"Unapt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attenuated by famine. He half feared to displease him; but he trusted that his generous kindness would be administered so delicately, as not to excite repulse. What human heart is shut to kindness? and though poverty, in its excess, might render the sufferer unapt to submit to the supposed degradation of a benefit, the zeal of the benefactor must at last relax him into thankfulness. These thoughts encouraged Raymond, as he stood at the door of the highest room of the house. After trying vainly to enter the other apartments, he perceived ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... form, and low thy seat, And earthward bent thy gentle eye, Unapt the passing view to meet, When loftier ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... insomuch that we are almost afraid of accepting the epithets of description and aggravation which offer themselves as most appropriate to the subject. There are some self-complacent persons whose minds are so unapt to recognize the magnitude of a subject, or so averse perhaps to the contemplation of it if it be of tragical aspect, that strong terms accumulated to exhibit even what surpasses in its plain reality all the powers of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... let these Messenian maidens mark The fear'd and blacken'd ruler of their race, Albeit with lips unapt to self-excuse, Blow off the spot of murder from his name.— Murder!—but what is murder? When a wretch For private gain or hatred takes a life, We call it murder, crush him, brand his name. But when, for some great public cause, an arm Is, without love or hate, austerely raised Against a ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... hands, with whom they are said to make a perfect visible bargain, either beauty, money, promotion, wealth, worship, pleasure, honour, knowledge, or any other benefit whatsoever.' As to the preternatural gifts of these hags, he sensibly argues: 'Alas! what an unapt instrument is a toothless, old, impotent, unwieldy woman to fly in the air; truly, the devil little needs such instruments to bring his ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... men, or upon the chances of fortune. The rewards of virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural support are certain; or if we want meat till we die, then we die of that disease—and there are many worse than to die with an atrophy or consumption, or unapt and coarser nourishment. But he that suffers a transporting passion concerning things within the power of others, is free from sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall give him leave; and it is ten to one but he shall be smitten ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... as for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politics, they be of this nature: that learning doth soften men's minds, and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that it doth mar and pervert men's dispositions for matter of government and policy, in making them too curious and irresolute by variety of reading, or too peremptory or positive by strictness of rules and axioms, or too immoderate and overweening ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... pieces Of mica were found abundantly mixed with the soil. "Had the surface-soil been removed with care, and the stratum beneath been washed by a few heavy showers of rain, so thoroughly studded was it with small particles of mica, that under the sun's rays it certainly would have presented no unapt symbolic ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... heart-and through which the blood had previously passed-is closed and hermetically sealed, and the blood taking a new course, bounds into the lungs, now expanded with air, and which we have likened to a wetted sponge, to which they bear a not unapt affinity, air being substituted for water. It here receives the oxygen from the atmosphere, and the chyle, or white blood, from the digested food, and becomes, in an instant, arterial blood, a vital principle, from which every solid ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said, however, I would not dwell on what I thought; I wish to hear, rather, what some other person thinks,—some one whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... such woman. And when she was suddenly strangely brought face to face with a tragedy of her own, that was not enough to turn this innocent and modest girl into a raging Eleanor. She was profoundly reasonable in her simple way, unapt to blame; thinking no evil, and full of those prepossessions and fixed canons of innocence which the world-instructed are incapable not only of understanding, but of believing in the existence of. A connection between a man and a woman was to her, in one way or other, a ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... lusty courser's rein, Under the other was the tender boy, Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain, With leaden appetite, unapt to toy, She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire, He red for shame, but ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... unapt to strike an average mind is that, with such a caseful of volumes as my cursory and incomplete inventory represents and enumerates, how much, or perhaps rather how little, remains behind of solid, intrinsic worth, and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... towards an age when clever youngsters are not unapt to exercise their talents in depreciating home surroundings. He said that it was no wonder that Madame was disgusted, and scolded us for taking her into the feast. Jack took quite a different ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... then, because sacred subjects are peculiarly unapt for poetry, that so few sacred poets are popular. We have already glanced at some of the causes to which we attribute it—we ought to add another, which strikes us as important. Let us consider how the case stands with regard to books of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... subsumption of the individual into the species, its subsequent alliance to and co-ordination with other species, really does for the furnishing of the mind of the former. The layman, though we need not suppose him inattentive, or unapt to retain impressions, is in fact still but a child; and the shell, its colours and convolution, no more than a dainty, very easily destructible toy to him. Let him become a schoolboy about it, so to ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... Tell me,—for all things ye behold and know, While we know nothing and may only hear The random tales of rumor,—tell me who Were chiefs and princes of the Greeks; for I Should fail to number and to name them all,— Had I ten tongues, ten throats, a voice unapt To weary, uttered from a heart of brass,— Unless ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... Gay and Pope and Walpole, flash and fade through the air that must have been so heavy even at Hampton Court in these reigns. After all, it is the common people who get the best of it when some lordly pleasure-house for which they have paid comes back to them, as palaces are not unapt finally to do; and it is not unimaginable that collectively they bring as much brilliancy and beauty to its free enjoyment as the kings and courtiers did in their ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... In the head and face every organ and lineament expressive of brutal and unhesitating violence was in a state of the highest possible development. Indeed, could our readers fancy a bull-dog come unto man's estate, and walking about in a hat and coat, they would have no unapt idea of the general style and effect of his physique. He was accompanied by a travelling companion, in many respects an exact contrast to himself. He was short and slender, lithe and catlike in his ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... fragrance nor smoke till it is kindled; and the censer has to be constantly swung to keep up the glow, without which there will be no 'odour of a sweet smell.' So cold prayers are no prayers, but are scentless, and unapt to rise. The heart must be as a coal of fire, if the prayer is to come up before God with acceptance. Twice a day the incense was kindled; and all day long, no doubt, it smouldered, 'a perpetual incense before the Lord.' So, in the life of true communion, there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... damage to the cause, creating mighty prejudices against it; they argue much impotency in the advocate, and consequently little strength in what he maintains; that he is little able to judge well, and altogether unapt to teach others; they intimate a diffidence in himself concerning his cause, and that, despairing to maintain it by reason, he seeks to uphold it by passion; that not being able to convince by fair means, he would bear down ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... from the Fountain of Light, into the Abyss of Darkness, effect any thing to purpose, in Natural things, especially when his Wisdome in this natural Philosophick Study is barren and sophisticate? It is, for the most part, proper to these Fools and unapt men, presently to contemn a thing, not knowing, that more are yet to be sought by them, than they have the possession of. Therefore, rightly saith Seneca, in lib. de Moribus: Thou art not yet happy, if the Rout deride thee not. But I matter not, whether they believe, ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... for himself in an emergency. He was more easily managed than most of his kind—being shrewd, quiet, and, in fact, comparatively speaking, rather moral than otherwise; if he was a New Englander, when he retired from a sea life he was not unapt to end his days as a deacon. Altogether there could not have been better material for a fighting crew than cool, gritty American Jack. Moreover, there was a good nucleus of veterans to begin with, who were well fitted to fill the more responsible ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Solomon's rod keep you undecided.' Surely your own comment later shows that part, at least, of the influence of your early training was against corporal punishment, because you saw and felt its evils in yourself. Such early training may have made you unapt in thinking of other means of discipline; but it can hardly have made you think ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... blood hath been too cold and temperate, Unapt to stir at these indignities; But you have ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoughts in English, it is understood to be infra dignitatem—such light and unaccustomed essays do not fit the ponderous gravity of their pen—they only draw to advantage and with full justice to themselves in the bow of the ancients. Their native tongue is to them strange, inelegant, unapt, and crude. They 'cannot command it to any utterance of harmony. They have not the skill.' This is true enough; but you must not say so, under a heavy penalty—the displeasure of pedants and blockheads. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... poor maiden friend, Quiet he paces to his journey's end. Rich in his youth, he traded and he fail'd; Again he tried, again his fate prevail'd; His spirits low, and his exertions small, He fell perforce, he seem'd decreed to fall: Like the gay knight, unapt to rise was he, But downward sank with sad alacrity. A borough-place we gain'd him—in disgrace For gross neglect, he quickly lost the place; But still he kept a kind of sullen pride, Striving his wants to hinder or to hide; At length, compell'd by ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... present state of temporary concord, Raoul with his frosty visage formed no unapt representative of January, the bitter father of the year; and though Gillian was past the delicate bloom of youthful May, yet the melting fire of a full black eye, and the genial glow of a ripe and crimson cheek, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... which he possessed in an eminent degree, and which has been said to be the chief requisite of an orator. An ignorant man described his eloquence oddly but strikingly, when he said that Mr. Whitefield preached like a lion. So strange a comparison conveyed no unapt a notion of the force and vehemence and passion of that oratory which awed the hearers, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.' Benjamin Franklin writes (Memoirs, i. 163):—'Mr. Whitefield's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill |
