comforts. Instead of now being the object of matured and wise regulations, the captive is exposed to the rapacity of our enemies, who will derive great advantages from our abandonment of the trade, and those who are incompetent, from the want of local knowledge, to ease his shackles, and sooth him in his state of bondage. The magnitude and nature of the disease, required a comprehensive system of policy to eradicate it; and although in its nature and tendency of great moral turpitude, ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... the old man said, "Gordon, I am tired of fooling with you. You are incompetent; you will never ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... path of Edmund Melrose. The next farm to his belonged to the Threlfall estate. Melrose's methods as a landlord had thrown out one tenant after another, till he could do nothing but put in a bailiff and work it himself. The bailiff was incompetent, and a herd of cattle made their way one morning through a broken fence that no one had troubled to mend, and did serious damage to Brand's standing crops. Melrose was asked to compensate, and flatly declined. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remarkable contributions to the just understanding of the mammalian brain which has ever been made, would have been the first to admit the insufficiency of his data had he lived to profit by the advance of inquiry. The misfortune is that his conclusions have been employed by persons incompetent to appreciate their foundation, as arguments in favour of obscurantism. (80. For example, M. l'Abbe Lecomte in his terrible pamphlet, 'Le Darwinisme ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... sabotage of business enterprise can be put aside by sufficiently heroic measures. And they are also showing that they are all aware, and have always been aware, that the conduct of industry on business principles is incompetent to bring the largest practicable output of goods and services; incompetent to such a degree, indeed, as not to be tolerable in a season of desperate need, when the nation requires the full use of its productive forces, equipment and man-power, regardless of the pecuniary ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... occasional danger—by no means a constant danger—of forming in his mind images of men that were more significant than it was possible for the men themselves to be. John Pope was perhaps his worst instance. An incompetent general, he was capable of things still less excusable. Just after McClellan had so tragically failed in the Seven Days, when Lincoln was at the front, Pope was busy with the Committee, assuring them virtually that the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... story of the past, incarnate in stone, greenwood, and flower; it had even drained the life-blood from adjacent hamlets, repaying them with tumuli growths like its own, in the shape of purposeless lodges, quaintly incompetent hospitals and schools, and churches where the inestimable blessing and knowledge of its gospel were taught and fostered. Nor had it dealt more kindly with the gentry within its walls, sending some to the scaffold, pillorying others in infamous office, reducing a few to poverty, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... view of your conduct. As for you, Mr Carter," the skipper resumed after a pause, "you have placed me in the very unpleasant position of being compelled to suspend you from duty until the arrival of the ship at Sydney. You have proved yourself incompetent to command a watch with that tact and moderation which is so essential to the safety of a ship and the comfort of those on board; and, led away by your heat of temper, you have hastily and unnecessarily resorted to measures of extreme violence, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... they were, so to speak, thrust under our noses, what force remained in the dilemma—creation or nothing? It was obvious that hereafter the probability would be immensely greater, that the links of natural causation were hidden from our purblind eyes, than that natural causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other object than the attainment of truth was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it. Either it ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... I do anything for you?—Let me do that," she added hastily, as she saw the success of the dinner put in jeopardy by an awkward movement of the incompetent cook. In another moment Shenac's black dress was pinned up, and soon the dinner was on the table, and the father and children were seated at it. To her husband's entreaty that she would try and eat something, the poor woman ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... intermission, for the last ten years, to say nothing of previous instances of mansuetude. Unfortunately, however, they are as jealous of being helped as, according to Captain Widdrington's own admission, they are incompetent to help themselves. "Es una lastima," as they would say; but really at this rate there seems no chance of their ever getting their country into a prosperous, or even a decent, state. We fully agree with Captain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... it's Sally Fred picked out, an' not one of the other girls," she declared; "she's twenty-nine years old now—a good, sensible age—pleasant an' easy-goin', same's her mother is, an' yet real capable. Ruth always was a silly, incompetent little thing—she has to hire help most of the time, with nothin' in the world to do but cook for Frank, look after that little tiny house, take care of them two babies, an' go into the store off an' on when business is rushin'. ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... my real labors, I discovered how incompetent a conspirator Kossuth was. He had given me the name of his correspondent in Pesth and his residence, in the Karolyisches Haus, as if that were his ordinary residence, without warning me, though he knew it, that he was really in hiding from the police, and probably only to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card as protectors of truth upon earth—as though "the Truth" were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... embellishments. Scarce anything is left but the walls and buildings, which are uninjured, the lives and the industry of the inhabitants. Sandarion is made Governor of the city and province, with, as it seems to me, a very incompetent force to support his authority. Yet the citizens are, as they have been since the day the contest was decided, perfectly peaceable—nay, I rather should say, stupid and lethargic. There appear to be on the part of Aurelian no ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... might be an impregnable refuge for persecuted Catholics. He estimated that it would take five years of preparation. Tyrconnel also contemplated separation, and arranged for a French invasion, if James died. When James came over Tyrconnel thought him hopelessly incompetent, and offered his country to Lewis XIV. Sarsfield detested his treachery, and invited Berwick to undertake the government. Of James's French counsellors, one was Lauzun, who commanded the auxiliary army, and proposed to burn Dublin to the ground and ravage the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... matter with a lounge in front of the Luxembourg? That will make a contrast that can't help affect the populace. You, the conqueror, ill-clad, unshaven, and with a hat full of bullet-holes, walking outside the palace, with the incompetent Directors lodged comfortably inside, will make a scene that is bound to give the people food ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... The first is Orfeo which was written in Italian, on Calzabigi's text, and was first presented at Venice in 1761. The role of Orpheus in this score was written for a contralto and was designed for the eunuch Quadagni. The Venetian engravers of that day were either incompetent or, perhaps, there were none, for the scores of Gluck's Alceste in Italian and Haydn's Seasons were printed from type. However that may be the score of Orfeo was engraved in Paris. The composer Philidor corrected the proofs. He little ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... and political advancement of the colored man are the first to turn against him when he wants a friend." The correspondent then goes on to say that the school directors persist in employing teachers "totally incompetent." What the schools were in New York the report made by the New York Society for the promotion of Education among Colored Children to the Honorable Commissioners for examining into the condition of Common Schools ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... Assembly which might have saved Ireland never came into being. The Volunteers were in weak and incompetent hands. The metamorphosis they had undergone from a body formed for home defence into a militant political organization found them at the critical moment unprovided with the right stamp of leader. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... men ever lived. And yet to read what Mr. Rhodes has written, one would naturally assume that the opposite of this was true, that the Republican party in that section was under the domination of northern "carpet baggers," a few worthless southern whites and a number of dishonest and incompetent colored men. This, no doubt, is the false, deceptive and misleading picture which had been painted from the vividness of his partial, mistaken, prejudiced and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Ebenezer) by marrying beneath him, and Mary had earned praise by marrying rather well. These two children, by a useful whim of the eccentric old man, had received their portions of the patrimony on their respective wedding-days. They were both dead. Shadrach, amiable but incompetent, had died poor, leaving a daughter, Susan, who had repeated, even more reprehensibly, her father's sin of marrying beneath her. She had married a working potter, and thus reduced her branch of the family to the status from which old Ebenezer had originally raised ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... practical and is actually so, as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept them, though ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Man he 'appeals to the experience of all countries and ages, that if a people has power, and attempts wrongdoing against another, it also does not omit to conceive the other as very worthless and incompetent, and to repeat this conviction often and emphatically' (Der Mensch, ii. 235). It is easy for us to dot the i and cross the t here; less easy perhaps to realize that what troubled von Baer was the persistence of British and American ethnologists in the ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... faith or seamanship of his captain, and, between desperation and contempt, contemplates vaguely but persistently the assumption of control by a collective forecastle. He is like a private soldier obsessed with the idea that nothing can save the situation but the death of an incompetent officer. His distrust is so profound that he ceases not only to believe in the employer, but he ceases to believe in the law, ceases to believe in Parliament, as a means to that tolerable life he desires; and he falls back steadily upon his last resource of a strike, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... weak and incompetent Robert Short Hose returned from his crusading, he had the temerity to lay claim not merely to his Duchy but to the throne of England with it. He naturally lost both, at the battle of Tinchebray, where Henri Beauclerc won Normandy, and beat the Normans with his English soldiers. For many ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook |
