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More "Unfit" Quotes from Famous Books



... days, and half an hour, Judith held the sovereign power, Wondrous beautiful her face; But so weak and small her wit, That she to govern was unfit, And so Susanna ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... and body are alike unfit To trust each other, for some hours, at least; When thou art better, I will be thy ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... my lord," said the Nevile, bluntly, "I see already I had best go back to green Westmoreland, for I am as unfit for his grace the archbishop as I am ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... little boy's ears. This last address had disconcerted the young mother sadly, and cost her some tears; for she was as innocent as Geoff, and the idea that there were in the village things to tell her that were unfit for the child's ears threw her into daily terror, not only for him, but for herself. This was one of the things that made it apparent that a new rule was necessary. Her business grew day by day, as she began to understand it better, and the lessons fell more and more ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... equipped with aircraft, and had none available for Naval work. According to our knowledge at the time the United States Navy, in April, 1917, possessed twenty-three large and about twenty-four small destroyers, some of which were unfit to cross the Atlantic; there were about twelve submarines capable of working overseas, but not well suited for anti-submarine work, and only three light cruisers of the "Chester" class. On the other hand about ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... to me and I closely inquired as to the cause of this loss of the wing power. Plume grew more and more familiar in her address and in a long conversation told me of the many conditions that make people unfit to fly. I deduce from our conversation a few ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... also made a statement defending his appointments of Justices of the Supreme Court, and challenged anyone to prove them unfit. He said that, from the foundation of the Government, it had become customary for a President to make such appointments from amongst those whose views were in harmony with his own, that in this case he had selected men of well known integrity, and of profound legal ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... she said, "will support the untarnished honour of his maternal house, and elevate and support that of his father. Poor Lucy is unfit for courts or crowded halls. Some country laird must be her husband, rich enough to supply her with every comfort, without an effort on her own part, so that she may have nothing to shed a tear for but the tender apprehension lest he may break his neck in a foxchase. It was not so, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... murmur, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Thus far is plain sailing, for every one will agree with me; but when I denounced to the priests the pools of clotted blood as offensive, even to coarse men, and wholly unfit as a satisfactory offering to any power to whom we can ascribe the name of God, they retorted by saying this is also part of the Christian system: the God of Abraham demands his sacrifice of blood also. It is in vain to intimate ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... Francis Barber, has been pressed on board the Stag Frigate, Captain Angel, and our lexicographer is in great distress. He says the boy is a sickly lad, of a delicate frame, and particularly subject to a malady in his throat, which renders him very unfit for his Majesty's service. You know what manner of animosity the said Johnson has against you; and I dare say you desire no other opportunity of resenting it than that of laying him under an obligation. He was humble enough to desire my assistance on this occasion, though he ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... removed at the special request of the headmaster. A private tutor, heavily paid, took him in hand, but was no more successful with him than the schoolmasters had been. At the age of eighteen he was found unfit to pass any of the examinations which open the way to gentlemanly employment. Various jobs were found for him by his desponding parents, but on every occasion he was returned to them politely. He drifted at last ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... the governor's order for a quantity of cloves. The Dutch and English are contending with each other in the Moluccas; and the former, it is said, are intending to attack the Spanish forts there soon. Gaviria has but few men, and some of these are unfit for duty. He needs a few galleys, as he has "only one rotten galliot"; also troops, money, and clothing. Gaviria thinks that the Dutch are being to some extent supplanted by the English; and that the latter will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... secretary of the club was William Johnstone (Sir William Pulteney), and, as has been frequently told, David Hume was jocularly appointed to a sinecure office created for him, the office of assassin, and lest Hume's good-nature should unfit him for the duties, Andrew Crosbie, advocate (the original of Scott's "Pleydell"), was made his assistant. The club met at first in Tom Nicholson's tavern, the Diversorium, at the Cross, and subsequently removed to more fashionable quarters ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... effectually roused him from his habitual languor. His indolence was, however, so much the effect of ill health, that exertion was sometimes scarcely in his power, especially in hot weather, and by the time his brothers' studies were finished each day, he was unfit for anything but to lie on the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... striking figure, or a bold expression. But most of the poems are deformed by harshness of versification, feebleness of thought, and every species of bad writing. Compounded words, never seen before, and impossible to be pronounced, epithets detailed on service for which they are wholly unfit, figures that illustrate nothing but their own absurdity, and rhymes that any common book would die of, astonish the reader on every page. Had the poet purposely aimed to twist the English language into every ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... custom of the Persians, who never let their wives appear, but drink, dance, and wanton with their whores. This they propose for us to imitate; they permit us to have mimics and music at our feasts, but forbid philosophy; she, forsooth, being very unfit to be wanton with us, and we in a bad condition to be serious. Isocrates the rhetorician, when at a drinking bout some begged him to make a speech, only returned: With those things in which I have skill the time doth ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... followed these words. The alferez stopped and stared not unkindly at the wretch, who, thinking that his words had produced a good effect, went on with more spirit: "Yes, sir, my mother-in-law doesn't give me anything to eat but what is rotten and unfit, so last night when I came by here with my belly aching I saw the yard of the barracks near and I said to myself, 'It's night-time, no one will see me.' I went in—and then many ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... more than any man to mould the thoughts of his nation—and indeed of our English Puritans likewise—was writing a little book on the 'Regiment of Women,' in which he proved woman, on account of her natural inferiority to man, unfit to rule. ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley

... two and a half miles distant. Accordingly, mounting one horse, with Lewis on the other, they galloped over the plain, and striking the forest at the nearest point, they found it dry, destitute of grass, and totally unfit for a camping ground. Taking a circuit in a southerly direction, where the surface seemed more broken, they found they were on higher ground, and as they rode on, the thick undergrowth all the ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... for its introduction into Europe. Under the name of the Median Apple a tree is described first by Theophrastus, and then by Virgil and Palladius, which is supposed by some to be the Orange; but as they all describe it as unfit for food, it is with good reason supposed that the tree referred to is either the Lemon or Citron. Virgil ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... in illness: she neither seeks nor will accept sympathy. To put any questions, to offer any aid, is to annoy; she will not yield a step before pain or sickness till forced; not one of her ordinary avocations will she voluntarily renounce. You must look on and see her do what she is unfit to do, and not dare to say a word—a painful necessity for those to whom her health and existence are as precious as the life in their veins. When she is ill there seems to be no sunshine in the world for me. The tie of sister is near and dear indeed, and I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... part of quiet friendship than for him, partly because her love was a much less tempestuous affair and partly because a woman nearly always plays a part of any kind with more facility than a man does. And Larry Holiday was temperamentally unfit to play any part whatsoever. He was a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... nothing occult in the science of government. The administration in behalf of the people of the organization which they have ordered is nothing foreign to their own knowledge. They have ceased to consider themselves unfit for self-rule: they no longer think of calling in from other worlds a different order of beings to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... have not lost the grace of blushing yet; but you will soon, if you keep up this sort of study and forget to be ashamed. The society of such women will unfit you for that of good ones, and lead you into trouble and sin and shame. Oh, why don't the city fathers stop that evil thing, when they know the harm it does? It made my heart ache to see those boys, who ought to ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... so-called States are now but conquered provinces? That North Carolina and other waste territories of the United States are unfit to associate with ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... to sea, take care of themselves, and remain there prepared to attack an enemy wherever he may be found. Invisibility to an enemy may facilitate attack, but it has to be dearly paid for in diminished safety. Further, the life that must be led in such vessels in time of war would very quickly unfit men for their ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... Sir Lionel, I thank you; I am dead to the world and am only here to perform a duty; the hearing of names would stir sad memories in my heart and unfit me for my task," and motioning him to bend down towards her, she said in tones only ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... different as possible from all the big commercial departments of to-day. The really good journeyman tailor does not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... statements to the directors, had appealed to some of their most deep-rooted prejudices. Tillie's filial insubordination, her "high-mindedness," her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she refused even to live under her father's roof—all these things made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young children. She would imbue the "rising generation" with her ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... 231ier Regiment d'Infanterie were publicly announced. It was scheduled to entrain on the morrow for the front between Metz and Nancy. Robert le Marchand needed not to go. Pronounced unfit by the regimental doctor, his name had been placed upon the hospital list. Amidst the bustle of preparation for departure he spent the day in quietude, and Marie played ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... from another dog-fight. This time my dog had lost (which was but natural, seeing its very unfit condition, though to be sure it looked well enough at a glance). Alas! the sport is not what it was in my young days, when rogues can so put off a sick dog upon the unsuspecting. Methinks 'tis becoming a very brutal, degrading practice—have determined to have done with dog-fighting once and ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol

... of day to her, and the time of day meant some obscene remark unfit for women's ears. The young girl wore a simple grey dress, with fine lawn kerchief neatly folded across her bosom, a large hat with flowing ribbons sat above the fairest face that ever gladdened men's eyes ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... ways, that it may be considered a failure. The reason for its failure is not so much bad management as lack of foresight on the part of those choosing the site. The site is in no sense suitable for a colony, the soil being unfit for intensive farming. Probably the best work done there has been the reformation of drunkards, a work in which, according to reports, the colony has been ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb

... made prisoner, and when his wounds were healed, he was, though not perceptibly, disabled for active service. Amongst his brethren in captivity was a Captain Paling, who, when an exchange of prisoners took place, hastened to join his regiment, and gave George, who was deemed unfit for service, a letter to his mother and sisters who resided in Dartmouth. The letter was all that the captain could give him, for he was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... clothing that is received here is new and serviceable, but thousands of pieces are so badly worn that, to use the words of General Axline, of Ohio, who is doing noble service here with the thousands of other self-sacrificing men, "it is unfit to be worn by tramps." Many old shoes with the soles half torn off have been received. Shoes are badly needed at once or ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... technical terms also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of writing, that even with this alphabet it is only ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... captures on the Caucasian Front was "an apomecometer (an instrument for estimating altitudes)." It is understood that the latest Turkish estimate of the "All Highest" was captured with the instrument, but was found to be unfit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... district, who had a very pale daughter. I had the misfortune to tell her that the latter's colour would be restored after wedlock, and then with tears of gratitude she offered me her daughter's hand and the whole of her own fortune—fifty souls, [28] I think. But I replied that I was unfit for such ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... as in fine weather we ought to lay up for winter, so in youth one ought to form good habits and live soberly so as to have a reserve stock of strength for old age. Yet ought we to husband the exertions of the body, so as not to be wearied out by them and rendered unfit for study. For, as Plato says,[23] excessive sleep and fatigue are enemies to learning. But why dwell on this? For I am in a hurry to pass to the most important point. Our lads must be trained for warlike encounters, making themselves efficient in hurling the javelin and darts, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... Wallenstein the habit of self-examination has led to an irresolution which we feel at once, in such a man, to be a degrading weakness, and altogether inconsistent with the part he is playing in life. It is an indecision which, in spite of the philosophical tone it assumes, pronounces him to be unfit for the command of men, or to sway the destinies of a people. Artevelde, too, reflects, examines himself, pauses, considers, and his will is the servant of his thought; but reflection with him comes in aid of resolution, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... the mothers themselves are too often unfit for the divine duties of motherhood. They are lacking in a knowledge of what makes for the best life. I have seen so much of it that I am going to try to arouse the mothers of Los Angeles at a ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... motionless garden flowers headed by the smooth white river, and her gentle little friend so homely here, the contemplation of herself was like a shriek in music. Worse than discordant, she pronounced herself inferior, unfit mentally as well as bodily for the dreams of companionship with any noble soul who might have the dream of turning her into something better. There are couples in the world, not coupled by priestly circumstance, who are close to the true; union, by reason ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... extremely troublesome business on at the Merchants' Guild—I've just come away from a four hours' meeting; and upon my word I don't think I can stand a—domestic revolution at the same time. It would utterly unfit me ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... native place, and the peculiar circle in which I was brought up, by diverting me from all material pursuits, and by rendering me unfit for anything except the treatment of things of the mind, had made of me an idealist, shut out from everything else. The application of my intellect might have been a different one, but the principle would have remained the same. The true sign of a vocation is the impossibility of getting ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... proper hours, if I want to go to my friend's billiard table and play a quiet game, if I want to make merry over a few hits of backgammon, or give my energy full vent in rolling ten-pins for an hour, I am a heathen and a publican and unfit for ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.

... (1368-1422) had killed several men during his first fit of insanity. He was for the rest of his life wholly unfit to govern. He declared Henry V of England, the conqueror of Agincourt, his successor, thus disinheriting ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... brought to submit to it, will often produce effects, especially on women, like those one sees produced every day by the clash of two standards of manners. It means simply the recognition that one is unfit to be of certain company, and perhaps there are few moral ferments more penetrating. Probably Letty would have gone to her grave knowing nothing of it, but for the accident which had opened to her the inmost heart of a woman with whom, once ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Pleased with their honest method he hastened away to his house to obtain it. The two honest foragers hastily examined the particular pile of pork which the simple-hearted farmer designated as theirs, found it very rank and totally unfit for food, transferred half of it to another pile, from which they took half and added to theirs, and awaited the return of the farmer. On giving them their change, he assured them that they had a bargain. They agreed that they had, tossed good and bad together in a bag, said good-by, and ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... compacts can not be obtained from communities like ours, it need not be anticipated elsewhere, and the cause in which there has been so much martyrdom, and from which so much was expected by the friends of liberty, may be abandoned, and the degrading truth that man is unfit for self-government admitted. And this will be the case if expediency be made a rule of construction in interpreting the Constitution. Power in no government could desire a better shield for the insidious advances which it is ever ready to make upon the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... responsibility of the rupture must rest on him, he spoke more sincerely. He owned to Grace that his views had changed; said they were both too young to contract themselves when they did, and that he had made an engagement to marry, at a time when he was unfit to bind himself to so solemn a contract—said something about minors, and concluded by speaking of his poverty and total inability to support a wife, now that Mrs. Bradfort had left me the whole of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... inexhaustible converse came to an end? Had they shared the happiness of ameliorating Count Tristan's melancholy state, and seeing him daily improve? And now it was all over: she must resume her old course of life, her temporarily laid aside labors! To muse too long upon departed happiness would unfit her for those. Even the sad joy of recollection ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... full name was Dr. Pedro Rezio de Aguero, court physician in the island of Barataria. He carried a whalebone rod in his hand, and whenever any dish of food was set before Sancho Panza, the governor, he touched it with his wand, that it might be instantly removed, as unfit for the governor to eat. Partridges were "forbidden by Hippoc'rat[^e]s," olla podridas were "most pernicious," rabbits were "a sharp-haired diet," veal might not be touched, but "a few wafers, and a thin slice or two of quince," ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... like Lola Brandt always have husbands unfit for publication; and as the latter seem to make it a point of honour never to die, widowed Lolas are as rare as ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... of age, none of the family being present. I informed the persons about to set fire to the house of this circumstance, and prevailed on them to wait till Mr. Sellar came. On his arrival I told him of the poor old woman being in a condition unfit for removal. He replied, 'Damn her, the old witch, she has lived too long; let her burn.' Fire was immediately set to the house, and the blankets in which she was carried were in flames before she could be got out. She was placed in a little shed, and it was with great difficulty they ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... good old man's name) had brought out with him his own little hoard, and he said: 'I have five hundred crowns, the thrifty hire I saved under your father, and laid by to be provision for me when my old limbs should become unfit for service; take that, and He that cloth the ravens feed be comfort to my age! Here is the gold; all this I give to you: let me be your servant; though I look old I will do the service of a younger man in all ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... was too apparent that much of it had become deranged, and the parts no longer moved in harmonious action with the whole. The more these difficulties pressed upon him, the deeper did he drink, as a kind of relief, and, in consequence, the more unfit to extricate himself from his troubles did he become. Every struggle, like the efforts of a large animal in a quagmire, only tended to involve him deeper ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... first aimed his flying shaft in war, wont before to frighten beasts of the chase, and struck down a brave Numanian, Remulus by name, but lately allied in bridal to Turnus' younger sister. He advancing before his ranks clamoured things fit and unfit to tell, and strode along lofty and voluble, his heart lifted ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous living. Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to dine. That man he deemed unfit for this world ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... South, I do not conclude that more than the first step has been taken, exceedingly important as that step is. Many of the schools as yet are in a wretched condition. The buildings in the rural districts are small and rudely built, and many of them are positively unfit to be used as school houses. There are neither maps, nor charts or other appliances for the teacher's use in his work, and in fact everything about these school houses is of the most primitive type. The school year often does not exceed four months, ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various

... elder brother might have done. But young Ralph Newton had early in life taken rooms for himself in London, had then ceased to be a ward, and had latterly,—so Sir Thomas understood,—lived such a life as to make him unfit to be the trusted companion of his two girls. And yet there had been nothing in his mode of living to make it necessary that he should be absolutely banished from the villa. He had spent more money ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... Mayor, (Sir Thomas Bludworth, a silly man I think, [As his conduct during the Great Fire fully proved.]) and other places, about getting shipped some men that they have these two last nights pressed in the City out of houses: the persons wholly unfit for sea, and many of them people of very good fashion, which is a shame to think of, and carried to Bridewell they are, yet without being impressed with money legally as they ought to be. But to see how the King's business is done; my Lord Mayor himself ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... of its beauty. She and Dic could be seen only from the opposite side of the river, and she thought no one would be hunting at that time of the year. The pelts of fur-giving animals taken then were unfit for market. Venison was soft, and pheasants and turkeys were sitting. There would be nothing she would wish to conceal in meeting Dic; but the instinct of all animate nature is to do its love-making ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... collar of copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this globe the diver places his head, which he can move about at his ease. To the globe are attached two pipes; one used for carrying off the air ejected from the lungs, and which is unfit for respiration, and the other in communication with a pump worked on the raft, and bringing in the fresh air. When the diver is at work the raft remains immovable above him; when the diver moves about on the bottom of the river the raft follows his movements, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... other points relating to the general management are worthy of attention. Some crops get on fairly well when neglected and crowded with weeds. Not so with Asparagus. The plant appears to have been designed to enjoy life in solitude, being unfit for competition; and if weeds make way in an Asparagus bed, the cultivator will pay a heavy penalty for his neglect of duty. The limitation of the beds to a width of three feet, therefore, is of consequence, because ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... institutions; and lie argued generally that there was much in the situation of that country, and in the state of its society, which distinguished it from England and other nations, and which might render it, in certain cases, an unfit recipient for institutions not essential in themselves to good government, and only valuable as being machinery for that purpose. His motion was seconded by Mr. Lefroy. The bill was defended by Lords John Russell, Morpeth, and Hawick, Mr. O'Connell, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... from its being in the neighbourhood of the only secure anchorage from all winds, and near the best soil he had found after traversing the whole of the island. According to his account it was totally unfit for rearing sheep on a large scale; the bushes and grass being so full of burrs that the wool was completely spoiled. The soil was everywhere very inferior, and a few patches only of clean land was to be found, the principal part being overrun with dense ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... of Kimberley and Ladysmith we imagined that the decisive battles would soon follow. Although my knee was not yet cured, I went to Glencoe, whither our commandos had retreated. I was not five days there when I had to leave, being unfit for active service. Again I went to Warmbad for some weeks with Mr. Burgemeester Potgieter and his family, and on my return to Pretoria remained in my office until the beginning ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... abundance. When the last accounts arrived, three acres of barley were in a very thriving state, and ground was prepared to receive rice and Indian corn. In the wheat there had been a disappointment, the grain that was sown having been so much injured by the weevil, as to be unfit for vegetation. But the people were all at that time in commodious houses; and, according to the declarations of Mr. King himself, in his letters to Governor Phillip, there was not a doubt that this colony would be in a situation to support itself entirely without assistance, in less ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... prevent, in some degree, the circulation of trash which, under the name of a 'Lady author,' might otherwise have found its way into the hands of young persons of both sexes, for whose perusal it was, on the score both of morals and politics, utterly unfit. Such a notice naturally defeated its own object, and France went triumphantly through several editions. The review attracted almost as much attention as the book, and many protests were raised against it. 'What cruel work you ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... 1721.—This day, the junk having become unfit for food, and five of the crew down with scurvy, I ordered that we send two boats ashore at the nor'-western point of Hispaniola, to seek for fresh fruit, and perchance shoot some of the wild oxen ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... The owners exchanged cattle and sheep for corn, grain, and garden vegetables; they had no faith that they could grow cereals, and it was too much trouble to procure water for a garden or a fruit orchard. It was the firm belief that most of the rolling mesa land was unfit for cultivation, and that neither forest nor fruit trees would grow without irrigation. Between Los Angeles and Redondo Beach is a ranch of 35,000 acres. Seventeen years ago it was owned by a Scotchman, who used the whole of it as a sheep ranch. ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... the presiding genius of the occasion, and looked like the light-hearted girl that Leonard had wooed more than a dozen years before. She ordered him around, jested with him, and laughed at him in such a piquant way that Burt declared she was proving herself unfit for the duties of chaperon by getting up a flirtation with her husband. Meanwhile, under her supervision, order was evoked from chaos, and appetizing ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... spectators who were still open to such natural impressions. This was entirely misunderstood by the learned; with the Academy at their head, they affirmed that this subject (one of the most beautiful that ever fell to the lot of a poet) was unfit for Tragedy; incapable of entering historically into the spirit of another age, they made up improbabilities and improprieties for their censure. [Footnote: Scuderi speaks even of Chimene as a monster, and off-hand dismisses ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... though she had been driven so high up on the rock that it was very evident that we should not be able to get her off again. The boat still lay where Roger Trew and Oliver had hauled her up. We hurried down to examine her. A hole had been torn in her bottom, rendering her unfit for use. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Because she is unfit to rest there," cried the man. He pulled out a knife, and with the blade pried up the rim, and shook free the protective glass and slip of ivory. "Now 't is purged of all wrong," he said, touching the setting to his lips. "I would it were for me to keep, for 't has lain near your ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... Dodge, confronting the still kneeling and agonized delinquent, "Wretch! these are the penalties of guilt. You have forged and stolen, acts that meet with my most unqualified disapprobation, and you are unfit for respectable society.—I saw from the very first what you truly were, and permitted myself to associate with you, merely to detect and expose you, in order that you might not bring disgrace on our beloved country. An ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... them only at night, being herded together during the day in a separate cabin, in charge of nurses. These nurses are feeble, sickly women, or recent mothers; and the fact of Jule's being employed in that capacity was evidence that she was unfit for ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... the city, or in the upper portion of the island, cannot think of walking between their homes and their business. To say nothing of the loss of time they would incur, the fatigue of such a walk would unfit nine out of ten for the duties of the day. In consequence of this, street railways and omnibuses are more necessary, and better patronized in New York than in any ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... please, mother,' said she, the very day before she died, 'but I feel this pain will be the death of me—and I so unfit to die,' she added, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... But as the autumn advanced and his health did not greatly improve, another consultation of his doctors was held, the result of which was that he was pronounced to be suffering from cardiac weakness, and quite unfit for the work of the coming winter. He at once acquiesced in this verdict, and, with unabated cheerfulness, set himself to bring his lectures into a state that would admit of their being easily read to his classes by two friends who had undertaken this duty. This done, he ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns

... his tired horse for a fresh one, he should have his horse inspected by his company commander, who should certify to the condition of the horse and the necessity of the exchange. If the company commander certified that his horse was unfit for service, the man obtained from his regimental commander permission to obtain a fresh one, which had also, before it was valid, to be approved by the brigade commander. Whenever it was practicable, the exchange was required to be made in the presence of a commissioned officer, and, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... to thee!)[FN148] with rule for the unfit; * Crave thou of Allah pardon for thy foul adultery. Th' unhappy youth to us is come complaining 'mid his groans * And asks for redress for parting-grief and saddened me through thee. An oath have I to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... usual, turn the opposite side of the spyglass on my poor narrative, and reduce, MORE TUO, to the most petty trivialities, the circumstance to which thou accusest me of giving undue consequence. Hang thee, Alan, thou art as unfit a confidant for a youthful gallant with some spice of imagination, as the old taciturn secretary of Facardin of Trebizond. Nevertheless, we must each perform our separate destinies. I am doomed to see, act, and tell; thou, like a Dutchman enclosed in the same diligence with ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... commands, and left you with no choice But just to do the bidding of his voice. His rare, kind smile, low tones, and manly face Lent to his quick imperiousness a grace And winning charm, completely stripping it Of what might otherwise have seemed unfit. Leaving no trace of tyranny, but just That nameless force that seemed to say, "You must." Suiting its pretty title of "The Dawn," (So named, he said, that it might rhyme with "Swan,") Vivian's sail-boat, was carpeted with blue, While all its sails were of a pale ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... not be aliens born, or minors. 2. That they must not be any of the twelve judges, because they sit in the lords' house; nor of the clergy, for they sit in the convocation; nor persons attainted of treason or felony, for they are unfit to sit any where[c]. 3. That sheriffs of counties, and mayors and bailiffs of boroughs, are not eligible in their respective jurisdictions, as being returning officers[d]; but that sheriffs of one ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... was the name given the frigate Constitution. It was proposed by the Secretary of the Navy to dispose of the ship as it had become unfit for service. Popular sentiment did not approve of this. It was said a ship which was the pride of the nation should continue to be the property of the Navy and be rebuilt for service when needed. Holmes wrote this poem at the time of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... no! he only changed him for a worse; Embased your slavery by his own vileness, And loaded you with more ignoble bonds. Then think me not ungrateful, not to share The imperial crown with a presuming traitor. He says, I am a Christian; true, I am, But yet no slave: If Christians can be thought Unfit to govern those of other faith, 'Tis left for you ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... part from you here," he said, "and it may be so; but I fear I shall need your services still further. My mules are unfit to travel at present; they may never be fit to use; surely not within a fortnight. I must find other sumpter mules, wait for those I have to regain their strength, or leave my goods at Metz. My fortune is invested in these silks, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... restrains passion and appetite, and curbs the will. Various conjunctures arise in which the taboos are weakened or the sanctions on them are withdrawn. Faith in the current religion may be lost. Then its mystic sanctions cease to operate. The political institutions may be weak or unfit, and the civil sanctions may fail. There may not be the necessary harmony between economic conditions and political institutions, or the classes which hold the social forces in their hands may misuse them for their selfish interest at the expense of others. The philosophical and ethical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... army in its march from Old Brandenburg. He had been prostrated by fever, and although he shook off the attack it left him so weak and feeble that he was altogether unfit for duty. The army was still lying in its swampy quarters, and the leech who had attended him declared that he could never recover his strength in such an unhealthy air. Nigel Graheme, who had now rejoined the regiment cured of his wound, reported the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... uncultivated plot of ground, in the midst of which arose a black rock. Down its sides rushed with fearful noise a torrent of poisonous water, which, insinuating itself through the soil, penetrated to all the springs of the city, and rendered them unfit for use. After he had been shewn all this, the stranger led him into another large chamber, filled with gold and precious stones, all of which he offered him if he would kneel down and worship him, and consent to smear the doors and houses of Milan with a pestiferous salve which he held out to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... men, and came whole-heartedly to their assistance. He and Wicks and Carthew (so soon as he was recovered) held a hundred councils and prepared a policy for San Francisco. It was he who certified "Goddedaal" unfit to be moved, and smuggled Carthew ashore under cloud of night; it was he who kept Wicks's wound open that he might sign with his left hand; he who took all their Chile silver and (in the course of the first day) got it converted for them into portable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the offspring of degeneracy and disease. A diseased and degenerate population, no matter how favourably circumstanced in other respects, will always produce a plentiful crop of criminals. Stunted and decrepit faculties, whether physical or mental, either vitiate the character, or unfit the combatant for the battle of life. In both cases the result is in general the same, namely, a career ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... was, in a degree, one of the causes of this yielding nature; and he would almost rather have died than offer any one a personal offence, an insulting word or look. There are such characters in the world; none can deny that they are amiable; but, oh, how unfit to ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... conqueror had sedulously guarded), and had reduced them to a state of vassalage. They held the lands of their lord at his will, and paid their rent by military service. When retainers were put down, and rent or knights' service was no longer paid with armed men, their occupation was gone. They were unfit for the mere routine of husbandry, and unprovided with funds for working their farms. The policy of the nobles was changed. It was no longer their object to maintain small farmsteads, each supplying its quota of armed men to the retinue ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... thefts never extend beyond trifles.'[35] The women were well-shaped before they began to have children; both sexes slovenly and dirty in the extreme. An account of their habits in the coarse language of the historian would be unfit for our readers' perusal. There was no regular traffic in them, 'both purchases and sales being conducted in private, and the usual price for one of either sex was from five to six hundred piastres.' ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... during the voyage, which brought me in contact with this boy, and so many occasions to arouse my sympathies in his behalf, (for he was evidently in delicate health, and unfit for laborious work.) that in a short time I became deeply interested concerning him, and I determined as soon as I had recovered from sea-sickness, to watch for an opportunity of inquiring into the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... prudery of the dinner table, a mere difficulty of education and language. We are not taught to think decently on these subjects, and consequently we have no language for them except indecent language. We therefore have to declare them unfit for public discussion, because the only terms in which we can conduct the discussion are unfit for public use. Physiologists, who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal, find no difficulty; and masters of language who think decently can write popular stories like Zola's Fecundity ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... but James went further than they in arguing for divine hereditary right. Providence, James declared, had chosen the principle of heredity in order to fix the succession to the throne. This principle, being divine, lay beyond the power of man to alter. Whether the king was fit or unfit to rule, Parliament might not change the succession, depose a sovereign, or limit his authority in any way. James rather neatly summarized his views in a Latin epigram, a deo rex, a rege lex—"the king is from God and law ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... the Levantine waters, following the final expulsion of the Venetians from the Morea in 1718, gave play to the natural aptitude of the Greek islanders for coasting-trade. Then ships, still small and unfit to venture on long voyages, plied between the harbours in the AEgaean and in the Black Sea, and brought profit to their owners in spite of the imposition of burdens from which not only many of the Mussulman subjects of the Sultan, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the length of injury that wears us out! What if something should happen to us? None are so unfit to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... It gladdens us, we confess, to see how goodly a volume of Americanisms Mr. Bartlett has been enabled to gather, for it shows that our language is alive. It is only from the roots that a language can be refreshed; a dialect that is taught grows more and more pedantic, and becomes at last as unfit a vehicle for living thought as monkish Latin. This is the danger which our literature has to guard against from the universal Schoolmaster, who wars upon home-bred phrases, and enslaves the mind and memory of his victims, as far as may be, to the best models of English ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... ordinary tokens of Christian fellowship among abolitionists. If Abraham were on earth, they could not let him, consistently, occupy their pulpits, to tell of the things God has prepared for them that love him. Job himself would be unfit for their communion. Joseph would be placed on a level with pirates. Not a single church planted by the apostles would make a fit home for our abolition brethren, (for they all had masters and slaves.) The ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... language as that of the other record; but whereas the first speaker merely USED the words, the last speaker demolished them. One felt that he had extracted every ounce of power in the language, leaving it weak and flabby, unfit for further use. He threw out his sentences as though done with them; not boldly, not defiantly, least of all, tentatively, he spoke with a certainty and force that came from a knowledge that he could compel, rather than ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... was the experience of the master to intervene in order to divert the dog from a spot where the general aspect of things indicated that no commercial results need be expected, for I was more concerned with the miserable specimens unfit for the market than with the choice specimens, though of course ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... foreign yoke was to be imposed on our literature. Charles, surrounded by the companions of his long exile, returned to govern a nation which ought never to have cast him out or never to have received him back. Every year which he had passed among strangers had rendered him more unfit to rule his countrymen. In France he had seen the refractory magistracy humbled, and royal prerogative, though exercised by a foreign priest in the name of a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle naturally gratified a prince to whose family the opposition of Parliaments had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... only in the sense that many devout and religious women have been Christian mystics too. Like Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Teresa, and other holy women, she was specially attracted to the spiritual and devotional aspect of the Catholic Faith. Neither did her devotion to the spiritual element unfit her for the practical side of things: quite the contrary. Like Saint Teresa, side by side with her religious life, she was a remarkably shrewd woman of business. It need scarcely be added that between so- called "spiritualism" ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... the law of conscription obliges the student of theology, as well as the student of philosophy, to march together; and, when once in the ranks, and accustomed to the licentiousness of a military life, they are either unwilling, unfit, or unworthy to return to anything else. The Pope, with all his entreaties, and with all his prayers, was unable to procure an exception from the conscription of young men preparing themselves for priesthood. Bonaparte always ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... our fundamentals. At first it amazed me that such men would pay their own expenses to live in a place like Whitechapel, only to work on drain committees, as delinquent landlord mentors, or just to give special educational chances to promising minds, or physical training to unfit bodies. Yet one saw in their efforts undeniable messages of real love. Personally I could only occasionally run up there to meet friends in residence or attend an art exhibition, but ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... foolish one! alike unfit For healthy joy and salutary pain: Thou knowest the chase useless, and again ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... circumstance of his character; but to have received every impression from those who surrounded him, and whom he loved, for the time, with the most imprudent and most unreserved affection. Without activity or vigor, he was unfit to conduct war; without policy or art, he was ill fitted to maintain peace: his resentments, though hasty and violent, were not dreaded, while he was found to drop them with such facility; his friendships were little valued, because they were neither derived ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... life, especially to enduring hunger and want of sleep. On learning this Philopoemen not only himself avoided wrestling and ridiculed it, but when he was in command of an army took every means in his power to bring every kind of athletic exercise into contempt, as likely to unfit the best men's bodies for the most important struggles ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... which have been raised from pips; [32] a codling is an apple which requires to be "coddled," stewed, or lightly boiled, being yet sour and unfit for eating whilst raw. The John Apple, or Apple John, ripens on St. John's Day, December 27th. It keeps sound for two years, but becomes very shrunken. Sir John Falstaff says (Henry IV., iii. 3) "Withered like an old Apple John." The squab pie, famous in Cornwall, contains ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... from commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... much lighter in weight than myself and his rapier as slender as a child's toy, he had been well taught in fencing, as I learned when meeting him by chance in front of St. Peter's church, he, to my utter surprise, fell upon me crying out that I was a scurvy knave unfit to live. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... done the next day, nor his remaining single-exposure stuff either. When his own reason and Applehead's earnest assurances convinced him that the day after the real blizzard day was going to be unfit for camera work, Luck took Weary, Pink, and the Native Son to Albuquerque, rented a little house he had discovered to be vacant, and set them to work building a drying drum for his prints, according to the specifications he furnished them. He hauled his tanks from ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... Liguori, etc., ever been honest enough, in their works on confession, to say that the Most Holy God could never command or require woman to degrade and pollute herself and the priest in pouring in the ear of a frail and sinful mortal, words unfit even for an angel? No; they were very careful not to say so; for from that very moment, their shameless lies would have been exposed; the stupendous but weak structure of auricular confession would fall to the ground with sad havoc and ruin to its ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... my life, or of such parts of it as are not deemed wholly unfit for publication, is read (and, no doubt, a public which devoured 'Scrawled Black' will stand almost anything), it will be found that I have sometimes acted without prim cautiousness—that I have, in fact, wallowed in crime. Stillicide and Mayhem I ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)

... the way with a few men, finding out the spots at which an ascent was practicable, and scouting on either side to discover if Boers were hidden; behind him followed Woodgate leading his men. He was in bad health and quite unfit for such a climb, but in spite of remonstrances he had insisted upon going, although he was obliged to be assisted at the more difficult places. The distance was not more than six miles, but it was ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty

... trifling—there was not the most remote chance of a pardon, but it seemed the poor wretch had been building up his dependence upon that hope and was resting on it; and consequently was altogether indisposed and unfit to give his attention to the subjects that his situation rendered ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... like a blinding revelation, and forth-with it seemed to him that he stepped into a new world. She had tried him too far, had thrown him off his balance. He was unfit for this further and infinitely greater provocation. His senses swam. The touch of her intoxicated him as though he had drunk a potent draught from some goblet of the gods. He heard himself laugh passionately at her ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... worthy humble friend, rather than servant, of the most excellent departed, was the person whom, next to the niece, I most pitied. She was every way to be lamented: unfit for any other service, but unprovided for in this, by the utter and most regretted inability of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... make up one's mind, but some counter-reason that admits of positive statement, as we say, in black and white. It is true that many minds cannot define their grounds of doubt, even when these are real. Such minds are unfit to apply the doctrine of Probabilism to themselves, but must seek its application from others. The opinion against the law, when explicitly drawn out, must be found to possess a solid probability. It may be either an intrinsic argument from reason and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... 'ooman, you turn in," said Adams, when the small hours of morning had advanced a little. "You'll only be unfit for work to-morrow if you sit up bobbin' about on your stool ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... amiss &c. (disagree) 24; embarrass &c. (hinder) 706; put to inconvenience; pay too dear for one's whistle. Adj. inexpedient, undesirable; unadvisable, inadvisable; objectionable; inapt, ineligible, inadmissible, inconvenient; incommodious, discommodious[obs3]; disadvantageous; inappropriate, unfit &c. (inconsonant) 24. ill-contrived, ill-advised; unsatisfactory; unprofitable &c., unsubservient &c. (useless) 645; inopportune &c. (unseasonable) 135; out of place, in the wrong place; improper, unseemly. clumsy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... unfortunately, appears to have been quite unfit for the service demanded of her. Having already been thirty years in service, the sheathing was very much worn, and her keel was not studded with nails, which might have served instead of sheathing to protect ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... which it could have done any damage, and has thrown the quicksilver on the back of a large looking-glass into an alarming state of eruption. The return of "cracked and broken" presents a fearful list of smashage and fracture: the best tea-set is rendered unfit for active service, being minus two saucers, a cup-handle, and a milk-jug; the green and gold dessert-plates have been frightfully reduced in numbers; two fiddle-handle spoons are completely hors de combat, having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... now!" screamed the widow, at the tope of her voice; "and you can no longer deceive me, unworthy son of Neptune as you are! You are unfit to be a lubber, and would be log-booked for an or'nary by every gentleman on board ship. You, a full-jiggered sea-man! No, you are not even half-jiggered, sir; and I tell ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... of young school-teachers have left the schoolroom behind, closed the book and desk and gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of young wives and mothers have left their little children with the grandmother. Many rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for service at the front by reason of age, work all day long in the munition factory. Many a professional man crowds his work in the office that he may reach the factory for at least a few hours' work upon shot ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... and their crews. Most of the vessels are smaller in scantling than the run down (and constantly going down) ten-gun brigs in our own service, built for a light draft of water (as they were originally intended to act against the pirates, which occasionally infest the Indian seas), and unfit to contend with anything like a heavy sea. Many of them are pierced for, and actually carry fourteen or sixteen guns; but, as effective fighting vessels, ought not to have been pierced for more than eight I have no hesitation in asserting that an English ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... constitution and health of body. And therefore discreet and wise physicians ought also to be consulted, before an absolute resolve be made to live the Life of the Learned. For he that has strength enough to buy and bargain, may be of a very unfit habit of body to sit still so much, as, in general, is requisite to a competent degree of Learning. For although reading and thinking break neither legs nor arms; yet, certainly, there is nothing that flags the spirits, disorders ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... consuming passion. They could stop when they liked, but anyone looking on could see that they gloried in the combat. Fighting is like breath to them—they must have it. Nature has implanted in all animals a fighting instinct for the weeding out of the physically unfit, and these dogs have an extra share of ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... between this sphere of survival and that of the animal world. In it the fittest survive, the others are lost; but in society the unfittest are lost, all the others survive. Social selection weeds out the unfit, the murderer, the most unsocial man, and says to him: "You must die"; natural selection seeks out the most fit and says: "You alone are to live." The difference is important, for it marks a prime series of distinctions, when the conceptions drawn from ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... quench their thirst, which a powerful sun had contributed to increase, nor shall I ever forget the looks of terror and disappointment with which they called out to inform me that the water was so salt as to be unfit to drink! This was, indeed, too true; on tasting it, I found it extremely nauseous, and strongly impregnated with salt, being apparently a mixture of sea and fresh water. Whence this arose, whether from local causes, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... mode of living, he said, 'Sir, the servants, instead of doing what they are bid, stand round the table in idle clusters, gaping upon the guests; and seem as unfit to attend a company, as to ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... allude to? A. To the manner of heaving over work that the Overseers said was unfit for the Temple; also the manner the keystone was ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... violate any of the grand duties incumbent on us (piety, charity, justice, sobriety), but rather sometimes may yield advantage in those respects; it cannot well absolutely and universally be condemned: and when not used upon improper matter, in an unfit manner, with excessive measure, at undue season, to evil purpose, it may be allowed. It is bad objects, or bad adjuncts, which do spoil its indifference and innocence; it is the abuse thereof, to ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... chairs to see if they recalled any memories, a copper warming pan, a damaged foot stove that she thought she remembered, and a number of housekeeping utensils unfit ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... move towards a condition of repugnance to new ideas—a repugnance that becomes hatred when they are inconsistent with the old theories that have grown to be part of ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas; we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting based on them, but of course cumber the ground and retard progress. In youth, having few theories of our own or that have cost us enough labour in acquirement to seem very precious, we ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... Between the lines on my paper I was ever seeing the old baronial hall that was Tom Temple's home, and the people who had been invited to spend the festive season there. Presently I began to chide myself for my foolishness. Why should the thoughts of a Christmas holiday so unfit me, a staid old bachelor of thirty, for my usual work? Nevertheless it did, so I put on my overcoat, and went away in the direction of Hyde Park in order, if possible, to dispel my fancies. I did dispel them, and shortly afterwards returned to my lodgings, ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... small of stature to undertake wrathful purposes, and all unfit to represent the mighty winds that rend the stubborn oak, and the fierce tempests that scatter yet wilder desolation," said the Teton chief, surveying, almost contemptuously, the diminutive form of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... service was over to engage in private enterprise. Two years of such training would dissipate all the slackness, lack of precision, and laziness which are so often apparent in young men who have never had any strict discipline in their homes, and whom parental weakness has rendered unfit for the hard ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... structural gradation and geological succession. It is true that we do not find the Actiniae in the Reef any more than in the crust of the earth, for the absence of hard parts in their bodies makes them quite unfit to serve as Reef-Builders. Neither do we find the Fungidae, for they, like all low forms, are single, and not confined to one level, having a wider range in depth and extent than other stony Polyps. But the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... since some cavalry horses, deemed "unfit for further service," were sold at Tattersal's. Of one of these a Miller happened to be the purchaser. Subservient now to the ignoble purposes of burthen, the horse one day was led,'with a sack of flour on his back, to the next market- town; there while the Miller entered a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... and Somersetshire, but who had not,—so said the constable,—honoured Lavington for the last two years, till this his last appearance. He had, however, been seen there in company with another man, and had evidently been in a condition very unfit for work. He had slept one night at a low public-house, and had then moved on. The man had complained of a fall from the cart, and had declared that he was black and blue all over; but it seemed to be clear that he had no broken bones. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... Manning was arrested. He was found guilty of cowardice, and his sword was broken in front of the Stadt Huys in the presence of the citizens, and he was declared, on the good authority of King Charles II., unfit ever ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet

... in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest, rejection of the unfit—force-correlations, molecular machinery, transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates, molA(C)cules organiques, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulA|, with which the average mind ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... quality of any action, and the consequent obligation to desist from it, they reply to you in the very spirit of Shylock, "they cannot find it in the bond." In short, they know Christianity only as a system of restraints. She is despoiled of every liberal and generous principle: she is rendered almost unfit for the social intercourses of life, and is only suited to the gloomy walls of that cloister, in which they would confine her. But true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude. Their's is accordingly ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... met with him, saving the obscure fears concerning the fate of the Countess, which his dying words were calculated to convey, and which induced them to urge their journey with the utmost speed, pressing horses in the Queen's name when those which they rode became unfit for service. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... hand, notwithstanding its great cost, is coming more and more into favor, and has the great recommendations of strength and safety. It is also of such a nature that wheels tired with it run much further before being unfit for further service than those made of cast iron, and consequently renewals are less frequent. The inference would seem to be that a combination of steel and cast iron would effect the desirable safeness with the greatest cheapness; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... to be as full and as truthful as the ample materials at the author's disposal permitted. The reader will conjecture that Lord Lytton could have given many more details, but apart from the fact that they would often have been wholly unfit for publication, it is difficult to see that they would in any degree have altered the balance of the story, or modified our judgment, which is quite sufficiently enlightened by the copious letters on both sides which are now for the first ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... eat their Hearts, and drink their Blood, Were they not Poison, and unfit for Dogs. Here, you Blood-hunter, have you lost your Feeling? You Tygress Bitch! You Breeder up of Serpents! [Slapping HONNYMAN in the face, and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... one of the fresh-water tanks was carried away and, before it was noticed, sea-water had entered to such an extent as to render our supply unfit for drinking. Thus we were, henceforth, on a strictly ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... man unfit for a soldier's life who was not ready to unfurl his country's flag, and let it be known for whom he is fighting. What is the position of those who read this paper? Do you, in your heart, believe that Jesus ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... the cannon, and is apt to make it unfit for war. Our lack of imagination, and our present sense of comfort and well-being, tend to make us fancy that we shall go on for ever in the quiet jog-trot of settled life without any very great calamities or changes. But there was once a village at the bottom of the crater ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the event of the Court, contemplated by Article 8 of the Amendment of the Grondwet of 1877, declaring the State President, or the Supreme Court, contemplated by Article 115 of the Grondwet, declaring the Commandant-General or other members of the Executive unfit to occupy his or their office, the Chairman of the Volksraad, upon the receipt of the decision of such Court, shall convene the members of the Volksraad, who shall be bound to attend, in order to dismiss the official or officials found guilty; and to provide ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various

... rapidly exhaust the nutrient fluid. They take from it food and oxygen and they put into it their wastes. To prevent its becoming unfit for supplying their needs, food and oxygen must be continually added to this fluid, and waste materials must be continually removed. This is not an easy task. As a matter of fact, the preparation, distribution, ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... he had lain prostrate in the wretchedness of his loss. "A girl you could put in your hat—and there you have a strong man prone." He had been a sluggard, weary of himself, unfit to fight, a failure in life and a failure in love. That was ended; he was tired of failing, and it was time to succeed for a while. To accept the worst that Fate can deal, and to wring courage from it instead of despair, that is success; and it was the success that ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... "but it was exactly the physical beauty of the picture that rendered it in my eyes unfit to represent one whose aspect should purify and purge the senses, instead of exciting them. Let all the pictures in the world be destroyed, if they be found to have caused the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the companies composing the Philadelphia regiment, being met, chose me for their colonel; but, conceiving myself unfit, I declin'd that station, and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person, and man of influence, who was accordingly appointed. I then propos'd a lottery to defray the expense of building a battery below the town, and furnishing ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... "Beast!" said he, "unfit art thou to march with these my comrades. Now therefore do I cast thee out. Take thy life and go, and let any follow thee that will—Pentavalon needeth not thy kind. Get thee from among us, empty-handed ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... town is better secured by its strong walls against a first onset, they contented themselves there with sawing holes in the great wooden gates, for the purpose of firing through them. Every thing denoted the determination not to spare the city in the least, however unfit in itself for a point of defence. The only circumstance calculated to tranquillize the timid was the presence of our king, for whom, at any rate, Napoleon could not but have ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... question of Reform, we hear it said by the very same persons, "Would you alter the Representative system in such agitated times as these?" Half the logic of misgovernment lies in this one sophistical dilemma: If the people are turbulent, they are unfit for liberty: if they are quiet, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thy brother and sister dear, They have made them unfit for thee; 10 They have withered the smile and dried the tear Which should have been sacred to me. To a blighting faith and a cause of crime They have bound them slaves in youthly prime, And they will curse my name and thee 15 Because ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... impossible, contradictory, in the present system of society, for the proletariat to secure well-being through education or education through well-being. For, without considering the fact that the proletaire, a human machine, is as unfit for comfort as for education, it is demonstrated, on the one hand, that his wages continually tend to go down rather than up, and, on the other, that the cultivation of his mind, if it were possible, would be useless to him; so that he always ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... before planning her meals for the day, and is particular to use scraps of bread and left-over meat and vegetables as quickly as possible. Especially is this necessary in hot weather. Never use any food unless perfectly sweet and fresh. If otherwise, it is unfit ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... to have been quite unfit for the service demanded of her. Having already been thirty years in service, the sheathing was very much worn, and her keel was not studded with nails, which might have served instead of sheathing to protect her from parasites. Again the provisions and marketable ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... of overcoming the abuses, until its procrastination had destroyed the object of his wishes. He had courage sufficient, as well as decision, where others were not menaced and the danger was confined to himself; but, where his family or his people were involved, he was utterly unfit to give direction. The want of self-sufficiency in his own faculties have been his, and his throne's, ruin. He consulted those who caused him to swerve from the path his own better reason had dictated, and, in seeking the best course, he often ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... be taken as a governing principle, in all civil relations, that the strong will grow stronger and the feeble more weak, until the first become unfit to rule or the last unable to endure. In this important truth is contained the secret of the downfall of all those states which have crumbled beneath the weight of their own abuses. It teaches the necessity ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... despatched to the passes among the hills. There was a narrow-featured Vermonter in this party, termed, by his comrades, the Hatchet-face, and, in truth, the extreme thinness of his chest and the slenderness of his limbs might as aptly have been called the hatchet-handle. But, so far from being unfit for the hardy pursuits of a hunter, he was gifted with the activity of a greyhound, and the swiftness and bottom of a race-horse. His name was Sneak Punk, which was always abbreviated to merely Sneak, for his general success in creeping up to the unsuspecting ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... light, sandy soils it is best to follow with the roller, otherwise the coarse manure may cause the soil to lie so loose and open that both soil and manure will lose moisture so rapidly that fermentation of the manure will be stopped and the soil will be unfit for planting. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... Monday, so that Tuesday was fixed, much to Eustace's displeasure, for he did not like Harold's condescending to work which labourers would hardly undertake; and besides, he would make his hands, if not himself, absolutely unfit for the entertainment on Thursday. On which Harold asked if there were no such thing as water. Eustace implored him to give it up and send half-a-dozen unemployed men, but to this he answered, "I should ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... disposed while man proposed. God kept out of the mission field, at this juncture, one so utterly unfit for His work that he had not even learned that primary lesson that he who would work with God must first wait on Him and wait for Him, and that all undue haste in such a matter is worse than waste. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson

... help her off with her coat, but she stopped him, and he didn't insist, guessing that she supposed her blouse to be unfit for publication. ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... You will pardon me, I hope, That so beyond your expectation, (And at a time for visitants so unfit) 250 I (with my noble friend here) visit you: You know that my accesse at any time Hath ever beene admitted; and that friend, That my care will presume to bring with me, Shall have all circumstance of worth in him 255 To merit ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... corps. They believed that their only associates, on terms of equality, should be of their own order, as the clergy or medical profession, representing an educated aristocracy. The masses were illiterate, unpolished and, in the estimation of the lawyers, unfit for companionship with the cultivated classes, whose policy it was to inspire the plain people with profound ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... say to him: 'O Prince of True Believers, my handmaid is worth more than this: do but prove her, and her value will be magnified in thine eyes; for this slave-girl hath not her equal, and she were unfit to any but thou.'" And she added, "Beware, O my lord, of selling me at less than the sum I have named; indeed 'tis but little for the like of me." Now her owner knew not her worth nor that she had no equal in her day; but he carried her to the Caliph and set her in the presence and repeated ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... forms die when their utility is over; in history, peoples succumb when their work in and for the world is complete. Shall, he asks, we recognise Judaism as the solitary exception, as the unique instance of the survival of the unfit and ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams

... which called it haunted. The green room—I remembered now how fearfully the servants avoided it—how it was mentioned rarely, and in whispers, when we were children, and how we had regarded it as a mysterious region, unfit for mortal habitation. Was It—the dark form with the chain—a creature of this world, or a specter? And again—more dreadful still—could it be that the corpses of wicked men were forced to rise and haunt in the body the places where they had wrought their evil deeds? And was ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... a feeling of fear or depression. Once committed to the undertaking, he spends anxious days and sleepless nights in mental agony, much as a criminal is said to do just prior to his execution. When at last he attempts his "maiden effort," he is almost wholly unfit for his task because of the needless waste of thought and energy ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser

... scarcely more than a third of the whole number of average mental capacity. It is evident that these people, even if restored to sobriety, would still retain their more or less inborn defectiveness, and would remain equally, unfit to become the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... Happily some of our journals will not publish such advertisements, and no editor can excuse himself by saying that he is ignorant of the character of such announcements. It must be known to every man of experience that such advertisements are unfit for the perusal of young men or women, and it is surprising that the heads of families should permit newspapers containing those advertisements to enter their houses. As a well-known English author some-time ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... water it is necessary for parties to carry a supply even when they expect to be in the vicinity of the Cheyenne River and probably ford the South fork, as these waters carry in solution a quantity of alkali that renders them unfit for drinking, although the effects would not be fatal but simply the ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... which made a decided improvement on a desert. Doubtless—had that water been pure. But every mouthful of it was a blood poison, and helped promote disease and death. Even before reaching the Stockade it was so polluted by the drainage of the Rebel camps as to be utterly unfit for human use. In our part of the prison we sank several wells—some as deep as forty feet—to procure water. We had no other tools for this than our ever-faithful half canteens, and nothing wherewith ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... do. The woman, worn out with anxiety or abuse, may be unequal to their physical care for the present; or they may be running wild and in danger of becoming delinquent. The mother may be morally an unfit guardian, and the desertion may furnish the long-sought opportunity to interfere for the children's protection. Commitment may have to be planned, and the mother's consent won, to save the children from the return of a brutal father, against whom she ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord

... Helene, "that was just like the Prince. He was afraid of flattering you and making you unfit for your work. But if he said nothing, depend ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... and he might have found me better lodgings and something to do. But after I came back from the South and was unfit to do clerical work because of my eyes, he only threw me a dollar now and then—like throwing a bone to a ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe

... Governor of all below, If I might dare a lifted eye to thee, Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, And still the tumult of the raging sea; With that controlling power assist even me Those headstrong furious passions to confine, For all unfit I feel my powers to be To rule their torrent in the allowed line; O, aid me ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... shaft in war, wont before to frighten beasts of the chase, and struck down a brave Numanian, Remulus by name, but lately allied in bridal to Turnus' younger sister. He advancing before his ranks clamoured things fit and unfit to tell, and strode along lofty and voluble, his heart lifted ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... ears are not dull, nor my eyes blind. But too much out of the world lives your father; men who do so grow unfit to live in the world. He dreams dreams impossible to us—impossible to France—and then he says 'Liberty is a dream.' Well, well, Life also ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... have thought it then—but not now. I've had two days to think it over. It all comes down to this: If, knowing how you felt about it, I could not kneel there beside you and take that taste of wine without going under, I'm just what you suspected—weak, unfit." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... this time in a court off the Rue St. Jacques, not far from the church of that name; and the house being remote from the eyes and observation of the street, seemed not unfit for secret and desperate uses. Although we noted lights shining behind several of the barred windows, the wintry night, the darkness of the court, and perhaps the errand on which we came, imparted ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... of late of the possibility that the great lakes cities may suffer a water famine. The rapid increase of population along the borders of these great seas, it has been said, might render the water unfit for use. This fear is based upon the assumption that we shall always continue the present very foolish practice of dumping our sewage into the source of our water supply. The time may come when we shall know better how to protect the public ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the mind of the reader is one of disappointment. At first blush one is ready to believe that the members of the little colony, in proving the free negro capable of raising cotton to good advantage, had still more completely proved him unfit for freedom. Yet the more one reflects on the story, the more plainly one sees that the discouraging state of things described in the later letters was merely the inevitable result of Emancipation, and would have been the same had any other race been concerned, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... the result was that Miki came up slowly through the mire and spread himself out like an overgrown crustacean while he got the wind back into his lungs. Neewa, sensing the fact that for a few moments his comrade was physically unfit for travel, shook himself, and waited. Miki picked up quickly. Within five minutes he was on his feet shaking himself so furiously that Neewa became the centre of a shower of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... perspiration produce on the air and the clothing?—"It soon makes the air unfit to be breathed, and the ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis

... hearing this, would have driven me from his presence, saying it was unfit such a wretch should even enjoy the blessings of the air; but Bennaskar would not suffer it, and asked me, "Whether the insincerity of my friends had taught me to be ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... on earth has got to reach heaven on the same terms as the greatest sinner; unworthy, unfit, good-for-nothing; but saved through grace. Do cheer and comfort yourself with these thoughts, my dearest Anna, and your sick-room will be the happiest room in your house, as I constantly pray it may be! Your ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... cause of all the calamities of the country. Monmouth held similar language in the House of Lords. Though First Lord of the Treasury, he paid no attention to financial business, for which he was altogether unfit, and of which he had very soon become weary. His whole heart was in the work of persecuting the Tories. He plainly told the King that nobody who was not a Whig ought to be employed in the public service. William's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... for her trysting-place because of its seclusion, and partly, perhaps, for the sake of its beauty. She and Dic could be seen only from the opposite side of the river, and she thought no one would be hunting at that time of the year. The pelts of fur-giving animals taken then were unfit for market. Venison was soft, and pheasants and turkeys were sitting. There would be nothing she would wish to conceal in meeting Dic; but the instinct of all animate nature is to ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... of Austrian birth, and, though a spotless and noble woman, her most trivial actions gave occasion to calumnies founded on the crimes of the last generation. Unfortunately, the king, though an honest and well-intentioned man, was totally unfit to guide a country through a dangerous crisis. His courage was passive, his manners were heavy, dull, and shy, and, though steadily industrious, he was slow of comprehension and unready in action; and reformation was the more difficult because to abolish the useless court offices ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be burdened by the young of man was in no way to his liking. He could see from her evident fright at her position on the branch, and from the terrified glances she cast in his direction that she was hopelessly unfit. By all the ethics of Akut's training and inheritance the unfit should be eliminated; but if The Killer wished this there was nothing to be done about it but to tolerate her. Akut certainly didn't want her—of that he was quite positive. Her skin was ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the state and inadequacy of the transports, which, besides ten ocean steamers, fit and unfit, included six river steamers wholly of the latter class, Weitzel sailed from New Orleans on the evening of the 4th of September. Leaving the Southwest Pass on the morning of the 5th, under convoy of the Arizona, and steering westward, he was joined, early ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... communication not being completed, and roads rendered unfit by heavy rains, delayed the passage of canteen stores, and the rations had perforce to consist chiefly of mutton caught, killed and eaten the same day. Shall we ever forget the taste of it? Of course, we did get goat sometimes as a variation. Xmas Day was on ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown

... public ships and between the officers of the Army and Navy in the various grades of each; for reorganizing the naval establishment by fixing the number of officers in each grade, and providing for a retired list upon reduced pay of those unfit for active duty; for prescribing and regulating punishments in the Navy; for the appointment of a commission to revise the public statutes of the United States by arranging them in order, supplying deficiencies, correcting incongruities, simplifying their language, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. From their perjured lips it became my mechanical ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... imperar to rule. imperio empire, authority. imperioso imperious. imperterrito intrepid. impio impious. imponente imposing. imponer to impose. importancia importance. importar to import, matter. impropio improper, unfit. improvisar to extemporize. impulsar to impel, push. impunidad f. impunity. inaccion f. inaction. incendiar to kindle, set on fire. incentivo incentive, incitement. incesantemente continually. inclinar to incline, ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... conceited, Sir; I may be vain of my little reading; of my writing; as of late I have more than once been told I am. But, Sir, the more unequal the proposed match, if so: the better opinion I have of myself, the worse I must have of him; and the more unfit are we for ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... over a gentle fire; the pot should then be put in a heap of hot sand, to give the impurities time to settle, before it cools into a mass. When this has taken place, the bottom part must be broken off and put aside as unfit for making gunpowder, and the top part alone used. Flower of sulphur ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... substance remains the same. Mahanaim is still the name of every place where a man who loves God pitches his tent. We may be wandering, solitary, defenceless, but we are not alone. Our feeble encampment may lie open to assault, and we be all unfit to guard it, but the other camp is there too, and our enemies must force their way through it before they get at us. We are in its centre—as they put the cattle and the sick in the midst of the encampment on the prairies when they fear an assault ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... can do no good at present; my business is to write an opera for Paris; for anything else I am unfit. This object cannot be attained by storm; in the most favourable case I shall achieve the poem in half a year, and the performance in a year and a half. In Paris without a home, or—which is the same—peace of heart, I can do no work; I must find a new place where I am at home and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... physician telling me that a gentleman objected very much to some prescriptions given to his wife, and wanted some quack medicines tried. The doctor opposed him, and on the gentleman calling on him and telling him he was unfit for his profession, there was an open rupture between them, and they cut each other in the street. Not long afterwards the gentleman died, and left him a legacy of L500. The doctor could not help being amused at the bequest under such circumstances, though, had it come equally ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... sun. Much of the clothing that is received here is new and serviceable, but thousands of pieces are so badly worn that, to use the words of General Axline, of Ohio, who is doing noble service here with the thousands of other self-sacrificing men, "it is unfit to be worn by tramps." Many old shoes with the soles half torn off have been received. Shoes are badly needed at once or all ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... raise her face to his, and take the reward he felt his due. Then she said she must return, but Ambrose would bring him all particulars. Ambrose was as anxious as herself and her mistress that the thing should be done, but was unfit by all his habits, and his dainty, scholarly niceness, to render such effectual assistance as the soldier could do. Giles offered to scale the gate by night himself carry off the head, and take it to any place Mrs Roper might appoint, with no assistance save such as Ambrose could ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... make none, Sir Edward. I regret that I should have conceived so mad a thought; it is enough to unfit me for longer holding position as you agent, which I beg ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor

... and oral confession of their faith. Yet these new members may vote, and may determine the attitude of the church in important exigencies. All this is avoided in our mission churches. They perceive the necessity of keeping out the unfit, as clearly as that of admitting the fit. They do not add to their membership by infant baptism, and they make sure that no pecuniary considerations influence professing converts. Our Baptist mission ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision.—Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world![120] How glorious in its action and itself! But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit 40 To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride, Contending with low wants and lofty will, Till our Mortality predominates, And men are—what they name not to themselves, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the time with a sleepy, voluptuous expression, which suggests a lack of intelligence and too great a susceptibility to physical impressions. Women as we find them in contemporary memoirs, and these most often deal with such as are about the court, are not unfit companions for the men. We see not a few the willing victims of coarse intrigues, and some even assisting in the degradation of others of their sex. Many of them swore "good mouth filling oaths," and the scandal they talked would have shocked the taste as well as the principles of Elizabeth's ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... a few days later, M'Splae falls out on a long regimental route-march, and hobbles home, chaperoned by a not ungrateful lance-corporal, in a state of semi-collapse. This time the M.O. reports to the captain that Private M'Splae will be unfit for further duty until he is provided with a proper pair of boots. Are there no boots in ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... and revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had been taught by experience, that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was unfit for action, and almost incapable of motion; [80] his archers were directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety of spikes and snares were scattered over the ground on which he might expect an attack. In the neighborhood of Larissa the events ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... soon became evident that he could not live. On his dying bed he designated Peter as his successor, passing over his brother John. The reason for this was that John was so extremely feeble and infirm that he seemed to be wholly unfit to reign over such an empire. Besides various other maladies under which he suffered, he was afflicted with epilepsy, a disease which rendered it wholly unsuitable that he should assume any burdens whatever of responsibility ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... up before the sun, and in the large dark closet which adjoined her sleeping room, she rummaged through band-boxes and on the top shelves until she found and brought to light a straw hat, which was new the fall before, but which her mother had decided unfit to appear again in the city. Jenny had heard the unkind remarks which Mary's odd-looking bonnet elicited, and she now determined to give her this one, though she did not dare to do so without her mother's ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... all unworthy art To fall beneath a prince's noble hand. The hangman's axe should thy accursed head Cleave from thy trunk, unfit for such vile use The royal Duke of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Tragedy of 'Gowry,' with all the action and actors, hath been twice represented by the King's Players, with exceeding concourse of all sorts of people; but whether the matter or manner be not well handled, or that it be thought unfit that Princes should be played on the stage in their lifetime, I hear that some great Councellors are much displeased with it, and so 'tis thought shall be forbidden. And so wishing a merry Christmas ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... that we did not expect him to reach the Glacier Tongue, and that he has now done more than 100 miles from Cape Evans, one really does not know what to expect of these creatures. Certainly Titus thinks, as he has always said, that they are the most unsuitable scrap-heap crowd of unfit creatures that could possibly ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... at a small distance, sternly enquired why he had not put a stop to the inhuman massacre. 'Sir,' said Proctor, 'your Indians cannot be commanded.' 'Begone' retorted Tecumseh, with the greatest disdain, 'you are unfit to command; go and put ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... man,—venerable by his silver beard,—lies wounded and dying near the threshold of his hut. War, suddenly instigated by avarice, has just visited the dwellings which we see. The old have been butchered, because unfit for slavery, and the young have been carried off, except such as have fallen in the conflict, or have escaped ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... gored, Which they were told would be their lot When Cromwell came. So from each cot They bore away what pleased them best, And to the flames consigned the rest. But now Dunbar is reached; yet he Finds himself in extremity; Midst swamps and bogs unfit to tent, By Lammermoor from hillside rent, Leslie in front defiant stands A noble army he commands Of thousands two score seven, or more, Ready on Cromwell shot to pour. Behind the sea cut off retreat; With such great odds can he compete? The mountain sheep may safely tread The Lammermoor, ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... asked, during the eight years of Jose's course in the seminary, did his tutors not mark the forces at work in the boy's soul? And if so, why did they not urge his dismissal as unfit for the calling ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the way of the wicked. He unmasked sin, showing its hideous deformity, how it pollutes the soul, and makes man unfit for fellowship with a holy God. Then he passed on to show the guilt of sin, the awful misery coming to a man when he is face to face with his iniquities. With great skill he pointed out condemnation ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... you—I know you, now!" screamed the widow, at the tope of her voice; "and you can no longer deceive me, unworthy son of Neptune as you are! You are unfit to be a lubber, and would be log-booked for an or'nary by every gentleman on board ship. You, a full-jiggered sea-man! No, you are not even half-jiggered, sir; and I tell you so ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... delusion (thought I), that encourages the ruin of health and the perversion of intellect by studies that are as unprofitable to the world as they are destructive to the possessor—that incapacitate him for public, and unfit him for private life—and that, while they expose him to the ridicule of strangers, render him the victim of his wife, and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... less to other sinners than to fornicators: because by other mortal sins, sinners act against the charity of Christ, of which this sacrament is the sign, and all the more according as their sins are graver. But in a measure the sin of fornication makes one more unfit for receiving this sacrament, because thereby especially the spirit becomes enslaved by the flesh, which is a hindrance to the fervor of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... Adams, under date of February 29th, 1760, in which he says that few things were "so fruitful of destructive evils" as "licensed houses." They had become, he declares, "the eternal haunts of loose, disorderly people of the town, which renders them offensive and unfit for the entertainment of any traveler of the least delicacy." * * * "Young people are tempted to waste their time and money, and to acquire habits of intemperance and idleness, that we often see reduce many to beggary and vice, and lead some of ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... six weeks of an illness which has rendered me unfit for serious work I long to be transported into the circle of my Paris friends, to find myself again among the men whose devotion to science gives them a clear understanding of its tendency and influence. Therefore I take my way quite naturally to the Rue Cuvier ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... said the monk, signing himself with the cross, "it is the Holy Scripture. But it is rendered into the vulgar tongue, and therefore, by the order of the Holy Catholic Church, unfit to be in the hands ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... it most—given, too, on pretexts which sometimes strike one as inadequate, not to say recondite. So the street-scavengering in a certain village has been entrusted to a one-armed cripple, utterly unfit for the business—why? Because his maternal grand-uncle is serving a long sentence in gaol. The poor family must be helped! A brawny young fellow will be removed from a landing-stage boat, and his place taken by some tottering ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... his dear brethren indiscreet mortifications, which are injurious to the body; representing to them that they either hasten death, or throw the body into such a state of languor and weakness, as makes it unfit for spiritual exercises, or an impediment to the practice of good works. Oh, fortunate and happy times, when it was necessary to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... a failure as a mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while I was a waif, a ne'er-do-well, nearly two years in America with nothing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... mine,[27] in what moans of bitter lamentation do I dwell, in the songs of a songless strain unfit for the lyre, alas! alas! in funereal griefs for the ills which befall me, bemoaning my brother, what a vision have I seen in the night whose darkness has passed away![28] I am undone, undone. No more is my father's house, ah me! no more is our race. Alas! alas! ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... in his private life. Not only did he at a later period become a great advocate of Gluck against Piocini, but, in spite of his argument that it was impossible to compose music to French words, that the language was quite unfit for it, that the French never had music and never would, he himself had composed a good deal of music to French words and produced a French opera, "Le Devin du Village." Diderot was also a warm partisan of the Italians. Pergolesi's beautiful music having been murdered by the French orchestra ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... unknown And unsaluted? 'twas not wont to be Thus frozen with the younger companie Of jolly Shepherds; 'twas not then held good, For lusty Grooms to mix their quicker blood With that dull humour, most unfit to be The friend of man, cold and dull Chastitie. Sure I am held not fair, or am too old, Or else not free enough, or from my fold Drive not a flock sufficient great, to gain The greedy eyes of wealth-alluring ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... of Princess Charlotte, the nation was particularly sensitive with regard to the health of the heir to the crown. Whispers began to spread abroad, happily without much foundation, of pale cheeks, and a constitution unfit for the burden which was to be ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... from selection, though great numbers were eager for the field.... Where there was no lack of educated men in the dominant party, the appointments consisted generally of swaggerers, dependents, decayed gentlemen, and others "fit for nothing else," which always turned out utterly unfit for any military ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... "[t]en[)a]n[']de uq[|c]a[']ha [|c]a^{n}" or pericardium(?) of the buffalo, which is like sinew. This does not smell unpleasant, even when used for seven or ten days. But at the expiration of that time it is unfit for further service. ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... present mood, it was only torture to prolong this interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,—unfit even for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to the purpose that had broken from him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... much time has been lost. Mrs. Watts is of the same opinion; and with this view, "the extravagances of those apocryphal personages—giants, ghosts, and fairies—have been entirely banished from her pages, as tending not only to enervate the infant mind, and unfit it for the reception of more wholesome nutriment, but also to increase the superstitious terrors of childhood,—the editor has not less scrupulously excluded those novel-like stories of exaggerated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... majority of men are sufficiently candid to acknowledge—at least to themselves—that they are unfit for the station of law-giver; but the vanity and jealousy begotten by participation in political power, lead many of them, if not actually to believe, at all events to act upon the faith, that men, no more able than themselves, are the best material for rulers. ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... worth the while of children; and it is not an adverse criticism of Louisa M. Alcott to say that they are not worth the while of mature men and women. Similarly, it is not an adverse criticism of certain Continental novelists to say that their characters are decidedly unfit companions for adolescent girls. Our judgment of the characters in a novel should be conditioned always by our sense of the sort of readers to whom the novel is addressed. Henry James, in his later years, wrote usually for ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... Charles, surrounded by the companions of his long exile, returned to govern a nation which ought never to have cast him out or never to have received him back. Every year which he had passed among strangers had rendered him more unfit to rule his countrymen. In France he had seen the refractory magistracy humbled, and royal prerogative, though exercised by a foreign priest in the name of a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle naturally gratified a prince ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... very different from Navarre, with his powerful profile and broad chest like an eagle in repose, and different from Nungesser, the Nungesser before his wounds had so devastated his body that a medical board wanted to declare him unfit, a decision which he heroically resisted, adding to his thirty victories another triumph over physical disability. Guynemer differed from them mentally, too, possessing neither their instinct nor their ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... wisdom. Here and now, in and around us, there is the heavenly presence of budding life, of widening vision, of "new thoughts urgent as the growth of wings." Let us turn the white forehead of hope to the fair time, and deem no labor great by which we shall become less unfit to do the work ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... talking too much," said the Senora's voice, in the doorway; and as she spoke she looked reproachfully at Ramona. If she had said in words, "See how unfit you are to be trusted with Felipe. No wonder I do not leave the room except when I must!" her meaning could not have been plainer. Ramona felt it keenly, and not without some misgiving that it ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... in spite of the bold face he put upon the matter, was quite unfit to walk. The rough treatment he had received when his legs were tied together had completely crippled him, and in addition his head was injured by a kick from ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... the Copernican ideas, he was compelled to overlay them with the Ptolemaic. Even this was not thought safe enough, and in 1571 the subject was intrusted to Peucer. He was eminently "sound," and denounced the Copernican theory in his lectures as "absurd, and unfit to be introduced into ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... country or Western butter as desired, you may get several pounds of it when it is cheap during the summer; or any butter unfit for table use may be made sweet and good for cooking purposes and will last for months, if prepared in the following manner: Place the butter in a deep, iron kettle, filling only half full to prevent boiling over. ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... time to receive the invitation. The fog still brooded heavily and the light, always bad, was growing worse. How would they get back? How had they come from Juist? Could we forestall them? Questions of time, tide, distance—just the odious sort of sums I was unfit to cope with—were distracting my attention when it should have been wholly elsewhere. 4.20—4.25—now it was past 4.30 when Davies said the bank would cover. I should have to make for the beacon; but it was fatally near that steamboat path, etc., and I still at intervals heard ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... and is a tall, good-looking fellow; but I should not have thought him the stuff to make a dragoon. He has always been puling and delicate, unfit for school, wanting force.' ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which is carefully collected and saved in large roof-covered cisterns. There are a few wells on the island, but the water in them is generally brackish, or is so impregnated with lime and earthy salts as to be unfit either for drinking or for irrigation. To sum up briefly, the climate of Key West may be roughly described as mild and dry in winter, warm but showery in summer, and breezy and sunny at ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... 27th.—There is a general impression that membership of the House of Commons is in itself a sufficient excuse for the avoidance of military service. This, it appears, is erroneous. Only those are exempt whom a Medical Board has declared unfit for general service; and even these, according to Mr. FORSTER, may now be re-examined. This ought to prove a great comfort ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... at work at all. I've had nothing to do, and have been unable really to think of work. But I feel that chance circumstances have put me into a position for which I am unfit, and which yet I have been unable to avoid. How much better would it be that you ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... the other hand it might mean the millennium. The threat of overpopulation—for man's architectonic powers were restored if not woman's; to say nothing of his prolonged sojourn—would at last rouse the law-makers to the imperious necessity of eugenics, birth control, sterilization of the unfit, and the expulsion of undesirable races. It might even stimulate youth to a higher level than satisfied it at present. Human nature ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... about the war, says that half the adult male population of Europe will be killed before it is over. Those who are left will be the feeble ones, the slackers, the unfit, and the cowards. It is good to be left to breed from ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... figures are hardly more than dummies, unable to excite the smallest interest. Mephistophilis deserves our notice, but his is a shadowy outline removed from humanity. One figure alone stands forth to hold and justify our attention; and he proves himself unfit for the task. Those who insist on tracing one guiding principle in all Marlowe's plays have declared that Faustus is the personification of 'thirst for knowledge' or of 'intellectual virtu', just as Tamburlaine personifies, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... Bob is somewhat saner— He minds his stock and is the gainer; Content to pass his life amid The scenes that his old father did. With hose in hand he cleans the byre, And saves himself a menial's hire; But gives his girls an education That may unfit them for their station. But don't ask Bob to tempt the tide, Even on a turbine down the Clyde; Neptune and Ceres don't agree, And farmers hate the name ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... enjoyment of that last summer term. But for all that he found material thoughts stealing in on his most sacred moments. A chance phrase, a word even, and there would suddenly rise before him the spectre of his own failure. And he was forced to realise that as yet he was unfit to lay down the imperious burden of his own personality. The hold of life was too strong. He still wanted the praise of the populace, "the triumph and the roses ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... Prebendary of the Prebend of Leighton Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral, George Herbert was entitled to an estate in the parish, and it was no doubt a portion of the increase of this property that he devoted to the repairing and beautifying of the House of God, then "lying desolate," and unfit for the celebration of divine service. Good Izaak Walton, writing evidently upon hearsay information, and not of his own personal knowledge, was in error if he supposed, as from his language he appears to have done, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various

... wonder why their effects were not understood ages ago. These elements are (1) the universal occurrence of variation, (2) an excessive natural rate of multiplication, (3) the struggle for existence entailed by the foregoing, (4) the consequent elimination of the unfit and the survival of only those that are satisfactorily adapted, and (5) the inheritance of the congenital variations that make for success in the struggle for existence. It is true that these elements are by ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... call him back and guess again. But had not every one of the four boys been making me guess at that four-legged thing since they could talk about birthdays? And were not the conditions of our living as unfit now for four-legged things as ever? Besides, they already had the cow and the pig and a hundred two-legged hens. More live stock was simply out ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... Shortly afterwards he wrote to the speaker of the House of Commons, "These are, therefore, to command you to make known in our name unto the House that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our government or deep matters of state." He insisted that "these are unfit things to be handled in Parliament except your king requires it of you. "As to the privileges of Parliament James wrote, "We cannot allow of the style calling it your ancient and undoubted right and inheritance, but could rather have wished that ye had ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... prejudice. A man's not having sense enough to want to marry, or, having that, not having wit enough to do it, argues to her thinking either weakness of intellect or natural depravity, the former rendering its victim unable, and the latter unfit, ever to become a ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome

... admirably designed. The port of Dunkirk had been destroyed under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and though the French had been restoring it secretly for some time, it was still unfit to receive a fleet of transports. In spite of the warnings of Sir John Norris, the senior admiral in the service, the assembling of troops in its neighbourhood from the French army in Flanders could only be taken for a movement into winter quarters, and that no suspicion might be aroused ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... of science were set the problem of finding a method of sterilizing the unfit, that is, people who showed any decadent tendency to originality. All the increase of population by that time was occasioned under the direction of the High Priests, so that the Holy State had not only the power of dealing death, but of bringing ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... the symptoms are favourable. He is quite unfit," the doctor added, looking steadily at the inspector, ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest, rejection of the unfit—force-correlations, molecular machinery, transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates, molA(C)cules organiques, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... street not far distant from Euston Square. Thither she went: with what intention she hardly knew, but to assuage her conscience by telling him how much she pitied him. In her present state she felt herself unfit to counsel, or restrain, or assist, or do ought else but sympathise and weep. The people of the inn said such a person had been there; had arrived only the day before; had gone out soon after his arrival, leaving his luggage in their care; but had ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... popular name by which the frigate Constitution was known. The poem was first printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, at the time when it was proposed to break up the old ship as unfit for service. I subjoin the paragraph which led to the writing of the poem. It is from the Advertiser of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... And my sisters—I remember Isabel; she was three years elder than I. And— was one Elizabeth? I think so. But wherever they are, I suppose they would feel me a stranger among them—an intruder who was not wanted, and who had no business to be there. I am unfit both for Heaven and earth. Nobody wants ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... people are always on the verge of starvation. The significant results of this poverty face us on every side. The alarming and persistent increase of insanity. The large number of would-be recruits for the army who have to be rejected because they are physically unfit; and the shameful condition of the children of the poor. More than one-third of the children of the working classes in London have some sort of mental or physical defect; defects in development; defects of eyesight; abnormal nervousness; ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... mechanical politicians who have no place among us—a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are unfit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom: ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Roland had fully realised how unfit he was for the vivid, rapid life of the West. The cultivated, gentlemanly drawl of his speech was of itself an offence; his slow, unruffled movements and attitudes, his "ancient" ways of thinking, his conservatism and gentility and ultra-superficial refinement were the very qualities ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... no good at present; my business is to write an opera for Paris; for anything else I am unfit. This object cannot be attained by storm; in the most favourable case I shall achieve the poem in half a year, and the performance in a year and a half. In Paris without a home, or—which is the same—peace ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... of his health. As I was then pressing General McClellan for more officers, I deemed it necessary to explain why I did so. I used these words: "I am satisfied that General Sherman's physical and mental system is so completely broken by labor and care as to render him, for the present, unfit for duty; perhaps a few weeks' rest may restore him." This was the only communication I made on the subject. On no occasion have I ever expressed an opinion that his mind was affected otherwise than by over-exertion; to have said so would have ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... treacherous, the most heartless!" It was evening, and moonlight; a soft and delicious night in September. The waves lapped gently at their feet, the warm breeze played upon their faces, the moon shone upon them—an evening wholly unfit for such a royal rage as this young gentleman (two and twenty is still young) exhibited. He walked about on the parade, which was deserted except for this solitary pair, gesticulating, waving his arms, mad with the madness ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... can do many things beside the one thing they are hired to do. A spinner's hands can do nothing but spin. They are unfit for any other labor and are spoiled for spinning if they try it. Servants live in other people's houses. Nearly all of Hatton's spinners own, or partly own, their homes. In its seclusion they can bear with patience whatever they have ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... than the neglect of tree-planting. The caroub is an indigenous production volunteering its services to man, and producing an important revenue; there are immense tracts of land which by their rocky nature are unfit for the general purposes of husbandry, at the same time the rich soil in the interstices is eminently adapted for the cultivation of the caroub. Such lands are at the present moment abandoned to a growth of jungle, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... he, "unfit art thou to march with these my comrades. Now therefore do I cast thee out. Take thy life and go, and let any follow thee that will—Pentavalon needeth not thy kind. Get thee from among us, empty-handed as I found thee—thy share ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... with the greatest care, and found in most of them considerable quantities of water in the holes of the rocks, but so mixed with the sea-water that it was unfit for use; and therefore they were obliged to go farther. The first thing they did was to make a deck to their boat, because they found it was impracticable to navigate those seas in an open vessel. Some of the crew joined them by the time the work was finished; and the captain having ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... this way is troublesome, and takes a good deal of time, yet unless done so, it is totally unfit for perfuming with flowers, because a bad grease will cost more in perfume to cover its mal odeur than the expense of thus deodorizing it. Moreover, if lard be used that "smells of the pig," it is next to impossible to impart to it any delicate odor; and if strongly ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... her task-labour extremely. Her baby was born dead, she thinks in consequence of a fall she had while carrying a heavy weight of water. She is suffering great pain in one of her legs and sides, and seems to me in a condition utterly unfit for any work, much less hoeing in the fields; but I dare not interfere to prevent this cruelty. She says she has already had to go out to work three weeks after her confinement with each of her other children, and does not complain of it as anything special in her case. She says that is ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... on that of one who has to get up early in the morning and who, only intending to see one or two particular friends and then go home, is forced because of an impulse of courtesy not only to spend an endless and exhausting evening, but to be utterly unfit ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... complained of—a scoundrel in that gentleman's estimation seems to be one who thinks that some 12 pounds per head per annum is rather too heavy a tax for an Englishman to pay, especially if used in supporting men so unfit for office as he has proved himself to be. This gentleman was the arch-rioter of the 30th November; in this we are confirmed (if confirmation of well-known facts were needed) by the verdict of acquittal of the so called 'Ballaarat Rioters,' partially ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... their larder—how long would it last? The bear was large and fat, they could tell by the "feel" of him; and if they drew upon the carcass for moderate rations, it would hold out for many days; but then how was the meat to be preserved? Lying as it was—still unskinned—it must soon become unfit for food, though not so soon as in the open air; for meat will keep much longer in a cave,—that is, if it be a very deep one, than it will when exposed to the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... people to encourage the stage upon principles honourable to it; not as a place of mere barren pastime; but as a school of improvement. But how shall we be able to bring the public mind to that habitual respect for the stage without which it must lose all useful effect, if the actors show themselves unfit for conveying instruction. Were this to be the case, and were mere pastime the object of theatres, Astley's horse-riders, the tumblers and rope-dancers of Sadlers-Wells, nay, the PUNCH of a puppet-show, would be as useful and respectable as Garrick, Barry, Cooke, or Kemble, and the circus ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... should be ready to shed their own blood for Christ, so as to imitate in deed what they portray in their ministry. For this reason it has been decreed that those who shed blood, even without sin, become irregular. Now no man who has a certain duty to perform, can lawfully do that which renders him unfit for that duty. Wherefore it is altogether unlawful for clerics to fight, because war is directed to the shedding ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... and fade out into darkness, had measured but a few weary steps by the side of her companion, lost in the meditation of a glad sermon for the next Sunday about the lost sheep carried home with jubilance, and forgetting how unfit was the poor sheep beside him for such a fatiguing tramp up hill and down, along what was nothing better than the stony ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... blank three weeks. She had ample time for such foolish discussions, for such vain imaginings, for she was left much to herself, having no mind-companions either of her own age or of any other. She was one of those unfortunate persons whose education and instincts' unfit them for their position. The diversions of youth had been denied her, the pleasures of dress or company had never been within her reach. For pastime she was turned back continually to her own thoughts, and an active ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... the same time as the engagement of Montebello, Garibaldi with his diminutive army (which through the weeding-out of men unfit for service was reduced to about 3,500 before it took the field), crossed the Lago Maggiore, and advanced boldly into the heart of the enemy's country. The volunteers had no artillery, and by way of cavalry only some ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... this outcry is true. No one can doubt that the electoral bodies of the Universities, as at present constituted, are quite unfit to represent the Universities, to speak in their name or to express their wishes or feelings. The franchise, at Oxford and Cambridge, is in the hands of the two largest bodies known to the University constitution, the Convocation of Oxford, the Senate of Cambridge. If we look ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... story of the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, with Mr. Croker as Wolf and Mr. Nixon the innocent who was eaten up. No, no; he might have better guided himself. Mr. Nixon—were all about the friendliest—was still unfit for the place. It was like putting a horse in a tree-top; it gave the horse no grace nor glory and offered a sole assurance of his ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... a scroll of the Law has become through age unfit for use it is to be buried in an earthen vessel, as is said in Jeremiah xxii, 14, "And put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days." A scroll of the Law ought never to be sold unless the object ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... he replied, "but it was exactly the physical beauty of the picture that rendered it in my eyes unfit to represent one whose aspect should purify and purge the senses, instead of exciting them. Let all the pictures in the world be destroyed, if they be found to have caused the commission of one ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and, even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... they had entered the camp the rain began to fall in such torrents that it was impossible for us to move; this was unfortunate for where we were halted was unfit for a day's resting-place, and we should consequently be compelled to move on Sunday morning instead of making it a day of perfect rest. The point where the party made the river today was about south latitude 15 degrees 41 minutes; east longitude ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... more adorned by Verse; than Verse unbeautified by mean ones. So that Verse seems not only unfit in the best use of it, but much more in the worst, when "a servant is called," or "a door bid to be shut" in Rhyme [p. 569]. Verses, I mean good ones, do, in their height of Phancy, declare the labour that brought them forth! like Majesty that grows with care: and ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... still have Desroches, who is very sagacious. I'll go and see him this morning. He can tell the newspaper people that Philippe trusted a friend and has been made a victim; that his weakness in such respects makes him unfit to be a cashier; what has now happened may happen again, and that Philippe prefers to resign. That will ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... portions of a few poems, which would else have been too long or otherwise unsuitable for the collection; and, in a very few instances, I have ventured to substitute a word or a phrase, when that of the author has made the piece in which it occurs unfit for children's reading. The abbreviations I have been compelled to make in the "Ancient Mariner," in order to bring that poem within the limits of this collection, are so considerable as to require ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... that from the day of his appointment his reputation would begin to decline. The congress was an unorganised body without any constitutional status, conducting its business by means of constantly changing and irresponsible committees, and was utterly unfit to exercise executive functions; it had no means of enforcing its decrees, no revenue, and no munitions of war. The army which it adopted was little better than an assembly of armed men; many were volunteers, and it ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... are sufficiently candid to acknowledge—at least to themselves—that they are unfit for the station of law-giver; but the vanity and jealousy begotten by participation in political power, lead many of them, if not actually to believe, at all events to act upon the faith, that men, no more able than themselves, are the best material for ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... companion-way leading to the captain's cabin there now appeared a pale young face. It was that of Dickory Charter, who had been ordered by Blackbeard, before the two vessels came together, to shut himself in the cabin and to keep out of the broil, swearing that if he made himself unfit to present to Eliza he would toss his disfigured body into the sea. Entirely unarmed and having no place in the fight, Dickory had obeyed, but the spirit of a young man which burned within him led him to behold the greater part of the conflict between Blackbeard and the English ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... where we heard heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration. Dr. Johnson said, "It grieves me to see the chief of a great clan appear to such disadvantage. This gentleman has talents, nay some learning; but he is totally unfit for this situation. Sir, the Highland chiefs should not be allowed to go farther south than Aberdeen. A strong-minded man, like his brother Sir James, may be improved by an English education; but in general they will be tamed into insignificance." 'I meditated an escape from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... city, and that the inhabitants were rather occupied with the pleasures of bathing, feasting, and dancing, than the care of preparing for war, he gave orders to have all their places of public entertainment shut up, and that they should be restrained in such amusements as rendered soldiers unfit for battle. 16. In the mean time the Romans did all which prudence could suggest, to oppose so formidable an enemy; and the consul Laevi'nus was sent with a numerous force to interrupt his progress. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... bitter winds descended upon the camp early in December. It was a worn, ragged, weary but devoted army of about eleven thousand men that followed Washington into Valley Forge to make a camp for the winter. Of these, two thousand and ninety-eight were unfit for duty. Most of the latter had neither boots nor shoes. They marched over roads frozen hard, with old rags and pieces of hide wrapped around their feet. There were many red tracks in the snow in the Valley of the Schuylkill that day. Hardly a man was dressed for cold ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... childher.' On Pathrick's day ye'll see th' Dr. Tanner Anti-Food Fife an' Drum corpse out at th' head iv th' procession instead iv th' Father Macchews, an' they'll be places where a man can be took whin he gets th' monkeys fr'm immodhrate eatin'. Th' sojers 'll complain that th' liquor was unfit to dhrink an' they'll be inquiries to find out who sold embammin' flood to th' ar-rmy—Poor people 'll have simple meals— p'raps a bucket iv beer an' a little crame de mint, an' ye'll r-read in th' pa-apers about a family ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... to call himself, cannot safely go to war with the whole world, and that in the courts of earth he will be condemned. But he will be justified in the world below. Then the position of Socrates and Callicles will be reversed; all those things 'unfit for ears polite' which Callicles has prophesied as likely to happen to him in this life, the insulting language, the box on the ears, will recoil upon his assailant. (Compare Republic, and the similar ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... from disease that renders the party unfit for military duty. But any officer or private whose health permits him to visit watering places or places of amusement, or to make social visits or walk about the town, city, or neighborhood in which he may be, will be considered fit for military duty and as evading ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... me with this piece of news, I was startled at another, by the same channel of communication; which was, that Mr. Marmozet, before he advised me to this application, had informed the earl that he had read my play, and found it altogether unfit for the stage. Though I could not doubt the certainty of this intelligence, I believed there was some inapprehension in the case; and, without taking any notice of it, told Mr. Marmozet the answer I had been favoured with; and he promised to ask Mr. Vandal the ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... only for that time, but for as many times as he chose to inflict it. To tell the teacher or your mother, or to betray your tormentor to any one outside of the boys' world, was to prove yourself a cry-baby, without honor or self-respect, and unfit to go with the other fellows. They would have the right to mock you, to point at you, and call "E-e-e, e-e-e, e-e-e!" at you, till you fought them. After that, whether you whipped them or not there began to be some feeling ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... third lieutenant, on account of his wound, which was not severe enough to render him unfit for ordinary duty, was appointed prize-master of the Sphinx, with orders to report at New York for condemnation. A furlough was given to Christy, with a stateroom on board of the captured steamer. She was fitted ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... place, the above argument overlooks the fact that the Southern statesman vindicates the institution of slavery on the ground that it finds the Negro race already so degraded as to unfit it for a state of freedom. He does not argue that it is right to seize those who, by the possession of cultivated intellects and pure morals, are fit for freedom, and debase them in order to prepare them for social bondage. He does not imagine that it is ever right ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Beersheba when the retaining walls were giving way and a foot-deep layer of mud invited a skid every yard. The Latron-Jerusalem road was better going, but the soft metal laid down seemed to melt under the unceasing traffic in the wet, and in peace time this highway would have been voted unfit for traffic. The worst piece of road, however, was also the most important. The Nablus road where it leaves Jerusalem was wanted to supply a vital point on our front. It could not be used during the day because ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... these schools were so poverty-stricken that they could not afford to pay lay teachers at such a rate as would attract them to the teaching profession, and, next, the Catholic laity as a body were uneducated, and, therefore, unfit to teach in the schools.'—Maynooth and the University Question, p. ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... casting his eye upon him at a small distance, sternly enquired why he had not put a stop to the inhuman massacre. 'Sir,' said Proctor, 'your Indians cannot be commanded.' 'Begone' retorted Tecumseh, with the greatest disdain, 'you are unfit to command; ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... frequent result of the administration of this system by incompetent or unfit officers would be the ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... new levies arrived slowly in the American camp, and many of those who were sent were mere boys utterly unfit for active service. The several States discovered much backwardness in complying with the requisitions of Congress, so that there was reason to apprehend that the number of troops necessary for besieging New York could not be procured. This made Washington turn ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... could judge a day's work, which he sent in with the rest of the midshipmen, and which proofs of theoretical knowledge of their profession were in those days little attended to; but he was very ignorant, and quite unfit to take charge of any vessel. Captain M—-, who, as we before stated, had joined the ship as acting captain, and had not had time to ascertain the merits or demerits of the officers, had given the prize to his charge because he was the senior mate ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... I was turned joiner, I had another convenience to provide for. I had nothing wherein to enclose things, and preserve them from dust, except the chests, and they were quite unfit for holding liquors, victuals, and such like matters, but open shells, as most of my vessels were. Wherefore, having several boards now remaining of the boxes I had broken up for chairs and stools, I bethought me of supplying this great deficiency; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... when my eyes and ears were taking the impression. On my memory plate of that moment in my interview with Roebuck, I find details so significant that my failing to note them at the time shows how unfit I then was to guard my interests. For instance, I find that just before he spoke those words declining my assistance and implying that he had already increased his holdings, he opened and closed his hands several times, finally ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... Troilus, you have both said well; And on the cause and question now in hand Have gloz'd, but superficially; not much Unlike young men, whom Aristode thought Unfit to hear moral philosophy. The reasons you allege do more conduce To the hot passion of distemp'red blood Than to make up a free determination 'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice Of any true decision. Nature craves All dues ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... of course he'll cease to be your chaplain," said she. "After what has passed, that must be a matter of course. I couldn't for a moment think of living in the same house with such a man. Besides, he has shown himself quite unfit for such a situation; making broils and quarrels among the clergy; getting you, my dear, into scrapes; and taking upon himself as though he were as good as bishop himself. Of course he'll go. But because he leaves the palace, that is no reason why he should ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... Hall, near Thetford, in 1578, and Mr. Rookwood presumed to kiss her hand. But the Lord Chamberlain severely reprimanded him for so doing, sternly bade him stand aside, and charged him with being a recusant, unfit to be in the presence, much less to touch the sacred person, of his sovereign. He was required to attend the Council, under surveillance, and when he reached Norwich, in the queen's train, was committed ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... and Martell are at it," he announced in a low tone of voice. "Martell just sneaked a quart bottle of ink from the storeroom, while Brown picked up some of the cans of vegetables which were cast aside by the cook as unfit to eat. Now they have both gone down into the ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer

... declared "that the whole conduct of the people of the North is such as proves them not only unfit for the government of themselves, but unfit for the courtesies and the community of the civilized world." Referring to some case of an English ship that had been seized by an American man-of-war, he declared: "It may lead to war; and I, speaking ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... and perseverance of De Foe began now to be properly estimated, and as a firm supporter of the administration, he was sent by Lord Godolphin to Scotland, on an errand which, as he says, was far from being unfit for a sovereign to direct, or an honest man to perform. His knowledge of commerce and revenue, his powers of insinuation, and above all, his readiness of pen, were deemed of no small utility, in promoting the union of the two ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... roof on the south side fell in, and the lead was used for water-pipes. The new portico was hacked about and turned into stalls for wares, and, in a word, Inigo Jones' work more than undone. Other doings of the soldiery are unfit ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock

... the choosing of friends come from unfit haste. We would better take time to know our possible friends, and be sure that we know them well, before making the solemn ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... have sent petitions to him asking him to stop these abuses. He has answered with insult. A prince with such a character is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. We therefore, declare we are enemies in ...
— History Plays for the Grammar Grades • Mary Ella Lyng

... Christians in name and in form of worship, they were superstitious, they were luxurious, they were unwarlike. Many of them were not Britons at all, but foreigners settled in the City for trade. Moreover, for it is not true that the whole British people had grown unfit for war, a revolt of the Roman legions in the year 407 drew a large number of the young men into their ranks, and when Constantine the usurper took them over into Gaul for the four years' fighting which followed, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... is by no means easy to find. You see you have been in this groove all your life, and are unfit for anything else. It's true you've been my foreman, but even that won't help you, for the factories all over England are discharging hands, and there's not a vacancy to be had. It's a bad outlook for you ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... for which he is unfit, therefore, finds it not a means of self-expression, but a slow form of self-destruction. All this wretchedness of spirit reacts directly upon the efficiency of the worker. "A successful day is likely ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... our good king, who was then but prince, lamed himself for life; and so was forced, on his accession, to leave the conduct of affairs to Albany, then Earl of Fife. The king, as all men know, is just and good, and has at heart the welfare of his subjects; but his accident has rendered him unfit to take part in public affairs, and he loves peace and quiet as much as Albany loves intrigues, and dark and devious ways. 'Tis a sore pity that the king cannot make up his mind to throw himself into the arms of Douglas, ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty

... of my mind became so great that I could not feel myself safe. Every day seemed to increase my fear, till I was unfit for work, study or rest. My friend endeavoured, but in vain, to get me ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington

... altogether right or not, is not the question here; the novelist's business is to represent the real thoughts of mankind, when they are not absolutely unfit to be told; and certainly Tom spoke the doubts of thousands when he spoke ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... with a sigh, and then they were for a long time silent. She was thinking how the wind would find its way through the long-worn great coat of her husband, and how unfit he was to bear the bitter cold. David was thinking how the rain, that had been falling so heavily all the afternoon, must have gullied out the road down the north side of Hardscrabble hill, and hoping that old Don would prove himself sure-footed in ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson

... beyond what is merely unexpected. I remember a physician telling me that a gentleman objected very much to some prescriptions given to his wife, and wanted some quack medicines tried. The doctor opposed him, and on the gentleman calling on him and telling him he was unfit for his profession, there was an open rupture between them, and they cut each other in the street. Not long afterwards the gentleman died, and left him a legacy of L500. The doctor could not help being amused at the bequest under such circumstances, though, had it come equally unexpectedly ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... seeing the Spaniards, Quizquiz withdrew to some distance with all the women and people who were unfit for battle, and placed his troops in a post of very difficult access under the command of Huaypalca, a brother of the late inca Atahualpa. Almagro advanced without hesitation to attack them, although ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... life at his word. So far from this conflict proving a republic unfit to make war, or that for its prosecution there must be intensely centralized authority, it has demonstrated that a democracy trusted, is ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy

... or I shouldn't do it," she retorted. "It isn't the real thing, as I told you once. But none of us gets the real thing. It's power.... Just as you enjoy what you're doing—sorting out the unfit. It's a game, it keeps us from brooding over things we can't help. And after all, when we have good appetites and are fairly happy, why should ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... interests of the empire and the character of the officers commanding. Even this ship, in common with the rest, is so ill-equipped as to be much less efficient than she otherwise would be. Our cartridges are all unfit for service, and I have been obliged to cut up every flag and ensign that could be spared to render them serviceable, so as to prevent the men's arms being blown off whilst working the guns. The guns ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... The catacombs are unfit for men to live in, or to stay in even for a few days. The tradition that Antonio Bosio spent seventy or eighty consecutive hours in their depths is unfounded. When we hear of Popes, priests, or their followers seeking ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... for their depot. Any irregularity in the entries entailed the bastinado; peculators were punished by imprisonment, mutilation, or death, according to the gravity of the offence. Those whom illness or old age rendered unfit for work, were pensioned for the remainder ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... station was nominally commanded by an officer who had been thirty-four years in the army, and had great experience amongst Natives; but he had fallen into such a bad state of health, that he was quite unfit to deal with the crisis which had now arrived. The command, therefore, was practically exercised by Chamberlain. Next to Delhi and Lahore, Multan was the most important place in Upper India, as our communication with the sea and southern ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... out that morning by the joint efforts of a brakesman and the newsagent, so that it was less hideously repulsive than at a later stage in the day, when tobacco juice, orange peel, and scraps of newspapers made it unfit for a decent pig. The lawyer took out his plug, more easily carried than cut tobacco, and whittled it down with his knife to fill his handsome Turk's head meerschaum. When all was ready, he discovered, to his infinite ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... necessary for them to be led by some continual Task or Employment. These are such as we commonly call dull Fellows; Persons, who for want of something to do, out of a certain Vacancy of Thought, rather than Curiosity, are ever meddling with things for which they are unfit. I cannot give you a Notion of them better than by presenting you with a Letter from a Gentleman, who belongs to a Society of this Order of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... luncheon you would be received by a young aide who, in army jargon, was known as a "crock"; that is, he had been invalided as the result of wounds or exposure in the trenches and, though unfit for active service, could still serve as aide to the Commander-in-Chief. At the appointed minute of the hour, in keeping with military punctuality, whether of generals or of curtains of fire, a man with iron-gray hair, clear, kindly eyes, and an unmistakably ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... great satisfaction. He didn't dance particularly well. He tells of a Christmas dinner that he helped his sister to prepare. Something made him dissatisfied with himself and he bewails his melancholy and gloomy forebodings that unfit him for rational enjoyment and cause him to be a spectacle for "gods and men." He adds: "Thermometer of my spirit on Christmas day, 1857, 9 A.M., 40 deg.; temperature, 12 A.M., 60 deg.; 3 P.M., 80 deg.; 6 P.M., 20 ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... you the moving story of our cart and cart-horses; the latter are dapple-grey, about sixteen hands, and of enormous substance; the former was a kind of red and green shandrydan with a driving bench; plainly unfit to carry lumber or to face our road. (Remember that the last third of my road, about a mile, is all made out of a bridle-track by my boys—and my dollars.) It was supposed a white man had been found—an ex-German artilleryman—to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... terms:—"You are always less dull with Inachia than me: in her company you are threefold complaisance; but you are ever unprepared to oblige me in a single instance. Lesbia, who first recommended you—so unfit a help in time of need—may she come to an ill end! when Coan Amyntas paid me his addresses; who is ever as constant in his fair one's service, as the young tree to the hill it grows on. For whom were labored the fleeces of the richest Tyrian dye? For you? Even so that there was not one in company, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... stop on this side? Are there shops and mills, or warehouses and drawing-rooms, or studies and lecture-halls, over there? Will the lives which have not struck their roots down through all the surface soil to the rock, bear transplanting? Alas! for the thousands landed in that new country, as unfit for it by the tenor of their past occupations, as some pale artisan, with delicate fingers and feeble muscles, set down as a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and character, a Spaniard, and that so exclusively, that the circumstance would alone have made him unfit to govern a country so totally different in habits and national sentiments from his native land. He was more a foreigner in Brussels, even, than in England. The gay, babbling, energetic, noisy life ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... supplying our ideas from foreign sources 'enfeebles all internal strength of thought,' as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom and authority, become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over lines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than if they were ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... read," rejoined the judge, taking up the pamphlet he had laid down upon the lad's entrance, "but it says in substance, as quoted by this author, that negroes are beings 'of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; in fact, so inferior that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, and that the negro may justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.' That ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... subaltern in the British Army. A severe accident in the hunting-field compelled him to leave the Army. When war broke out in 1914 he offered his services to the War Office, but was rejected because physically unfit. He then enlisted as a private soldier, and by repeated acts of gallantry in ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... The age of artillery had not yet arrived; nevertheless, cannon were quite well known to fame. Enterprising traders from the West had sailed into the Golden Horn with samples of the new arm on their decks; they were of such rude construction as to be unfit for service other than saluting. [Footnote: Cannon were first made of hooped iron, widest at the mouth. The process of casting them was just coming in.] So, now, while the idlers on the wall were not alarmed, they were curious to make out who the extravagant fellows were, and waited ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... condition of many communities in the Black Belt, is startling. One negro witness who has been in direct association for many years with ministers in this part of the South, says, "three-fourths of those who are now acting as preachers in all this region, are absolutely unfit to preach the gospel. It is rare that one can find in the country districts where the masses of the people dwell, a minister who is both intelligent and ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... that hard-worked troop had been afield, and the time had passed and gone when its young first lieutenant had hoped for a leave to go home and see the mother and Jess. His captain was still ailing and unfit for duty in saddle. He could not and would not ask for leave at such a time, and yet at the very moment when he was most earnestly and faithfully doing his whole duty at the front, slander was busy with his name long miles at ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... us who have much time for retrospect, and there is a very deep sense in which it is wise to 'forget the things that are behind,' for the remembrance of them may burden us with a miserable entail of failure; may weaken us by vain regrets, may unfit us for energetic action in the living and available present. But oblivion is foolish, if it is continual, and a remembered past has treasures in it which we can ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... of. There is an end of that scandalous jobbing which at that time existed in every department of the State, and in every branch of the public service; and a check is imposed upon any scandalous and unfit promotion, civil or ecclesiastical. By whatever persons the government may be administered, they are now well aware that they must do nothing which will not bear daylight and strict investigation. The magistrates also are closely observed by this self- constituted censorship; and the inferior ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... and are laboring most assiduously to correct them. Grave obstacles have been encountered in their endeavors to perfect the system. Those who have written upon the subject in the public press have been largely such as have given it but a cursory study, or such as have been totally unfit to discuss it from an impartial standpoint by reason of preconceived notions or prejudices in favor of the level premium system of insurance, if, indeed, they have not been retained for a consideration by that gigantic ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... wholly unfit for the shelves of a library; the elegant white binding soils with dust, or the use of the hands, more quickly than any other; and the vellum warps in a dry climate, or curls up in a heated room, so as ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions—in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty; and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it. Again, a people may be unwilling or unable to fulfill the duties which a particular ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... so now did both hunger and thirst gnaw at Shann, all the sharper for the delay. The Terran wanted to reach that water, could picture it in his mind, putting away the possibility—the probability—that it might be sea-born and salt, and so unfit to drink. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... to publish, upon pain of I know not what, until I have tried again at the third Act. I am not sure that I shall try, and still less that I shall succeed, if I do; but I am very sure, that (as it is) it is unfit for publication or perusal; and unless I can make it out to my own satisfaction, I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... pleased the great, and commended him to their favor. Two years after the expedition to Port Royal, the king, under the new charter, made him governor of Massachusetts, a post for which, though totally unfit, he had been recommended by the elder Mather, who, like his son Cotton, expected to make use of him. He carried his old habits into his new office, cudgelled Brinton, the collector of the port, and belabored Captain Short of the royal navy with his cane. Far from trying to hide the obscurity of his ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... expected to part from you here," he said, "and it may be so; but I fear I shall need your services still further. My mules are unfit to travel at present; they may never be fit to use; surely not within a fortnight. I must find other sumpter mules, wait for those I have to regain their strength, or leave my goods at Metz. My fortune is invested in ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... door, of some hotel in a street not far distant from Euston Square. Thither she went: with what intention she scarcely knew, but to assuage her conscience by telling him how much she pitied him. In her present state she felt herself unfit to counsel, or restrain, or assist, or do aught else but sympathize and weep. The people of the inn said such a person had been there; had arrived only the day before; had gone out soon after arrival, ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... material increase of knowledge and intelligence among the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented with it; would excite them to insubordination and arrogance toward their superiors; and make them the more liable to be seduced by the wild notions and pernicious machinations of declaimers, schemers, and innovators.—Observations ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... finally decided to despatch Gordon he telegraphed that there was only just enough time left to escape to Berber. While the commandant held and expressed these views, it is not surprising that the garrison and inhabitants were disheartened and decidedly unfit to make any resolute opposition to a confident and daring foe. There is excellent independent testimony as to the state of ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... it was of a character which seemed more accustomed to receive honours voluntarily paid than to enforce them when they were refused. The good nature of the expression was so great as to approach to defenceless simplicity or weakness of character, unfit, it might be inferred, to repel intrusion or subdue resistance. Amongst the grey locks of this personage was placed a small circlet or coronet of gold, upon a blue fillet. His beads, which were large and conspicuous, were of native gold, rudely enough ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... possessed of steadiness, prudence, and principle, was he very unfit for such a post at such a time. For he was very fertile in resources, and well-endowed with both physical and moral courage; but these faculties were combined with, were indeed the parents of, a mischievous defect. He had such reliance on his own ingenuity and ability ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... reflections, and had nothing before her eyes but the gloomy prospect of extreme distress, she received a message from Lady Brumpton, who waited in her equipage at the door, desiring to be admitted to see her, for Lady Mary had given a general order to be denied, being unfit to see company, and unwilling to be exposed to the insulting condolence of many whose envy at the splendour in which she had lived and the more than common regard that had usually been shewn her, would have come merely to enjoy the triumph ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... innocence, the old country of my hopes—how could I endure to look on you now? And how to meet John?—John, with the old love on his lips, the old, honest, innocent, faithful heart! There was a Dorothy once who was not unfit to ride with him, her heart as light as his, her life as clear as the bright rivers we forded; he called her his Diana, he crowned her so with rowan. Where is that Dorothy now? that Diana? she that was everything to John? For O, I did him good; I know I did him good; I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sex and state, what not: To be discreet, keepers at home, and chaste; To love their husbands, to be good; shamefac'd: Children to bear, to love them, and to fly What to the gospel would be infamy. I think those to the sick should look also, A work unfit for younger ones to do. Wherefore he saith, The younger ones refuse; Perhaps because their weakness would abuse Them, and subject them unto great disgrace, When such a one as Amnon is in place. And since the good old ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the passage of the river. Marion was at this time an invalid, but, however much he might need, he asked for no repose or exemption from service when the enemy was in the field. His force was also reduced by sickness. Col. Mayham alone had no less than one hundred men unfit for duty. Other circumstances kept the militia from coming to the summons of Marion. Those on the borders of North Carolina were detained to meet and suppress a rising of the loyalists of that State under Hector M'Neil, and even those in his camp were unprovided with ammunition. Early in October, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... except in a few instances that their places have been filled; and the efficiency of the service has been impaired from this cause. To remedy these defects, I recommend that authority be given to accept the services of individual volunteers to fill up the places of such as may die or become unfit for the service and be discharged, and that provision be also made for filling the places of regimental and company officers who may die or resign. By such provisions the volunteer corps may be constantly kept full or may approximate the maximum number authorized ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... intelligence. His external appearance will inform us whether he is old-fashioned, in which case, he is less valuable upon every gambling calculation. His face also will generally inform us whether all is right within. This curious machine is filled with a complication of movements, very unfit to be regulated by the rough hand of ignorance, which sometimes leaves a mark not to be obliterated even by the hand of an artist. If the works are directed by violence, destruction is not far off. If we load it with the oil of luxury, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... our dirty rooms 'give' on to the odorous court-yard; we turn our backs upon the valley which the building almost overhangs; we can neither breathe pure air nor see the bright landscape. Any details of the domestic arrangements and surroundings of the Hotel de la Poste at Mortain would be unfit for these pages; suffice it that, we are in one of the second-rate old-fashioned inns of France, the style of which our travelled forefathers ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... turnip. This is an excellent root and cultivated with great success, particularly on new lands. They differ from the common field turnip, being of a firm texture they keep the year round; while the common turnip turns soft and unfit for use after the winter sets in. They, however, answer a good purpose for early use and for cattle, being sown late in July, after the other crops are out of the way. The Swedish turnip is sown early in June. All the sowing in this country is broad-cast, the method ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... and crimes of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the harvest of governesses. The daughters of trades-people, however well educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children's minds and persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring who have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Straits, in the course of which he became known as a bold and skilful seaman, but he not only wanted experience in sailing amongst ice, but also the endurance and the coolness that are required for voyages in the high north. He thereby showed himself to be quite unfit for the command which he undertook. Before his departure he was unreasonably certain of success; with the first encounter with ice his self-reliance gave way entirely; and when his vessel was wrecked on the coast of Novaya ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... him, he spoke more sincerely. He owned to Grace that his views had changed; said they were both too young to contract themselves when they did, and that he had made an engagement to marry, at a time when he was unfit to bind himself to so solemn a contract—said something about minors, and concluded by speaking of his poverty and total inability to support a wife, now that Mrs. Bradfort had left me the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... two hundred years, the number of inhabitants in the United States in 1852 will be twenty millions; in 1874, forty-eight millions; and in 1896, ninety-six millions. This may still be the case even if the lands on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains should be found to be unfit for cultivation. The territory which is already occupied can easily contain this number of inhabitants. One hundred millions of men disseminated over the surface of the twenty-four States, and the three dependencies, which constitute the Union, would only give 762 inhabitants ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... can't buy it," he cried, in a rage, driving the threat home with an oath peculiarly unfit for the ears of women, ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... a living spring or well. Her pasture should be timothy grass or native grass free from weeds; clover alone is bad. She should be cleaned and cared for like a carriage horse, and milked twice a day by the same person and at the same time. Some cows are unfit ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... Spain; but the ship in which they were was cast away in a storm, and all on board were lost. About this time, finding the ships which had accompanied him in exploring the islands, and those others which remained at Isabella, so much injured by worms as to be unfit for service, he ordered that two new caravels should be built with all speed, that the colony might not be without shipping; and these were the first ships that were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... a point and came out near a sparkling pool of clear, inviting water fed by a stream bursting out of what appeared to be solid rock. I knelt to drink, but was jerked to my feet sharply by a watchful Indian. The water is unfit to drink on account of the arsenic it contains. I noticed that none of the hot, tired horses even dipped their dusty noses into the pool. Safely away from this unhealthy spot we came into Rattlesnake Canyon, so named for obvious reasons, where the riding was much ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... it was exactly the physical beauty of the picture that rendered it in my eyes unfit to represent one whose aspect should purify and purge the senses, instead of exciting them. Let all the pictures in the world be destroyed, if they be found to have caused the commission of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the next morning and, started for Bradford, and though we discovered an improvement in the weather when we reached our destination we found the grounds of the Bradford Foot-ball and Cricket Club in a condition that was utterly unfit for base-ball playing purposes. To make matters worse it began to rain while we were getting into our uniforms and a chilly wind swept across the enclosure. Four thousand people braved the inclement weather to see us play, however, and the ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... broke in a caustic voice, "but that is hardly the point. He has taken to ways of relieving his sufferings which make him quite unfit for decent society——" ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... apples which have been raised from pips; [32] a codling is an apple which requires to be "coddled," stewed, or lightly boiled, being yet sour and unfit for eating whilst raw. The John Apple, or Apple John, ripens on St. John's Day, December 27th. It keeps sound for two years, but becomes very shrunken. Sir John Falstaff says (Henry IV., iii. 3) "Withered like an old Apple John." The squab pie, famous in Cornwall, contains apples and onions ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... upheld the application to oranges which were intended for the interstate market of a Florida statute prohibiting the sale, shipment, or delivery for shipment of any citrus fruits which were immature or otherwise unfit for consumption. The burden thus imposed upon interstate commerce was held by the Court to be incidental merely to the effective enforcement of a measure intended to safeguard the health of the people of Florida. Moreover, said the Court, "we may take judicial ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... on these cars is always an adventure. Since we are in war-time, the drivers are men unfit for active service: cripples and hunchbacks. So they have the spirit of the devil in them. The ride becomes a steeple-chase. Hurray! we have leapt in a clear jump over the canal bridges—now for the four-lane ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... crossing stock or improving the breed of either cattle or horses was never thought of. The cattle were long-horned, rough-skinned animals, and the beef was tough and coarse. The sheep, while of Spanish stock, were very far from being Spanish merino. Their wool was of the poorest quality, entirely unfit for exportation, and their meat ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... his present mood, it was only torture to prolong this interview. He felt himself unfit for counsel or argument,—unfit even for confidence, had it been vouchsafed. But he held, with a tenacity that could not but have its influence on his future acts and life, to the purpose that had broken from him so suddenly, and not less to his own surprise than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... a ball split into separate pieces, another ball may be put down where the largest portion lies; or if two pieces are apparently of equal size it may be put where either piece lies, at the option of the player. If a ball crack or become unfit for play, the player may change it on intimating to his opponent his intention to do so. Mud adhering to a ball shall not be considered as making it unfit ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate, uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with Negroes, he broods over his hardships and bemoans his fate. He is a Negro hater and thirsts for the excitement of a lynching bee. This condoned clog to the progress of Southern ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... too, but seeing that we did not expect him to reach the Glacier Tongue, and that he has now done more than 100 miles from Cape Evans, one really does not know what to expect of these creatures. Certainly Titus thinks, as he has always said, that they are the most unsuitable scrap-heap crowd of unfit creatures that ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... used, and is indeed altogether unfit to be eaten, until submitted in one form or other to ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... herd; the instinct of the "stricken deer" this might be called. But I do not think that we need assume that the ailing individual goes away to escape the danger of being ill-used by his companions. He is sick and drooping and consequently unfit to be with the healthy and vigorous; that is the simplest and probably the true explanation of his action; although in some cases he might be driven from them by persistent rough usage. However peaceably gregarious mammals ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... It is not coquetry. That was injustice. She loves me. She loves me still! Why do I believe it only too late? Why is this trial sent me, since I am bound to the scheme that precludes my marriage? What use is it to see her as undisciplined—as unfit as ever? I know it! I always knew it. But I feel still a traitor to her! She had warning! She trusted the power of my attachment in spite of my judgment! Fickle to her, or a falterer to my higher pledge? Never! I must ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... friend and companion in arms. It were a folly even to dream of a thing so improbable. But with respect to the other business, it is worth serious consideration. Yon sexton seems to have kept company with dead bodies, until he is unfit for the society of the living; and as to that Dickson of Hazelside, as they call him, there is no attempt against the English during these endless wars, in which that man has not been concerned; had ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... The pious Hindu, before the eclipse comes on, takes a torch, and begins to search his house and carefully removes all cooked food, and all water for drinking purposes. Such food and water, by the eclipse, incur Grahana seshah, that is, uncleanness, and are rendered unfit for use. Some, with less scruples of conscience, declare that the food may be preserved by placing on it dharba or Kusa grass," and much more to the like effect is duly set out ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... Dalrymple himself, although I had written to him several times, I heard seldom, and always briefly. His first notes were dated from Berlin, and those succeeding them from Vienna. He seemed restless, bitter, dissatisfied with himself, and with the world. Naturally unfit for a lounging, idle life, his active nature, now that it had to bear up against the irritation of hope deferred, chafed and ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... us bury the old feud, and right the old wrong in a new way. Those two are so blameless, it is cruel to visit the sins of the dead on their innocent heads. My lady has suffered enough already, and Lillian is so young, so happy, so unfit to meet a storm like this. Oh, Helen, mercy is ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott

... been made, many of the rebels, by letters which they sent from Hispaniola, and by some of their adherents who returned into Spain, continually conveyed false information to their majesties and the council against the admiral and his brothers; alleging that they were cruel and tyrannical and unfit for the government of the colony, both because they were strangers and aliens, and because they had not formerly been in a condition to learn by experience how to govern and command over gentlemen. They affirmed, if their highnesses did not apply some remedy, those countries ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... Shot-holes had been only roughly plugged, and in some of the vessels pumping was still being carried on day and night. The two prizes had been knocked about still more badly; in fact the whole squadron was in a very unfit state to encounter even a strong gale, and the coming storm threatened something very much worse than this. But everything was battened down and made as snug as possible, and all that Cavendish could now ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... and fat which were quite uneatable, and often the meat was so lean, old, dry and shrivelled that it was valueless as food. The victuallers often killed their animals in the heat of the summer, when the meat would not take salt, so that many casks must have been unfit for food after lying for a week in store. Anti-scorbutics were supplied, or not supplied, at the discretion of the captains. It appears that the sailors disliked innovations in their food, and rejected the substitution of beans, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... only on his account, but on account of the men I might leave in charge of the boat, made me averse to this measure; the chance of any misfortune to them involving in it the destruction of our boat and the loss of our provisions. My anxiety of mind would have rendered me unfit for exertion; yet so desirous was I of examining the ranges and the country at their base, that I should, had our passage to the salt water been uninterrupted, have determined on coasting it homewards, or of steering for Launceston; and most assuredly, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... by prompt, vigorous action. This did not detract from his value as a secret agent, when alone, for then all his actions were premeditated, and carried out with surpassing coolness and bravery; but it did unfit him for the command of men, in startling emergencies, where instant action afforded the only chance of safety. This trait of character will be more fully developed in the course of my story. I conversed with him on the object of the expedition, not, of course, expecting ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... my social position often appealed strongly to my sense of humor. I frequently smiled inwardly at some remark not altogether complimentary to people of color; and more than once I felt like declaiming: "I am a colored man. Do I not disprove the theory that one drop of Negro blood renders a man unfit?" Many a night when I returned to my room after an enjoyable evening, I laughed heartily over what struck me as the ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... it demanded strength, moral and physical strength. I was minded of the words of old Jim, "Where one wins ninety and nine will fail"; and time had proved him true. The great, grim land was weeding out the unfit, was rewarding those who could understand it, the faithful brotherhood of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... in the given scene. There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all, only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of beginners, the following general warnings ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... it in him, it would have come out. The critic had very probably told him the truth. He could not hope to make a living out of literature. He had not the strength to write the masterpiece which the perverse cruelty of nature had permitted him only to see, and he was hopelessly unfit for journalism. But in his simple, wholesome mind there was no bent towards suicide; and he scanned every horizon. Once again he thought of his uncle. Five years ago he had written, asking him for the loan of a hundred pounds. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore

... supposed to have done him harm; but the conclusion appears to be ill founded. They diverted his thoughts, and made him conscious of his powers and his fame. I doubt whether he would have been better for entire approbation: it would have put him in a state of elevation, unfit for what he had to endure. He had found his pen his great solace, and he had never employed it so well. It would be incredible what a heap of things he wrote in this complicated torment of imprisonment, sickness, and "physic," if habit and mental activity had not been sufficient ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... some of their most deep-rooted prejudices. Tillie's filial insubordination, her "high-mindedness," her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she refused even to live under her father's roof—all these things made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young children. She would imbue the "rising generation" with her worldly ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... spent a deal of learning and ingenuity in trying to make out that the play referred to by Meres as Lovers Labour's Won was The Tempest. Among Shakespeare's dramas he could hardly have pitched upon a more unfit subject for such a title. There is no love's labour in The Tempest. For, though a lover does indeed there labour awhile in piling logs, this is nowise from love, but simply because he cannot help himself. Nor does ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... work for which he is unfit, therefore, finds it not a means of self-expression, but a slow form of self-destruction. All this wretchedness of spirit reacts directly upon the efficiency of the worker. "A successful day is likely to be a restful one," says Professor Scott,—"an unsuccessful day an exhausting one. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... stories he has altogether omitted "because they are similar to tales already well known" (unfortunately the comparative study of popular fictions was hardly begun in his time), while of others bare outlines are furnished, because he considered them "unfit for general perusal." But his work, even as it is, has probably never been "generally" read, and he seems to have had somewhat vague notions of "propriety," to judge by his translations from the Arabic and Persian. A complete English rendering of the "Bahar-i-Danish" would be welcomed by all ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... in mine than any other consideration. But we have both reached that time of life, when it is probable that in any proposition of marriage we should think more of our adaptability to each other than we did before. For myself I know that there is much in my character and disposition to make me unfit to marry a woman of the common stamp. You know my mode of life, and what are my hopes and my chances of success. I run great risk of failing. It may be that I shall encounter ruin where I look for reputation and a career of honour. The chances are perhaps more in favour of ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... village (as the weaker part, unfit for sea, and left behind, were politely called, being very old men, women, and small children), full of conversation, came, upon their way back from the tide, to the gravel brow now bare of boats, they could not ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... word of this outcry is true. No one can doubt that the electoral bodies of the Universities, as at present constituted, are quite unfit to represent the Universities, to speak in their name or to express their wishes or feelings. The franchise, at Oxford and Cambridge, is in the hands of the two largest bodies known to the University constitution, the Convocation of Oxford, the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... example, there were times during the first thirty years of the century when the open and general lewdness of the officials on some of the principal settlements, in their relations with the female convicts, rendered them totally unfit for the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... was very evident that we should not be able to get her off again. The boat still lay where Roger Trew and Oliver had hauled her up. We hurried down to examine her. A hole had been torn in her bottom, rendering her unfit for use. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... preferred the "[t]en[)a]n[']de uq[|c]a[']ha [|c]a^{n}" or pericardium(?) of the buffalo, which is like sinew. This does not smell unpleasant, even when used for seven or ten days. But at the expiration of that time it is unfit for ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... unfit to have the care of her." Stella spoke with very unusual severity. "Since Captain Ermsted's death she seems to have drifted into a state of hopeless apathy. I can't bear to think of a susceptible child like Tessa brought up in such ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... me that England as a nation is really unfit for any decent other nation to know politically, but they added, with stiff bows in my direction, that sometimes the individual inhabitant of that low-minded and materialistic country is not without amiability, especially if he or she is ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... the girl to play beside. Nor did they know, then, that their streamlet flowed on and on until it joined the river; and that the river, in its course, led it past great cities that poured into it the poisons and the filth of their sewers, fouling its bright waters, until it was unfit for children to ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... left my friends a long way off, and was alone in a strange place, with an amount of work and responsibility for which I knew I was thoroughly unprepared and unfit. However, I sauntered back to my lodgings, and began to ruminate as to what ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... part. Ambitious but trivial, enterprising but cowardly, an intriguer and a dupe, without religious convictions or political principles, save that he was willing to accept any creed or any system which might advance his own schemes, he was the most unfit protector for a people who, whether wrong or right; were at least in earnest, and who were accustomed to regard truth as one of the virtues. He was certainly not deficient in self-esteem. With a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... and sensitive by nature than many would believe or can imagine, reared in seclusion more simply and quietly than falls to the general lot of peers' daughters, completely inexperienced, Isabel was unfit to battle with the world—totally unfit to battle with Miss Carlyle. The penniless state in which she was left at her father's death, the want of a home save that accorded her at Castle Marling, even the hundred-pound ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... surprised," he said, "that your stepmother should have thought of it. He is an unfit companion ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... poisonous and unwholesome. As we breathe on an average about eighteen or twenty times to the minute when we are grown up, and twenty-five to thirty times a minute when we are children, you can readily see how quickly the air in an ordinary-sized room will be used up, and how foul and unfit for further breathing it will become from being loaded with these bad-smelling lighter gases, with the carbon "smoke," with heat, and with moisture. The only way in which a room can be kept fit for human beings to breathe in ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... your anxiety do? It does not empty to-morrow, brother, of its sorrows; but, ah! it empties to-day of its strength. It does not enable you to escape the evil, it makes you unfit to cope with it when it comes. It does not bless to-morrow, but it robs to-day. For every day has its own burden. Sufficient for each day is the evil which properly belongs to it. Do not add to-morrow's to to-day's. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... captaines for his care both of us and of our action, not as the matter deserved, but as I could both for my company and myselfe, I (being aforehand prepared what I would desire) craved at his hands that it would please him to take with him into England a number of weake and unfit men for any good action, which I would deliver to him; and in place of them to supply me of his company with oare-men, artificers, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... the grass shoots up high in the meadows; but they are dank and cold, unfit bed for us. Corn we have none, and the crude fruits cannot support us. We must seek firing in the bowels of the earth, or the unkind atmosphere will fill us with rheums and aches. The labour of hundreds of thousands alone ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... thoughts were fuller of the bang Be lately took than RALPH'S harangue; To which he answer'd, Cruel Fate 585 Tells me thy counsel comes too late. The knotted blood within my hose, That from my wounded body flows, With mortal crisis doth portend My days to appropinque an end. 590 I am for action now unfit, Either of fortitude or wit: Fortune, my foe, begins to frown, Resolv'd to pull my stomach down. I am not apt, upon a wound, 595 Or trivial basting, to despond: Yet I'd be loth my days to curtail: For if I thought my wounds not mortal, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... conference of that leadership on Mr. Nixon—the old story of the Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, with Mr. Croker as Wolf and Mr. Nixon the innocent who was eaten up. No, no; he might have better guided himself. Mr. Nixon—were all about the friendliest—was still unfit for the place. It was like putting a horse in a tree-top; it gave the horse no grace nor glory and offered a sole assurance of his finally ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... insensible to the higher sway of moral affinity or heaven-lit admiration. But when this attaching force is present in a nature not of brutish unmodifiableness, but of a human dignity that can risk itself safely, it may even result in a devotedness not unfit to be called divine in a higher sense than the ancient. Phlegmatic rationality stares and shakes its head at these unaccountable prepossessions, but they exist as undeniably as the winds and waves, determining here a wreck and there ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... bidding the Plataeans to wait for further instructions, before taking any steps against the prisoners. When the herald arrived, he found the men already slain, and the Athenians then proceeded to place the town in a state of defence, removing the women and children and all those who were unfit for military service, to Athens, and leaving a small body of their ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... leave one, merely from indifference, undisturbed. Sara de Treverell, in the past, had been, by her vagaries, directly responsible for several sleepless nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he had been conscious of them always. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... glad to see you, Mr. Brooke; but I should be more glad, still, if you had been coming to join, for we have lost several officers from sickness, and there are others unfit for duty. When ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... according to an ancient story reported by Athenaeus, becoming conscious that their trick of laughter at everything and nothing was making them unfit for the conduct of serious affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... love for yonder lovely child had led him into an act of culpable imprudence. Besides, that very day many things had reached his ears concerning these two who suited each other as perfectly as Heinz Schorlin seemed—even to the Hapsburg, who was loyally devoted to the Holy Church—unfit ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... open to all that was excellent, in the variety of characters with whom his extensive professional connexions brought him acquainted; and he did not fail to observe and note down many curious circumstances and traits of character, in themselves highly amusing, but, for obvious reasons, unfit subjects for publication. Not one taint of satire or ill-nature, however, ever sullied the wit which flowed spontaneously from a mind sportive sometimes even to exuberance." His artistic critiques will be found in the following works: The Bee: or, a Critique on the Exhibition of Paintings at Somerset ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various

... produce on the air and the clothing?—"It soon makes the air unfit to be breathed, and the clothing unfit to ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis

... proper food. I expect when we get under way we shall be much more healthy. it has always had that effect on us heretofore. The guns of Drewyer and Sergt. Pryor were both out of order. the first was repared with a new lock, the old one having become unfit for uce; the second had the cock screw broken which was replaced by a duplicate which had been prepared for the lock at Harpers ferry where she was manufactured. but for the precaution taken in bringing on those ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... entirely aware that they gain nothing by carrying their tedious burden, but they carry it. Not content with doing their duty, and trying their best while actively engaged, they take home with them a long face, breathe sighs around them in the saddest fashion, and really unfit themselves for the healthy exercise of their reason, and the active employment ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... Andrew; but it is really useless for this farce to continue. Do what you like, and let us make no further pretence of collaborating. I cannot act as a drag upon such a wheel as yours. I will not any longer be a dead-weight upon you. Our temperaments evidently unfit us to be fellow-workers; and I feel that your strength and power are so undeniable that you may, perhaps, be able to carry this weary tragedy through, and by sheer force make it palatable to the public. I will protest ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... won him great reverence, was suggested apparently in all sincerity to the wearied and perplexed Cardinals. He was elected and took the title of Celestine V. In accordance with the desire of Charles II of Naples, he took up his abode at Naples. But he was utterly unfit for his high office, and after a pontificate of less than four months (August to December, 1294) he resigned, thus perpetrating that "great refusal" which won Dante's immortal phrase of scorn. How far his act was due to the machinations of ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley

... speak, the hereditary solicitors of the family more than of any individual member of it; and therefore, though highly respectable persons, unfit to advise me in this particular matter. Besides," she added with increasing tremor and hesitation, "to deal with, and if possible foil, the individual by whom I am persecuted, requires an agent of keener sagacity ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... the mines of dark and silent thought Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, With heavy labour to the surface brought That lie and mock me in the brighter air, Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty, Unfit for working or to be refined, That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, I turn away from that base cave, the mind. Yet had I but the power to crush the stone There are strange metals hid in flakes therein, Each flake a spark sole-hidden ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... emperor should act in a way which astonishes the uninitiated. Indeed, William II. displays extraordinary force of character in suppressing physical agony, when the duties he owes to the state force him to come forward when unfit for anything else but the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... You regarded me as unfit for practical work, and so credited me with occult powers. But that is where you made a mistake, Mrs. Quintard; I'm nothing if not practical. And let me add, that I'm as secret as the grave concerning what my clients tell me. If I am to be of any help ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... is unfit to march, if you desire it, Mr Twigg, I will leave him here in command of a detachment sufficient to protect the house," said Major Malcolm, "as probably the marines and sailors may be required on board their ship, to render aid ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... tours, and decides elsewhere about the same time that "of all dull, stagnant, unedifying entourages, that of middle-class Dissent is the stupidest." It is sad to find that he thinks women utterly unfit for teachers and lecturers; but Girton and Lady Margaret's may take comfort, it is "no natural incapacity, but the fault of their bringing-up." With regard to his second series of Poems (v. infra) he thinks Balder will "consolidate ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... previous year, a month later in the season. On that occasion, late as it was, we have the evidence of Lieutenant De Haven to prove the channel opened: why should we doubt it doing so in 1851? An open sea existed on both sides of a belt of ice, rotten, full of holes, unfit to travel over (as Penny's officers reported it), full thirty days before the winter set in; is there an Arctic navigator hardy enough to say he believes that that belt would have been found there on ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... breeds (namely the Niata ox and Ancon sheep) in other quadrupeds have thus originated. Again they may say, seeing what training and careful selection has effected for the greyhound, and seeing how absolutely unfit the Italian greyhound is to maintain itself in a state of nature, is it not probable that at least all greyhounds,—from the rough deerhound, the smooth Persian, the common English, to the Italian,—have descended ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... elegance, his was a decided love of his old clothes; his garments, like his friends, became dearer to him from their wear and tear in his service, and they were deposited successively in his dressing-room, though mamma thought them quite unfit for him. He averred that he required his old hunting-suits for accidents; his summer jackets and vests, though faded, were the coolest in the world; his worm-eaten but warm roquelaure was admirable for riding about the fields, etc. In vain ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... foundations of trust and security;" and he also declared that nothing could be more opposed to the precepts of our Lord and His apostles, than to destroy men's souls by depriving them of the benefits of the pastoral office by giving unfit persons the care of souls. He therefore absolutely refused to publish the bull, or to admit the young Italian to ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... respectfully as I could to protest. I represented that it was hardly just to punish a man for not performing a heavy physical task whilst admitting in the very terms of the sentence that he was unfit to do it. The answer was, 'Right about face, march!' I went to cells. I had my hair cut, and I spent thirty-six delirious hours alone. At the end of that time my condition was reported and I was removed; but from that hour I was sullen and rebellious, and whatever spirit of order and discipline ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... omits Canto IV. of Childe Harold, all the dramas except Manfred, and gives "extracts" from Don Juan, "a poem unfit to be printed in this collection entire." Another edition, including the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold's, etc., Mazeppa, and the Ode on Venice, enclosed in coloured vignette borders, was issued ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... slept and Zubaydah sent for her Chief Eunuch and putting her in a great chest, locked it and gave it to him, saying, "Take this chest and cast it into the river." Thereupon he took it up before him on a he-mule and set out with it for the sea, but found it unfit to carry; so, as he passed by the trunk-market, he saw the Shaykh of the brokers and salesmen and said to him, "Wilt thou sell me this chest, O uncle?" The broker replied, "Yes, we will do this much." "But," said the Eunuch, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... wrong—was sacrificed to the education of Stephen Leach at public school and University. Here he met and selected for his friends youths whose futures were ensured, and who were only passing through the formula of an education so that no one could say they were unfit for the snug Government appointment, living, or inheritance of a more substantial sort, that might be waiting for them. Stephen acquired their ways of life without possessing their advantages, and the consequence was something ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... there one day—Ah! There's some one you'd like to see in Louvain, if I mistake not! You always was one for findin' out things, and maybe I'll tell you more, now you've come back to me, than what I'd a done with you standing up so stiff and proud and me unfit to take up the hem of your skirt.... How I do ramble. Suppose it's old age comin' on" (shudders). "About this Villa de Beau-sejour ... It was once a farm house, and even now it's the farm where I get me eggs and milk and butter an' the fruit and vegetables ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... in France was constantly being disturbed by the partisans of the young Prince Arthur, desiring to see him king instead of his uncle, and taking up arms to enforce their claim, it was necessary, in order to put an end to this rebellion, that the young prince should be rendered unfit for governing; and as no people would be likely to choose a blind boy for their king, Hubert de Burgh was instructed to have Arthur's eyes put out; and the two men who had arrived with the king's messenger were come, so the letter said, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... said when Mrs. Marx was gone, "are you afraid these new things will make me forget my duties, or make me unfit for them?" ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... know that you're an utterly immoral person?" He nodded. "You're my protector, Bernie; you're all I have. I'm a poor motherless girl and I lean upon you. But you must appreciate now that you're quite unfit to act as ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... third day before making Charleston light, Manuel Pereira came aft, and with a sad countenance reported that the last cask of good water was nearly out; that the others had all been stove during the gale, and what remained, so brackish that it was unfit for use. From this time until their arrival at Charleston, they suffered those tortures of thirst, which only those who have endured them ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... visitors, too, we hear of cases of destitution, truancy, waywardness and moral exposure, of unfit dwellings, and illegal liquor-selling. Such things we report to suitable agencies—the other departments of our Children's Aid Society, the Associated Charities, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Board of Health, the Law and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... political economy was, at that time, doubted by all who knew him best! Are such statements as these to be submitted to by a man of honor? Never! PUNCHINELLO dares the recreant editor of the dirty sheet to do his worst! Of that base man he could tell much which would render him unfit for the association of any person living, but he forbears. This much, however, he will say. It is well known that the said calumniator did, at many periods of his life, make use of the services of a calceolarius. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... Manning a last flattering testimony of the confidence with which he was regarded at the Court of Rome. In one of the private consultations preceding the Conclave, a Cardinal suggested that Manning should succeed to the Papacy. He replied that he was unfit for the position, because it was essential for the interests of the Holy See that the next Pope should be an Italian. The suggestion was pressed, but Manning held firm. Thus it happened that the Triple Tiara seemed to come, for a moment, within ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... ungrateful. I say 'us' when I ought to have said 'me,' for you have known Robert, and you have not known me, and I am naturally less safe with you than he is—less safe in your esteem. We should both have gone to inquire after your health if he had not been attacked with influenza, and unfit for anything until the days you mentioned as the probable term of your remaining in town had passed. I waited till he should be better, and the malady lingered. Now he is well, and I do hope you may be so ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... "Houses unfit for human habitation, rooms destitute of light and ventilation, overcrowding in rural cottages, contaminated water supplies, accumulations of every description of filth and refuse, a total absence of drainage, a reign of unbelievable dirt in milk-shops and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... are unfit for motorists," is the report of the Tadcaster surveyor to his council. We understand the inhabitants have ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... I can and I will, George Hamilton," I answered, determined not to let him put me off without knowing wherein I had offended. "Save what you heard at Sundridge, I have neither done nor said anything unfit to come from a friend. If any man has reported me otherwise, he has lied. If any woman—well, she ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... wide areas, that tests vitality and survival values, so far as these values are biological. It may be claimed that war is very often, if not generally, a means of interrupting favorable selective processes, the unfit tending to prevail temporarily by force of numbers, or even because of qualities that antagonize biological progress. Viewing war in its later aspects, we can see that it is often when nations are failing in natural competition ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... thousand five hundred of the principal men among the Arabians had been destroyed, and that their captain Nacebus, his familiar friend and kinsman, was slain; and that the riches that were at Raepta were carried off; and that Obodas was despised, whose infirm state of body rendered him unfit for war; on which account neither he, nor the Arabian army, were present. When Sylleus said so, and added invidiously, that he would not himself have come out of the country, unless he had believed that Caesar would have provided that they should all have peace one with another, and that, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... marked his character, especially when anything jarred against his personal dignity or prejudices; "you forget that, however desirous I am to satisfy the family to whom this borough belongs, it is impossible for me to see with satisfaction—even though I cannot prevent—the election of any person so unfit to serve His Majesty. If, indeed, there were another candidate, so that the popular feeling might ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... of our success and comfort in life depends on distinguishing the similar from the same, that which is peculiar in each thing from that which it has in common with others, so as still to select the most probable, instead of the merely possible or positively unfit, we shall learn to value earnestly and with a practical seriousness a mean, already prepared for us by nature and society, of teaching the young mind to think well and wisely by the same unremembered process and with the same never ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Dispositions, from which she was known to be entirely free. However, so far from taking the Denial, it only made him more urgent; at which the Queen to free herself from what she call'd her Consort's Importunities, sent him Word, and confirm'd it herself, that an incurable Disorder had rendered her unfit ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... out with the honors of war; and the victorious Peter, who was as generous as brave, permitted them to keep possession of all their arms and ammunition—the same on inspection being found totally unfit for service, having long rusted in the magazine of the fortress, even before it was wrested by the Swedes from the windy Van Poffenburgh. But I must not omit to mention that the governor was so well pleased with the service of his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... attorney says he is not guilty. 2. And for a further Plea the Deft, says that before and at the time of the alleged imprisonment Plt, was a person of unsound mind and incompetent to take care of himself and a proper person to be taken care of and detained and it was unfit unsafe improper and dangerous that he should be at large thereupon the Deft, being the uncle of the Plt. and a proper person to cause the Plt. to be taken charge of under due care and treatment in that behalf did cause the Plt. to be so taken charge of and detained under ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... surprise. "I don't quite understand you, Mr. Tarling. I had come down to give you rather a blowing up about Miss Rider. You know she is absolutely unfit to go out. I thought I made that clear to you when ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... wan iv th' customs iv th' great raypublic iv ours, Jawn, f'r to appoint th' most competent men f'r th' places, he'd have a mighty small lot f'r to pick fr'm. But, seein' that on'y thim is iligible that are unfit, he has th' divvle's own time selectin'. F'r Sicrety iv State, if he follows all iv what Casey calls recent precidints, he's limited to ayether a jack-leg counthry lawyer, that has set around Washington f'r twinty years, pickin' up a dollar or ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... dry land barley rather than spelt, in medium land both. Furthermore there are still more subtle distinctions to be made in respect of all these kinds of soil, as for example it must be considered in respect of loam, whether it is white loam or red loam, because white loam is unfit for nursery beds, while red loam is what they require. But the three great distinctions of quality of soil are whether it is lean or fat, or medium. Fat soils are apparent from the heavy growth of their vegetation, and the lean lie bare; as witness ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... love, it is the saddest thing, When friendship proves unfit, For lots of sadness it will bring, When e'er you ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... to Greshamsbury, and he was at first well inclined that she should do so. But this idea was overruled, partly in compliance with Lady Scatcherd's entreaties, and partly because it would have seemed as though they had both thought the presence of its owner had made the house an unfit habitation for decent people. The doctor therefore returned, leaving Mary there; and Lady Scatcherd busied herself between her ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... thou loveliest maid, Still first to fly where sensual joys invade; Unfit in these degenerate times of shame To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame; Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, My shame in crowds, my solitary pride; Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so; Thou guide by ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... they awoke. The sergeant got on to his feet, but it was evident to Edgar that he was altogether unfit for walking. ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... will give you now just half an hour," sternly said Major Hardwicke, "to consider the propriety of resigning instantly your executorship of your brother's estate in favor of your son, Douglas Fraser. He is honest! You are unfit to control your ward! You can also first file your written consent to the immediate marriage of your ward, Nadine Fraser Johnstone, to myself, and apply to have your accounts passed and approved upon your discharge as guardian ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... journals will not publish such advertisements, and no editor can excuse himself by saying that he is ignorant of the character of such announcements. It must be known to every man of experience that such advertisements are unfit for the perusal of young men or women, and it is surprising that the heads of families should permit newspapers containing those advertisements to enter their houses. As a well-known English ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... not, as is frequently asserted by their Anglo-Saxon critics, totally unfit to appreciate humor, when it is mingled with the study of man's nature and seasoned with that high-spiced irony of which they have been so fond at all times, from the days of Villon to those of Rochefort. Still, Daudet would never have acquired such a complete mastery over the general ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... to be met with, and are occasionally convenient. A communication with the billiard-room, sometimes made, may give the library too completely the character of a lounge, so as to render it somewhat unfit for its better purposes. When the library of a small house is used as a study, by a clergyman, for instance, or as the business room, a door to the dining-room may be so useful as to be specially admissible, the dining-room being thus brought to serve as a waiting-room ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... Certain waters, for instance, those contaminated to any extent with organic matter, cannot be used at all in brewing, as they give rise to unsatisfactory fermentation, cloudiness and abnormal flavour. Others again, although suited to the production of one type of beer, are quite unfit for the brewing of another. For black beers a soft water is a desideratum, for ales of the Burton type a hard water is a necessity. For the brewing of mild ales, again, a water containing a certain proportion of chlorides is required. The presence or absence of certain mineral substances as such ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... sort to let himself be vexed. Each had disappointed him seriously; Fannie by setting up domestic love and felicity as a purpose instead of an appliance, squandering her care and strength in a short-sighted devotion to his physical needs, and showing herself unfit to co-operate with him in the things for which he thought it no great matter to risk his life; and John by failing so utterly to discern the true situation in Suez that the only thing to do with him was to let him alone until time and hard luck might season him to better uses than anyone could ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... and the bridge which General Dodge built there. Schofield's had their depot at Smyrna and came by the wooden bridge which we built at the mouth of Soap Creek to replace the pontoons. The latter were of canvas, and whilst unequalled for field use, were unfit for a bridge of any permanence, because the canvas would be destroyed by long continuance in the water. As soon as they could be replaced by a pier or trestle-bridge of timber, they were taken up, cleaned and dried, and then packed on their special wagons for transport. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... forward the subject of the representation of women on its board of directors. Dr. James F. Clarke made a motion looking to that result, which was largely discussed, much opposition being manifested. It was urged by many that women were unfit to serve in a position demanding so much business capacity, that they would displace capable men, and that it was improper for them to assume so public a duty. Charles Lowe, James F. Clarke, John T. Sargent, and others ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... 17th March, 1863, the custom bills of entry show that 23,870 gun-barrels, 30,802 rifles, and 3,105,800 percussion caps were shipped to the United States. (Hear, hear). So that if the Southern States have got two ships, unarmed, unfit for any purpose of warfare—for they procured their armaments somewhere else—the Northern States have been well supplied from this country through the agency of some most influential persons. (Hear, hear.) Now, it has been stated—and by way of ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... general principles of locomotion, and aware of the character of the road and of the expected traffic, and able to judge, (not by so-called experience, but by real knowledge,) he may get machinery totally unfit for the work required of it. Indeed, American civil engineers ought to qualify themselves to equip the roads they build; for none others are so well acquainted with the road as those who from a thorough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... your programme, I would fain request M. Peter Benoit [One of the chief representatives of Belgian national music (born 1884), Director of the Antwerp Conservatoire] to conduct it, since for the last fifteen years I have declared myself unfit for this work in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... exhaustive treatise, or as adapted for the use of foreigners. It is intended primarily for boys, but, in the present unsatisfactory state of English education, we entertain a hope that it may possibly be found not unfit for some who have passed the age of boyhood; and in this hope we have ventured to give it the title of ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... through the columns of the Lincoln Register are often unfit to be read by any child, or aloud in any family, because of their indecency, we are unanimously of the opinion that his course is calculated to defeat the aims and purposes of Christianity, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... a running stream, but how ugly in puddles and swamps; it is good then neither for man nor beast. Without water city and country alike languish; and rightly did the ancients punish one who was unfit for human society by forbidding all men to give him water. Therefore you ought all heartily to combine for this most useful work, since the man who is not touched by the comeliness of his city has not yet ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... scroll of the Law has become through age unfit for use it is to be buried in an earthen vessel, as is said in Jeremiah xxii, 14, "And put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days." A scroll of the Law ought never to be sold unless the object be to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... America Simon Bolivar, and the storm of revolution which swept the Continent shook these northern dependencies into transient wakefulness and energy, until the great day of Boyaca dawned, and New Granada and Venezuela, as Spanish colonies, ceased to be. Fit or unfit as they might have been for self-government at the time, these peoples set out to make histories as independent States, and the Spanish colonial era, having lasted over two and a half centuries, came to ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... first entered this region, many superficial changes have taken place, not only about the entrances but within the caverns as well. Very probably these alterations have converted caves once occupied into places which at present are quite unfit for such purposes. Talus has accumulated in front of the openings or partially filled the front chambers; it may well be the case that this conceals much refuse. Caves which, from similar deposits, are now difficult to enter and dark to the doorway, may have ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... said Vessels to be equally shared and divided between them According to the Articles belonging to both the said Vessels. And further that if either of the said Vessels happens to be disabled so as to be unfit for her Cruising or proceeding the said Voyage, then the other of the said Vessels shall assist in getting her into any of such port as shall be most convenient for her in Order to ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... acquittal. This warrants one of two inferences: either the writer would have men convicted whose guilt is involved in "reasonable doubt," or he fears that the learning and experience of the bar and the bench tend to unfit the mind to weigh the evidence of guilt or innocence. It is curious that in a former number of the same Review, another learned writer expressed exactly the contrary opinion.[A] Mr. Edward A. Thomas thinks that "judges are too ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various









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