"Inadequacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Aden, but in a town called Lahedj, about eighteen miles distant, where he kept the treasures which his uncle, who was a brave and politic ruler, had succeeded in amassing. He reputation for wealth, however, and the inadequacy of his means for defending it, drew on him the hostility of the more warlike tribes in the vicinity; and in 1836 Aden was sacked by the Futhalis, who not only carried off booty to the value of 30,000 dollars, (principally the property of the Banians and the Sumauli merchants in the port,) but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... pardon!" said I at last and then, struck by the inadequacy of these trite words, drew a pace nearer. "Oh, pray—pray don't weep!" I pleaded. "If I have hurt you, I crave your forgiveness!" Here she sobbed but the fiercer. "But indeed—indeed," I stammered, "I thought—that is, I did not think, I—I mean I could not leave you destitute and having no money ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... years the flow of his contributions to scientific literature never ceased. In 1856 he was appointed to take charge of the natural history departments of the British Museum, and before long set forth views as to the inadequacy of the existing accommodation, which led ultimately to the foundation of the buildings now devoted to this purpose in South Kensington. Owen died on December 18, 1892. His great book, "Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrates," was completed in 1868, and since ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... utterly failed me; I could only think to myself, "Is this fear? It is not fear!" I strove to rise,—in vain; I felt as if weighed down by an irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to my volition,—that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond man's, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to my will was another will, as far superior to its strength as ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... its throne the brain reigns supreme; its right is challenged by no other organ. The possibilities of all the other organs, as supreme rulers, have been exhausted. Each one has been thoroughly tested, and its inadequacy proven beyond doubt by actual experiment. These formerly supreme lower organs must serve the higher. The age of man's existence on the globe is, and must remain, the era of mind. For the mind alone has an inexhaustible store ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... confidence and interest in agriculture in general. This is one of the basic industries, upon the proper understanding and growth of which depends the food supply of the nation. It is admitted by scientists that, other conditions being equal, an adequacy or inadequacy in the supply of proper food makes the difference between great people and undesirable people. This being true, the various operations of agriculture must always be of the greatest concern to those who are interested ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... restoration of the authority of the Spanish king over the whole of the Netherlands was only a question of time. The military skill and the statecraft of Alexander Farnese were making slow but sure progress in the reconquest of Flanders and Brabant. Despite the miserable inadequacy of the financial support he received from Spain, the governor-general, at the head of a numerically small but thoroughly efficient and well-disciplined army, was capturing town after town. In 1583 Dunkirk, Nieuport, Lindhoven, Steenbergen, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... endure any longer her galling state of dependence. Eliza Countess of Gaverick had sent her a meagre cheque, accompanied by a scathing rebuke of her extravagance. Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... till he falls into the frame of mind that leads to the catastrophe, from mere internal irritation, not premeditation, or envy of Abel (which would have made him contemptible), but from the rage and fury against the inadequacy of his state to his conceptions, and which discharges itself rather against Life, and the author of Life, than the mere living."—Letter to Moore, November 3, 1821, Letters, 1901, v. 470. Here, no doubt, Byron is speaking in propria persona. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... networks are opertional in Moscow and St. Petersburg; expanding access to international E-mail service via Sprint networks; the inadequacy of Russian telecommunications is a severe handicap to the economy, especially with respect to international connections; total installed telephones 24,400,000, of which in urban areas 20,900,000 and in rural areas ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... from the inadequacy of the piano transcription, for it was conceived and written orchestrally. Paula, too, has given finer performances of it;—indeed, she sang it better a little later that same evening. But spurred as she was by the knowledge that the composer was listening ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... People of any land learned to judge their preachers and teachers by the lines of fact alone! Inasmuch as fact would convincingly prove to them that their leaders prospered and grew rich, while they stayed poor; and they might take to puzzling out reasons for this inadequacy which would inevitably cause trouble. For this, and divers other motives politic, the rosy veil of sentiment is always delicately flung more or less over every new move on the national debating-ground,—and whether ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... unavailing visit, the necessity of going again established itself in me, and I went repeatedly, choosing, indeed, rainy days when I could not well go elsewhere, and vengefully rejoicing, when I went, in the inadequacy of its hugeness and the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... be said that we did not give way to depression for long, for soon every one was as cheery as usual. Laughter rang out from the tents, and even the Boss had a passage-at-arms with the storekeeper over the inadequacy of the sausage ration, insisting that there should be two each 'because they were such little ones,' instead of the one and a half that ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... take place, owing to the increased demands which the future must make upon the endurance of our horsemen, and presumably also the heavier losses they will be called upon to suffer in action, both of which must be intensified in proportion as their numerical inadequacy for the tasks incurring on them increases. Germany is certainly comparatively well supplied with horses; but owing to the demands of the aforesaid new formations, which must be set on foot immediately on the declaration ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... book will find fault with my way of using the phrase, "disassociation of personality." I know their use of it, yet am compelled to use it in my own way in default of a better phrase. I take shelter behind the inadequacy of the English language. And now to the explanation of my use, or misuse, of ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... He bought fish at the coast, which he conveyed on horseback to Leeds and other towns for sale. He continued indefatigable at this trade for some time, being on the road often for nights together; but he was at length forced to abandon it in consequence of the inadequacy of the returns. He was therefore under the necessity of again taking up his violin; and he was employed as a musician in the Long Room at Harrogate, at the time of the outbreak of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... not visited his mother; others, because they had neglected to pay him this compliment sooner. The true reason, however, of the haughty distance, at which, both now and afterwards, he stood apart from his more opulent neighbours, is to be found in his mortifying consciousness of the inadequacy of his own means to his rank, and the proud dread of being made to feel this inferiority by persons to whom, in every other respect, he knew himself superior. His friend, Mr. Becher, frequently expostulated with him on this unsociableness; and to his remonstrances, on one occasion, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... music to the Marquis in 1503, 1514 and 1525, are among the names unearthed from the archives of Mantua by their keeper at the request of Mr. Vander Straeten. These papers contained the names of a few other singers, players and directors, but their inadequacy was demonstrated by the fact that they contained no mention of Jacques de Wert, a composer of great activity and talent, to whom Vander Straeten devotes some fifteen pages of ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... INADEQUACY OF THE TERMS USED.—It is unfortunate that the English language is so poor in synonyms in this field that the same word must have two such different and conflicting meanings, for, though the new definition ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... felt as though the man beside her might be capable of any extreme of action. Whatever decision he might adopt over any given matter, he would hold by it, come what may, and she was aware of an odd reflex consciousness of feminine inadequacy. To influence Garth Trent against his convictions would be like trying to deflect the course of a river by laying a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... staging and of the unfortunate choice of a singer for the leading part, but remarked that on the whole it had gone fairly well. The reports sent me by Liszt were the most encouraging. He did not seem to think it worth while to allude to the inadequacy of the means at his command for such a bold undertaking, but preferred to dwell on the sympathetic spirit that prevailed in the company and the effect it produced on the influential personages he had invited ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... connections stand at less than 1 per 100 persons; equipment is old and outdated, and connections with many parts of the country are unreliable; mobile-cellular usage, in part a reflection of the poor condition and general inadequacy of the fixed-line network, increased more than 6-fold between 2002 and 2007 reaching a subscribership base of 25 per 100 persons domestic: cable, microwave radio relay, and tropospheric scatter international: country code - 237; landing ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... heroine were again discussed that evening in another part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... XXVIII. The inadequacy of natural religion alone becomes still more manifest, when we consider the weakness and limited extent of the human understanding. To meditate assiduously on an abstract object, which does not fall under the perception of ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... it is difficult to guarantee in a few that sympathy with all earnest books which does not preclude rigid honesty in the application of firmly held principles, it is more difficult with the many. And if it is hard to exclude bias, inaccuracy, over- statement, and inadequacy from the work even of a small and chosen group, it is still harder to be certain of complete competence if the net ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... American and European. The first patent issued for an American electro-motor was in 1837, to a man named Thomas Davenport, of Brandon, Vt. He was a man far ahead of his times. He built the first electric railroad ever seen, at Springfield, Mass., in 1835, and considering the means, whose inadequacy is now better understood by any reader of these lines than it then was by the deepest student of electricity, this first railroad was a success. Davenport came as near to solving the problem of an electric motor as was possible ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... satisfy needs which are now first felt. Optimism is the expression of man's new reconciliation with his world; as the opposite doctrine of pessimism is the consciousness of an unresolved contradiction. Both are a judgment passed upon the world, from the point of view of its adequacy or inadequacy to meet demands, arising from needs which the individual ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Jesus, and the other "Writings;" all of which were characterized by a calm and rational philosophy, that recognized the laws of life and fed the wisdom which obeys them. Even Agnosticism, in so far as it is the confession of the inadequacy of every interpretation of the universe, finds despondent yet still earnest expression in Ecclesiastes, and humble, hopeful expression in Job; and the silence of many of the noblest natures of our age, which the churches brand as irreligious, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... and posture (as indeed Dickinson and Truslow realise) have their inevitable reaction on the nervous system: they produce a constant wearing stress, a perpetual liability to pain. The women who have fallen into these habits are inadequate to life, and their inadequacy is felt in all that they are and in all that they attempt to do. Each of them is a stone flung into the social pool to disperse around it an ever-widening circle ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... with section 107, the committee's attention has been directed to the unique educational needs and problems of the approximately 50,000 deaf and hearing-impaired students in the United States, and the inadequacy of both public and commercial television to serve their educational needs. It has been suggested that, as long as clear-cut constraints are imposed and enforced, the doctrine of fair use is broad enough to permit the making of an off-the-air fixation of a television program within ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... miracle of ignorance. The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy. And as regards Father Francis's personal responsibility, he could not help feeling that the other had allowed ceremonial to play too great a part in his religion, and prayer too little. In him the external ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Social Democrat usually contents himself by compassionating the inadequacy of my efforts for dealing with the miseries which they contemplate, with the remark that I don't go deep enough, that mine is a superficial operation, whereas they destroy poverty by dragging it up by ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... insufficiency; inadequacy, inadequateness; incompetence &c (impotence) 158; deficiency &c (incompleteness) 53; imperfection &c 651; shortcoming &c 304; paucity; stint; scantiness &c (smallness) 32; none to spare, bare subsistence. scarcity, dearth; want, need, lack, poverty, exigency; inanition, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as he realized—impolitic but irresistible. It was the easiest way in which candidate Remington, heckled by suffragists, overridden by his campaign committee, mortifyingly tormented by a feeling of inadequacy, could re-establish himself in his own esteem as a man of prompt and ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... of feeling, which will emphasize the gloom of the picture. The use of a colour, in itself sad, would weaken the effect of the dramatic whole. [Footnote: Once more it is wise to emphasize the necessary inadequacy of these examples. Rules cannot be laid down, the variations are so endless. A single line can alter the whole composition of a picture.] This is the principle of antithesis already defined. Red by itself cannot have a sad effect ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... world-wide empire into a self-sufficing system, and if, as is likely, she learned that even the diversified fifth of the entire globe which owns allegiance to her Crown could not satisfy all her wants, she could eke out this inadequacy with some carefully selected and ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... favourite papers were in some way responsible for this, she ceased to take them in, and took in sewing instead. It had become necessary to do so, for the allowance she received from the government was about a quarter of Gerhardt's weekly earnings. In spite of its inadequacy it was something, and she felt she must be grateful. But, curiously enough, she could not forget that she was English, and it seemed strange to her that, in addition to the grief caused by separation from her husband from whom she had never been parted not even for a night, she should now ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... the end of the third act, which is known by the (not quite relevant) title of "Isolde's Love-death," Wagner, after previously expressing by Tristan's last words, "Do I near light?" the inadequacy of the physical senses—attempts to describe the metaphysical condition of the unity of love, which to our consciousness can only have the negative characteristics of the unthinkable and intangible—the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the equal Divinity. In both there are three self-subsistent and only one self-originated:—which is the substance of the idea of the Trinity, as faithfully worded as is compatible with the necessary inadequacy of words to the expression of ideas, that is, spiritual truths that can only ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... religious phenomena must somehow be seen to be consistent with their common nature. The religious experience must not only be found, but must also be reconciled with "the varieties of religious experience." The inadequacy of the well-known definitions of religion may be attributed to several causes. The commonest fallacy is to define religion in terms of a religion. My definition of religion must include my brother's religion, even though he live on the other side of the globe, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for its inadequacy and dangers? We certainly cannot expect the fathers and mothers who have come to the city from farms or who have immigrated from other lands to appreciate or rectify these ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... impartial account of the inroad upon Washington, an affair than which the whole war produced none more brilliant or more daring. In whatever light we may regard it, whether we look to the amount of difficulties which it behoved him to overcome, the inadequacy of the force which he commanded, or the distance which he was called upon to march, in the midst of a hostile population, and through deep and trackless forests, we cannot deny to General Ross the praise which is his due, of having planned and successfully accomplished an expedition which none ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... time I have you by the collar I won't let go, either," said the painter; but he felt an inadequacy in his threat, and he imagined a superfluity, and he made some haste to ask: ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the withered hag her mother, he had taken a little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,—when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in general,—that the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his bachelor's bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... but a very human and fallible system of ideas and motives, a system that grows and develops. He regards its spirit, its intimate substance as the most hopeful thing in human affairs at the present time, but he does also find it shares with all mundane concerns the qualities of inadequacy and error. It suffers from the common penalty of noble propositions; it is hampered by the insufficiency of its supporters and advocates, and by the superficial tarnish that necessarily falls in our atmosphere of greed and conflict darkest upon the brightest ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... read in the report of the investigating committee which has just completed its survey of Wisconsin rural schools the statement that in many districts the hog pens were on a better plane of efficiency than the school houses; if you had seen the miserable inadequacy of country schools North, East, South and West, and had then been transported into the midst of the school system of Page County, Iowa, you would have been sure that you had passed through the looking-glass into the queer world ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... accumulations of Facts necessary to his purpose, and discovering the inexactitude and insufficiency of his Generalizations in the ratio that the bounds of his field of inquiry enlarged, he was led to perceive the essential weakness and inadequacy of the Inductive Method, and the probable certainty that, at some future period, the progress of our Knowledge would lead to the establishment of positive bases for all departments of investigation, and thus furnish an opportunity for the harmonious and reciprocal activity of the two ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... been lost if the old-time barriers had been maintained, may be added the name of the late Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. Mary Putnam secured her preliminary medical education in the early '60's, and found herself keenly troubled and dissatisfied at the inadequacy of the facilities extended to women for the study of medicine. She insisted that if women practitioners were to be, as she expressed it, "turned loose" upon the community with license to practise, they should, not only as a matter of ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... canoe trip from Lake Superior to the Mississippi. Simple as the word seemed, it was interpreted by each of us in accord with his previous personal experience. And these divergent experiences exchanged that evening brought home to me as never before the inherent and inevitable inadequacy of the vocabulary of every language, since there must always be two partners in any communication by means of words, and the verbal currency passing from one to the other has no fixed value necessarily the same to both of them." [Footnote: ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... not without effect upon this institution itself. Heralded in the first days of the revolution, it came into being only after eight or nine months of bitter class and party struggle. It came too late to play a creative role. Its internal inadequacy had been predetermined by a single fact—a fact which might seem unimportant at first, but which subsequently took on tremendous importance for the fate of ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... been whispered that the war has completely shattered the foundations of Christianity; but from close observation I am inclined to the opinion that it has exposed the instability and inadequacy of human creeds, and will eventually accomplish what the Churches have so lamentably ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... of the opposition to the Czarina's circle, which gradually came to characterize the "Jeune Cour," but specially in the service of those vague, ambitious foreshadowings which from her first years in Russia had possessed her mind. Clear-sighted, with a keen sense of her husband's inadequacy to his position, warned by the implacable hostility of his mistress Elizabeth Vorontsoff and her relations, above all with a passionate thirst to realize her presentiment of greatness, she was instinctively preparing for some emergency, she knew not exactly what. As for the more precise ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... demons last night, the implication being that the things seen were objects external to himself. As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence in the absence of an alternative interpretation, his ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Hence the voyage has been one of hardships, and it was a great mercy of God that they were able to make the islands, although not little is the discomfort and not few the additional expenses that have been incurred because of their inability to make this port. What I grieve over most is to see the inadequacy of the aid, which does not reach two hundred and fifty thousand pesos, while I informed the viceroy that we needed four hundred thousand, as I wrote last year. Consequently, I again petition your Majesty in the same terms as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... out of ten the reversal of a conviction in a criminal case is due to the carelessness or inefficiency of the prosecuting officer or trial judge and not to any inadequacy in our methods of procedure. Yet the tenth case, the case where the criminal does beat the law by a technicality, does more harm than can easily be estimated. That is the one case everybody knows about, the one the papers descant upon, the one that cheers the heart of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... modifying force at work is not the strangeness nor the temperamental maladjustment of the new elements of population, but the conscious realisation of the inadequacy of the tradition on the part of the more intelligent sections of the American population. That blind national conceit that would hear no criticism and admit no deficiency has disappeared. In the last decade such a change ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... as myself, had to learn that I needed Hope with me to make my work more perfect. We must first feel our own inadequacy before our helpers can be fully appreciated. I think she came in the right time," said ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... inadequacy of their parlors to accommodate all the guests that they wish to invite at one time, without disagreeable overcrowding, have adopted the custom of giving their large entertainments at public assembly rooms. This custom, while it frees the hostess from much care, must also be deplored as depriving ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... than Napoleon was, when dealing with problems of war? Who was ever more attentive to details, who more industrious, who more untiring? And yet Napoleon's plans for his Russian campaign were inadequate to an amazing degree, and the inadequacy was the cause of his disaster. But whether the cause was carelessness or moral cowardice on his part, the fact remains that he did not estimate the situation with sufficient care, and make due plans ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... of the inadequacy of the German translation apparently urged Borrow to hasten on with Celebrated Trials. The Universal Review was dead, the German version of Proximate Causes {50b} had passed out of his hands. It was desirable, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity." We think his "fact of religious intuition" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... little tables and cupboards, and other utensils for holding their dolls and their trinkets. He had lived nearly six years in the same house with Miss Storey, and there is reason to believe that their youthful friendship gradually rose to a higher passion; but the smallness of her portion, and the inadequacy of his own fortune, appear to have prevented the consummation of their happiness. Miss Storey was afterwards twice married, and under the name of Mrs. Vincent, Dr. Stukeley visited her at Grantham in 1727, at the age of eighty-two, and obtained from ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... came down the river to Washington's army, and, as supposed, to encourage the loyalists in the upper counties and supply them with arms. Washington acknowledged that the event showed the weakness and inadequacy of the North River line of defences, and reported to Congress that it developed a possible plan of attack by the British upon his rear. Measures were taken to annoy if not destroy the ships, and, on the 3d of August, Commodore ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... the same, was what he wanted to blurt out, as he caught a vision of a world without end of sunlit spaces and starry voids through which he drifted with her, his arm around her, her pale gold hair blowing about his face. In the same instant he was aware of the pitiful inadequacy of speech. God! If he could so frame words that she could see what he then saw! And he felt the stir in him, like a throe of yearning pain, of the desire to paint these visions that flashed unsummoned on the mirror of his mind. Ah, that was it! He caught at the hem of ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... inevitable from the constitution of our nature. The mind is too infirm to be entirely occupied with higher knowledge. The conditions of life oblige us to act in many cases which cannot be understood by us except with the utmost inadequacy; and the resignation to the higher will which has determined all things in the wisest way, is imperfect in the best of us. Yet much is possible, if not all; and, although through a large tract of life 'there comes one event to all, to the wise and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... her feeling. I had experienced it often. Nothing has ever filled me with a more hopeless sense of inadequacy and utter uselessness than to watch, as I am often compelled to watch, the deplorable results of the determined choice made by certain human beings to go backward and downward rather than forward and upward,—a choice in which ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... A strong gale now set in from the southwest; the deck of the brig was covered with ice and snow and the weather became exceedingly damp and cold. The men were suffering not only from want of sufficient room but from the inadequacy of the clothing." ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... the Chancellors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries depended upon customary gratuities for their revenues may be seen from the facts which show the degree of state which they were required to maintain, and the inadequacy of the ancient fees for the maintenance of that pomp. When Elizabeth pressed Hatton for payment of the sums which he owed her, the Chancellor lamented his inability to liquidate her just claims, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... by friend. It resulted, moreover, from this clearness of judgment that Caesar never formed to himself illusions regarding the power of fate and the ability of man; in his case the friendly veil was lifted up, which conceals from man the inadequacy of his working. Prudently as he laid his plans and considered all possibilities, the feeling was never absent from his breast that in all things fortune, that is to say accident, must bestow success; and with this may be connected the circumstance that ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in silence. My head was whirling with thoughts: again I had that feeling of helplessness, of inadequacy, which I had felt so sharply on the previous evening. What could ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... legitimate commerce, while the want of uniform laws upon subjects altogether national, was everywhere observed. A general government, adequate to the necessities of the nation, was not established until the inadequacy of the State governments had been felt in peace and war; but war more than peace created bonds of sympathy, and inspired ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... {lossage} but connotes that the failure is due to a designed-in misfeature rather than a simple inadequacy ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... awaiting reinforcements to replace the men lost in battle and those necessarily detached to protect his lengthening line of communications. After three severe actions he had now traversed forty-five of the seventy miles that lay between the Orange River and Kimberley; but the inadequacy of his numbers was increasingly felt. During the ten or twelve days at the Modder a serious demonstration was made in his rear at Enslin, threatening {p.162} the railroad and his communications. Although successfully repelled, it was evident that the enemy's concentration ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... mail establishment. To arrive at that end it is indispensable that the Post-Office Department shall be enabled to control the hours at which the mails shall be carried over railroads, as it now does over all other roads. Should serious inconveniences arise from the inadequacy of the compensation now provided by law, or from unreasonable demands by any of the railroad companies, the subject is of such general importance as to require ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... charming" would seem a not unworthy compliment, but the Candy Man, as he resumed his place in the wagon, smiled scornfully at what he was pleased to consider its grotesque inadequacy. If he had anything better to offer, the Miser did not stay to hear it, but with a courteous "good evening" disappeared in his turn in the mist. An ambulance carried away the injured man, the crowd dispersed; the remains of the machine were towed away to a near-by garage. ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... seem, to such as knew her not, to be eulogy. But, after several disappointments as to the editorship of the volume, the duty, at last, has seemed to devolve upon me; and I have no reason to shrink from it but a sense of inadequacy. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... discontent at any period of history must take the form of an examination of the wants engendered by the age, and of the adequacy or inadequacy of their means of satisfaction. If we turn our attention first to the forces of society which were in possession of the fortress and were to be the object of attack, we shall find that the ruling desires which animated these men of wealth and influence were chiefly ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... The same people would willingly admit that it is hopeless to rout a modern army with bows and arrows, even with the support of a fanfare of trumpets. Yet that metaphor, as we have seen, altogether fails to represent the inadequacy of law in the face of immorality. We are concerned with a method of fighting which is not merely inadequate, but, as has been demonstrated many times during the last two thousand years, actually fortifies and even dignifies the foe it professes to attack. But the failure of physical force to ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... philosophical form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards, of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of years; of one's emotional inadequacy without God for adjudicator. It is a direct search for God. One finds wrapped within it the mystery, aspiration, and spiritual passion of ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... less fatal cause of our defeat was the inadequacy, or indeed the total lack of organisation in the occupied countries. Instead of doing as we had done during the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, and leaving behind the advancing army small bodies of troops which, stretching back in echelon, could keep ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... family records are available, it can accomplish little. And it can not get these family records unless genealogists realize the importance of furnishing them; for as has already been pointed out, most genealogies at present available are of little value to genetics, because of the inadequacy of the data they furnish. It is only in the case of exceptional families, such as the royal houses of Europe, that enough information is given about each individual to furnish an opportunity for analysis. What could be done if there were more such data ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... children a tense, pained curiosity concerning their father's feeling on the subject, which no word of his had thus far served to relieve. There was a grave shyness among them concerning their deepest feelings, which was, perhaps, a sense of the inadequacy of expression rather than the austerity it seemed. Marg'et Ann would have liked to show her sympathy for her father, and no doubt it would have lightened the burdens of both; but any betrayal of filial ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... comfort her, to assure her that it was just the glare on the water, that she would be able to see again in a moment, but I felt the pitiful inadequacy of my empty words, and it seemed that the light had gone out of my life. I pray that I may never again witness such a harrowing sight as that of Myra, leaning her beautiful head on my shoulder, suddenly stricken blind, doing ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... observation, that the overcoming of difficulty is a source of pleasure, nor find anything meritorious in a work of art merely because it is artificially composed. As for the claim which the French advance to set themselves up, in spite of all their one-sidedness and inadequacy of view, as the lawgivers of taste, it must be rejected with ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... it only owing to its inadequacy that Mr. Gosse's treatment of Browne as an artist in language is the least satisfactory part of his book: for it is difficult not to think that upon this crucial point Mr. Gosse has for once been deserted by his sympathy and his acumen. In spite of what appears to be a genuine delight ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... approach to ultimate truth, by flatly contradicting our own moral judgements. It would be just as reasonable to argue that because the law of gravitation might be proved, from the point of view of the highest knowledge, to be an inadequate statement of the truth, and all inadequacy involves some error, therefore we had better assume that from the point of view of God there is no difference whatever {69} between attraction and repulsion. All arguments for what is called a 'super-moral' ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... very inadequacy of our instruments, resulting in that incompleteness of which we just spoke, should once more suggest a reflection which, while in no wise original or startling, is specially relevant to the subject under discussion: for if God's knowledge necessarily and immeasurably ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... did so," said Hugh Woodgate, with the emphasis which often atoned for the inadequacy of ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... senses, divergency makes the difference between truth and error; but where it is question of the substitution of one analogy or symbol for another, the more elegant is not necessarily the more truthful; nor when we consider the infinite inadequacy of even the noblest conceivable finite symbolism to bring God down to our level, need we pride ourselves much for being on a mountain whose height is perceptible from the plain but imperceptible ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... the details of the curious little creature: its tiny finger-nails, fine and sharp, and its small queer fist doubled so tight, and closing on one's finger like a canary's claw on a perch; the absurdity of its foot, the absurdity of its toes, the ridiculous inadequacy of its legs and arms to the work ordinarily expected of legs and arms, made them laugh. They could not tell yet whether its eyes would be black like Marcia's, or blue like Bartley's; those long lashes had the sweep of hers, but its mop of hair, which made it look so odd and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... meditation, I concluded that the actual beginning of the malady was unknown, and that the inability of the doctors to master the disease arose from the inadequacy of the means employed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... these possessions. A government to be stable and efficient must possess adequate powers for the collection of its revenue. The miserable condition to which the old Confederation was reduced by reason of the inadequacy of its powers in this respect, has already been discussed. Says Fiske: "Between the old Continental Congress and the government under which we have lived since 1789, the differences were many; but by ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... becomes reduced so tremendously that the average of normals, the majority, are hopelessly inferior. In effect, they are really subnormal. So the ideal of our ideal statesman is bound to be defeated because of the inadequacy of his material. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... by the breath of circumstance. Her own erroneous idea that her still unconquered passion kept them apart was breeding morbid misery for her, as all false beliefs must do. She had kept herself under control to-day by dint of isolation, and the inadequacy of that course filled her with self-contempt. In her solitary fight against the life forces within and without, she was getting worsted. She knew she resisted the invasion of their hours of depression with less courage than ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... into the same mould, consisted of events little worthy of remark. A boyhood more or less studious; progress sometimes slow, sometimes rapid; inclinations thwarted by capricious or shortsighted parents; inadequacy of means, the privations which it introduces in its train; thirty years of a laborious professorship and difficult studies,—such were the elements from which the admirable talents of the early secretaries of the Academy were enabled to execute those portraits, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... article in the National Review concerning the inadequacy of our present solution of the housing problem; but it ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... the country he had determined to, appropriate; and the true sentiments of its most influential inhabitants, here, was the man most competent of all the world to advise him; describing the situation for him, day by day, in the most faithful manner. And at every, step the absolutely puerile inadequacy of the means, employed by the king to accomplish his gigantic purposes became apparent. If the crime of subjugating or at least dismembering the great kingdom of France were to, be attempted with any hope of success, at least it might have been expected ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 18 was ineffectual, owing to the inadequacy of the landing forces, and the failure of the Entente powers to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... drama of Wagner. The common revolt completely failed. The higher, the real music is ever of that pure tonal design where the fancy is not leashed to some external scheme. Liszt himself grew to perceive the inadequacy of the new device when he returned to the symphony for his greatest orchestral expression, though even here he never escaped from the thrall of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... these unknown places and people. How could he get at them? What place was there for him and his mission in that wild, reckless life of theirs? What had he to bring them. Only a Tale? In the face of that vigorous, strenuous life it seemed at that moment to Shock almost ridiculous in its inadequacy. Against him and his Story were arraigned the great human passions—greed of gold, lust of pleasure in its most sensuous forms, and that wild spirit of independence of all restraint by law of Good or man. He was still looking at the map when ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... analysis, is only the handwriting of consciousness on space, and materialism has written there already all that it has to tell of its failure to satisfy the mind and heart of man. However beautiful old forms may seem to him they will declare their inadequacy to generations free of that mist of familiarity which now makes life obscure. If, on the other hand, submitting himself to the inspiration of the demos he experiences a change of consciousness, he will become truly and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... opinion of its value and practicability. Galileo's opinion was highly unfavourable. He saw clearly, and explained distinctly, the objection to Morin's method, arising from the imperfection of the lunar tables, and the inadequacy of astronomical instruments; but he seemed not to be conscious that the very same objections applied with even greater force to his own method, which has since been supplanted by that of the French savant. See Life of Galileo, Library of ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... labor and large-scale production, aided by the extraordinary development of invention and machinery. The ideal of legal control. The epoch of ultra individualism, of what Huxley called "administrative nihilism," is rapidly passing. Jane Addams speaks of "the inadequacy of those eighteenth-century ideals the breakdown of the machinery which they provided," pointing out that "that worldly wisdom which counsels us to know life as it is" discounts the assumption "that if only the people had freedom they would walk continuously in the paths ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to hear Dr. Wayland's address open with a confession of the inadequacy of speech to do justice to the thoughts and feelings that fill the soul to overflowing at such an hour. And while listening to his lofty, bold, beautiful, and we may add emphatically scriptural delineation ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... the gross inadequacy of the fiscal return for her deed, perhaps that was her own fault. She had not wished for more. Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished only for the belt. But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth was to come. Perhaps something might occur that ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... instrument for the gradual realisation of this ideal.[695] With him the mystic and ecstatic as well as the magic and sacramental element is still in the background, though it is not wanting. To Origen's mind, however, the inadequacy of philosophical injunctions was constantly made plain by the following considerations. (1) The philosophers, in spite of their noble thoughts of God, tolerated the existence of polytheism; and this was really the only fault he had to find ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... a pious care had preserved in spite of its present inadequacy, circled an almost unbroken procession of trolley-cars; for this point was the very centre of the web of tracks whose various termini were pegged out here and there in the neighbouring towns. It might be added that this spot was enshrined in the heart ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... until the old are displaced by the new conditions. We should learn from these facts that it is folly to brand as false and condemn as worthless the rules and formulas, and even religious thought, of the past when we find upon careful investigation and crucial tests their inadequacy to account for present conditions. They were true in their cycle, and applied to past conditions and states of mental development. But in this new era, upon whose threshold we now stand, the vibrations become more intense. Man's whole nature is being tuned to a higher key. ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... must be added the appointment of Kutusoff, which had revived their hopes, the false intelligence of a victory at Borodino, and for the less affluent, the hesitation natural at the moment of abandoning the only home which they possessed; lastly, the inadequacy of the means of transport, notwithstanding the quantity of vehicles, which is peculiarly great in Russia; either because heavy requisitions for the exigencies of the army had reduced their number; or because they were too small, as it is customary to make them very light, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... emaciation, slenderness, gauntness, spareness, meagerness; tenuity, delicacy, fineness; incompactness; rarity, subtilty, subtilization; inadequacy, sparseness, scantiness. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... I read them, knowing no better. But I very soon learned to let them alone. The kind notices, while they gave me a sort of courage which by temperament possibly I needed more than all young writers may, overwhelmed me, too, by a sense of my own inadequacy to be a teacher of the most solemn of truths, on any such scale as that towards which events seemed to be pointing. The unfair notices put me in a tremor of distress. The brutal ones affected me like a blow ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... absorption and exportation by the Government of all the cotton. He had, moreover, recommended against any legislation by Congress to contract the currency and stop the issues. Now, therefore, the inflation and utter inadequacy of the paper money was laid at his door, as well as Mr. Memminger's; and the people, feeling there was no safety for them, began to distrust the good faith of such reckless issue. A system of barter was inaugurated among ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... tracing the relationships of algae is largely due to the inadequacy of our knowledge of the conditions under which they pass through the crucial stages of their life-cycle. Of the thousands of species which have been distinguished, relatively few have been traced from spore to spore, as the flowering plants have been observed from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... wonder worker, the spoken word, is no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought, or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. The ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... method, that of experiment, is available to us only in the form of castration. I need not dilate on the inadequacy of this application of the experimental method, even apart from the fact that it subserves our purposes almost exclusively in respect of the male sex—for in the case of young girls, castration (oophorectomy) is almost ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... were less sincere—Mrs. Barton's trivialities jarred, and Alice's ideas had already begun to slip from her, and feeling keenly the inadequacy ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... defenceless sister been trifled with? that was the question which affected him. Her refusal of Edward as a husband was, he knew, dictated solely by a humiliated sense of inadequacy to him in repute, and had not been formed till since the slanderous tale accounting for her seclusion had been circulated. Was it not true, as Edward had hinted, that he, her brother, was neglecting his duty towards her in allowing Manston to thrive unquestioned, whilst she was ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... observed by Fothergill, however, the kidney is not the starting-point, the new departure only taking place when the structural change on the kidney has reached that point that it is no longer equal to its function—the "renal inadequacy" of Sir Andrew Clarke. (J. Milner Fothergill, in the Satellite, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two sections. I did so in language which I cannot improve and which, ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... written on greenish tinted fancy note-paper, and with all and more than Nettie's usual triteness and inadequacy of expression. Her handwriting bore no traces of emotion; it was round and upright and clear as though it had been done in a writing lesson. Always her letters were like masks upon her image; they fell like ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of some promise, but produced with an extraordinary inadequacy in the matter of what the programme called "the decors," has been very quickly withdrawn from the Little Theatre. But its curtain-raiser, Dusk, is to be retained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... no ghost but only a Count Morano, all Mrs. Radcliffe's power is required to prevent an anti-climax. This weakness is very different from that of Walpole or Reeve. They failed to excite the feeling of superstitious fear. Mrs. Radcliffe excited it, but she destroyed its effect by revealing the inadequacy of its cause. The works of Walpole, Clara Reeve, and particularly of Mrs. Radcliffe, contain very decided merits. They made a school which has found many admirers and has given a vast deal of pleasure. But the school was founded on wrong principles ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... wood Gedackt of very large scale (in other words, a stopped pipe), furnished with leather lips. It was invented by Mr. Hope-Jones. The tone is powerful and beautifully pure and liquid. The prevailing fault of the modern Swell organ is, perhaps, the inadequacy of the Flute work. * * * It was the recognition of this shortcoming which led to the invention of the ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... declared himself in favour of authority; and Frederick noticed in his remarks the exaggeration which characterised what he had said himself to Deslauriers. The Republican even inveighed against the masses for their inadequacy. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... was asked if he would appear before the Commission and give evidence—to "talk without interrogation" so as to convince the Commission of the inadequacy of the teaching of science in general and of the absence of means and appliances for the higher teaching. This he did early in January 1893, representing partly his own views, partly those of the Association, to whom he read ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... indifference to human nature. There is too much mechanical malice in their tragedies and too little of the passion that every man recognizes in his own breast. Even so good a play as The Duchess of Malfi is marred by inadequacy of motive on the part of the duchess's persecutors. Similarly, in Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois, the villains are simply a dramatist's infernal machines. Shakespeare's own plays contain numerous examples ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... which met in St. Louis about this time, observing the inadequacy of the provision made for advertising, volunteered to cooperate with the Exposition Company by posting bills on their boards free of charge throughout ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... hear that there was some cause for his silence unconnected with her own inadequacy. But anger rose with the relief; it must be some serious cause to ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... which leaves no room for Christ and His work as Christian experience has realised them, then that view of the world must be appreciated by the evangelist, it must be undermined at its weak places, its inadequacy to interpret all that is present even in the mind which has accepted it—in other words, its inherent inconsistency—must be demonstrated; the attempt must be made to liberate the mind, so that it may be open to the impression of realities which under the conditions supposed ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... whilst under instruction, are boarded and lodged at the school houses, and as far as practicable, the boys and girls are kept separate. There are still, however, many evils attending the present practice, most of which arise from the inadequacy of the funds, applicable to the Aborigines, and which must be removed before any permanent good can be expected from the instruction given. The first of these, and perhaps one of the greatest, is that the adult natives make their encampments immediately in the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Margaret, came well enough from a man who was old enough to be their father. She had always maintained that Mr. Wilcox had a charm. In times of sorrow or emotion his inadequacy had pained her, but it was pleasant to listen to him now, and to watch his thick brown moustache and high forehead confronting the stars. But Helen was nettled. The aim of THEIR ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Northern papers give the most extravagant numbers to our army in Kentucky. Some estimates are as high as 150,000. I know, and Mr. Benjamin knows, that Gen. Johnston has not exceeding 29,000 effective men. And the Secretary knows that Gen. J. has given him timely notice of the inadequacy of his force to hold the position at Bowling Green. The Yankees are well aware of our weakness, but they intend to claim the astounding feat of routing 150,000 men with 100,000! And they suppose that by giving us credit for such a vast army, we ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... that lofty moral fiction which was always common amongst the Jews after the Exile, and was known as "The Haggadah." So clearly is this proven to most critics, that they willingly suffer the attempted refutations of their views to sink to the ground under the weight of their own inadequacy. (The Bible ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... themselves, justly to receive ideas of power, therefore not the best to illustrate them. He proceeds to "ideas of power, as they are dependent on execution." There are six legitimate sources of pleasure in execution—truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, velocity. "Decision" we should think involved in "truth;" as so involved, not necessarily different from velocity. Mystery and inadequacy require explanation. "Nature is always mysterious and secret in her use of means; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of the Briscoe household, the community was given something a little more definite. The lady's name was Sherwood; she lived in Rouen; and she had known Miss Briscoe at the eastern school the latter had attended (to the feverish agitation of Plattville) three years before; but Mildy confessed her inadequacy in the matter of Mr. Fisbee. He had driven up in the buckboard with the others and evidently expected to stay for supper Mr. Tibbs, the postmaster (it was to the postoffice that Miss Upton brought her information) suggested, as a possible explanation, that the lady ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... great work of the academy for the government was that of devising a forestry system for the United States. The immediate occasion for action in this direction was stated by Secretary Hoke Smith to be the "inadequacy and confusion of existing laws relating to the public timber lands and consequent absence of an intelligent policy in their administration, resulting in such conditions as may, if not speedily stopped, prevent the proper development of a large ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... and freedom from money-care had changed her greatly, and with her black silk frock, her lace kerchief and cap, she seemed quite like some old gentlewoman. I tried, knowing the inadequacy of words, even while speaking, to thank her for my wonderful child, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... me doubts whether many will come to hear me. He tells me that the serious American is not popular here, whereas the joker is much run after. Of that I must take my chance. In all this I am endeavouring to do a duty,—feeling every day more strongly my own inadequacy. Were I to follow my own wishes I should return by the next steamer ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... extraordinary joy and terror. At last things were beginning to happen to her, and she did not know if she had strength enough to support it. If she could have countermanded her destiny she would, although she knew from the rich colour that tinged this moment, in spite of her inadequacy, it was going to be of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... be lonely," said the unfortunate man in a muted voice. "You need not be afraid of that." The utter inadequacy of the remark came to him like one of those nightmare recognitions encountered as a rule only in Dreamland. Yet she seemed to find it sufficient, her mind ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... by his own emotions, as he turned them from side to side, and prodded them, and shifted to a fresh viewpoint, only to find it no more favorable than the one relinquished: but he veiled the inadequacy of his emotions with very moving fervors. The tale does not record his conversations with Guenevere: for Jurgen now discoursed plain idiocy, as one purveys sweetmeats to a child in fond astonishment at the pet's appetite. And ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... on the life of our Lord must many a time pause in secret and exclaim to himself, "It is high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" But we have now arrived at the point where this sense of inadequacy falls most oppressively on the heart. To-day we are to see Christ crucified. But who is worthy to look at this sight? Who is able to speak of it? "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... view, clearer and more complete than has been given before, of the personality of Abraham Lincoln. A life so full of incident and a character so many-sided as his can be understood only with the lapse of time. A sense of the exhaustless interest of that life and character, and the inadequacy of the ordinarily constructed biography to portray his many-sidedness, suggested the preparation of a work upon the novel plan here represented. Begun several years ago, the undertaking proved of such magnitude that its completion has been delayed beyond the anticipated time. The extensive correspondence, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the attainment of her object, and to render difficult the recueillement which she needed for the praise and prayer that she felt due from her, and which seemed to oppress her heart, by a sense of inadequacy of her partial expression. It was well for her that the day began with the calm service in the minster, where it was her own fault if cares haunted her, and she could confess the sin of her irritated sensations, and wishes to have all her own way, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... and then to haggle yourself wealthy. You buy up land upon which people will presently want to build houses, you secure rights that will bar vitally important developments, and so on, and so on. Of course the naive intelligence of a boy does not grasp the subtler developments of human inadequacy. He begins life with a disposition to believe in the wisdom of grown-up people, he does not realise how casual and disingenuous has been the development of law and custom, and he thinks that somewhere in the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... though she were a thousand miles away. I stood there impressed by the utter inadequacy of speech. And the thing that puzzled me was that there was an air of honesty about the woman. She still so desperately clung to her self-respect that she wanted me to understand both her predicament and her motives. I could hear her explaining that my husband had no intention of ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... vivid and striking his descriptions may seem to his audience, he himself should constantly be impressed with their total inadequacy, and should feel that his best efforts have entirely failed to convey any idea of what he really sees. And we must remember that in the case of the report given down here of a record read on the mental plane, ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... sources. The book of Isaiah was written to record the sayings of at least two persons, both men of marvelous spiritual vision. The Song of Solomon was originally probably a Persian love-poem. The book of Job illustrates the human-mind problem of suffering, and the utter inadequacy of philosophy to heal it. It is a ringing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... had been fixed for your session of the present year, I was induced to call you together still sooner, as well that any inadequacy in the existing provisions for the wants of the Treasury might be supplied as that no delay might happen in providing for the result of the negotiations on foot with Great Britain, whether it should require arrangements adapted to a return of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... following pages to assist the young physicist in making his first steps towards acquiring a working knowledge of "laboratory arts." However humble the ambition may be, no one can be more keenly alive than the writer to the inadequacy of his attempt; and it is only from a profound sense of the necessity which exists for some beginning to be made, that he has had the courage to air his views on matters about which there are probably ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... it is more important to keep well. Good health on the whole is a kind of by-product. We suffer as distinctly from spiritual and mental maladjustments as from physical. We suffer also from the sense of inadequacy, the sense, that is, of a burdening disproportion between our own powers and the challenge of life. New Thought has addressed itself increasingly to such states and problems as this. Here it ceases to be a ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... mother to her. These had given the poet the purest pleasure, and he intended making use of them for his Autobiography.[8] But, on the other hand, as soon as Bettina risked independent judgments on his creations, as in the case of the Elective Affinities (1809), her inadequacy and her presumption in claiming for herself the role of a better Ottilie were both painfully apparent. Her attitude toward the adored object was a combination of meekness and pretension, the latter predominating as time went on. "It was sung at my cradle, that I must love ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various |
