"Unfitted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And dragged the unsophisticated girl Into the whirl of fashionable life, For which her singularly rustic ways, Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude), Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical), Would absolutely have unfitted her. How different to this unreflecting boor Was HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... days passed away in disputation and bitterness, in the midst of tedious controversies respecting canonical law and exegesis, for which his great moral elevation, instead of giving him the advantage, positively unfitted him. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the best advantage her carefully hoarded wages. The difficulty was with the cooking. Clearly Paulina could not be expected to attend to this, for although her skill with certain soups and stews was undoubted, for the finer achievements of the culinary art Paulina was totally unfitted. To overcome this difficulty, Anka hit upon the simple but very effective expedient of entrusting to her neighbours, who would later be her guests, the preparing of certain dishes according to their various abilities and inclinations, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... boys and girls are trained merely in literary accomplishments, to the total exclusion of industrial, manual, and technical training, the tendency is to unfit them for industrial work and to make them reluctant to go into it, or unfitted to do well if they do go into it. This is a tendency which should be strenuously combated. Our industrial development depends largely upon technical education, including in this term all industrial education, from that which fits a man to be a good mechanic, a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... he could not prevail on the Imperial Government to convert Kingston into the provincial capital, that the seat of government should not be at the London of General Simcoe. He was not favorable to York. A muddy, marshy, unhealthy spot, it was unfitted for a city. Lord Dorchester, peevish from age, was, to some extent, under the influence of the Kingston merchants, and was inclined, by a feeling of gratitude, to grant the wishes of Commodore Bouchette, who resided at Kingston, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... needful to pause for a brief space in our narrative, whilst we give some account of this goodly spark who had so unexpectedly, as it might seem, unfitted the lady for the due exercise of her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... was long—and therefore unfitted to turn quickly—the powerful strokes of the two paddles in what may be called counteracting-harmony brought the little craft right round with her stern ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... tall, wiry man whose education had been acquired principally in the cow camps of Texas, where, among other things one does NOT learn to love nor trust a greaser. As a result of this early training Grayson was peculiarly unfitted in some respects to manage an American ranch in Mexico; but he was a just man, and so if his vaqueros did not love him, they at least respected him, and everyone who was or possessed the latent characteristics ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not at all likely he would have attempted anything so bold as that in broad daylight if he had not been drinking too freely, and the very evil "spirit" which had prompted him to his rascality unfitted him for its immediate consequences. These latter, in the shape of Dab Kinzer and the lower "joint" of a stout fishing-rod, had been bounding along up the road from the landing at a tremendous rate for nearly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... in school or college athletics those who need exercise the most are often those who are physically unfitted to play on the school teams. In other words, we select our runners and jumpers and football players from among the stronger boys, while the weaker ones really need the benefit of the sport. Every boy should take part in school games when possible even if he is not as swift or ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... streams of thought that filled these forty years; and it was worth while to put Moses into the desert for all that time, and to break off the purposes and hopes of his life sharp and short, and to condemn him to comparative idleness, or work that was all unfitted to bring out his special powers, for that huge scantling out of his life, one-third of the whole of it, in order that there might be burnt into him, not either of these two thoughts separately, but the two of them in their blessed conjunction; 'I am a stranger here'; 'God is my Help.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... a cow-puncher, and not a star performer on his own pitch, and he had only to look at the man to realise how unfitted he was for the rough work of a logging-camp. A derisive chuckle gurgled from his huge, hairy ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... fact—yet it is nevertheless perfectly true—that thou art reverenced, well nigh canonized, by the holy church; and thy words will have weight when mine would be light as air. Refuse the holy fathers all access to her; say she is unfitted to encounter them; that she is ill; nay, mad, if thou wilt. Bring forward the state in which she was borne from the hall; her very laugh (by St. Francis, it rings in my ear still) to confirm it, and they will believe thee. The present excitement will gradually ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... on their lips. For this the Kshatriya order has been exterminated and the fame of thy foes enhanced. Thou hadst occupied the position of an umpire, but thou didst not utter one word of salutary advise. Unfitted as thou wert for the task, thou didst not hold the scales evenly. Every person should, at the outset, adopt such a beneficial line of action that he may not have, in the end, to repent for something already done by him. Through affection for thy son, O monarch, thou didst ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... have led a lazy life of it these last few days. The excitement we have lately undergone has unfitted us for regular labour; and, besides, one has had altogether a tolerably long spell of toil. Although, ever since we have been fairly settled here—now about a month—we have not worked more than from four to five hours daily, and have taken it by turns ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... wicked. The wrong he had done was divested of the awful responsibilities which had seemed more than he could bear. The revelation had made him, comparatively, an innocent and free man. But a shock had been given to his whole being which unfitted him for ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... tumult that unfitted me for conversation. I felt hourly-increasing remorse at having concealed my proceedings from my mother. I imagined that, had I treated her from the first with the confidence due to her, I should have avoided all my present difficulties. Now the obstacles to confidence appeared ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... narrative. In June 1793, just after the fall of the Girondins, Danton was married. His bride insisted that their union should be blessed by a priest who had not taken the oaths. Danton agreed, found the priest, and went to confession. He became unfitted for his part in the Revolution, dropped out of the Committees, and retired, discouraged and disgusted, into the country. When he came back, after the execution of the queen, of Madame Roland, and the Girondins, he took the side of the proscribed ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... it would turn out that she would have to take papa too: as he is so teasing, I will just tell tales about him. Mrs. Bretton and all of you listen: About five years ago, when I was twelve years old, he took it into his head that he was spoiling me; that I was growing unfitted for the world, and I don't know what, and nothing would serve or satisfy him, but I must go to school. I cried, and so on; but M. de Bassompierre proved hard-hearted, quite firm and flinty, and to school I went. What was the result? In the most admirable manner, papa came to school likewise: every ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... until the beginning of 1860, when he was sent as ambassador to Paris, for the special purpose of averting the much-dreaded intervention of France in the affairs of Syria. But Ahmed Vefik's abrupt frankness, irascibility and abhorrence of compromise unfitted him for European diplomacy. He offended the French government; his mission failed, and he was recalled in January, 1861. None the less his integrity of purpose was fully understood and appreciated in Paris. On his return he was appointed minister of the evkaj, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... very different boy. His merit was a ceaseless diligence, in which it was doubtful whether ambition or conscientiousness had the greatest share. Reserved and thoughtful, unfitted for or indifferent to most games, he was anything but a favourite with the rest, and Eric rather respected than liked him. When he first came he had been one of the most natural butts for Barker's craving ill-nature, and for a time he had been tremendously bullied. But gradually ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Palmyra. Zenobia looked for relief from Persia; but at that moment Sapor died, and the Queen of Palmyra fled upon a dromedary, but was pursued and captured. Palmyra surrendered and was spared; but unfortunately, with a folly which marks the haughty spirit of the place unfitted to brook submission, scarcely had the conquering army retired when a tumult arose, and the Roman garrison was slaughtered. Little knowledge could those have had of Aurelian's character, who tempted him to acts but too welcome to his cruel nature by such an outrage as this. The news ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of her husband's health to be certainly and rapidly progressing, Mrs. Wilmer dwelt in her own mind with painful solicitude upon the probable means of support for them all, when his strength should so entirely give way, as to render him altogether unfitted for business. The only child of over-fond parents, rich in this world's goods, she had received a thorough, fashionable education, which fitted her for doing no one thing by which she could earn any money. Her music had been confined ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... mountain and river, and by every town and castle.[80] It will be enough to say that in an incredibly short space of time he beat up for recruits the greater part of the counties of Aberdeen, Inverness, and Perth, while the bewildered Mackay, whose training and troops were alike unfitted to this sort of campaigning, toiled after him in vain. He also found time for a flying visit to Dudhope, where his wife had been safely delivered of a son. He can have stayed with her but a day at most; and when he left her, he was to see her ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... of the incongruous matches in middle or later life of old friends who seem to be unfitted to each other. Often one of them has waited many years for the other to consent, for children to grow up, or for Death to clear ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... calculation the black-fringed lids drew apart and one hand pushed back of the temple, and held there, a tangled skein of hair that had thrown the dusk of a deep wood about her eyes. Then, as she looked, came the little dreaming smile that unfitted critic eyes for their office; a smile that wakened to a laugh as she looked—a little womanish chuckle of confident joy, as one alone speaking aloud in ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the human intellect at any particular period is worth studying, then all books are, or may become, useful. It is amazing that a person with any pretensions to discernment should denounce newspapers as unfitted to form a part of a public library. The best newspapers of the time are sometimes the best books of the time. A first-class daily journal is an epitome of the world, recording the life and the deeds of men, their laws and their literature, their politics and religion, their social ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... made the mere machine the former becomes, and Buell's failure to appreciate this caused great ill-feeling against him at the time in his army. Then, again, Buell's earlier military training in the bureau office he held so many years unfitted him for the handling, on the battle-field, of the large number of troops which composed his command. But very few generals during the rebellion were able to successfully handle on the battle-field as large ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... to the throne. Sir Walter Raleigh, a romantic adventurer lingering beyond his time, was beheaded out of hand by the ungenerous timidity of the monarch to whom had been transferred devotion and loyalty he was unfitted to receive. The Court which had been a centre of flashing and gleaming brilliance degenerated into a knot of sycophants humouring the pragmatic and self-important folly of a king in whom had implanted themselves all the vices of the Scots and none of their virtues. Nothing seemed left ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... the Marquis de Denonville arrived at Quebec as governor general in succession to M. de la Barre, whose advanced age and failing health unfitted him for the arduous duties of the office. The new governor was selected by the king for his known valor and prudence; a re-enforcement of troops was placed at his disposal, and it was determined to spare no effort to establish the colony ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... the full force of the situation. His soldiers were worn out with the labor of building the fort, and many of them were prostrated by a peculiar fever that racked their joints with severe pains and unfitted them for duty. The store of provisions upon which he had depended to feed his men through the approaching winter had been destroyed. The Indians who might have provided him with game had abandoned him and gone he knew not whither. His men knew nothing of the art of winning for themselves a livelihood ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... you put your finger on it, it isn't there. No, I am saying too much. He does stick to his literary and legal aspirations, and he naturally would elect the very two things which he is wholly and preposterously unfitted for. If I ever become able, I mean to put Orion on a regular pension without revealing the fact that it ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... primary characteristics of the British mind to be interested in problems of conduct rather than of thought. The seventeenth century had, for the most part, been interested in theology and government; and its preoccupation, in both domains, with supernatural sanctions, made its conclusions unfitted for a period dominated by rationalism. Locke regarded his Human Understanding as the preliminary to an ethical enquiry; and Hume seems to have considered his Principles of Morals the most vital of his works. It may be true, as the mordant insight of Mark Pattison suggested, that "those periods ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... Palons are still very poor and miserable, the place has been greatly improved since Neff's time, by the erection of the parsonage. It was found that the pastors who were successively appointed to minister to the poor congregations in the valley very soon became unfitted for their work by the hardships to which they were exposed; and being without any suitable domestic accommodation, one after another of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Pandavas, seeing that they had lost, threw off their garments and put on deer-skins, and prepared to depart into the forest with their wife and mother, and their priest Dhaumya; but Vidura said to Yudhishthira:—"Your mother is old and unfitted to travel, so leave her under my care;" and the Pandavas did so. And the brethren went out from the assembly hanging down their heads with shame, and covering their faces with their garments; but Bhima threw out his long arms and looked at the Kauravas furiously, and Draupadi spread her long black ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... very different from what Mrs. Arlington had expected, so refined in her manners and tastes, so totally unfitted to combat with all the mortifications of a governess's career. True, she had expected a rather superior person, when Mrs. Arnold wrote that Miss Leicester was the indulged daughter of a wealthy merchant, who on account of her father's losses and subsequent death, was forced to gain ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... administration had been issued to Jason Jones and the control of his wife's—now Alora's—property legally placed in his hands. Judge Bernsted attended to all the necessary details and, while he did not admire the artist and secretly believed he was unfitted for the task of handling so much money, he loyally insisted that the dead woman's wishes ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... come in hot from the fields and had scarce got the taste of the thing before mine eye lit upon the bottom of the pot. It may be, too, that I spoke somewhat shortly concerning the bran and the beans, the same being poor provender and unfitted for a man of my inches. It is true also that I did lay my hands upon this jack-fool of a brother Ambrose, though, as you can see, I did him little scathe. As regards the maid, too, it is true that I did heft her over the stream, she ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she will occupy places that might be taken by men. I say, If she have more skill and adaptedness for any position than a man has, let her have it! She has as much right to her bread, to her apparel, and to her home, as men have. But it is said that her nature is so delicate that she is unfitted for exhausting toil. I ask in the name of all past history what toil on earth is more severe, exhausting, and tremendous than that toil of the needle to which for ages she has been subjected? The battering-ram, the sword, the carbine, the battle-ax, have ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... prospective settlers. Letters were issued to Roberval authorizing him to search the jails of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, and Dijon and to draw from them any convicts lying under sentence of death. Exception was made of heretics, traitors, and counterfeiters, as unfitted for the pious purpose of the voyage. The gangs of these miscreants, chained together and under guard, came presently trooping into St Malo. Among them, it is recorded, walked a young girl of eighteen, ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... functions of his new profession, a true officer he will never become. More time will not help him; for time seldom does much for one who enters, especially in middle life, on an employment for which he is essentially unfitted. It is amusing to see the weight attached to the name of veteran, in military matters, by persons who in civil life are very ready to exchange a veteran doctor or minister for his younger rival. Military seniority, though the only practicable rule of precedence, is liable to many notorious inconveniences. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... had not his sanity. Though he was fearless in thought, he was a prey to his diseased nerves; with his ardent soul in his rickety body, he was driven on to the fight and was unfitted for it. The animosity of certain opinions of his ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... his habit of thinking in platitudes and quotations, but long years of study had unfitted him for less prosaic phraseology. If he could ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... this time through the country, the period of the year being unfitted for other sports. It seemed to Caldigate as though all the bows and all the arrows had been kept specially for him,—as though he was the great toxophilite of the age,—whereas no man could have cared less for the amusement than he. He was ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... with the French commandant, who thereupon closed the fort against him. He then repaired to his friends and relatives in the woods, but only to encounter a rebuff from a young squaw to whom he made his addresses. On this, he turned his steps towards the mission-house, and, being unfitted by his French education for supporting himself by hunting, begged food and shelter from the priests. Le Jeune gratefully accepted him as a gift vouchsafed by Heaven to his prayers, persuaded a lackey at the fort to give him a cast-off suit of clothes, promised ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... independent. At rare intervals, under the pressure of an emergency, some of them would try to act in concert; and, except in New England, the results had been most discouraging. Nor was it this segregation only that unfitted them for war. They were all subject to popular legislatures, through whom alone money and men could be raised; and these elective bodies were sometimes factious and selfish, and not always either far-sighted or reasonable. Moreover, they were in a state of ceaseless friction with their ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... mean in the whim of making an ill-assorted marriage between a pretty village flirt and a sickly cripple, and settling a couple of peasants in a business for which they are wholly unfitted." ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very great change of opinion and practice in this nation in regard to the subject of social and domestic duties. Many sensible and conscientious men spend all their time abroad in business; except perhaps an hour or so at night, when they are so fatigued as to be unfitted for any social or intellectual enjoyment. And some of the most conscientious men in the country will add to their professional business public or benevolent enterprises, which demand time, effort, and money; ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... warm, and his belly full, and money in his pocket—and lecturing men who were struggling for their lives, men at the death grapple with the demon powers of hunger and cold!—This, of course, was unfair; but Jurgis felt that these men were out of touch with the life they discussed, that they were unfitted to solve its problems; nay, they themselves were part of the problem—they were part of the order established that was crushing men down and beating them! They were of the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... reality, no longer a bear," said one; "nor can he justly be called a bird. But he is half bird and half bear, and so unfitted ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... to the deplorably defective presentation of the ideas in some work distinguished for its learning, its profundity or its novelty, it is probable that you will be despised as a frivolous setter up of manner over matter, a light-minded DILLETANTE, unfitted for the simple austerities of science. But this is itself a light-minded contempt; a deeper insight would change the tone, and help to remove the disgraceful slovenliness and feebleness of composition which deface the majority of grave works, except those written ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Russell said each nation must suit itself in this respect; we have perhaps been in error in thinking our Constitution could be generally adopted; some nations it may suit, others may find it unfitted for them. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... the floor from necessity. My long journey has unfitted me for this evening, and I must bid you all ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... realize what you are doing, Nora. You have been a little homesick and you are glad to be back. But after we have gone and you must settle into the old Racicot life again, you will not be contented. You will find that your life with us will have unfitted you for this. There will be no real place for you here—nothing for you to do. You will ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... system of education benefited only the comparatively few to whose nature and inclination it was adapted. We have need, indeed, of classical scholars, but the majority of men and women are meant for other work; many, by their very construction of mind, are unfitted to become such. And only in the most exceptional cases are the ancient languages really mastered; a smattering of these, imposed upon the unwilling scholar by a principle opposed to psychology,—a smattering from which is derived no use and joy in after life, and which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and exigencies of gaining a livelihood. They possess no accurate or comprehensive knowledge of the advantages and disadvantages of different types of wage earning occupations, and frequently take up work for which they are entirely unfitted or which holds little future ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... qualified by nature to perform the task which Babar had been obliged to neglect. His character, flighty and unstable, and his abilities, wanting in the constructive faculty, alike unfitted him for the duty. He ruled eight years in India without contributing a single stone to the foundation of an empire that was to remain. When, at the end of that period, his empire fell, as had fallen the kingdoms of his Afghan predecessors, and from the same cause, the absence of any ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... Sir William Phips, the leader of the expedition, was not an Englishman by birth, but a New Englander of very humble origin who owed his advancement to a robust physique and unlimited assurance. He was unfitted for his command, both because he lacked experience {125} in fighting such foes as he was about to encounter, and because he was completely ignorant of the technical difficulties involved in conducting a large, miscellaneous fleet through the ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... Germanic intellect at Seicheprey, Bouresches Wood, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, and in the Forest of the Argonne. Especially was it demonstrated when it came to fighting in small units, or in individual fighting. The highly disciplined and highly trained German soldiers were absolutely unfitted to cope with Americans, Canadians and Australians when it came to matching individual against individual, or ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... whether he did not propose going back, and having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,—as soon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the half mile two years in succession against Cambridge at Queen's Club. But owing to the pressure of other engagements he unfortunately omitted to do any studying, and when the hour of parting arrived he was peculiarly unfitted for any of the learned professions. Having, however, managed to obtain a sort of degree, enough to enable him to call himself a Bachelor of Arts, and realizing that you can fool some of the people some of the time, he applied for and secured ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... obstacles to this work come from her own sex. Strange if it were not so; if the meagre hope doled out to women hitherto should have unfitted them to believe that such a function awaits them. Strange if they did not fear a thousand perils in the untried way of freedom. But the unwise distrust will have to be abandoned; and so will the conventional flippancy and contempt. I think the grand duty of every honorable man toward this effort ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... imagination, that he studied it night and day until he had planted it in his memory from beginning to end; but in so doing, his brain, like that of the hero of Cervantes, had become dry and heated, so that he was unfitted for any serious or useful occupation. After the death of his parents he wandered about the streets in great distress, until at last he fell into the hands of certain toreros, or bull-fighters, who kept him about them, in order that he ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the lady asserts her pantheistical doctrine, and openly attacks the received Christian creed. She declares it to be useless now, and unfitted to the exigencies and the degree of culture of the actual world; and, though it would be hardly worth while to combat her opinions in due form, it is, at least, worth while to notice them, not merely from ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... part of our nursery lore, and are known to the English race under forms better adapted to English taste and sympathies than those under which they are here presented; and nearly all of those that are exceptions to this remark are unfitted for "home consumption," either by the objectionable nature of their subjects, by the still more objectionable tendency of their teaching, or by a yet more fatal demerit,—their lack of interest. They are in some respects notably tame and puerile,—with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... lost. We may even assign a natural, though conjectural, reason for this. The Dynasty of Raghu has been used for centuries as a text-book in India, so that manuscripts abound, and commentaries are very numerous. Now if the concluding cantos were unfitted for use as a text-book, they might very easily be lost during the centuries before the introduction of printing-presses into India. Indeed, this very unfitness for use as a school text seems to be the explanation of the temporary loss of several cantos ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... said to herself, "than any thing else I could possibly have done." "Time to think" was the one thing Hetty dreaded. As resolutely as if they were a sin, she strove to keep out of her mind all reminiscences of her home, all thoughts of her husband, of Raby. Whenever she gave way to them, she was unfitted for work; and, therefore, her conscience said they were wrong. While she was face to face with suffering ones, and her hands were busy in ministering to their wants, such thoughts never intruded upon her. It was literally true that, in such hours, she never ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... there. It was only in the defence of the Capitol that any method was observed, measures being taken to prevent it being crowded with useless numbers, and all the victual which could be got, being brought into it to enable it to stand a siege. Of the women, the children, and the men whose years unfitted them for service, the most part fled for refuge to the neighbouring towns, the rest remained in Rome a prey to the invaders; so that no one who had heard of the achievements of the Romans in past years, on being told of what ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... not be supposed, however, that he sank into a state of mystic contemplation that unfitted him for every-day life. On the contrary, he took more interest in his physical surroundings than ever. It was now October, and he threw himself with almost feverish energy into the garden-work belonging to that month. There were potted carnations to ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... certain minds, he was the first of those who condemned, and secretly slew, the unfortunates, who either came into the world hampered by disfigurement, or who, by accident, were unfitted for ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... a sense, all that belongs to Time belongs also to Eternity; but these lower correspondences are in their nature unfitted for an Eternal Life. Even if they were perfect in their relation to their Environment, they would still not be Eternal. . . . An Eternal Life demands an Eternal Environment. Natural Law, Eternal Life, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... song, or other characteristic sounds. The female, also sexually immature, responds coquettishly to these advances of the male. Song, which Brehm regards as a sign of the awakening of love, makes its appearance at an age when the animal is still unfitted for the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... qualities more than the President, unless it was General Scott himself, who with great self-esteem was nevertheless not unconscious that his age and infirmities had impaired his physical energies, and in some respects unfitted him to be the active military commander. It was his misfortune that he prided himself more if possible on his civil and political knowledge and his administrative ability than on his military skill and capacity. As a politician his opinions were often chimerical, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... but to take his brother officer's place, and fight. This he did and came from the bloody field disabled for life. In consequence of his lameness, he was under the necessity of resigning his commission in the army, which he did, and came home a cripple, and nearly unfitted for ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... might have been expected, gave rise to a considerable amount of excitement and conflicting opinion. Nearly every boy in the school saw clearly that he was both unworthy and unfitted to fulfil the duties of a prefect, but the peculiar circumstances under which he had, as "Rats" put it, been given "notice to quit," caused a large number of his schoolfellows to side with him, and condemn the action of the captain. ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... the support of the other organs of the community. They must not be the subjects of a foreign power, nor, as he argues at length, subject to the desocialising influence of celibacy. It follows that the Roman church is unfitted to be ever a national church, although, if that danger be sufficiently obviated, no political disqualifications should be imposed upon Romanists. And thus, too, the Church Catholic is essentially a body which has no relations to any particular state. It is opposed to the world, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... per cent as interest for his money after waiting a few years. But it is a hard country for the poor gentleman, whose habits have rendered him unfit for manual labour. He brings with him a mind unfitted to his situation; and even if necessity compels him to exertion, his labour is of little value. He has a hard struggle to live. The certain expenses of wages and living are great, and he is obliged to endure many privations if he ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... die without believing that book they will be forever damned without benefit of clergy; the consequence is that before they read that book they believe it to be true. When they do read, their minds are wholly unfitted to investigate its claim. They accept it as ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... lady of fortune? She told herself that it was so, and that it would be better for her to be a hard-working, dependent woman, doing some tedious duty day by day, than to live a life of ease which prompted her to longings for things unfitted to her. ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... downward again, wedging into and against each other, so as nearly to reform their previous figure.' But the unshattered state of the stones and the rounded surfaces of the sides show no sign of explosion. The upper Piton is unfitted for retaining water, which must percolate through its cinders, pumices, and loose matter into many a reservoir formed by blowing-holes. Snow must also be drifted in and retain, the cold. Moisture would be kept in the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... responsibilities of office, exactly suited him, and he was made for it. When all England was importuning him to accept the primacy, he shrank back from it with a reluctance which was wholly genuine, and an obstinacy which belonged also to his nature. He felt himself unfitted for the place, and he foresaw the result. He likened his future relation with the king to that of a weak old sheep yoked with an untamed bull. In all this he was perfectly right. That harmony which had existed between Lanfranc and the Conqueror, because each understood the other's ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... was that Miss Herschel found everything changed. A life of fifty years spent in a certain routine and upon certain objects, had unfitted her to tread in the old paths. It soon became clear to her that all her ideas and feelings had been shaped and influenced in a totally different path. More bitter still, we are told, she came to know that in her great sorrow and inextinguishable ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... vulgarity are unbecoming any age. But they are especially offensive and indecorous in youth. The young man, or young woman, who has not sufficient self-respect and pride of character to deport themselves with modesty, circumspection, and politeness, is unfitted to be an associate. A bold, brazen, forward demeanor, indicates a heart far from possessing those delicate and amiable traits, which are alone worthy of imitation. Vulgarity in language or demeanor, indicates ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... holding her a little away in order to see her better, "I have been distressing myself about you in vain. I could not help thinking that there would be one change after all this time, that your skin would lose that delicacy which makes you look so unfitted for work of any kind. There would be, I thought, a little of that unwholesome pallor and the tired look one so often sees in girls who are confined in shops and have to stand all day on their feet. But you have the same fresh look and pure ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... The seat of his patriotism was in his pocket; and the only internal improvement in which he was interested, was that which opened new facilities for acquiring money. It is surprising how totally such a mind becomes unfitted to enjoy and admire any great or noble quality in the abstract; in spite of a quick wit and keen organs, such men become the most one-sided beings, perhaps, in the whole human family. To moral beauty Mr. Taylor seemed quite blind; his mental ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... but the simple fact (to which I was myself witness) of your leaving my house in the low disguise of a carter's smock-frock, affords in itself sufficient proof that your associates must belong to a class of persons utterly unfitted for the companionship of a gentleman. Let me hope this hint may be enough, and that conduct so thoroughly disgraceful in one brought up as you have been may not occur again. I presume I need scarcely say that, in the event of your 52disregarding ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... be the prime fascinations of the work, abound on its surface. And their very number and their superficial prominence constitute a main charge against the author, and prove, we think, his mind to be unfitted for the severity of historical inquiry. He takes much pains to parade—perhaps he really believes in—his impartiality, with what justice we appeal to the foregoing pages; but he is guilty of a prejudice as injurious in its consequences to truth as any political bias. He abhors whatever ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... performance of one's ordinary duties in life. For it is possible to become over-zealous and even morbid over these mysteries of human life, and to become so obsessed by the idea of their importance as practically to render oneself unfitted for any ordinary pursuits, thereby producing an isolation that is in the best sense unprofitable. Moreover, there are mental dangers as well as spiritual and social to be feared, and it is unfortunately not uncommon to observe that neuraesthenia, nervous corrosion, and even insanity attends ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... complicated and varied relations, resembling those of pictures, demands an instrument resembling them also in the shape of the background. A rectangle 600 mm. broad by 400 mm. high seemed to meet this requirement better than the square of Dr. Pierce. Other parts, also, of his instrument seemed unfitted for our purpose. The tin, 5 cm. broad and confined to the slits across the center of the square, gave not enough opportunity for movement in a vertical direction, while the scale at the back was very inconvenient for reading. To supply these ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... was firmly convinced that most army officers were unfitted by their training to perform civil functions. He organized municipal governments with all possible promptness in the towns occupied by his troops, and in this work he requested my assistance, which I ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... had also got to work. Flossie, awaked by the shock of war to the surprising fact that, after twenty-two years of vain, idle and inglorious life, she was now of the most complete unimportance to her country, had (for the first time) a sudden longing to "do something." And so, being unfitted for needlework, nursing or the kitchen, she adopted eagerly the suggestion of some stupid and unimaginative old gentleman, and constituted herself (under God) Supreme Arbiter of Men's Consciences for the South-West Suburbs of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... lower floor by a stiff ascent of exterior steps, which are in no way grand or imposing, and then, having entered by a mean back door, are instantly obliged to ascend again by another flight—by stairs sufficiently appropriate to a back entrance, but altogether unfitted for the chief approach to such a building. It may, of course, be said that persons who are particular in such matters should go in at the front door and not at the back; but one must take these things as one finds them. The entrance by which the Capitol is approached ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... authorization of the ruler, and there is any issue, the children cannot be educated without the sovereign's wishes being consulted. The parents, in fact, are regarded much as if they were either minors, outlaws, or demented people, unfitted to be entrusted with the control and bringing up of their offspring, for the sovereign is ex officio the guardian of all children who are under age, belonging to the married members of his family, and his rights over the children are superior ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... attributed the removal of the Farraguts to Louisiana from eastern Tennessee. The region in which the latter is situated, remote both from tide-water and from the great river by which the Western States found their way to the Gulf of Mexico, was singularly unfitted to progress under the conditions of communication in that day; and it long remained among the most backward and primitive portions of the United States. The admiral's father, after his long experience ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... wonderfully equable character; her "satanic" moods showed themselves chiefly in pen and ink; her nerves were very strong, the balance of her physical and mental organization was splendidly even, as one imagines Shakespeare's to have been. But the very vigor of her character, its force of self-assertion, unfitted her to be the complement to any but a very yielding nature. The direct influence a passive, merely receptive spirit would have accepted, and gratefully, was soon felt as an intolerable burden by a mind in many ways different from her own, but with the same imperious instinct of freedom, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... dissention occurred between the two great confederates, Kelly and Dee. They were in many respects unfitted for each other's society. Dee was a man, who from his youth upward had been indefatigable in study and research, had the consciousness of great talents and intellect, and had been universally recognised as such, and had possessed a high character ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... much in his character at the time when he entered upon the general political stage. After graduating from Princeton in 1879, where his career gave little indication of extraordinary promise, he studied law, and for a time his shingle hung out in Atlanta. He seemed unfitted by nature, however, for either pleasure or success in the practice of the law. Reserved and cold, except with his intimates, he was incapable of attracting clients in a profession and locality where ability to ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... often told that women are unfitted for business pursuits. If this was business, I should say decidedly they were. My acquaintance with women has been large and varied, but I have yet to see the woman whom I consider qualified to be a member of the New York Board of Brokers. I have been present at many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... free, than the whites, particularly as they would have the encouragement of wages. There would be transient difficulties at the outset, but no more than a bad system lasting for ages might be expected to leave behind. The first generation might be unfitted for the active duties and responsibilities of citizenship; but this difficulty, under generous provisions for education, would not pass to the next. Even now they are not so much behind the masses of the whites. Of the Virginians ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... this effect upon young men. It is generally stimulating and exciting, even to the most unimaginative, while the novelty of it, the utter freedom and lack of restraint and absence of conventional public opinion is such that usually, within a very short time, one becomes unfitted to return to a more formal society. In the old days of a generation ago, life on the China Coast was probably much more exciting and inciting than it is to-day, although to-day, in all conscience, the checks are off. But our young man was rather fine, rather extraordinarily ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... loft Lady Burton spent many hours examining her husband's papers, and in the autumn of 1902 she commenced in earnest to write his life—a work that occupied her about eight months. That she was absolutely unfitted for the task must be clear to all who have any knowledge of Burton. Indeed, she was quite incapable of doing literary work of any kind properly. The spirit in which she wrote may be gauged both from the book itself, with its frequent offences against good taste, and the following citation ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the position of leader was thrust upon him, and as it would seem not unwillingly accepted. His abilities were great: the rising was organised with much skill, and with wonderful system and discipline. Yet Aske's very virtues unfitted him for his office under the existing conditions. He was honest himself; he wished to avoid bloodshed: what he sought was the remedying of genuine grievances. As with the Lincolnshire insurgents, this meant the restoration of the monasteries, the removal of evil councillors, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the young girl, and thought how unfitted she seemed for such a place of labor. With her large experience, for many had wandered there before, burdened with heavy struggles, she quickly saw that grief, or want, perhaps both, had driven her from home, or shelter, whichever it ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... to let his imagination torment him so ... and he sprang to his feet, determined to put an end to these maddening visions which only unfitted him for the stern and hopeless battle which was all that he could ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of considerable size, being full an inch in length, with an elongated oval body, and a small flat head. From the head protruded two great horny jaws, that bore some resemblance to a pair of calliper compasses. Its legs were short and very unfitted for motion. Indeed they were not of much use for that purpose, as it could make very little way on them, but crawled only sidewards, or backwards, with great apparent difficulty. The creature was of a greyish or sand colour; and in the sand, where it ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... attend to, and impossible to remember; and when you heard the good man preach, you sighed for the rough and striking heartiness of former days. And we have all heard of such a thing as taste refined to that painful sensitiveness, that it became a source of torment,—that is, unfitted for common enjoyments and even for common duties. There was once a great man, let us say at Melipotamus, who never went to church. A clergyman once, in speaking to a friend of the great man, lamented that the great man set so bad an example before his humbler neighbors. "How can that man go to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... possibilities of democratic theories; and there are those who would a thousand times rather see these shattered into hopeless fragments than any other result which could possibly transpire in the national affairs of all Christendom. Let our democracy prove shallow, weak, inefficient, unfitted for emergencies, and incapable of sustaining itself under the test of determined opposition, to them it is enough. Our great national axiom, is, per se, the eternal foe of all monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, of all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... than that of non-payment. "The rascality of man," he writes, "is almost beyond belief." He never was more despondent or more irritable than now. No one was better aware of his weakness than himself. In short, his heartaches and nervousness unfitted him for business. As usual, he attributed his discouragement chiefly to his financial obligations. The firm was as hard pressed as ever. Indeed a new source of danger had developed. Fothergill's affairs became involved, and had it not been for Boulton's capital and ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... incapable as is McClellan, and absolutely unfitted by nature to be a great captain as is Burnside, yet I think it quite clear that neither of them would have blundered quite so terribly if he had been provided with a really competent, zealous and faithful staff, as the generals of continental Europe invariably are. But it seems that here, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... wholly unlike, for Abigail had been a plain, simple-hearted, buxom country girl of the West, whose world was all contained within the limits of the neighborhood where she lived, while Ethie was a high-spirited, petted, impulsive creature, knowing but little of such people as Abigail Jones, and wholly unfitted to cope with any world outside that to which she had been accustomed. But love is blind, and so was Richard; for with his whole heart he did love Ethelyn Grant; and, notwithstanding his habits of thirty years, she could then have molded him to her will, had she tried, by ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... Colonel Armytage, scornfully. "Your sister will be as happy as her nature will allow her, with her books and abstruse studies, which, by all accounts, have turned her brain, and unfitted her for every-day life. However, we will not discuss the subject. It is settled to my satisfaction, at all events. I am no longer the miserable beggar I was two hours ago. By-the-by, what has become of our tall friend who accompanied us from Aberdeen? I expected to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the importance of which could not be over-estimated, and it was thought that keeping a strong column in its vicinity for a few days would materially strengthen our position there. Moreover, Umritsar lay in the direct route to Jullundur, where the military authorities had proved themselves quite unfitted to deal with the emergency. It was decided, therefore, that Umritsar should be our objective in the first instance. We marched from Lahore on the 10th June, and reached Umritsar ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... regarding Flossie as a deeply injured person. He had wronged her from the beginning. Had he not laid on her, first the burden of his passion, and yet again the double burden of his genius and his honour? A heavier load, that, and wholly unfitted for the poor little back that would have had to bear it. It never occurred to him that he had been in any way the victim of Flossie's powerful instincts. It was Maddox who said that Mr. Spinks had made himself immortal by his marriage; ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... was already a middle-aged man when he was drawn into correspondence by Thomas Pennant, a naturalist younger than himself, who had undertaken to produce, in four volumes folio, a work on British Zoology for the production of which he was radically unfitted. It has been severely, but justly, pointed out that wherever Pennant rises superior, either in style or information, to his own dead level of pompous inexactitude, he is almost certainly quoting from a letter of Gilbert White's. Yet no acknowledgment of the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this, while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the world-old bitterness of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... standers in the aisle so privately, calmly saying together—with the actor as chief speaker, Hugh grim, and the Californian mostly a nodding listener? Was Hugh—whose big eyes and stone visage so drolly fitted each other yet seemed so sadly unfitted to this big emergency—was he insisting that it would be idle for him to go to Basile without the twins, as was only too true? Or that John the Baptist and his two disciples must first be disposed of? Or was it his word that the most pressing need was for the actor, long ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... and catalogues show a general desire in the Western Church to settle the canon. The two most influential men of the period were Augustine and Jerome, who did not entirely agree. Both were unfitted for a critical examination of the topic. The former was a gifted spiritual man, lacking learning and independence. Tradition dominated all his ideas about the difficult or disputed books. He did not enter upon the question scientifically, on the basis of certain ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... him of the King's kindliness and simplicity, his desire for peace, and his passion for sport, solitude, and the open air, which, amidst the worries of power, must often have made him dream of a life of freedom far from the imperious duties of royalty for which he seemed unfitted.* But the Queen was yet more tenderly loved. So naturally and serenely virtuous that she alone remained ignorant of the scandals of Rome, she was also a woman of great culture and great refinement, conversant with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Cornwallis to make this treaty, when Seringapatam lay at his mercy, have ever been a mystery. Tippoo had proved himself a monster unfitted to live, much less to rule, and the crimes he had committed against the English should have been punished by the public trial and execution of their author. To conclude peace with him, now, was to enable him to make fresh preparations for war, and to necessitate ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... is a libel on Byron, who was a libel on God." "Byron, too," murmured Jenkins. "Yes, Byron, another blasphemer. The six symphonies are caricatures of the symphonic form. Their themes are, for the most part, unfitted for treatment, and in each and every one the boor and the devil break out and dance with uncouth, lascivious gestures. This musical drunkenness; this eternal license; this want of repose, refinement, musical feeling—all these we are to believe make ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... after all, only fallible, and those to whom is given the privilege of accepting or refusing candidates for admission to the great Society of Jesus had made a fatal error in taking Rene Drucquer. Never was a man more unfitted to do his duty in that station of life in which he was placed. His religious enthusiasm stopped short of fanaticism; his pliability would not bend so low as duplicity. All this the young journalist learnt as he penetrated further into the sensitive depths of his companion's gentle temperament. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... preparations was only equaled by their vast lack of intelligence, insuring defeat from the first. The type of ship adopted was the old galley, intended to ram and grapple the enemy but totally unfitted for manoeuvring in the Atlantic gales. The 130 ships carried 2500 guns, but the artillery, though numerous, was small, intended rather to be used against the enemy crews than against the ships themselves. The necessary geographical information for the invasion of Britain ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... with a comprehensive and penetrating genius, but should possess a wide and accurate acquaintance with the best accredited results of philosophic speculation and scientific research. To such qualifications I can lay no claim, and accordingly I must regard myself as unfitted for a purely philosophic treatment of natural theology. To speak plainly, the question of the existence of a God is too deep for me. I dare neither affirm nor deny it. I can only humbly confess my ignorance. Accordingly, if Lord Gifford had required of his lecturers either a dogmatic ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... must it front the south; for when the sun fills the concavity, the inclosed air, unable to escape or circulate, is heated, and then extracts and dries up the juices of the body. It is also to be carefully observed that the place be not unfitted to transmit sound, but one in which the voice may expand ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... maintained for some time a fierce, and, on their part, a bloody contest. Exposed thus, in a narrow street, to a galling fire, and finding themselves unable to force the barrier, or to discharge more than one in ten of their fire arms—the violence of the storm having unfitted them for service; many of the assailants threw themselves into the stone houses on each side, which afforded them a shelter both from the storm and from the enemy. After continuing some time in this situation, Morgan proposed to cut their way back to the American camp. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... officer is more and more a failure, and unfitted to command, in proportion as he is high in rank. Rash personal conduct which might be tolerated in a lieutenant would in a lieutenant- general be conclusive of his unfitness to hold any general command. Of course, there are rare emergencies when an officer, let his rank be what it may, should ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... agreeing)—"I understand that one juryman prevents your coming to a verdict. In my summing up I have clearly stated the law, and any juryman who obstinately sets his individual opinion against the remaining eleven is totally unfitted ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... who, as he himself relates, came to America at the age of eighteen, and therefore could have had little previous opportunity of studying theology, and who, moreover, was unfitted to do so by the want of knowledge of Latin, to which he himself confesses, yet at the end of his history of the conquest of Mexico, one of the most interesting books ever written, has the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... by, and Mildred was growing desperate. Unfitted for most work, either in strength or education, she scarcely knew for what to apply, and went from one place to another at her aunt's recommendation, feeling like a forlorn little waif for whom there was no ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... mediocre health, and though from a cadet he had attained the rank of lieutenant it was doubtful if he would ever rise higher. His mother had left him four thousand dollars, so he went over to the Latin Quarter and began to study painting. That he was unfitted for, and meeting Eugene Blery he became interested in etching. A Dutch seventeenth-century etcher and draughtsman, Reiner Zeeman by name, attracted him. He copied, too, Ducereau and Nicolle. "An etching by the latter of a riverside view through the arch of a bridge is like a link ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Heidi shall never have to go and earn her living among strangers; I will make provision against this both during my life and after. But now I have something else to say. Independent of her circumstances, the child is totally unfitted to live a life away from home; we found out that when she was with us. But she has made friends, and among them I know one who is at this moment in Frankfurt; he is winding up his affairs there, that he may be free to go where he likes and take his ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... has become an under-graduate. A University career means, among other things, the discovery of new powers, new interests, and opportunities; sometimes it brings with it the painful conviction that aspiration has outstripped capacity. The bright girl who has excelled at school, may find that she is unfitted for independent honour work: she is not necessarily worse on that account, but she must substitute some other plan for her ambition to become a "specialist." The slow plodder who could never trust her memory at school, may, at College, discover unsuspected ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... to her all day, when poor Fred was left in his lonely room, to bear his own share of sorrow in solitude? For though Mr. and Mrs. Langford, and Uncle and Aunt Roger, made him many brief kind visits, they all of them had either too much on their hands, or were unfitted by disposition to be the companions he wanted. It was only Aunt Geoffrey who could come and sit by him, and tell him all those precious sayings of his mother in her last days, which in her subdued low voice renewed that idea of ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Society, already suffering sufficiently at the hands of men whose intellect is more evolved than their conscience. Hence arises the necessity of withholding certain teachings from those who, morally, are as yet unfitted to receive them; and this necessity presses on every Teacher who is able to impart such knowledge. He desires to give it to those who will use the powers it confers for the general good, for quickening human evolution; but he equally desires to be no party ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... more unfitted to teach things to so shy a boy as Philip. He had come to the school with fewer terrors than he had when first he went to Mr. Watson's. He knew a good many boys who had been with him at the preparatory school. He felt more grownup, and instinctively realised that among the larger numbers ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... upon your view over the bay while we have been staring at puppets half asleep. Most costly games, but I should say—judging of you by myself—that they would have been quite revolting to you. Poor AEsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. Why should I tell you of it all? The very costliness of the affair took away all the pleasure. Six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of Clytemnestra, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... know this man, C.," I said when I had finished. "And I want to ask whether you will let me show him Miss Montague's letter. It would set him against the girl, who, as a matter of fact, is wholly unwor—I mean totally unfitted for him." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of goodness," observed De Maintenon, "and by her very innocence is unfitted to judge of character. The old Princess de Carignan imposed upon her credulity with some story of an unhappy attachment, while veritably his illness is nothing more than the natural consequence ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... for some man who could take his place in that office, and aid in the direction of national politics; to use his own words, "who could replace Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and himself." Breckenridge of Kentucky only appeared and died. The eccentricities of John Randolph unfitted him for leadership. William H. Crawford of Georgia, Monroe's secretary of the treasury, alone filled Gallatin's expectations. To a powerful mind Crawford "united a most correct judgment and an inflexible integrity. Unfortunately he was neither indulgent nor civil, and, consequently, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... almost before Dot could realize the movement, she found herself standing alone, whilst the Kangaroo hopped forward to the front of a big boulder, as if to meet the dog. Here the poor hunted creature took her stand, with her back close to the rock. Gentle and timid as she was, and unfitted by nature to fight for her life against fierce odds, it was brave indeed of the poor Kangaroo to face her enemies, prepared to do battle for the lives of little ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... neglect, plainly malicious, lies incontestably at the judge's door; for the sow is a stupid animal, and therefore unfitted for the theft of papers. From which it plainly appears that the said frequently mentioned sow was not otherwise than instigated to the same by the opponent, Ivan Pererepenko, son of Ivan, calling himself a nobleman, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... after night Rose had been christened; and the nurse sat with the child in the room where my old grandmother lay. I was so cut up with grief, and when I looked upon my child, so sad and yet so glad—in fact I was so greatly shaken that I felt utterly unfitted for any kind of work, and stood quite still and wrapped up in my own thoughts beside my old grandmother's bed; and I counted her happy, since now all her earthly pain was over. And as I gazed upon her face a strange smile began ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... growing whiter and angrier, his eyes flashing, his fists clenched. His testimony was not going to be accepted after all! It had been vain to bear the shame himself. Nothing, nothing that he could do would blot out the trouble because he had unfitted himself to blot it out. It had to be a witness who told the truth who would be believed. It had to be one with a good record to take away the shame! That was something like what Miss Marilyn said in Sunday School once, that only Jesus ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... married men exhaust themselves by these excesses; they become irritable, liable to cold, to rheumatic affections, and nervous depression. They find themselves weary when they rise in the morning. Unfitted for close application to business, they become dilatory and careless, often lapsing into entire lack of energy, and not seldom into the love of intoxicating stimulants. Numbers of husbands and wives entering upon these experiences ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... tried and true warriors, the ballot in one hand, the child led by the other, they are in a position to right old wrongs, for they have won new rights. They will be able to put into practice in their homes all they have gleaned from the sojourn in the world; the ill-given service of unfitted menials will disappear, as ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... a kind of training in the arts of producing discords on their instruments, and of begging, in the whole of which the cruelty of the masters and the stolid submission of the pupils are the predominant features. The worst part of all is that the children become utterly unfitted for any occupation except vagrancy ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Hamlet. A young tenor whose great vocal and physical advantages made him an ideal Duke in Rigoletto, a fascinating Almaviva in Il Barbiere, found but little enjoyment in life because his director refused to allow him to try Otello and Tannhaeuser, for which he was vocally unfitted. Never show the public what you cannot do, is the best advice that can be given in such cases. Even the finest and most experienced singers are occasionally liable to make mistakes in the choice of roles. Madame Patti once sang Carmen, and Madame Melba essayed Bruennhilde; but I am not aware ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... of Mrs. McManus, that the principalships of the boys' grammar-schools ought to be accessible to ladies of the proper character and qualification, without the imputation that by reason of their sex they must necessarily be unfitted for such duties. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the Huguenots? What beneficial influence did they have on the colony? What was the "Grand Model"? How was it unfitted for a new country? How was it received? What were the relations between the proprietors and settlers? How were the difficulties ended? How came ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of the Emperor on the Elbe and the Weser to victory. The wild impetuous fire of his temperament, which no danger, however apparent, could cool, or impossibilities check, made him the most powerful arm of the imperial force, but unfitted him for acting at its head. The battle of Leipzig, if Tilly may be believed, was lost through his rash ardour. At the destruction of Magdeburg, his hands were deeply steeped in blood; war rendered savage and ferocious his disposition, which had been cultivated by youthful ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... girl learns and practices but one thing,—some one mechanical movement, which gives no scope for invention, ingenuity, or any other of the powers called into play by domestic labor; so that she is in reality unfitted in every ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... miscellaneous poems, though some of these are admirable, even the Contes, exhibit only a fragment of his mind; in the Fables the play of his faculties is exquisite, and is complete. His imagination was unfitted for large and sustained creation; it operated most happily in a narrow compass. The Fables, however, contain much in little; they unite an element of drama and of lyric with narrative; they give scope to his feeling for nature, and to his gift for the observation of human character ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... in America, and at the very time he was superseded in the command, he was conscious that the army must soon evacuate Philadelphia. For the last seven months he had, indeed, been living a life of pleasure, which wholly unfitted both him and his army for active service. Hence, it is no wonder that before his departure both officers and men, expressed their warmest affection for him. On the 18th of May a grand fete was given to him as a proper leave-taking, which was celebrated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... otherwise than kind and generous. But let us understand each other. I shall remain at present under this roof. Do not misapprehend my views. I seek not to recall your affections. The past has proved to me that we are completely unfitted for each other. I have not those dazzling qualities that could enchain a fiery brain like yours. I know myself; I know you; and there is nothing that would fill me with more terror now than our anticipated union. And now, after ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the pints I have been explainin' to you," and then he went on agin real high headed, and skairt, about the old ground, of the willingness of the meetin' house to shelter wimmen in its folds, and how much they needed gaurdin' and guidin', and about their delicacy of frame, and how unfitted they wuz to tackle anything hard, and what a grief it wuz to the male sect to see 'em a-tryin' to set on Conferences or mount ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... sorry to press any business matters on your attention," he said, "when you are necessarily unfitted to deal with them. But I must take my instructions back to London with me to night. With reference, in the first place, to the disgraceful pecuniary offer, to which I have already alluded. The younger Miss Vanstone having read the Instructions, needs no further ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... times; distributed 804 tracts; visited the sick several times; sat on the platform at temperance and other public meetings 47 times; had the headache Sabbath mornings, and so was compelled to appear in a condition of physical pain, nervous prostration and bodily distress that utterly unfitted him for public preaching, 104 times; picnics attended, 10; dinners, 37; suffered from attacks of malignant dyspepsia, 37 times; read 748 hymns; instructed the choir in regard to the selection of tunes, 1 time; had severe cold, 104 times; sore throat, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... his own in many ways, the princess, whose money and influence could get him something to do in Wagon Wheel, and Mary, whose very name made him shudder with remembered adoration—each one now made him think. Mary, of all the group, was most certainly unfitted to share his mode of life, and yet the thought of her made the others ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... for all to do at various rates of wages that would bring about a value equilibrium of services.[9] The maladjustments are either of an individual or of a general character. Individual maladjustment may be due to a mistake in choosing an occupation (e.g., through the vain ambition of one unfitted to be an artist, actor, lawyer, or teacher); or to failure to acquire by adequate training the necessary skill; or to loss of capacity by accident, old age, or failure of mental or moral powers; ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... so many calls to make with father," she said, wearily. "It is the worst work I do. They are upon fashionable, frivolous people, who cannot talk about anything. It is worse martyrdom now than it used to be. I think I am peculiarly unfitted for such ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... show was over it was quite amusing to get his version of the incident. It was almost always so wide of the fact as to be little recognizable. And, mind you, he was perfectly sincere in his belief, and absolutely courageous. Only he was quite unfitted by physical make-up for a big game hunter; and I was relieved when, after a short time, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... in their manufacture, in addition to numerous alterations which have been registered according to the Act, Vic. 6 & 7, Cap. 65. With very few exceptions the inventors have not been repaid the cost of their patents. This has arisen, partly from the delicacy of their mechanical construction, unfitted for the rough usage to which Umbrellas are exposed; but chiefly in consequence of the increased cost of manufacture not being ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... created farmers must in many cases have aroused. The natural consequence of the enactment was that the spurious element amongst the peasant-holders, represented by those whose tastes and capacities utterly unfitted them for agriculture, parted with their allotments, which went once more to swell the large domains of their wealthier neighbours.[770] We do not know the extent or rapidity of this change, or the stage ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... would have the effect of throwing them (as their only alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit 25 of at least 500 miles extra; besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to the Torgau at a point unfitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The defile in the hills, therefore, it was resolved to gain; and yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of light 30 cavalry, there was little chance ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... neighbourhood of water should be avoided. A clear stream is a tempting object, and the difficulty of carrying water for the supply of troops is important; but it is less than the necessity of carrying the sick. If once the fever of malaria attacks an individual he becomes unfitted for his work; the blood is poisoned, and he is the victim of renewed attacks which baffle medical skill and lead to other serious complications. Avoid the first attack. This may generally be effected ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the negroes were unfitted for the exercise of the elective franchise, and "can not be expected correctly to comprehend the duties and responsibilities which pertain to suffrage. It follows, therefore, that in admitting to the ballot-box a new ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... article of food being excessively dear, and only sometimes to be had, which troubled us exceedingly; and we were so continually vexed with violent rains, that we thought to have all perished. I was forced to fetch away the junk I bought at Lantor unfitted for sea, as the Dutch, on seeing men at work upon her, sent out one of their ships to batter her to pieces. So that night I got the help of two tonies to launch her, having to carry her a great way on rollers, which we did under night, and got her out of sight before ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... You will perceive how unfitted I was for the meeting I attended to-night. The uppermost thought in mind as I left was, "I do not believe in bloodless revolutions." You cannot have a revolution of society without turning part of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee |
