"Unfitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the difficulty and upon its submission to the public meeting called for its consideration, it was felt that the comment of the irrepressible Victor Forsythe was not entirely unfitting: ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... were fiction, instead of a veracious study from life,' to make use of a phrase which one rarely finds out of a novel, it would be unfitting to let such an incident as that just related fall to the ground, except as the seed of future development; but, this being as I have stated, there is nothing more to say of that winning ouvriere. ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... occasions the hostility of the Republican Administration provoked a trial of strength with the Federalist judiciary. The impeachment in 1804 of John Pickering, District Judge in New Hampshire, on charges of intoxication and habits unfitting him for his duties, amounted to little short of a tragedy. When the trial opened, Judge Pickering did not appear, but representations made by his son showed beyond a doubt that he was and had been for two years of unsound mind. To convict a man of misdemeanors for which he was not morally ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... restored in this life "an hundredfold." How is it to be wished that these half measures were abandoned, and that if we have put our hand to the plough, we might not look back, as we so often have done, to the unfitting ourselves for that kingdom which is not only righteousness, but peace and joy. "That your joy may be full," is plainly the purpose of our Saviour towards His children; and yet how many, as Macaulay says, "have just enough religion to make them unhappy when they do ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... the root of his trouble. The passing recoil from an ardent avowal is no uncommon experience with the finer types of men. But, to Roy, it seemed peculiarly unfitting that the son of his mother should, as it were, stumble into marriage in a headlong impulse of passion, on a superficial six weeks' acquaintance; and the shy, spiritual side of him felt alarmed, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... within the precincts of the college ground. "Before those next ten years are gone," she would say, "common-sense will have interfered to let folks live out their lives properly." It had been quite useless for me to attempt to make her understand how unfitting was such a speech for the wife of the President of the Republic. My wife's opposition had been an annoyance to me from the first, but I had consoled myself by thinking how impossible it always is to imbue a woman's mind with a logical idea. And though, ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... maidens, "we have counsel for thee." "What may it be?" she inquired. "Go to the youth that is in the upper chamber, and offer to become his wife, or the lady of his love, if it seem well to him." "That were indeed unfitting," said she. "Hitherto I have not been the lady-love of any knight, and to make him such an offer before I am wooed by him, that, truly, can I not do." "By our confession to Heaven, unless thou actest thus, we will leave thee here to thy enemies, ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... who left the military service during the latter half of the year 1865 and early in the year 1866 re-entered civil life with apparent contentment and even with certain advantages. Their experience as soldiers, so far from unfitting them for the duties and callings of Peace, seem rather to have proved an admirable school, and to have given them habits of promptness and punctuality, order and neatness, which added largely to their efficiency in whatever field they were called to labor. After ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... naval art and the military art are both in a state of transition; the last discovery of to-day is out of date, and superseded by an antagonistic discovery to-morrow. Any large accumulation of vessels or guns is sure to contain much that will be useless, unfitting, antediluvian, when it comes to be tried. There are two cries against the Admiralty which go on side by side: one says, "We have not ships enough, no 'relief' ships, no NAVY, to tell the truth"; the other cry says, "We have all the wrong ships, all the wrong guns, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... noncommittal on this subject. If she has not thought about equal suffrage she must do so now, exactly as persons of intelligence were compelled to think about slavery in the time of Garrison, or about the reformation in the time of Martin Luther. To those who try to get out of it it is not unfitting to quote Thomas Huxley's famous sentence: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who dare not reason is a coward; he who can not reason is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... overnight by threats if required. It has hardly seemed necessary to inquire how the learner would know when his work was finished, or to what extent he should pass judgment on thoughts presented, for her questions and other tests would insure proper thoroughness, and her presence would check unfitting boldness in judging. It has hardly seemed necessary to consider how far he should proceed in the mastery of a topic, or how he should avoid being dogmatic, for she would let him know when the endpoint was reached—if he did not stop too soon of his ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose." There was in Spenser a facility for turning to account all material, original or borrowed, an incontinence of the descriptive faculty, which was ever ready to exercise itself on any object, the most unfitting and loathsome, as on the noblest, the purest, or the most beautiful. There are pictures in him which seem meant to turn our stomach. Worse than that there are pictures which for a time rank the poet of Holiness or Temperance, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... "And most unfitting for you, were it not that you laboured in a great cause; but it must soon be decided, and then that fair lily shall be transplanted, like a wild flower from the rock, and be ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... of these successive transitions the husband has remained obediently and tranquilly indifferent. He has in his heart considered them all equally unfitting and uncomfortable and sighed in regretful memory of a deep, old-fashioned arm-chair that sheltered his after-dinner naps in the early rosewood period. So far he has been as clay in the hands of his beloved wife, but the anaemic ladies and the communion table are the last drop that causes his cup ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... I hold, and hold strongly, that the study of physical science, far from interfering with an officer's studies, much less unfitting for them, must assist him in them, by keeping his mind always in the very attitude and the ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... of business, instead of unfitting a cultivated mind for scientific or literary pursuits, are often the best training for them. Voltaire insisted with truth that the real spirit of business and literature are the same; the perfection of each being the union of energy and thoughtfulness, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... law, and which the Saviour came not to destroy but to complete (for what he completed was not alien to Him, but yet it was not perfect); secondly, the part comprising evil and unrighteous things, which the Saviour did away with as something unfitting His nature; and thirdly, the part which is for types and symbols, which is given as a law, as images of things spiritual and excellent which, from being evident and manifest to the senses, the Saviour changed into the spiritual and unseen. Now ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... words," she mocked him, yet very seriously, "I am to wait until he dies of old age to make quite sure that he has no such sins as must render him an unfitting husband?" ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... poison. A very obvious incidental reflection is the cruelty of science, sacrificing its best loved object to its curiosity. And may we not turn the whole tale into a parable of the isolation produced by a peculiar and unnatural rearing, say in heterodox beliefs, or unconventional habits, unfitting the victim for society, making her to ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... and a duel with pistols in the course of one week, he tells them roundly he will be no writer, which common-sense might have told them before. He has now perhaps acquired habits of insubordination, unfitting him for the army, where he might have been tamed at an earlier period. He is too old for the navy, and so he must go to India, a guinea-pig on board a Chinaman, with what hope or view it is melancholy to guess. His elder brother did all ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... just as it was, was wholly unexpected. I was surprised and disconcerted. In my previous reasonings I had certainly considered her sex as utterly unfitting her for those scenes and pursuits to which I had destined myself. Not a doubt of the validity of my conclusion had insinuated itself; but now my belief was shaken, though it was not subverted. I could ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... refresh them. On the middle of the couch, its feet and frame[86] being made of willow, is placed a cushion of soft sedge. This they cover with cloths, which they have not been accustomed to place there but on festive occasions; but even these cloths are coarse and old, {though} not unfitting for a couch of willow. The Gods seat themselves. The old woman, wearing an apron, and shaking {with palsy}, sets the table {before them}. But the third leg of the table is too short; a potsherd, {placed beneath}, makes it equal. After this, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... good work go on until the mummy of a dead bird will be recognized by all persons as an unfitting decoration for ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... the writer and reader, of the attempt which must be made to use vague words so as to convey a precise meaning, is not wholly a matter of regret. It is not unfitting that logical treatises should afford an example of that, to facilitate which is among the most important uses of logic. Philosophical language will for a long time, and popular language still longer, retain so much of vagueness and ambiguity, that logic would be of little ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... he dwelt on these things, till Lady Lucy, exasperated, could hardly bring herself to open the envelopes which contained his lucubrations. Could any subject, in correspondence with herself, be more unfitting or more futile?—and what difference could it all possibly make to the girl's ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... star to him, will accept Mertoun while she was sinning with another! He should have felt that this was incredible, and immediately understood, as Guendolen does, that her lover and Mertoun were the same. Dulness and blindness so improbable are unfitting in a drama, nor does the passion of his overwhelming pride excuse him. The central situation is a protracted irritation. Browning was never a good hand at construction, even in his poems. His construction is at its very worst in ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... education raised their still familiar outcry about "cramming children full of nonsense" and "unfitting them for the state of life to which they were called." But one cannot say what state of life they may be called to without opportunity of testing their capacities, and as for cramming them with nonsense, such a scheme, if properly ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... commonly supposed to belong to that people. To an altitude of six feet three he added a breadth of shoulder and expansion of chest seldom equalled among men of more highly-favoured climes; and his real bulk being very greatly increased by his costume, he appeared to be a very giant—no unfitting tenant of such giant scenery. The said costume consisted of an extremely loose coat or shirt of deerskin, having the hair outside, and a capacious hood, which usually hung down behind, but covered his head at this time, in order to protect ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. And this induced Plato to esteem of Homer as a sacrilegious person, because he presented the gods sometimes laughing. As also it is divinely said of Aristotle, that to seen ridiculous is a part of dishonesty, ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... which might be remedied. As to a love of the drama going out of the human heart, that is all nonsense. Put it at the lowest, what a great pleasure it is to hear a good play read. And again, as to serious pursuits unfitting men for dramatic entertainments, it is quite the contrary. A man, wearied with care and business, would find more change of ideas with less fatigue, in seeing a good play, than in almost any other way of ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... been twice to the opera since we arrived here. At the Pergola, Bassi, though a woman, is the Primo Uomo; the rare quality of her voice, which is a kind of rich deep counter-tenor, unfitting her for female parts. Her voice and science are so admirable, that it would be delicious to hear her blindfold; but her large clumsy figure disguised, or rather exposed, in masculine attire, is ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... joy to care for you," said Madame von Marwitz. "I have always loved you like my own child. I do not admit that to think of Franz as a husband for you was to do you a wrong. I would not listen to an unfitting suitor for my child. It is you who have hurt me—deeply hurt me—by so misunderstanding me." Sorrow and ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... by the Lord:— "Go earthward! pass where Solomon hath made His pleasure-house, and sitteth there arrayed, Goodly and splendid—whom I crowned the king. For at this hour my servant doth a thing Unfitting: out of Nisibis there came A thousand steeds with nostrils all aflame And limbs of swiftness, prizes of the fight; Lo! these are led, for Solomon's delight, Before the palace, where he gazeth now Filling his heart with pride at that brave show; So taken with the snorting and the tramp Of his war-horses, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... whom the Woman was tempted; even by the most ugly and unworthy of all Beasts, into whom the Devil entered and persuaded. Secondly, What was the Motive of her Disobedience? Even a desire to know what was most unfitting her Knowledge; an Affection which has ever since remained in all the Posterity of her Sex. Thirdly, What was it that moved the Man to yield to her Persuasions; even the same Cause which hath moved all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... perhaps, on a moment's reflection, the rose-leaves scattered on the floor, and the air filled with odor of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a religious brotherhood—or if this should not be conceded, at all events it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... different, in their frank, bold, fearless expression, from the dark and wily intellect that characterises the lineaments of the South—eloquent at once with enthusiasm and thought—he might have seemed no unfitting representative of the genius of that northern chivalry of which he spake. And Adrian half fancied that he saw before him one of the old Gothic scourges of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... glory, there is the anagogical sense. Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the author of Holy Writ is God, Who by one act comprehends all things by His intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says (Confess. xii), if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... disproportionated^; inharmonious, unharmonious^; inconsonant, unconsonant^; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper; unsuited, unsuitable; inapplicable, not to the point; unfit, unfitting, unbefitting; unbecoming; illtimed, unseasonable, mal a propos [Fr.], inadmissible; inapposite &c (irrelevant) 10. uncongenial; ill-assorted, ill-sorted; mismatched, misjoined^, misplaced, misclassified; unaccommodating, irreducible, incommensurable, uncommensurable^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... if he—as if I had been given a new frock." She altered the "as if he had given me" which was upon her tongue because the proposition, even for purposes of illustration, that a nobleman could ever have offered her a new frock seemed to have in itself something of the scandalous and unfitting. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... seems not unfitting to me to take next into our consideration, as it were all in a train, what he has also said against him. But first let us contemplate a little the diligence—together with the manifold and profound knowledge—of this ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... any other calling for sympathy and care, we see him cast among strangers and mercenaries, without either nurse or friend;—the self-collectedness of woman being, as we shall find, wanting for the former office, and the youth and inexperience of Count Gamba unfitting him wholly for the other. The very firmness with which a position so lone and disheartening was sustained, serves, by interesting us more deeply in the man, to increase our sympathy, till we almost forget admiration in pity, and half regret that he should ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... administrative reconstruction which now awaited him. How this task—at once more congenial and more especially his own—was discharged is a matter that must be left for a second volume. In the meantime the conclusion of the Surrender Agreement is no unfitting stage at which to bring the review of the first period of Lord Milner's ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... leisure to nurse their sorrows: there was Nannie left to toil for, and it was unfitting her for her necessary labors to give vent to the rising anguish, therefore she choked back the bitter sighs and tears, and plied her needle diligently, trying to think only of the mercies left her. She had still plenty ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... years together, understanding very little of it, but perhaps prizing and loving it the more for that. Of late he had begun to listen to the doctrines of the sect of Flagellants settled in the neighborhood. He was evidently shaken by them, but judged it unfitting to go over to the new faith. His habit of theological reading gave him an expression of still ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Richard Crawshay, the first of the great ironmasters who had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of manufacturing iron invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting commentary on the sad history we have thus briefly described. It shows how, as respects mere money-making, shrewdness is more potent than invention, and business faculty than manufacturing skill. Richard ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... thought of them to defy them. He longed to be exempted from the restraint of the Royal presence, that he might indulge the secret glee with which such unexpected tidings filled him, and which prompted him to bursts of delight which would have been totally unfitting for that society. ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... unfitting for a well order'd City to be without Laws and without a Governor; so neither ought a Feast to be without Orders and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... referred to by the late First Lord, has been content to leave his record of sixty-one years' service in the hands of his countrymen. In the briefest maiden speech ever delivered in either House he stated that it was "unfitting to make personal explanations affecting the national interest when my country is in the midst of a great war." Here at least the traditions of the "Silent Service" have been worthily maintained, just as they are maintained by the Port Officer R.N.R. at an Oriental seaport, a ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... applaud," answered the count stiffly. "As a with-the-capacity-and-learning-requisite-for-teaching-endowed young man deserves he also some commendation. Also will I remember his laudable-and-not-lacking independence character. Nevertheless, unfitting would it be should I pay the first tenor of the opera five francs an hour to teach my daughter Italian literature." De Pretis ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... let them have their way. After all, a guest's women helped the woman of the house, and as there was no woman in Keeper's House, it was not unfitting ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... better I should think,' said Miss Browning with some severity. For she had got many of her notions of the metropolis from the British Essayists, where town is so often represented as the centre of dissipation, corrupting country wives and squires' daughters, and unfitting them for all their duties by the constant whirl of its not always innocent pleasures. London was a sort of moral pitch, which few could touch and not be defiled. Miss Browning had been on the watch for the signs of deterioration in Cynthia's ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... conscious of any secrets," answered Bridgenorth, "nor do I desire to have any, in which a clergyman is unfitting confidant." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... occasionally the excessive duration, of these periods of unemployment too often makes unemployment not a beneficent vacation (comparable to shorter hours), but a period of tragic anxiety, demoralizing and unfitting for return to work. Irregular work is generally recognized to be a greater cause of poverty and of actual pauperism than is a ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... twain: "For what do ye take me? Am I a lesser or a weaker man than either of ye that Sir Gawain must needs ride with me? I will not have it so. There is no knight so bold but I dare well withstand him. I know well what is unfitting. Now say whither ye will betake ye, and send me what road ye will; I will dare the venture, be it never so perilous. By my knighthood, and by all who follow Christendom, I shall adventure alone, and take ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... unqualified regret we call to mind that notably sad event. Like many another of lowlier name he died in the service of his queen—and ours; and perchance the Queen herself rebelled, not as against an utterly unfitting thing, when thus called in her own person to share the griefs of those among her own people, whom recent events have made ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... confines him to the chamber of private grief, while the Senate is occupied with the public manifestations of a respect and sorrow which a national loss inspires. In the absence of that Senator, and as the member of this body longest here, it is not unfitting or unbecoming in me to second the motion which has been made for extending the last honors of the Senate to him who, forty-five years ago, was a member of this body, who, at the time of his death, was among the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... this, she was cheerful in spite of their hunger. Almost all of God's favorites among women, before their life-work is given them, pass through such hunger,—seasons of dull, hot inaction, fierce struggles to tame and bind to some unfitting work the power within. Generally, they are tried thus in their youth,—just as the old aspirants for knighthood were condemned to a night of solitude and prayer before the day of action. This girl was going through her probation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... malformations, the limbs of the operatives suffer in still another way. The work between the machinery gives rise to multitudes of accidents of more or less serious nature, which have for the operative the secondary effect of unfitting him for his work more or less completely. The most common accident is the squeezing off of a single joint of a finger, somewhat less common the loss of the whole finger, half or a whole hand, an arm, etc., in the machinery. Lockjaw very often follows, even upon the lesser among these injuries, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... new development in sociology. She has many lessons to learn, but one has hopes of her. It is said that she is unfitting herself to be a wife and mother. If the ideal helpmeet for a man be an animated Dresden china shepherdess—something that looks pretty on the table, something to be shown round to one's friends, something that can be locked up safely in a cupboard, that ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... evil genii or sprites in the Arabian tales, it can reach from afar the object of its malignity, striking him down unawares in the most unaccountable manner; making him a victim to all manner of ills, sufferings, and tribulations; unfitting him for marriage or the cares of business; making him miserable and an object of continual scolding and punishment in childhood, through its worriments and nocturnal enuresis; later on, beginning to affect him with ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... "It seems unfitting," she said quietly. "He is almost like your uncle. Of course, one may marry one's uncle—but he is too old for you, dear. And, after all, with your name, and ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... northern counties, the following information was forwarded to the crown. The Earl of Derby, lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, wrote to inform the council that he had arrested a certain "lewd and naughty priest," James Harrison by name, on the charge of having spoken unfitting and slanderous words of his Highness and the Queen's Grace. He had taken the examinations of several witnesses, which he had sent with his letter, and which were to ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... small number of the people who either permanently or temporarily reside in the district as compared with its vast expanse and the variety of the interests that have to be subserved, make it altogether unfitting in my judgment to provide for a popular election of a legislative body. The present system is not adequate and does not furnish the character of local control that ought to be there. The only compromise it seems ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... taller than one of the people, and indeed the natural needs are the same to all, and the means of satisfying them should be equally within the reach of all. Fit a man's education to his real self, not to what is no part of him. Do you not see that in striving to fit him merely for one station, you are unfitting him for anything else, so that some caprice of Fortune may make your work really harmful to him? What could be more absurd than a nobleman in rags, who carries with him into his poverty the prejudices of his birth? What is more despicable than a rich man fallen into poverty, ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the friend and biographer of Turgot, and it was not unfitting that he should resume the design of a history of civilisation, in the light of the idea of Progress, for which Turgot had only left luminous suggestions. He did not execute the plan, but he completed an elaborate sketch in which the controlling ideas of the scheme ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... England; and as I now hope to see the great object of my existence accomplished—the son of my old captain established in his rights—I purpose throwing off my allegiance to France, and becoming once more a Spaniard. I have told you all this, at a moment so unfitting, because I am anxious that you should endeavour to prevent any of the persons who were on board my frigate from escaping. Tacon will certainly make the attempt. He does not know of what crimes he may be found guilty, and instinctively will do what ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... one to whom it is proposed. For fitness is spoken of by way of relation; hence it depends on both extremes. And hence it is that taste, according as it is variously disposed, takes to a thing in various ways, as being fitting or unfitting. Wherefore as the Philosopher says (Ethic. iii, 5): "According as a man is, such does the end seem ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... never forgive me—if I were to allow Lady Merton to run any risk of some sordid scandal which might get into the papers. Of course this young man ought to take himself off! If he had any proper feeling whatever he would see how altogether unfitting it is that he, with his antecedents, should be associating in this very friendly way with such persons as Elizabeth Merton ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that one of the most cruel results of modern social life is the cutting off of young girls from acquaintanceship with youths of the sturdy, intelligent and hardworking type—and the unfitting of such girls for anything except the marriage mart of ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... wed them so soon as he should have brought her out of the fortress. Upon that detail they were within an ace of quarrelling. Guidobaldo would not at first agree to such hasty nuptials; they were unfitting the dignity and the station of his niece, and if Gian Maria would wed her he must come to Urbino and let the ceremony be performed by a cardinal. Well was it then for Gian Maria that he mastered his wonted ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... promises." The instrument used in this ordeal is generally our brother-man. Yet, while with hope and confidence, we look forward to a glorious issue of temporal affliction in eternal glory, let us beware of unfitting ourselves for the future recompence by extreme resentment against those who are the agents that Almighty Wisdom uses to improve us. Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives. Do we not often afflict others ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... curb him in his way of life and his lawless acts. And I do not repeat what might be added, as it is almost all of the same sort as those of which I have written—being the effects of a depraved character, as is evident, for his will is governed by unfitting motives. He has, moreover, a son who is accustomed to argue with him, increasing his covetous disposition, although there is no need for that. [In the margin: "Let the papers in regard to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... faintest idea that the girl's heart had been touched by the young tailor. She had so lived that she knew but little of lovers and their love, and in her fear regarding Daniel Thwaite she had not conceived danger such as that. It had to her simply been unfitting that there should be close familiarity between the two. She expected that her daughter would be ambitious, as she was ambitious, and would rejoice greatly at such perfect success. She herself had been preaching ambition and practising ambition all her life. It ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... the only proper way to do. Why in the world should you wake her up, just to spend the whole night in useless grieving? unfitting her utterly for her journey, and doing yourself more harm than you can undo in a week. No, no; just let her sleep quietly, and you can go to bed and do the same. Wake her up, indeed! I thought ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... an idol—To please him I had begun—To please myself in pleasing him, I was trying to become great—and with him went from me that sphere of labour which was to witness the triumph of my pride. I saw the estate pass into other hands; a mighty change passed over me, as impossible, perhaps, as unfitting, for me to analyse. I was considered mad. Perhaps I was so: there is a divine insanity, a celestial folly, which conquers worlds. At least, when that period was past, I had done, and suffered so strangely, that ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... one equal to the concession you ask me to make," he said gravely. "In my eyes nothing could be more unfitting than that you should be staying in London—during a time of particularly violent agitation—under the chaperonage of Miss Marvell, who is already committed to this agitation. If I agree to such a direct contradiction ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the convictions of the Spirit in him be unaffected, save that continual so doing might lessen them; but when he blasphemes the Spirit—it being so interwoven as to be, in a sense, a part of himself—he involves his own soul, by taking a stand against himself, as it were, thereby unfitting and unqualifying himself to be further affected by the Spirit. He drowns, dissolves, annihilates the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... discussion has hitherto been limited to the lesser evils attributable to the forcing upon the masses of the people a useless and unsuitable kind of education. But there are far graver possibilities than the mere unfitting of large numbers of individuals for the occupations their natural propensities ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... relation to that subject, they are hardly worth considering; but the fact is that the regulation of industry, the distribution of wealth—these and all other questions derive their importance solely from the manner in which they affect individual men, women and children, fitting or unfitting them for the life that now is and that which is to come. A good deal might be said of {72} the temper which makes fun of the idea of God's "solicitude to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness"; but we may leave that unhappy phrase ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... I ever had with my noble and lamented friend Lord George Bentinck, which I am happy to say was thoroughly removed before his untimely death—was upon a full and frank expression of my opinion that nothing could be more unfitting nor more impolitic than to load with terms of vituperation those from whom we are compelled conscientiously to differ' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... said she. "It would only do harm. But I wish ministers knew and felt that at the communion table there is a Real Presence that makes many words unfitting. When we are on the mount of Transfiguration, we do not care much for Peter, James or John. And so, dear, I recommend you to do as I do—if the minister must give us a doctrinal disquisition, or a learned argument, or an elaborate arabesque of fancy work, or an ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... practised by the whole church during a great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and that though since that time they had by subtle practices begun to fall into disuse, and in place thereof other foreign and unfitting usages by little and little to creep in, yet in the royal chapels and many other churches most of them had been ever constantly used and observed) it was declared that the standing of the communion table sideway under the east window of every chancel was ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... unfitting," he said; "I shall take a lowlier seat." Then he drew a stool to him, and sat down before her, and said: "What aileth thee? What ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... in mine ears that I am Richard's son. Fond man! ah, whither art thou carried? How are thy thoughts ywrapt in honour's heaven? Forgetful what thou art, and whence thou camest. Thy father's land cannot maintain these thoughts; These thoughts are far unfitting Fauconbridge: And well they may; for why, this mounting mind Doth soar too high ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Light" was indeed leading on Jack Pringle, no longer boy on the schooner "Flying Fish," but—what? The soul of a fisher lad, who had kissed his girl, and drunk his glass, and told many a brave and unfitting tale, and sworn many a lusty oath, following some torch along the radiant ways of Heaven! Was that it? Uniacke had, possibly, preached now and then that so indeed it was. Or, perhaps, was the light-hearted and careless living lad caught fast, like sunk wreckage, in the under sea of Hell, where ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... When thousands of savages burst on her defenceless settlements, she had conquered safety and peace with her own blood and her own slender resources; but now, as the proposed capture of Quebec would inure to the profit of the British crown, Bradstreet and his council thought it not unfitting to ask for a supply of arms and ammunition, of which they were in great need. [Footnote: Bradstreet and Council to the Earl of Shrewsbury, 29 Mar., 1690; Danforth to Sir H. Ashurst, 1 April, 1690.] The request was refused, and no aid of any kind came from the English ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Algernon; a bad habit," said my lord, lighting another seagar: "a disgusting and filthy practice, which you, my dear child, will do well to avoid. It is at best, dear Algernon, but a nasty, idle pastime, unfitting a man as well for mental exertion as for respectable society; sacrificing, at once, the vigor of the intellect and the graces of the person. By-the-by, what infernal bad tobacco they have, too, in this hotel. Could not you ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... woman's heart she guessed the cause of his trouble, and while she had been afraid of him when he appeared suddenly as the Indian warrior yet she liked him better in that part than as she now saw him. Then he was majestic, now he was prosaic, and it seemed to her that his present role was unfitting. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... morning service drew near, the drummer took his accustomed stand before the church and began to thunder forth his summons,—a summons not unfitting those stern Puritans whose idea of religion was that of a life-long warfare against the world, the flesh, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... forced upon absurdities. For if the Act begins in a Chamber, all the persons in the Play must have some business or other to come thither; or else they are not to be shown in that Act: and sometimes their characters are very unfitting to appear there. As, suppose it were the King's Bedchamber; yet the meanest man in the Tragedy, must come and despatch his business there, rather than in the Lobby or Courtyard (which is [were] fitter for him), for fear the Stage should be cleared, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... trouble! For his joy, He makes you recompense. 'Tis not unfitting For you, Count Piccolomini, to feel So tenderly—my brother it beseems To show himself forever ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... with other gifts, such as broadcloth[FN208] and woollen stuffs and Grecian silks. Thy father accepted them and chose out from amongst the five girls Sophia, daughter of King Afridun; nor did we hear more of her till the beginning of this year, when her father wrote to my father in words unfitting for me to repeat, rebuking him with menaces and saying to him: Two years ago, you plundered a ship of ours which had been seized by a band of Frankish pirates in which was my daughter, Sophia, attended by her maidens numbering ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... is a confidence. Such a use of the word ought to be abandoned to women: doubtless, when sitting in a bower in the month of May, it is pleasant to hear from a lovely mouth—'I put implicit confidence in your honor:' but, though pretty and becoming to such a mouth, it is very unfitting to the mouth of a scholar: and I will be bold to affirm that no man, who had ever acquired a scholar's knowledge of the English language, has used the word in that lax and unmeaning way. The history of the word is this.— Implicit (from the Latin implicitus, involved in, folded up) was ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... it unfitting that the passage to the women's apartments should be left open when so many in the palace know the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... originating cause of this imperfection, it detracts very largely from the usefulness and value of a horse, disqualifying him for ordinary labor and wholly unfitting him for service under the saddle without jeopardizing the safety of his rider. If, however, the trouble is known from the start, and is not the result of congenital deformity or weakness of the knee joint, or secondary to other diseases, rest, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Persian porters who are seen at Baku; they are also to be found at Petrovsk and Astrachan, and are generally preferred to the local labourers, who, in common with their class in Russia, take a long drink once a week, often unfitting them for their work the following day. The Persians are of sober habits, and can be relied upon for regular attendance at the wharfs and loading-stages. They have learnt, however, to take an occasional ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... a member of the Royal family to public opprobrium, so, in like manner, in 1820, a woman, and no less a person in this instance than a titular queen of England, was the means of dragging the crown itself through the mire of a disreputable scandal. That Caroline of Brunswick was an uncongenial and unfitting consort; that she was an utterly unfit and improper person to occupy the exalted position of Queen of England, there can be no manner of doubt. But to the question whether it was wise, politic, or dignified to subject her conduct (however morally criminal) ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... towards her new friend. She thought how nice it would be to have Nora at that splendid abode in England of which she had heard so much,—but she thought also that in that splendid abode she herself ought never to have part or share. If it were the case that this were an unfitting match, it was clearly her duty to decide that there should be no marriage. Nora had been quite right in bidding her speak to Mr. Glascock himself, and to Mr. Glascock she would go. But it was very difficult for her to determine on the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... "Not unworthy, surely, but unfitting for it," replied the Scot. "Give me the dress of a slave, noble Ilderim, and I will don it with pleasure; but I cannot brook to wear the habit of the free Eastern warrior with the turban ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Rex and the others could not declaim French verse, and improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from plays: he usually protested against the notion that an amusement which was fitting for every one else was unfitting for a clergyman; but he would not in this matter overstep the line of decorum as drawn in that part of Wessex, which did not exclude his sanction of the young people's acting charades in his sister-in-law's house—a very ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... with advice given to her by Lord de Terrier. And yet Lord de Terrier and his first lieutenant had used all the most practised efforts of their eloquence for the last three days in endeavouring to make their countrymen believe that no more unfitting Minister than Mr. Mildmay ever attempted to hold the reins of office! Nothing had been too bad for them to say of Mr. Mildmay,—and yet, in the very first moment in which they found themselves unable to carry on the Government themselves, they advised the Queen ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... of turpitude that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations, which made the ancient philosophers ever think laughter unfitting in a wise man. So that what either in the words or sense of an author, or in the language and actions of men, is awry or depraved, does strongly stir mean affections, and provoke for the most part to laughter. And therefore it was clear that all insolent and obscene speeches, ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... in Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed. It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had had to promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, they regarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was at that time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the deprivation of the freedom without which it was impossible to write. Still, he never mentioned these strictly personal matters. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... It was unfitting, he declared, that Beatrice should be married before her elder sister Sancie, and Charles of Anjou must perforce hold his amorous desires in leash until his prospective sister-in-law was ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... plain that, as a general rule, it is unfitting that government should own and operate industrial establishments. Practical experience has indicated that this experiment is wellnigh certain to result in failure, for reasons so evident as to require no mention here. The only alternative remaining is government regulation with ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... Worthies planned by the JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA, the first issue of which was devoted to Maimonides. The biography of Rashi is the second of the series. It is not for the author to endorse the order adopted, but he hazards the opinion that the readers will find the portrait of Rashi no unfitting companion-piece even to that of the author of ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... good and refined. It was the fashion among them to attend the classes, Bible and secular, put in their way, and their employers conscientiously attended to their welfare, so that Rose was by no means an unfitting companion for the High School maiden, and they most happily compared notes over their very different lives, when they were not engaged in playing with little Cea, as the unwieldy name of Miss Morton's protegee had been softened. She was a very pretty little ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mutual consent the contending forces drew apart. Prisoners had been taken on both sides, and Whately, who had badly sprained his arm, unfitting himself for active duty, was given charge of those secured ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... for fear that in saying precisely what fits your case I may seem to be uttering words that are unfitting for myself.[14] This I will pass over; and further, by Jupiter, also the affairs of Gabinius, against whom, you prepared accusers and then pled his cause in such a way that he was condemned; and the pamphlets which you compose against your friends, in regard to which you feel ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... that both the lady and her suitor are willing; but that the parents or guardians of the former, on being referred to, deem the connection unfitting, and refuse their consent. In this state of matters, the first thing a man of sense, proper feeling, and candour should do, is to endeavour to learn the objections of the parents, to see whether they cannot be removed. If they ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... attempt should be made by the noblest of Teutonic races, under the noblest chief it ever produced. Nor is it unfitting here to recur to the opinion of another great Goth, not indeed the equal of Theodorich, yet of the same race and the nearest approach to him, one of those conquerors who showed a high consideration ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... youthful reminiscences may appear unnatural, even unworthy. I must own that there breaks out now and then in his journal something which shows that he himself was not satisfied with many of these juvenile memoranda, as if they showed unfitting occupation and education of a young clergyman. But that was not their real nature. Those small studies and accomplishments took the place in his early training which the cricket-match or the boat-race now take in the school time of Young England. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... desirable that those who are appointed as Judges should know something of law, and most unfitting that he whom so many officials (milites) obey should be seen to be dependent for his law on some one ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... managed to extract some food for her imagination, even from such dry bones as "Paley's Evidences" and "Edwards on the Will and the Affections." Any book was better than no book to her. Aunt Myra, who discouraged the practice of reading for girls as unfitting them for any sort of useful work, used to declare that the very sight of a book made Cannie deaf and ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the curing. The meat must be chilled through before salt touches it, but freezing is very detrimental. Frozen meat does not absorb the salt, sugar, etc., essential to proper curing. By time it thaws so absorption becomes possible, there may have been changes such as take place in cold storage, unfitting it for food. If the beef ham is thick it may need to lie a month in salt or in brine. Here as elsewhere, the element of judgment comes ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... customary for them to take their families; but I explained this peculiar state of affairs to myself by the supposition that the women had been brought that they might do the work, which is deemed unfitting a warrior. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... unable to find a proper perch. Hissing noises supervened, and then a hoot, proclaiming that a brood of young owls were residing there in the company of older ones. In spite of the habitable and more modern wing, neglect and decay had set their mark upon the outworks of the pile, unfitting them for a more positive light than that of the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... discovered, as I opened the door, that Life's memories are not Life's history, but the original work of an unseen Artist. The variegated colours scattered about are not reflections of outside lights, but belong to the painter himself, and come passion-tinged from his heart; thereby unfitting the record on the canvas for use as evidence in ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... may not be unfitting to make further mention of that same little spot of darkness, germ of canker, echo of the cry of fear, that had come to mar the fair records of Brockhurst For very certain it was that among the varying scenes, moving merry or majestic, upon which Sir Denzil had looked down during ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... unfitting that we should at this point sound another note—that of the man of feeling. It is ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... certain pride taken in the austere morality of her own life, she who was now a widow anxious to devote her life solely to God, had persuaded the man to this sin, in order that her successor as Countess of Scroope might not be, in her opinion, unfitting for nobility! The young lord had promised her that he would be guilty of this sin, so damnable, so devilish, telling her as he did so, that as a consequence of his promise he must continue to live a life of ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... three Aunts were always a sight worth seeing on a Sunday. They were lovely ladies, who, by the calendar, might have been termed old; but they had stopped aging somewhere in the happiest period of girlhood. So it was not unfitting that they should dress in their girlhood clothes, though they were all of a fashion of some thirty years previous. And so, though Auntie Elspie's hair was white and her face wrinkled, and Auntie Flora was stooped and rheumatic ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... private distress, he was a sure refuge; and the hopes entertained of his assistance and sympathy were never disappointed. The success which attended his Lordship in his profession, has proved that moral and religious worth, far from unfitting men for the naval service, only qualifies them the more for the right discharge of their arduous duties. No commander ever possessed in a higher degree the confidence of the navy, the respect of the community at large, and the love and veneration of friends ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... the sea, and the great serpents were coiled around the top and were sliding down the sides into the waters, and there was not a cracker there for John. And so, with scarcely a grammatical sentence and with most unfitting words, he went on for an hour with a discourse full of wildness and weirdness, and full of untruth, while the people looked on with amazement at the wonderful knowledge and power of the man. Twenty or thirty years ago you might hear many similar sermons. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various
... amazed and bewildered others, and filled yet others with a holy horror at the daring effort to upset all the wholesome distinctions of ranks and classes by cramming the lower orders with an amount of knowledge wholly unsuited to their subordinate condition, and unfitting them for the proper discharge of the duties associated with that station in life to which it had ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... servant, but on the feeble masters. Who can wonder if the daring and haughty spirit of Catharine scoffed at the remonstrances, and despised the interests of a country, whose cabinet adopted language so unfitting the dignity and real power of the mighty British empire? The expressions of this dialogue would have been humiliating to the smallest of the "square-league" sovereignties of the Continent. The answer of the empress was precisely what she might have addressed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... that I would find you here. I followed, as you see. We have had many meetings in church edifices, in organ lofts. It seems natural to find you in such a place, but I fear it will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what I came to say. Shall ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... haughtiest and coldest of men, bent his knee and carried her hand to his lips. So on Birthnights he kissed the late Queen's hand, she standing before the Throne. Then stood very grave. "Madam, I entreat your pardon. I have shown you a side of a man's character very unfitting for your eyes and you but the child you are. Forgive me, and ere we part for ever, answer me one question, in token of your pardon. Had I been but James Hamilton, the lowest of my clan—could you have honoured ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... crown kept in the sacristy of the cathedral.[1500] The other signs of royalty handed down from Clovis, from Saint Charlemagne and Saint Louis must be represented as well as could be. After all, it was not unfitting that this coronation, won by a single expedition, should be expressive of the labour and suffering it had cost. It was well that the ceremony should suggest something of the heroic poverty of the men-at-arms and the common folk who had brought the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... a single glance. I will suppose that I carry to a sick person a potion which I believe to be an efficient remedy, but which, by a mistake for which I am not accountable, proves to be a deadly poison. My act, by the standard of absolute right, is an unfitting and therefore a wrong act, and it has its inevitable result in killing the patient. But because my intention was right, I have not placed myself in any wrong relation to God or man. Nay, if I procured what ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... not eat any heavy meats, such as tapir and peccary, but confine themselves to birds, monkeys, deer, fish, etc., principally because they argue that the heavier meats make them unwieldy, like the animals who supply the flesh, impeding their agility, and unfitting them for the chase." Similarly some of the Brazilian Indians would eat no beast, bird, or fish that ran, flew, or swam slowly, lest by partaking of its flesh they should lose their ability and be unable to escape from their enemies. The ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... finger-tips! That grey old house, with high lichen-stained roof and narrow windows—where but in sunny France could one see its like?—and the little farmsteads and villages, full of indescribable charm. One felt oneself in a land of artists. There was no inharmonious, no unfitting thing anywhere. Man had wedded himself to Nature, and his works seemed to receive her seal and benediction. English landscape was beautiful, and it had a particular charm to be found nowhere else in the world; but in revenge, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the progressive weakening of my father's health and peace of mind during the previous year or so, may probably have influenced my attitude in all such matters, may have given a partly feminine quality to my affection for my father. I know it seemed to me unfitting that he should ever take any part in our domestic work on the Livorno, and very natural that I should attend to all such matters. Also I had felt, ever since the day in Richmond Park when, to some extent, he gave me his confidence ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... not. To him the posture was one unfitting to the dignity of a mighty werowance, ruler over thirty tribes and lord of sixty villages. He would accept presents sent him, and he had no objection to wearing a glittering ring upon his head if the white men chose to give him one; but he would not kneel; that ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... exceptional qualifications for this missionary work. Just over twenty years of age, her youthful beauty and grace, the tender, yearning love which lit up her expressive features, the ready utterance and sweet voice, and the charm of manner which never left her, were no unfitting media to convey the tidings of mercy to many a benighted seeker ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... its features it wears the same noble aspects." As a bold navigator Columbus won the fame of a world-discoverer; but he never knew himself what he had found; and if Mr. Winsor's estimate is just, it is not altogether unfitting that the name of a more clear-sighted voyager than he should be given to the world ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... the chapel door, and his apparently triumphal march into his church on the first Sabbath of his return, after all the people had assembled, as if to say, "Behold us now!" was not to his taste nor of his planning; all this threw his thoughts into a tumult unfitting him in ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... sending up new suckers from the old root in spite of us. It is only from its roots in the living generations of men that a language can be reinforced with fresh vigor for its needs; what may be called a literate dialect grows ever more and more pedantic and foreign, till it becomes at last as unfitting a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. That we should all be made to talk like books is the danger with which we are threatened by the Universal Schoolmaster, who does his best to enslave the minds and memories of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to despise this selfish civilisation and to comprehend what living might be. Understanding Socialism will not make people at once what men and women should be but it will fill them with hatred for the unfitting surroundings that damn us all and with passionate love for the ideals that are lifting us upwards and with an earnest endeavour to be themselves somewhat as they feel Humanity ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Otway's restless, ill-concealed unhappiness. Even in the old days Anna had disapproved of Major Guthrie, and she had thought it very strange indeed that he came so often to the Trellis House. To her mind such conduct was unfitting. What on earth could a middle-aged man have to say to the mother of a ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... idiotic chatter, Mr. Ferrers, and listen to me with whatever little power of concentration you may possess. Your conduct, sir, has been wholly unfitting an officer and a gentleman. If I did my full duty I'd order you in arrest at once, and have you brought to trial before a general court-martial. You have visited upon yourself a disgrace that you can't wipe out in a year. You have—but what's ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... benefits on a grateful family that of the five Cardinals who accompanied his corpse from Avignon, one was his brother, one his cousin, and three his nephews; and that the Huguenots who violated his tomb at La-Chaise-Dieu, should have used his skull as a wine-cup, seems an horrible, but not an unfitting mockery. It was in vain that Petrarch hotly wrote, "the Pope keeps the Church of Jesus Christ in shameful exile." The desire for return ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... cloak. It became an obsession with him, and, as he now recognized, there was even more in it than a mere hunt for a spy. This woman troubled him; he wished to know who and what she was and why she, a girl, had undertaken a task so unfitting. Yet war, he remembered, is a destroyer of conventions, and the mighty upheaval through which the country was ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... his thoughts had been turned to poetical composition, but it was subsequent to the commercial disasters of 1825 that he began earnestly to direct his attention towards the concerns of literature. Successive periods of bad health unfitting him for continued labour in the fields, were improved by extensive reading and composition. Before he had completed his nineteenth year he had produced upwards of twenty poetical compositions, each of considerable length, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... disturbances broke out in the Papal States, he took a part in them which was eminently unfitting, as he and his mother had found hospitality in the States of the Church which they were refused in every other country. I saw Hortense at night, just before her hurried departure from Rome, when the news ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... have already ordered some vessels to France, under your direction as to their future operations, and more, we expect, will be sent. But our frigates are not capable of carrying much bulky commodity for commercial purposes, without unfitting them for war; besides, there is the consideration of our being obliged to get them away, how, and when we can, or endanger their being taken, which prevents our sending them to those staple Colonies, where the commodities ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... economists hold that higher education is unfitting numbers of young men from following the humbler pursuits, while at the same time it is not making them as efficient as are their ambitions; and such men are recognized as the most potent chemical in making the milk of human kindness to turn sour. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... lover: conceive the effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that light—that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a possibility,—and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting conditions, and questions ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the President that Mr. Trimble had once been in the British army; that he was even then a subject of the Queen, and entitled to a pension from the Cape Government. The canteen interest on the goldfields, playing upon the prejudices of the Boers, represented that this was unfitting the dignity of the Republic. The President, who was too shrewd to be caught with such chaff, was perfectly ready to support them for the sake of the liquor interest, which for him constitutes a very useful electioneering and political agency ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... relation she assumes to him, the entireness of his trust in the spotless purity of her whole nature. And in him we have presented all those essential and fundamental elements of nature which give assurance that, Dorothea by his side, he shall be no unfitting helpmeet to her, no drag or hindrance on her higher life; that he shall rise to the elevation and purity of her self-consecration, and shall stand by her side sustaining, guiding, expanding that life of ever-growing fulness and human ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... was girded on them. The men hurried to and fro with saddles on their heads, and stumbled over other saddles, and swore savagely. The women turned mutinous and would not rise; or, being dragged up by force, shrieked wild, unfitting words, as they were driven to the horses. The Countess looked on and listened, and shuddered, waiting for Carlat to set her on her horse. She had gone during the last three weeks through much that was dreary, much that was hopeless; but the chill discomfort of this forced start, with tired ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... Forgive me if at an unfitting time, Amid the soft devoirs of gallantry, I thus intrude unwilling; but I seek ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... when hee saw the bookes of Moses he commended them for such a majesticke stile as might become a God, but withall hee censured that manner of writing to be very unfitting for a Philosopher because there was nothing proved in them, but matters were delivered as if they would rather command than perswade beliefe. And 'tis observed that hee sets downe nothing himselfe, but he confirmes it by the strongest reasons that may be found, there ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... till she should find Folco's daughter alone or nearly so, and then and there addressed her earnestly with a request for some private speech. In such a season of merry-making the request did not come so strangely from a masked youth as to seem either insolent or unfitting. But Beatrice knew at once that the voice was a woman's, and so said, smilingly, as she drew a little apart with her challenger. Then it appears that Vittoria unmasked and named herself, and that Beatrice looked at her very steadily ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stout Tragedy," she said, "Why tread'st me down? art thou aye gravely play'd? Thou deign'st unequal lines should thee rehearse; Thou fight'st against me using mine own verse. Thy lofty style with mine I not compare, Small doors unfitting for large houses are. 40 Light am I, and with me, my care, light Love; Not stronger am I, than the thing I move. Venus without me should be rustical: This goddess' company doth to me befal. What gate thy stately words cannot unlock, My ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Many efforts are being made to break up the custom, but it is up-hill work. Another habit of the Negro which militates against his progress is his prowling about in all sorts of revels by night, thereby unfitting himself for labor the next day. This trait also shows forth the general thoughtlessness of the Negro. His mule works by day, but is expected to carry his owner any number of miles at night. Sunday is seldom ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... them, and another moment when we were just a little morbid about them; but now we have struck a very happy vein, free from all morbidness, very innocent and very happy, abounding in life and in no way unfitting for the experiences that have to be lived through afterwards. No one thinks it waste of time to write and illustrate books for children, and to do their very best in both, and the result of historical research and the most critical care of texts is put ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... he said, "that the forest is yet lord over these lands, but in the future I think the lilies of France will wave here. You perhaps have an equal faith that the shadow of the British flag will be over the wilderness, but it would be most unfitting for you and me to quarrel about it now. I infer from the canoe and the three paddles that you did not ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... the sacrilege was so ludicrous that Kendrick laughed aloud. However, he insisted that there was nothing unfitting in the idea; it was a good idea ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... mind—alas!—is not of the firm texture it once could boast; and your friend knows well how to press on the spring of every passion that can agitate and alarm her. Threats of exposure may extort her consent to this most unfitting match, if they do not indeed drive her to suicide, which I think the most likely termination. I will, therefore, be strong where she is weak.—Your friend, sir, must at least strip his proposals of their fine gilding. I will satisfy Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's of his false ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the obvious, any proof of the childlikeness and innocence of Emily, however childlike and innocent she may have been. I see only a tremendous artistic uprightness, the rejection, conscious or unconscious, of an unfitting because extraneous element. Anne, who was ten times more childlike and innocent than Emily, tackles this peculiar obviousness unashamed, because she needed it. And because she did not need it, Emily ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... figure of a man—short, tubby, with scanty red hair, and a brogue thick as pea-soup. Eccentric in most things, he was especially so in his dress, which he seemed to select on the principle of finding the most unfitting things to wear. Rumour credited him with a numerous half-breed progeny—certainly he was greatly mixed up with the Maories, half his crew being made up of his dusky friends and relations by MARRIAGE. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... employs hundreds of boys. —"March 1, 1902—Believing that the smoking of cigarettes is injurious to both mind and body, thereby unfitting young men for their best work—therefore after this date we will not employ any young man under twenty-one years of age who ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Lucy said. "He shan't be whipped any more, shall he, because Miss Grantly looks like a statue? And, Fanny, don't tell Mark to put me into a lunatic asylum. I also know a hawk from a heron, and that's why I don't like to see such a very unfitting marriage." There was then nothing more said on the subject, and in two minutes they arrived at the house of the Hogglestock clergyman. Mrs. Crawley had brought two children with her when she came from the Cornish curacy to Hogglestock, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Such an organization of our County Council system would operate also to break up sectarian cliques. The feeling of organized classes, farmers, or industrialists, concerned about their own well-being, would oppose itself to sectarian sentiment where its application was unfitting. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild, designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson |
