"Competence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never mind what I am now, for the public will know in a few pages more. My father was of the Suffolk Stubbses—a well-to-do gentleman of Bungay. My grandfather had been a respected attorney in that town, and left my papa a pretty little fortune. I was thus the inheritor of competence, and ought to be at ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and began to turn, she covered him with the small pocket pistol. She had an ease in handling it which denoted competence. ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... named William Kidd. He had passed most of his life on the waves, had distinguished himself by his seamanship, had had opportunities of showing his valour in action with the French, and had retired on a competence. No man knew the Eastern seas better. He was perfectly acquainted with all the haunts of the pirates who prowled between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Malacca; and he would undertake, if he were entrusted with a single ship of thirty or forty ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out to the sparsely settled districts of the great West and Northwest, there to take up rich farming lands and by a pioneer life to mend his fortunes in company with the peasants of other nations who are thus acquiring a firm foothold and a competence for their descendants; we repeat—in spite of the facts mentioned—before the close of the century the Negro had accumulated farms and homes valued in the neighborhood of seven hundred and fifty million dollars; personal property valued at one hundred and seventy millions; and had raised ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... onely principall of the family, but a generall father to them all. Priuate respects euer, with him, gaue place to the common good: as for franke, well ordered, and continuall hospitalitie, he outwent all shew of competence: spare, but discreet of speech, better conceiuing, then deliuering: equally stout, and kind, not vpon lightnesse of humour, but soundnesse of iudgement, inclined to commiseration, readie to relieue. ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... best intellectual satisfactions out of the work of his profession," answered Armstrong. "Besides, as to that, there's time enough. Fifteen years of solid work will enable one to put by a fair competence, if he lives carefully and has no one but himself to support; and then he will be free to take up a hobby. Oh, I shall cultivate a hobby or two after awhile. It keeps the mind healthy to have some interest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... vast respect for my grandfather. He was a man of forethought. He left me a modest little income of seven hundred a-year, well invested. Now, seven hundred a-year is not exactly wealth; but it is an unobtrusive competence; it permits a bachelor to move about the world and choose at will his own profession. I chose medicine; but I was not wholly dependent upon it. So I honoured my grandfather's wise disposition of his worldly goods; though, oddly enough, my cousin Tom (to whom he left his watch ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the use of her income. Godfrey has certainly understood this plan for the future. He may treat himself occasionally to the kisses of Tottie Pringle, but he is not the man to allow kissing to interfere with his prospect of earning a competence. Whether Marion understood her fate or not, I do not know. She always endured Godfrey with patience. I suppose that this condition of affairs gave Godfrey a certain right to nod sagaciously when he spoke of looking after Marion. But I ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... serviceable condition, and "feed" with its daily rations of powder and shot? Still, it may be fancied that, since all the relations between us as independent sovereigns (whether of war, or peace, or treaty) rested upon our own representations and official reports, it was surely within my competence to deny or qualify as much as within his to assert. But, in reality, the law of the contest between us, as suggested by some instinct of propriety in my own mind, would not allow me to proceed in such a method. What he said was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... puzzling to imagine Hamilton Rush, a fine, good-humoured fellow, something older than Preston, transformed into the grand and awful figure of Ahasuerus; and Nora was so eager to know what part she could take; and Mrs. Sandford entered into the scheme with such utter good nature and evident competence to manage it. Ella Stanfield's eyes grew very wide open; and Mrs. Fish was full of curiosity, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... why her thoughts turned to him. This man was totally unlike Ray. He was, indeed, unlike any one she ever had known. There was that about him which held her. It was not quite assertion; perhaps it was competence. But it was competence that seemed to go without tyranny, and that was something new in her experience of men. He looked at her on a level, spiritually, querying as to who she ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... longevity are very common; fever and consumption are seldom met with, and the cholera has never visited its shores. Wages are high, and employment abundant; land is cheap and tolerably productive; but though a competence may always be obtained, I never heard of any one becoming rich through agricultural pursuits. Shipbuilding is the great trade of the island, and the most profitable one. Everywhere, even twenty miles inland, and up among the woods, ships ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... which she was driven out of the house, without being paid the wages due her. Katiousha went to the city, where she stopped with her aunt. Her aunt's husband was a bookbinder. Formerly he used to earn a competence, but had lost his customers, and was now given to drink, spending everything that came ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... decorate himself and his department with names to fit his ideas of beauty and usefulness, and he'll proclaim these in the official gazette for the intention of his department. The Guadaloupeans argue the competence of a minister according as he has a department with titles that sweep the horizon and claim kin with the Antipodes and the Resurrection. Only it seemed to me that these things tended in time to make the figures of speech on the signs ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... is in a man. If he has the stuff in him to earn a competence at forty, he has usually acquired the judgment and experience to keep ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... I myself read into it; but I should like to amplify it by other memories, and would do so eagerly if I might here enjoy the space. The difficulty for these rectifications is that if the early vision has failed of competence or of full felicity, if initiation has thus been slow, so, with renewals and extensions, so, with the larger experience, one hindrance is exchanged for another. There is quite such a possibility as having lived into a relation too ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with all the seriousness the occasion demands, though I have neither the competence nor the wish to take a theological view of this great misfortune, sending so many souls to their last account. It is but a natural reflection. Another one flowing also from the phraseology of bills of lading (a bill of lading is a shipping document ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... offices after a change of ministry, and to the barefaced impudence of some of their claims for preferment. "The remedy is in the hands of the advisers of the Crown," it continued. "Let them shut the doors of their offices against influence and intrigue, keep Empleados of acknowledged competence permanently in their posts, and not appoint new ones without the conviction that they have capacity and aptitude for the work they will have to do. By this means, if the problem be not entirely solved, it will at least be in train for a solution satisfactory at once for a good administration ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... poor according to what they possess but to what they desire. The only rich man is he that with content enjoys a competence. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... China, fall into the hands of any other European Power, and the only means of preventing such a catastrophe is by the proclamation of a Protectorate over it—a Protectorate which, so long as the successors of Raja BROOKE prove their competence to govern, should be worked so as to interfere as little as possible in the internal affairs of the State. The virulently hostile and ignorant criticisms to which Sir JAMES BROOKE was subjected in England, and the financial difficulties of this little kingdom, coupled with a serious dispute ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... profit on each article, became enormous considered in bulk. Cesar was then able to buy the huts and the land in the Faubourg du Temple; he built large manufactories, and decorated his shop at "The Queen of Roses" with much magnificence; his household began to taste the little joys of competence, and his wife no longer ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... immediately to his own skill, sagacity, and perseverance—that there was an unpleasant rumor abroad about his widowed mother being indebted to her son's success in business for having passed the last ten years of her life in ease and competence. Mr. Rushton had left his widow a handsome annuity, and to his and her only son a well-invested income of upwards of seven thousand a year. Since the death of her husband, Mrs. Rushton, who inherited quite her full share ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... accredited mouthpiece of the Government in Ireland had formally subscribed to this doctrine. This admission was in itself and in its outflowing an event comparable only to Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule. It amounted to a challenge to Irishmen to prove their competence to settle the most sorely-beset difficulty that afflicted their country. Not only were Irishmen invited to settle this particularly Irish question, but they were given what was practically an official assurance that the Unionist ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... King Andrew II., a man far in advance of his time, summoned them to assist in consultation at the Imperial Parliament. The wealth of Herrmannstadt is a thing of the past; the place has now the appearance of a dead level of competence, where riches and poverty are equally absent. There were no new houses building to supply an increasing population, nor, I should say, had any been built for ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... She was studying physiology in London and luxuriating in the extraordinary cheapness of life in Cranham Chambers. Not that she had any special need of cheapness; but the spinster aunt who brought her up had, together with a comfortable competence, left her the habit of parsimony. If, however, she did not know how to enjoy her own income, she allowed many women poorer than herself to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... to sustain Galileo's proposition concerning the revolution of the earth by an appeal to theology, and just as theologians were considered competent to pronounce on the soundness of the theories of Columbus, so was it admitted, with far greater reason, to be within their competence to pronounce upon the question of the extension of slavery in the Indies, although that matter was treated as one of secular policy, belonging to the India Council. Kings and governments contended, when they could, for the exercise of their royal powers in temporal matters, independently ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... tedious solicitants, who waylaid him in his daily walks. He had become sick of "the smoke and the grandeur and the roar of Rome" (Od. III, 29, 12); his Sabine retreat would be an asylum and a haven; would "give him back to himself"; would endow him with competence, leisure, freedom; he hailed it as the mouse in his delightful apologue craved refuge in the country from the splendour and ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... interest, was elected without much expense, which was very wonderful, and took his seat in Parliament. Don Philip and Don Martin, after two months' stay, took their passage back to Palermo, fully satisfied with the prospects of their sister as to competence and happiness. Jack had no occasion to argue the point with Agnes; she conformed at once to the religion of her husband, proved an excellent and affectionate wife, and eventually the mother of four children, three ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... on their shoulders; sometimes a boy or two, or a half-grown girl on horseback. Occasionally they wear an appearance of more refinement and cultivation, as well as wealth, the principals travelling in a sort of worn-out old carriage, the remains of the competence of former days. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... assimilated or extirpated, no extensive migration. Thus life will again become comparatively stationary. The chances for making great fortunes quickly will be diminished, while the facilities for acquiring a competence by steady labour will be increased. When every one is able to reach the normal standard of comfortable living, we must suppose that the exaggerated appetite for wealth and display will gradually disappear. We shall be more easily satisfied, and thus enjoy more leisure. It may be that there will ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... public-spirited citizen who unselfishly devotes himself or herself to the public good. That citizen of Peekskill in those early days was Doctor James Brewer. He had accumulated a modest competence sufficient for his simple needs as bachelor. He was either the promoter or among the leaders of all the movements for betterment of the town. He established a circulating library upon most liberal terms, and it became an educational institution of benefit. The books were admirably selected, ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... was omitted from the history of her beneficiaries; the lights and shades were indeed so skilfully adjusted that any impartial expression of opinion took on the hue of cruelty. I could have produced closetfuls of "heirlooms" in attestation of this fact; for it is one more mark of Eleanor's competence that her friends usually pay the interest on her philanthropy. My one hope was that in this case the object, being a picture, might reasonably be rated beyond my means; and as our cab drew up before a blistered ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... labor is principally physical and manual, there also it is according to nature that there should be different and unequal positions; some, by brains and good conduct, make capital, and get a footing upon the ways of competence and progress; others, being dull, or idle, or disorderly, remain in the straitened and precarious condition of existence depending solely on wages. Throughout the whole extent of the social structure, in the ranks of labor as well as ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Catharine's child, Mary, and declared the children of Anne the only lawful heirs to the crown. His faith in the power of Parliament over all civil matters was too complete to admit a doubt of its competence to regulate the succession to the throne. But by the same Act an oath recognizing the succession as then arranged was ordered to be taken by all persons; and this oath contained an acknowledgement that the marriage with Catharine was against Scripture and invalid from the beginning. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... as a student at Lincoln's Inn, but did not complete his studies. Shortly afterwards he went abroad and travelled extensively, visiting Holland, France, Italy, and Spain. He had inherited a modest competence from his father. ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... cross-pins on my uncle's hat, Sang songs, and told us what befalls In classic Dartmouth's college halls. Born the wild Northern hills among, From whence his yeoman father wrung By patient toil subsistence scant, Not competence and yet ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... writes with such zeal for my interests, and such warmth of sorrow for my sufferings, as if he wrote with fire and tears. God bless him! I wish above all things to realize a school. I could be well content to plod from morning to night, if only I could secure a secure competence; but to toil incessantly for uncertain bread weighs me ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... glacier does more than abrade. Rocks are not homogeneous; they are intersected by joints and places of weakness, which divide them into virtually detached masses. A glacier is undoubtedly competent to root such masses bodily away. Indeed the mere a priori consideration of the subject proves the competence of a glacier to deepen its bed. Taking the case of a glacier 1,000 feet deep (and some of the older ones were probably three times this depth), and allowing 40 feet of ice to an atmosphere, we find that on every square inch of its bed such ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... gifts. The less, too, shall we dread their loss, the less be at the mercy of their fluctuations. The capitalist does not think so much of the year's gains as does the needy adventurer, to whom they make the difference between bankruptcy and competence. If you have God for your 'enduring substance,' you can face all varieties of condition, and be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stronger than its weakest link. If one journal, in its eagerness to attract, prints what ought to have been kept secret, the reticence of the remainder is of no avail. Nor is this merely a question of honour and patriotism. It is also a question of competence. Censorship responsibilities demand knowledge and call for certain qualifications which the personnel of the Press in general does not possess. A few editors, no doubt, could be trusted to do the work efficiently; but that claim to omniscience which is unobtrusively, but none the less ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... ministers only are accountable for all, and must answer it at their perils. He hath a vast revenue constantly arising from the hearth of the Householder, the sweat of the Labourer, the rent of the Farmer, the industry of the Merchant, and consequently out of the estate of the Gentleman: a large competence to defray the ordinary expense of the Crown, and maintain its lustre. And if any extraordinary occasion happen, or be but with any probable decency pretended, the whole Land at whatsoever season of the year does yield him a plentiful ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... of reasonable competence soberly and simply describe the scene in the House of Commons when some one of the ordinary professional ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... state, almost without a sheltering home and needful food—it is because he spent all in the service of the King. He needed not to commit any act of treachery or villany to obtain wealth— he had an ample competence in his own possessions. For Markham Everard— he knows no such thing as selfishness—he would not, for broad England, had she the treasures of Peru in her bosom, and a paradise on her surface, do a deed that would disgrace his own name, or injure the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... competence for the missus and kids," he kept on repeating to himself, "and the way to finger that competence is to get power." He never owned to himself that this thirst for power was one of the greatest curses of his ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... said with all the candour of her competence. "She can't come herself—except just to the door." Then as she thought afresh: "Can't she come even to ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... spoilt child. At last Miss Keith's refusal of him softened by a half-implied hope, sent him forth to his uncle at Rio, on the promise that if he did his utmost there, he should in three years be enabled to offer Miss Keith more than a competence. With this hope he had for the first time applied himself to business in earnest, when he received the tidings of her marriage, and like a true spoilt child broke down at once in resolution, capacity, and health, so that his uncle was only too glad to ship him off for England. And ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his way when, on May 5, 1889, he announced that he was about to leave St. Andrews, and attempt to get work at proof-correcting and in the humblest sorts of journalism in Edinburgh. The chapter is honourable to his resolution, but most melancholy. There were competence and ease waiting for him, probably, in London, if he would but let his pen have its way in bright comment and occasional verse. But he chose the other course. With letters of introduction from Mr. Meiklejohn, ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... when the savages were upon them. With anguish they saw, from the loop-holes of their retreat, every house and barn consumed, their cattle shot, and all their property of food, clothing, and furniture destroyed. They were thus, in an hour, reduced from competence to ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... to open warfare. This principle is universally applied in the French Artillery, where, apart from its evident wisdom, it has been necessitated by the great shortage of officers. My own Major used to train all our best N.C.O.'s with this object in view and, when satisfied of their competence, used to give them in normal times considerable responsibilities in the working of the Battery in action. The result was that we had as capable and reliable a set of "Numbers One" and "B.C.A.'s" as could be found anywhere.[1] ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... respect would her marriage with me be imprudent? I possess actual competence, and a prospect of wealth. I come of a long lived and healthy family. My name is, beyond comparison, more widely known than yours. [Mr. Lind recoiled]. I now find myself everywhere treated with a certain degree of consideration, which an alliance with ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... grow, we should be left with a flat history of phenomena and no means of prediction or even classification. All knowledge would be reduced to gossip, infinitely diffuse, perhaps enlisting our dramatic feelings, but yielding no intellectual mastery of experience, no practical competence, and no moral lesson. The world would be a serial novel, to be continued for ever, and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... special to do with the subject, or when (as in the case of a few minorities who happen to be of some importance) even well-informed readers are likely to be quite ignorant about them. Accounts, in all degrees of scale and competence, of the lives of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne abound. It is sufficient—but in the special circumstances at this point perhaps necessary—here to sum the facts very briefly in so far as they bear on the main issue. Richardson (1689-1761), not merely the first to write, but the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... is a matter in your own competence, and for your own conscience," Hamilton said. "The men have simply, as I understand, defended their property against marauders, and they are, as I conceive, worthy of no punishment whatever. If you choose to sentence them to such ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... important private business, which keeps me in the Confederate lines, I shall be with ——- again. Tell him to be in good spirits. This city has still a great deal of money hoarded in garrets—and we shall soon be here. Then we can retire on a competence—and when Fonthill is confiscated, we will purchase it, and live ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... sent to transport her, by violence, out of the territory. Somewhat cheered by this assurance, she rented a small house, in a very retired situation upon the western shore of the Lake of Constance. Though in the disasters of the times she had lost much property, she still had an ample competence. Her beloved brother, Eugene, it will be remembered, had married a daughter of the King of Bavaria. He was one of the noblest of men and the best of brothers. As soon as possible, he took up his residence near ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and vain words; for verily this man had not come in to us, were he not assured that he could of himself and single handed make head against an hundred riders; and if I said to him, 'Thou art Sharrkan, son of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman,' he would answer, 'Yes.' But 'tis not of your competence to let or hinder him; for if you do so, he will not turn back from you till he hath slain all that are in this place. Behold, here he is by my side, and I will bring him before you sword and targe in hand." "Albeit I were safe from thy wrath," answered Masurah the Knight, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... much positive truth as the human mind is capable of receiving; whether that truth is attained by the exercise of reason, or communicated by revelation. It must necessarily be both limited and alloyed, to bring it within the competence of finite human intelligence. Being finite, we can form no correct or adequate idea of the Infinite; being material, we can form no clear conception of the Spiritual. We do believe in and know the infinity of Space and Time, and the spirituality of the Soul; but the idea ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... faithless helpmate; and still more so, in finding that there was, as it were, especially reserved for me the affection of such a noble, right-minded creature as Bessy? My life, commenced in rags and poverty, had, by industry and exertion, and the kindness of others, step by step progressed to competence and every prospect of mundane happiness. Had I not, therefore, reason to be grateful, and to feel that there had been a little cherub who had watched over the life of Poor Jack? On my bended knees I acknowledged it fervently and gratefully, and prayed that, should ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... this on the authority of Mr. Edkins, one of our best living Chinese scholars, it is but fair that I should give the opinion of another Chinese scholar, the late Stanislas Julien, whose competence to give an opinion on this subject Mr. Edkins would probably be the first to acknowledge. All that we really want is the truth, not a momentary triumph of our own opinions. M.Julien wrote to me ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... or violinist we take his proficiency of technique for granted, and we ask, What, with all this power of expression at his command, has he to say? In his rendering of the composer's work what has he of his own to contribute by way of interpretation? Conceding at once to Mr. Sargent his supreme competence as a painter, his consummate mastery of all his means, we ask, What has he seen in this man or this woman before him worthy of the exercise of such skill? In terms of the personality he is interpreting, what ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... that moment of confusion he was struck by the cold competence of her tone, and wondered how she could ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably within the competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark its proper functions. And it may be laid down as a universal rule that a government which attempts more than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... immeasurably higher than our own remuneration to labour even in the United States. According to their theory, every child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age, and there terminating the period of labour, should have acquired enough for an independent competence during life. As, no matter what the disparity of fortune in the parents, all the children must equally serve, so all are equally paid according to their several ages or the nature of their work. Where the parents or friends choose to retain a child in their own service, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... such schemes. Many elementary and secondary teachers have undergone training for their life work, as investigators have, by a different regimen, of course, for theirs. But if college and university teachers do their work well, it is because they are born with competence for their calling, or were self-taught, or happened to grow into competence accidentally, as a by-product of training for other and partly alien ends, or learned to teach ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater preferment as I could never get, so am I not in debt for it, I have a competence (laus Deo) from my noble and munificent patrons, though I live still a collegiate student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, Et tanquam in specula ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of being laid open to immediate settlement, as its inhabitants may descend with rapidity in support of the lower country should future circumstances expose that to foreign enterprise. As the stipulations in this treaty also involve matters within the competence of both Houses only, it will be laid before Congress as soon as the Senate shall have ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... mild merits of domestic life, The patient sufferer, and the faithful wife. Thus graced with humble Virtue's native charms, Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia's arms; Secure with peace, with competence to dwell, While tutelary nations guard her cell. Yours is the charge, ye fair! ye wise! ye brave! 'Tis yours to ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... with the old, and promoted much good fellowship). At least Dr. Harry Ironside did. He was a young fellow born to be popular whether he would or not; handsome, with pleasant manners, kind-hearted, possessed of a respectable competence independent of his profession, to which he brought considerable abilities and great singleness of purpose. Everybody "took" to him, from crusty Mr. Foljambe to jaunty Mr. Lyle; from Miss Perkins, whose ear-trumpet he improved upon, to old Susan, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... is no occasion to show that the hand of Moses was the instrument made use of. To the most excellent of contemporary histories, to histories written by eye-witnesses of the facts which they describe, we accord but a limited confidence. The highest intellectual competence, the most admitted truthfulness, immunity from prejudice, and the absence of temptation to mis-state the truth; these things may secure general credibility, but they are no guarantee for minute and circumstantial ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Arthur O'Leary are distinguished among the Franciscans; and many great men have been produced in the Benedictine order. He saw no temptation that regulars had for coming here, if it was not to abandon certain competence where they were, for certain poverty ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... beads. It was his wife; and she told him he had been gone many, many years—she could not tell how many; that she had remained faithful and constant to him, and distracted her mind from the bitterness of sorrow by trading in kamas and magic herbs, and had thus acquired a genteel competence. But little cared the sage for such things; he, was rejoiced to be at home and at peace, and near his own early gains of hiaqua and treasure buried in a place of security. He imparted whatever he possessed—material ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... cottage, and that was Sir Reginald Eversleigh. The young baronet contrived to exist, somehow or other, upon his income of five hundred a year; but, as he had neither abandoned his old haunts, nor put aside his old vices, the income, which to a good man would have seemed a handsome competence, barely enabled him to stave off the demands of his most pressing creditors ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... hold the same epitaph to be irreverent, because in a list of Barker's many blessings occurs the profane word "trout:" but those trout, and the custom which they brought him, had made the old man's life comfortable, and enabled him to leave a competence for his children; and why should not a man honestly thank Heaven for that which he knows has done him good, even though ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... for example, the Valkyrie's Ride, the prelude to the third act of "Siegfried," the march in "The Dusk of the Gods"—have been deliberately massacred. One cannot criticise such conducting: it does not rise near enough to competence to be worthy of criticism. But one has a right to ask why this young man, who should be serving an apprenticeship in some obscure opera-house, is palmed off on the public as "the best artist procurable"? He scarcely ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Mabberly applied himself to his duties in London, unaffected by the loss of the Fairy, and profoundly interested in the success of his friend Barret, who had devoted himself heart and head to natural history, with a view to making that science his profession, though his having been left a competence by his father rendered a profession unnecessary, from a financial point of view. As for Giles Jackman, that stalwart "Woods-and-Forester" returned to his adopted land, accompanied by the faithful Quin, and busied himself in the ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... lutes, no singing birds again Will bring her sleep. Sleep knows no pride; It scorns not cots of village hinds, Nor shadow-trembling river-side, Nor Tempe, stirr'd by western winds. Who, having competence, has all, The tumult of the sea defies, Nor fears Arcturus' angry fall, Nor fears the Kid-star's sullen rise, Though hail-storms on the vineyard beat, Though crops deceive, though trees complain. One while of showers, one while of heat, One while of winter's barbarous reign. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... things, we sympathize with the inward life that molds the outward form. Hence men highly gifted with this sensibility become creative, in whatever province of work they strive; and no man in any province is truly creative except through the subtle energy imparted to him by this sensibility, this competence to feel the invisible in ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... exercised in the rural districts was in some measure counterbalanced by the power of the yeomanry, an eminently manly and truehearted race. The petty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a modest competence, without affecting to have scutcheons and crests, or aspiring to sit on the bench of justice, then formed a much more important part of the nation than at present. If we may trust the best statistical writers of that age, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the family in the old Deacon's time, but Justin seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil. He could, and did, rise early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could not make the rain fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them, and the elements, however much ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power—those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot straiten—with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride, where we formerly walked: live better, and lie softer—and shall be wise to do so—than we had means to do in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... room from the bed to the washstand. Her face was very white but she had an air of great competence and composure. She carried a white basin brimming with a reddish froth. He saw little red specks splashed on the sleeve of her white linen gown. ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... October of this last year a committee (Landesausschuss) of the whole territory was appointed to deliberate on laws proposed to it before they received the final sanction of the emperor. On the 2nd of May 1877, the Landesausschuss was itself empowered to initiate legislation within the competence of the territory, and in 1879 the imperial viceroy (Statthalter), representing the imperial chancellor, who had until then been the responsible minister, took up his residence in Strassburg. He is assisted in the government by 4 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... powers. Her dark eye unsheathed its glance of authority. It was an eye that went everywhere, and everywhere was met with signs that praised its oversight. Here was an out-worn inheritance which one woman, in less than a third of her lifetime, had developed into a competence for her son. He could afford to dream dreams of beneficence with his mother to make them good. Yes, he needed her still. His child was in her keeping; and, though brief the lease, that trust was no accident. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... obtained from farming, the mining of coal, the manufacture of steel or the selling of merchandise, is the exception, while the man, in whatever calling, who rears and educates a family and at the same time lays by a small competence is the normal American product. The moral is that a $500-a-year-income farm is a more important factor to the national ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... the future, enduring the darkness and privation of the present, in their faith in the brightness of the years to come. Thus they wait in patience for, while they command success, and the end of their toil is an old age of competence, and in the closing years of life, quiet and repose. Well, he was enjoying these pleasant visions when he saw, some thirty rods ahead of him, a huge bear, with her cubs, 'travelling his way,' as the saying is, in other words ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... uttered his thoughts aloud, yet always with a glance of uncertainty toward Dolores. They had reason to glance that way; for every man had tasted of the queen's justice, which rarely erred on the side of mildness; many of them had experienced her terrible competence to carry out a sentence in person. Of them all, not one but knew that in Dolores he owned as queen a woman who need yield nothing of prowess to any man: her knife was as swift, her round wrist as strong, her blazing violet-black eyes as sure as any among them. Not a man could ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... which first rise to a rank of dignity sufficient to occupy the views of a legislator, or to warrant a national interest. These ends are involved: 1st, in the practice of conferring degrees, that is, formal attestations and guarantees of competence to give advice, instruction, or aid, in the three great branches of liberal knowledge applicable to human life; 2d, in that appropriation of fixed funds to fixed professorships, by means of which the uninterrupted succession of public and authorized teachers is sustained in all the higher ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... come most constantly into conflict, and in which, as a result, their habits of mind are most clearly contrasted—to the field, to wit, of monogamous marriage. Surely no long argument is needed to demonstrate the superior competence and effectiveness of women here, and therewith their greater self-possession, their saner weighing of considerations, their higher power of resisting emotional suggestion. The very fact that marriages occur at all is a proof, indeed, that they are more cool-headed than men, and more ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the social and economic fruits. They realized vaguely that national consolidation brought with it organization, and organization depended for its efficiency upon a classification of individual citizens according to ability, knowledge, and competence. In a nationalized state, it is the man of exceptional position, power, responsibility, and training who is most likely to be representative and efficient, whereas in a thoroughly democratic state, as they conceived it, the average man was the representative citizen ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... "The competence of the ant is not like that of man. It is devoted to the welfare of the species rather than to that of the individual, which is, as it were, sacrificed or specialized for the benefit ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... seafarers through the narrow portals of the government examination. He gives that impression as he sits at his desk in his private office, the cuffs of his grey frock-coat and his starched white shirt drawn up out of the way. He has the capable air of a surgeon, the swift, impersonal competence of an experienced accoucheur. His business is to get results. It is not too much to say ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... personal check for ten thousand dollars. That is the last cent of Carmody money you will receive. Properly invested it will yield you a competence. Many men have builded fortunes upon less. As pocket money for a Broadway Bill it ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... in 1872 he re-stated them. While admitting, as the United Presbyterian Synod had done in adopting the "Articles of Agreement," that the State ought to frame its policy on Christian lines, he denied that it was its duty or within its competence to establish and endow the Church. This is, to quote his own words, "an overstraining of its province,—a forgetfulness that its great work is civil and not spiritual,—and an encroachment without necessity or call, and indeed, as I believe, in the face of direct Divine ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... clearer lines, and let competence for the work of each department, instead of recognition of party services, be the guide in appointing the ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... allowed one afternoon a week for several years, and two afternoons a week for a few months preceding confirmation, to spend half of a school day with instructors of these respective professions, who were nominated by the church, but examined by the state as to their competence. These teachers are as professional, therefore, as those in the regular class work. Each religion is allowed to determine its own course of religious instruction, subject only to the approval of the cultus minister or the local authorities. In this way a rupture between the religious sentiments and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... asked to be members of the Committee of Treasury notwithstanding. And it would certainly upon principle seem wiser to choose a committee which for some purposes approximates to a committee of management by competence ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... the suspicion that it is not because such cases are rare that many of them cannot be cited; but simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong. Successful search has been made by one whose competence as an observer is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes place. I refer to the author ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... writers, however, we have an otherwise competent artist handicapped by a personality so marked that, whatever he may nominally write about, the result is, above all else, an exposure of the writer's idiosyncrasies. Then, too, the laws of any locale wherein Mr. Pickwick achieves a competence in business, or of a society wherein Vautrin becomes chief of police, are upon the face of it extra-mundane. It suffices that, as a general rule, in fiction-making the true artist finds an ample, if restricted, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... is said, when the profession of a street-sweeper in London was a certain road to competence and fortune—when the men of the brooms were men of capital; when they lived well, and died rich, and left legacies behind them to their regular patrons. These palmy days, at any rate, are past now. Let no man, or woman either, expect ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... had I known its value earlier in life, I might have escaped a good deal of suffering. Ten years ago, I had a kind husband, and a promising son, and slowly, yet surely, they were gathering a pretty competence. We thought we could gather faster by going south; but the location proved unhealthy, and in one season I lost them both by a bilious fever." Sympathy kept me silent. "You would not discourage all attempts to better one's condition?" I at length inquired. "By no means," ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... I put before her, as I sometimes do, a perplexing business matter, I am surprised at her competence. Of course, she is as able as you or I to reason, but on one subject she does not reason or believe that it admits of discussion; and by Heaven! my friend, I am sometimes ashamed to keep out of this business. So far as this State is ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... complicated, various, or wide-ranging. If monotony were not by association a question-begging word, it might be applied with much justice to both: and it is consequently not necessary to have read every Icelandic saga in the original, every Provencal lyric with a strictly philological competence, in order to appreciate the literary value of the contributions which these two charming isolations made to ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Ludlow, whose business was no longer embarrassed, and who had become satisfied that, although he should sink a large proportion of a handsome fortune, he would still have a competence left, and that well secured—proposed to visit Saratoga, as usual. There was not a dissenting voice—no objecting on the score of meeting vulgar people there. The painful fact disclosed by Uncle Joseph, of their plebeian origin, and the marriage of Mr. Armand—whose ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... went straight from the minister to his wife—with the impetus of Mr. Ancrum's shove, as it were, fresh upon him. Sitting opposite to her in the back kitchen, while she peeled her potatoes with a fierce competence and energy which made his heart sick within him, Reuben told her, with incoherent repetitions of every phrase, that in his opinion the time had come when Mr. Gurney should be written to, and some of Sandy's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been sometimes better entertained. Nor does he confine himself to prose, but touches the lyre too, in his leisure moments, and passes for the chief bard of his kingdom, as he is its sole public character, leading architect, and only merchant. His competence, however, does not reach to music; and his verses, when they are ready, are taught to a professional musician, who sets them and instructs the chorus. Asked what his songs were about, Tembinok' replied, "Sweethearts and trees and the sea. Not all the same true, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He has been made familiar." Thus a month Went by. They liked the stirring ways of youth, The quick elastic step, and joyous mind, Ever expectant of it knew not what, But something higher than has e'er been born Of easy slumber and sweet competence. And as for him,—the while they thought and thought A comfortable instinct let him know How they had waited for him, to complete And give a meaning to their lives; and still At home, but with a ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... and competence—two things which do not always go together. She was industrious, economical, intelligent and ambitious. She was a helpmeet in all that the word implies. The man whose heart is at rest is the only one who can win. Jealousy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... appreciate his companion or his interlocutor, weigh his ideas, test his merit and esteem him at his correct value, and I am sure that he does not overrate him.—Now that the nobles have lost their special capacities and the Third-Estate have acquired general competence, and as they are on the same level in education and competence, the inequality which separates them has become offensive because it has become useless. Nobility being instituted by custom is no longer sanctified by conscience; the Third-Estate being justly excited against privileges that have no ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... preceding the Reformation. The best of all the acquisitions by earth from heaven, Christianity, might have seemed to bring with it an inevitable necessity of a great and permanent difference soon to be effected, in regard to the competence of men's knowledge to prevent their destruction. It was as if, in the physical system, some one production, far more salutary to life than all the other things furnished from the elements, had been reserved ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the maintenance of peace by sagacious prevision is the laurel of the statesman, which, in failing to achieve except by force, he takes from his own brow and gives to the warrior, it is none the less a necessary part of his official competence to recognize that in public disputes, as in private, there is not uncommonly on both sides an element of right, real or really believed, which prevents either party from yielding, and that it is better for men to fight than, for the sake of peace, to refuse to support their convictions of ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... not think such bold changes within their commission. It is indeed difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits to the mere ABSTRACT competence of the supreme power, such as was exercised by parliament at that time; but the limits of a MORAL competence, subjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign, occasional will to permanent reason, and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... publication would follow. He set the completion of this work as the period when he must enlist; working on with difficult self-restraint toward the appointed hour. If he had regrets for a career broken at the very point where it had reached success and was assured of more than competence, he never expressed them. His one regret was the effect of his enlistment on those most closely bound to him by affections which had been deepened and made more tender by the sense of common exile. At last ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... to a professorship of philosophy and history; the salary was a competence to his frugal life, and enabled him to publish his celebrated Review, which he dedicates "to the glory of the city," for illa nobis ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... he had always found good enough for himself. In this man there was neither the enthusiastic patriotism of a Chauvelin, nor the ardent selflessness of a Danton. He served the revolution and fostered the anarchical spirit of the times only because these brought him a competence and a notoriety, which an orderly and fastidious government would obviously have ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... without its reward, for though, as far as we can discover, Charlemagne, wise in his generosity, seldom if ever gave more than one profitable charge at once to one man, yet those who distinguished themselves by talent and exertion, were sure to meet with honour, distinction, and competence.—James. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... several obstacles in the path. Of some it would not be easy to speak on account of their own lives being too recent: in regard of nearly all the same fact must have occasioned exercise of "censorship" to a degree which makes absolute judgment of their competence as epistolers rash, and comparative judgment almost impossible. To take up once more one example of men who were born a full or almost a full century ago, Mr. Paul,[50] speaking apparently with intimate knowledge of the originals, speaks also of the "severe process of excision and ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... majority of scholars of name and acknowledged competence in England and Europe have now been led to form an irresistible conclusion that the Book of Daniel was not written, and could not have been written, in its present form, by the prophet Daniel, B.C. 534, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... desire so ardently entertained by the people of the land, for twenty years back, was gratified at last. The burghers shared in the prosperity to a very large degree, and in lieu of former poverty, competence and wealth became the rule, and many of them became exceedingly rich. It was not unusual to hear Boers expressing undisguised gratitude, not merely for the natural gold deposits, but specially also that people had come to ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... without juries certain misdemeanors in certain departments; these were composed of judges taken from the civil courts and formed into a special court. This conflict of special justice and criminal justice gave rise to questions of competence which came before the courts of appeal. If the department of the Aube had had a special court, the verdict on the outrage committed on a senator of the Empire would no doubt have been referred to it; but this tranquil department had never needed ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... these unhappy men? This is the most painful part of the business. Their livelihood is gone; and nothing remains but to go out into the street and beg,—to beg, alas! from beggars. It is not unfrequent in Rome to find families in competence this week, and literally soliciting alms the next. You may see matrons deeply veiled, that they may not be known by their acquaintances, hanging on at the doors of hotels, in the hope of receiving the charity of English travellers. Shame on the tyranny that has ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... nursing, and Lord Pinkerton, well aware of his younger daughter's clearheaded competence, offered Jane the ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... faces when she wanted to be pleasant to them. Amabel seemed to see her son from across the wide chasm that had opened between them; but, looking at his figure, suddenly grown strange, she felt that Augustine's manners were 'nice.' The fact of their niceness, of his competence—really it matched Lady Elliston's—made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... unutterably shameless That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged sister, by the name of BIGGS. She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always been particularly blameless; Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence, owing to some fortunate speculations ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... which the work was to be done. No slave could hire a house or plantation. No amount of industry could make him an exception to the general rule. If he toiled faithfully for years, amassed a fortune for his master, earned quite a competence for himself during the odd moments he caught from a busy life, and then, with acknowledged character and business tact, he sought to hire a plantation or buy a house, the law came in, and pronounced it a misdemeanor, for which both purchaser and seller ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... very matters of administration which are thus approved by Federal authority."[16] An employee of the Post Office Department is not required to submit to examination by State authorities concerning his competence and to pay a license fee before performing his official duty in driving a motor truck for transporting the mail.[17] To Arizona's complaint, in a suit to enjoin the construction of Boulder Dam, that her quasi-sovereignty ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would "never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he lived." And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to say, he considered he had kept ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sis," said Wayland, drawing her to his bosom, "have I not told you that when you have acquired an education, you can become a teacher, which will surely prove an occupation more congenial to your taste, and by it you can gain an ample competence ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... and hasn't he given you rent-free your fine mansion of Barryville yonder? And now, when his affairs can be put into order, and a chance offers for his old age to be made comfortable, who flings himself in the way of him and competence?—You, of all others; the man in the world most obliged to him. It's wicked, ungrateful, unnatural. From a lad of such spirit as you are, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mr Cooper's competence," returned Mr Webster; "but I will order a further examination, as you seem so anxious about it. Meanwhile I hope that the ship is being got ready for ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... company, he appropriated it to the proper pay and support of the servants of all kinds, carefully dividing the proceeds according to a scale; and thus gave every British functionary employed in the East the means of slowly but surely acquiring a competence. Having disposed of the affairs of the civil servants, Clive turned his attention to those of the military, his old companions in arms. And here he had greater difficulties than ever to contend with, for they were men who held the power of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... indeed remarkably well in London. As Pohl says, "he returned from it with increased powers, unlimited fame, and a competence for life. By concerts, lessons, and symphonies, not counting his other compositions, he had again made 1200 pounds, enough to relieve him from all anxiety as to the future. He often said afterwards that it was not till he had been to England that he became famous in Germany; by ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... in the firm and earned the very handsome competence in a small way which would have become due to you this week, instead of throwing us over at the last moment for some quixotic reasons of your own, it might have been a different matter. I do not say it would have been, I say it might have been, and you may remember ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... what one had not (if one had it) would be as bad. He had never been self-conscious—it was not the custom of his generation—and, having but little imagination, had never suspected that he was laying up that quality for his descendants, together with a competence which secured ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... has provided fair intelligence, one must die very young in order not to die an expert. As I write I think of D——, one of the last surviving philosophers. Born with the instincts of a man of letters, he declined to give himself to the gentler pursuit until he had made a little competence at the law. As he followed his disinterested course of writing and travel, his enthusiasm centred upon the antiquities of Greece and Rome. In the engraved gems of that time he found a beautiful epitome of his ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... one of the old square palaces of the North, in which Bernard Langdon, the son of Wentworth, was born. If he had had the luck to be an only child, he might have lived as his father had done, letting his meagre competence smoulder on almost without consuming, like the fuel in an air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea Elizabeth Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William Pepperell Langdon, and others, equally well named,—a string of them, looking, when they stood ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... large in proportion to the number of the people, that the people must be in comfort; nor because it is small, that they must be in distress. An active and economical race always produces more than it requires, and lives (if it is permitted to do so) in competence on the produce of its daily labour. The quantity of its store, great or small, is therefore in many respects indifferent to it, and cannot be inferred from its aspect. Similarly an inactive and wasteful population, which cannot live by its daily labour, but is dependent, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... course of nature, that the universal experience of the past affords a powerful presumption against their truth, and that in proportion to the gravity of these objections, should be the number and competence of the witnesses. The answer is a ready one. What do we know of the mysteries of Nature? Do we understand the intricate machinery of the Universe? When to this is added the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Andy Burke!" he repeated. "That is capital! It will start the boy in life, and with his good habits it will make him sure of a competence by and by. With half of it he can buy an interest in Graves' store, and the balance will, if well invested, give him a handsome addition to his income. Then there's the bequest for the town library—a capital idea, ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... meeting with competence in space did not shock him greatly. What bothered him was his lack of control over the situation. Had he seen them and passed on about his ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... earning a modest competence by poker-work, and the painting of flowers, birds, and other innocent and beautiful objects. Why cannot Katherine do ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... by careful observance of my principle has stacked up a goodly array of chips towards his winter's keep. All this goes to show that if a man will bet sanely and avoid "going for the gloves" he can make a modest competence on the Turf. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... daughters of kings, high-bosomed maids, as they were moons: I was blessed with a thousand sons as they were fierce lions, and I abode a thousand years, glad of heart and mind, and I amassed treasures beyond the competence of all the Kings of the regions of the earth, deeming that delight would still endure to me. But there fell on me unawares the Destroyer of delights and the Sunderer of societies, the Desolator of domiciles and the Spoiler of inhabited ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... hands on a table behind him, his long spare frame in a nervous fidget, his eyes bright and hostile, and a spot of red on either thin cheek. Beside Chicksands, who was of middle height, solidly built, and moderately stout, with mental and physical competence written all over him, the Squire of Mannering seemed but the snippet of a man. He was singularly thin, with a slender neck, and a small head covered with thick hair, prematurely white, which tumbled over his forehead and eyes. He had the complexion of ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his opera-glass abruptly away from the stage. Lawrence Lefferts was, on the whole, the foremost authority on "form" in New York. He had probably devoted more time than any one else to the study of this intricate and fascinating question; but study alone could not account for his complete and easy competence. One had only to look at him, from the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair moustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean and elegant person, to ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... the petty orthodox Chinese states taken by Ts'u— the first to be so taken by barbarians—in 684, but left by Ts'u internally independent, declined to render any assistance to Wu, unless she could prove her competence to hold permanently the Ts'u territory thus conquered. The King of Ts'u was so grateful for this that he drew some blood from the breast of his own half- brother, and on the spot made a treaty with the vassal prince. It 662, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker |
