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Fitness   /fˈɪtnəs/   Listen
Fitness

noun
1.
The quality of being suitable.  Synonym: fittingness.
2.
Good physical condition; being in shape or in condition.  Synonym: physical fitness.
3.
Fitness to traverse the seas.  Synonym: seaworthiness.
4.
The quality of being qualified.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Fitness" Quotes from Famous Books



... was as ambitious of social distinction as her husband was of political power. She was a woman of taste, but of luxurious taste. She had a passion for splendour, which, though ever regulated by a fine perception of the fitness of things, was still costly. Though her mien was in general haughty, she flattered Zenobia, and consummately. Zenobia, who liked handsome people, even handsome women, and persons who were dressed beautifully, was quite won by Mrs. Ferrars, against whom at first she ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... department of medicine, and an entire monopoly of the advantages of clinical observations, with all these advantages and precedents, what headway have we made in convincing the public and individuals of our superior ability to manage disease, or of our peculiar fitness for becoming the sanitary officers ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller

... exercising for the first time, under such critical circumstances, a right of which they did not know the extent and did not foresee the purport. "The people has more need to be governed and subjected to a protective authority than it has fitness to govern," M. Malouet had said in his speech to the assembly of the three orders in the bailiwick of Riom. The day, however, was coming when the conviction was to be forced upon this people, so impotent and incompetent in the opinion of its most trusty friends, that the sovereign authority rested ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... life had hardly yet offered a duty to fulfill or transgress; the terrible gloom of this Puritan horizon, on which no light showed me promise of better things, only to be hoped for through a process of repentance and atonement for the sins of Adam, the fitness and method of which process were far beyond my capacity to comprehend, as beyond that of any child,—all these things made my intellectual life so sombre that I can but regard the long interval of intellectual apathy as a fortunate provision against some form of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... Instead of accusing himself, the convert volunteered to track down and bring in the other fellow. His enthusiasm was not for repentance, but for what he began to call service. In brief, the national sense of energy and fitness gradually superimposed itself upon the national Puritanism, and from that marriage sprung a keen Wille zur Macht, a lusty will to power.[42] The American Puritan, by now, was not content with the rescue of his own soul; he felt an irresistible impulse to hand salvation on, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... true, how he must have suffered, how he must still be suffering—not only in his heart, but in his mind! His sense of pride, his self-respect, his passion for complete independence, his meticulous consciousness of the fitness of things, of what could be and what was impossible—all must by lying in the dust. She could almost have wept ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... soldiers with his own sense of the great importance of the Long Island front, Greene added the determined words: "In case of an attack, all these posts are to be defended to the last extremity." And Colonel Little, who had proved his fitness to command the post assigned him by his cool and soldierly conduct at Bunker Hill, quietly resolved that if the enemy assaulted Fort Greene it should never be ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... was Brutus chosen as the leader of the conspiracy? In what events of the play does he show his fitness as a leader? In what events does he ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely

... most important tattoo of the Igorot, since it marks its wearer as a taker of at least one human head. It therefore stands for a successful issue in the most crucial test of the fitness of a person to contribute to the strength of the group of which he is a unit. It no doubt gives its wearer a certain advantage in combat — a confidence and conceit in his own ability, and, likely, it tends to unnerve a combatant who has not the same emblem and experience. No matter ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... ended, Mrs. Ware had a boy baby of her own to increase her occupations and her happiness. It lived a few bright years, long enough to become a very attractive child and to give a severe wrench to her heart when it left her. This experience seems to have a certain fitness in a life in which every joy was to bring sorrow and every sorrow, by sheer will, was ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... of you, dear father," she said. Sir Walter waited for the gong to sound, but it did not, and he rebuked himself for thinking that it would sound. Masters had a more correct sense of the fitness of things than he. He thought curiously upon this incident, and suspected that he must be unhinged a little. Then he remembered a thing that he had desired to say to ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... in his masterful way made arrangements, becoming but economical, for the funeral; and when it was over came back to the vicarage with Philip. The will was in his charge, and with a due sense of the fitness of things he read it to Philip over an early cup of tea. It was written on half a sheet of paper and left everything Mr. Carey had to his nephew. There was the furniture, about eighty pounds at the bank, twenty shares in the A. B. C. company, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... Cross. There is a sense in which this is true, and there is a sense in which it is false. If the Cross is set forth as the cursed tree on which the Lord of Glory hung and suffered, to satisfy the demands of Eternal Justice, then indeed there is fitness in the preaching to produce the sense of guilt. But this is to preach the law, in its fullest extent, and the most tremendous energy of its claims. Such discourse as this must necessarily analyze law, define ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... seen fit to carry the inchoate right into effect, as is apparent in the law regulating the franchise of this District. When that shall have been done, it will be the pleasure of this court to administer the law as they find it. Until this shall be done, the consideration of fitness and unfitness, merit and demerit, are considerations for the law-making power. The demurrer in these cases ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... to have quarreled with Sally, that he might detect whether Mara would betray some gladness; but she only evinced concern and a desire to make up the difficulty. He would discuss her character and her fitness to make a man happy in matrimony in the style that young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and sensible, would talk with him in the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... from the analogy of others, and from the corresponding spiritual lesson as elsewhere declared in Scripture, we conclude with confidence that the wedding garment was a well understood distinctive badge, expressive generally of loyalty, and specifically constituting and declaring the wearer's fitness for sitting as a guest at the marriage supper of the king's son. In appearance it must have been conspicuous; but its value may not have been great. It was not the inherent worth of the material but the meaning of the symbol that bulked in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... women of the rebozo were vastly superior to those who stepped from their carriages at about the beginning of the third number and took to parading, the two sexes in pairs marching in opposite directions at a snail's pace. The "women of the people" had more sense of the fitness of things than to ape the wealthy in dress, like the corresponding class in our own land, and their simplicity of attire stood out in attractive contrast to the pasty features and unexercised figures in "Parisian" garb ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... Foreign Missions," when the very important subject of funds necessary to his mission to Antioch, will be discussed. Brother Spyke, having levelled this battery at the susceptibility of Mrs. Swiggs, is delighted to find some fourteen voices chiming in-all complimenting his peculiar fitness for, and the worthy object of the mission. Mrs. Swiggs sets her cup in her saucer, and in a becoming manner, to the great joy of all present, commences an eulogium on Mr. Spyke. Sister Slocum, in her letters, held him before her in strong ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... eyes followed him a little wistfully. His function, as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds. They were not wild beasts. They were human beings who had made a misstep. Sometimes he had been able to influence men strongly, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... apply alike to all. Thus the voter, selected by law to represent himself and four other non-voting citizens, is often a person who is unfit for any public duty or trust. In a town government, having a small area of jurisdiction, where the voice of the majority of qualified voters is conclusive, the fitness of the person who is to exercise that high representative privilege can be determined by his neighbors and acquaintances, and, in the great majority of cases, it will be decided honestly and for the good of the country. In such meetings, there is always a spirit of loyalty to the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... of the State women are appointed examiners to decide on the fitness of applicants to teach in the public schools, but they can not sit ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... pupils and assistants, through whose help the extensive works, requiring ceaseless labour by day and night, had been accomplished. Doubt had been cast on the capacity of Indian students in the field of science. From his personal experience Professor Bose bore testimony to their special fitness in this respect. An intellectual hunger had been created by the spread of education. An Indian student demanded something absorbing to think about and to give scope for his latent energies. If this could be done, he would ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... harmony; concord &c 714; concordance, concert; understanding, mutual understanding. conformity &c 82; conformance; uniformity &c 16; consonance, consentaneousness^, consistency; congruity, congruence; keeping; congeniality; correspondence, parallelism, apposition, union. fitness, aptness &c adj.; relevancy; pertinence, pertinencey^; sortance^; case in point; aptitude, coaptation^, propriety, applicability, admissibility, commensurability, compatibility; cognation &c (relation) 9. adaption^, adjustment, graduation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... it, is more properly a designation than a conception of the thing. A definition in this case would evidently be nothing more than a determination of the word. In the second place, no a priori conception, such as those of substance, cause, right, fitness, and so on, can be defined. For I can never be sure, that the clear representation of a given conception (which is given in a confused state) has been fully developed, until I know that the representation is adequate ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... been well observed by Zeller that the great weakness of all ancient thought, not excepting Socratic thought, was that instead of appealing to objective experiment it appealed to some subjective sense of fitness. There were exceptions, of course: Democritus, Eratosthenes, Hippocrates, and to a great extent Aristotle. But in general there was a strong tendency to follow Plato in supposing that people could really solve questions by an appeal to their inner ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... acknowledge her perfection in the part she had chosen as the arbitress of social honours. The candidates were rapidly increasing; almost every month, it seemed, someone turned up with a fortune and the aspirations that go with it, and it was Mrs. Durrett who decided the delicate question of fitness. With these, and with the world at large, her manner might best be described as difficult; and I was often amused at the way in which she contrived to keep them at arm's length and make them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... had a rule that every clergyman who volunteered or was invited to go to a parish in Virginia was to be investigated as to character and fitness, and each one of them was taken by a committee to a church to read the service and preach a sermon as part ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon

... this time the cleavage between Parnellite and Anti-Parnellite was less acute than that between Mr. Healy's section and the followers of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien. The choice of Redmond as Chairman was due less to a sense of his general fitness than to despair of reaching a decision between the claims of ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... Manufacturer and workingman looked as if hypnotized at the machines, forgetting that those wheels of steel were not the only working powers under the factory roof. A tremendous effort was devoted to the study and improvement of the industrial apparatus and of the raw material, while the mental fitness and the mental method of the army of workingmen was dealt with unscientifically and high-handedly. But within the last few years the attention of the industrial world has been seriously turned to the matter-of-course fact that the workman's ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... the opportunities thus suggested may be taken advantage of by the neophyte for his own safety, amusement, and the good of those around him; but the way in which he does this is one adapted to his fitness—a part of the ordeal he has to pass through, and misuse of these powers will certainly entail the loss of them as a natural result. The Itchcha (or desire) evoked anew by the vistas they open up will retard or throw back ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... doctor. "We all know that; and in the event of Mr Crawley coming back to his parish it would be open to the bishop to raise the question as to his fitness for the duties." ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... the forehead is seen in a steeply curved arch. "Why," says Mr. Baker, pointing to it, "there's the Norman arch of Iffley." Sure enough, there it exactly was: and a moment's reflection showed me how easily, and with what instinctive fitness, the Norman builders, looking to the Greeks as their absolute masters in sculpture, and recognizing also, during the Crusades, the hieroglyphic use of the zigzag, for water, by the Egyptians, might have adopted this easily attained decoration at once as the sign of the element ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... of great composers or executive musicians. Pshaw! Why I can reel off yarns by the dozen if I'm put to it. Besides, the more one reads of the private lives of great musicians, the more one's ideal of the fitness of things is shocked. Paderewski putting a collar button in his shirt and swearing at his private chaplain because some of the criticisms were underdone, is not half so fearsome as Chopin with the boils, or Franz Schubert advertising in a ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... in the conditions under which our infants are born and reared. Thus William Hall, who has had an intimate knowledge extending over fifty-six years of the slums of Leeds, and has weighed and measured many thousands of slum children, besides examining over 120,000 boys and girls as to their fitness for factory labor, states (British Medical Journal, October 14, 1905) that "fifty years ago the slum mother was much more sober, cleanly, domestic, and motherly than she is to-day; she was herself better ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... all, then, my dear young friends, I began active life, as soon as I had left college, as I can well wish all of you might do. I began in keeping school. Not that I want to have any of you do this long, unless an evident fitness or "manifest destiny" appear so to order. But you may be sure that, for a year or two of the start of life, there is nothing that will teach you your own ignorance so well as having to teach children the few things you know, and to answer, as ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale

... Penthony, moved by a sense of duty and a knowledge of the fitness of things, instantly ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... to Lord Lytton: 'It is a thousand pities that J. F. Stephen is a judge; he might have done anything and everything as leader of the future Conservative party.' Lord Beaconsfield was an incomparably better judge than I can pretend to be of a man's fitness for such a position. The opinion, too, which he thus expressed was shared by some of Fitzjames's friends, who thought that his masculine force of mind and downrightness of character would have qualified him to lead a party effectively. I shall only say that it is idle to speculate on what ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... incongruous appearance in his afternoon attire, as he plunged along the furrows in foot-gear not intended for locomotion over freshly ploughed land. Jake rose to his feet, answering the queries of Ferry at his side as to his fitness for continuing work with a decided: "Sure I am. Sha'n't get even with myself for that fool trick till I've done a good dozen furrows. You don't ketch that there pair o'hosses gittin' away from Jake ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond

... son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" is characterized by Professor Park as "a curiosity in politico-homiletical literature." At this distance it is not difficult to see that the course of this clergy was far more honorable to its boldness and independence than to its discretion and sense of fitness. Both its virtues and its faults had a tendency ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... morning dawned brilliantly, and to the homesick girl there suddenly came a sense of desolation on waking. A strange land was this, without church-bells or sense of Sabbath fitness. The mountain, it is true, greeted her with a holy light of gladness, but mountains are not dependent upon humankind for being in the spirit on the Lord's day. They are "continually praising Him." Margaret wondered ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... which she was in the habit of taking for spasms. She was found alone, and nearly dead, behind the door of her apartment. Alas, poor L.E.L.! It was certainly a strange and wild vicissitude of fate that made it the duty of this respectable African merchant, in company with men of similar fitness for the task, to "sit" upon the body—say, rather, on the heart—of a creature so delicate, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... Americans, before definitely committing themselves to a promise of marriage, would at least consult their mothers, and ask them to make private and confidential inquiries as to the disposition, as well as to the moral and physical fitness of the young man or lady whom they contemplate marrying. Mothers are naturally concerned about the welfare and happiness of their offspring, and could be trusted in most cases to make careful, impartial and conscientious inquiries as to whether the girl or man was really a worthy ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... but not nearly so much as the fact that after a few weeks she found she scarcely remembered the adventures at all. If it had not been for the quiet and persistent guardianship of her cowboys she might almost have forgotten Don Carlos and the raiders. Madeline was assured of the splendid physical fitness to which this ranch life had developed her, and that she was assimilating something of the Western disregard of danger. A hard ride, an accident, a day in the sun and dust, an adventure with outlaws—these ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... is quite in the medieval manner, and fitly concludes this chapter. We are left absolutely in the dark as to whether the knight and the lady came together at last. I for one do not blame Marie for this, as with the subtle sense of the fitness of things that belongs to all great artists she saw how much more effective it would be to leave matters as they were between the lovers. There are those who will blame her for her inconclusiveness; but let them bear in mind that just because of what ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... nearly one third of the total county vote, notwithstanding his absence from the canvass, notwithstanding the fact that his acquaintanceship was limited to the neighborhood of New Salem, notwithstanding the sharp competition. Indeed, his talent and fitness for active practical politics were demonstrated beyond question by the result in his home precinct of New Salem, which, though he ran as a Whig, gave two hundred and seventy-seven votes for him and only three against him. Three months ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... Today even there are still those among us who oppose and resist the use of the Catechism under the false notion that it is the enemy of practical religion. Their idea of religion is the Methodistic notion. Fitness for church-membership, according to their view, comes through the pressure and appointments of the big meeting. Sinners must come to a bench for mourning, or they must stand up in the congregation, or they must hold their hands, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... at first, some doubt of Branch's fitness to take the field at all—he had suffered a severe hemorrhage shortly after his arrival at Cubitas—and it was only after a hysterical demonstration on his part that he had been accepted as a soldier. He simply would not be left behind. At first the Cubans regarded ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... condition of the people, a mind well stored with classical acquirements and thoroughly versed in antiquarian lore, a strong poetic temperament and the feeling of an artist for scenery, had all combined to give him a certain fitness for his task; and by the extracts from his diary it would be seen on what terms of freedom he conversed with Ministers and ambassadors, even with ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... taxation, because they were denied the privileges and duties of citizenship. The petition set forth the hardships free Negroes were obliged to endure, even in Massachusetts, and was in itself a proof of the fitness of the petitioners ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... purgation of society, is perhaps another blessing of a tropical country. I know of more than one community, whose moral, and in some measure physical health, would in my mere mortal and short sighted notion of the fitness of things, be vastly benefited by the visitation of an energetic, wide sweeping epidemic. Human society is very like a grate full of ignited anthracite coal, those parts of it that have lost their combustibility, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... hand, nor self-respect and a chaste appreciation of beauty on the other. Indeed Eve was distinguished for that important acquisition to a gentlewoman, an intellectual or refined toilette; not intellect and refinement in extravagance and caricature, but as they are displayed in fitness, simplicity, elegance, and the proportions. This much, perhaps, she owed to native taste, as the slight air of fashion, and the high air of a gentlewoman, that were thrown about her person and attire, were the fruits of an intimate connexion ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... sentence, which for convenience may be called the Elmira system, is scientific, and it must be administered entirely by trained men and by specialists; the same sort of training for the educational and industrial work as is required in a college or an industrial school, and the special fitness required for an alienist in an insane asylum. The discipline of the establishment must be equal to that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... away soon in the very place that produced him! Leaving behind him no trace of what he has done in his lifetime. One can judge by the look of a house of the taste of its master, As on ent'ring a town, one can judge the authorities' fitness. For where the towers and walls are falling, where in the ditches Dirt is collected, and dirt in every street is seen lying, Where the stones come out of their groove, and are not replaced there, Where the ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... constituted a tremendous strain upon the reserve force of clergy unbeneficed and more or less unemployed, and it was inevitable that with such a strain, there would be a deterioration in the character and fitness of the newly- appointed incumbents. Yet nothing has surprised me more than the exceeding rareness of evidence damaging to the reputation of the new men. That these men were less educated than their ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... abandonment but very little wreckage in her work. She conserves her energies in fitness, her soul in tenderness, her people in love, and the interests of The Army in loyalty. Consequently, her ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... inside of a courthouse, and they were quite as few who had once looked upon a law-book! Where such was the case, some principle of appointment was of course necessary, other than that which required fitness, by training, for the office conferred; and it is probable that the rule adopted was but little different to that in force among those who have the appointing power, where no such ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... admirable fitness, as the contest goes forward, the relative position of the speakers begins to change. Hitherto Job only had been passionate; and his friends temperate and collected. Now, however, shocked at his obstinacy, and disappointed wholly in the result of their homilies, they stray still further from the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... strangeness of the situation, though not for an instant did he doubt Kiddie's fitness and ability. In Rube's estimation there was nothing great and honourable that Kiddie was ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... rose to continue the debate he was hailed with ringing cheer from embattled host. Pretty to see how gentlemen to right of SPEAKER, mustered for defence of the Church, were careful to contribute to fitness of things by wearing the clerical ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various

... ambition alone, however, do not adequately explain their undertakings, and we find among them a fierce zeal for Christian propaganda strikingly disproportionate to their fitness to expound the doctrines or illustrate the virtues of the Christian religion. They seem to have frequently compounded for their sins of sensuality and their deeds of blood by championing the unity and purity of the faith—two ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... much to claim for Denmark Vesey, that his genius rose to the emergency, and proved itself equal to a surpassingly difficult situation, in the singular fitness of the five principal men on whom fell his election to associate leadership, with himself, and to the work of organizing the blacks for resistance. These five men, who became his ablest and most efficient lieutenants, were Peter Poyas, Rolla and Ned Bennett, ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke

... he also confessed the stratagem by which he had secured the presence of Margherita, it was the news of Chigi's approaching marriage which determined Raphael to accede to his request. Though Agostino had worded his allusions to his betrothed so skilfully that they applied with equal fitness to either Imperia or Maria Dovizio, Raphael never doubted that he referred to the latter. The news simply confirmed the suspicions which he had long entertained, and with characteristic magnanimity, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... INTELLIGENCE, FORCE or STRENGTH, and HARMONY, or FITNESS and BEAUTY, are the Trinity of the attributes of God. With the subtleties of Philosophy concerning them Masonry does not meddle, nor decide as to the reality of the supposed Existences which are their Personifications: nor whether the Christian Trinity be such a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... condition of admission to the university. I would admit to the university any one who could be reasonably expected to profit by the instruction offered to him; and I should be inclined, on the whole, to test the fitness of the student, not by examination before he enters the university, but at the end of his first term of study. If, on examination in the branches of knowledge to which he has devoted himself, he show himself deficient in industry ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... other are carved heads and figures. The sculpture of the arcade as a whole is the finest in the cathedral, and some of the finest in England; but the art of the Gothic sculptor reaches its culmination in these heads. In grotesqueness, fertility of invention, and perfect fitness as decoration they could hardly be surpassed. The canopies are decorated at the top with a cornice of carved grapes and vine leaves. Above them is a passage running round the whole chapter-house and passing behind the vaulting shafts ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... is not material heaven that is described as the reward of the saints, but a heaven raised on the height of spiritual goods. Nevertheless a bodily place, viz. the empyrean heaven, will be appointed to the Blessed, not as a need of Happiness, but by reason of a certain fitness ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... circus. In the year 550 of the city, there were five festivals. The candidates for the consulship spent large sums on these games, the splendor of which became the standard by which the electoral body measured the fitness of candidates. A gladiatorial show cost seven hundred and twenty thousand sesterces, or ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... that in England is, at least artistically, a narrow mind and a vulgar being. And it may of course be alleged that the music in our hymn-books which is intolerable to the more sensitive minds was not put there for them, but would justify itself in its supposed fitness for the lower classes. 'What use,' the pastor would say to one who, on the ground of tradition advocated the employment of the old plain-song and the Ambrosian melodies, 'What use to seek to attract such people as those in ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges

... seeing Annie, took away the sting of having to part with her for awhile; and, when he finally closed with the offer, she at once resumed her application for a place in the High School, and was soon accepted, for there were not a few in the town capable of doing justice to her fitness for the office; so that now she had the joy not merely of being able to live with her mother as before, and of contributing to her income, but of knowing at the same time that she lived in a like atmosphere ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald

... liking and fitness may be discovered by experience. I know a man who, from childhood, took pleasure in construction and invention. At the age of nine he made a real steam engine which "could go" with steam, and which was small enough to be carried in his pocket. He was encouraged to follow the providential indication, ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... and his immediate following wanted and were working for independence and independence alone, while the Filipinos who had long lived in Hongkong wanted to see the archipelago lost to Spain, but had no confidence in the ability of the country to stand alone or in the fitness of Aguinaldo and his following to direct the councils of a state. The character of the new refugees did not inspire confidence in these older men, who hoped for a protectorate by or ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... reconciliation of the North and South. He showed almost superhuman endurance during that intense campaign. But Grant had captured the imagination of the people. The old soldiers voted as one solid band, the Republican party was looked upon as the saviour of the nation, and the people doubted Mr. Greeley's fitness for the presidency in a national crisis. He was defeated in November, and went home to watch over his wife during her illness and death. Just before she died, he wrote a friend saying: "I am a broken old man; I have not slept one hour ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... natural sense of the fitness of things tells you that ribbons go well with straw and light straw-like work such as this; though you would not put ribbons on those rude hampers and game-baskets in the corner. Like to like; a stout cord goes suitably with them: just as a poet who understands his art employs pretty expressions ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to the point of perfection, rather than an expression of a great and moving idea, gives an air of insincerity to some of Stevenson's works. Yet, although seemingly artificial, he never chose words for the sake of mere sounds, but for their accuracy in truth and fitness. He was as an ephemeral shadow with an optimistic and real spirit. He infused an intimacy and spirituality into his writings that prove delightful to all ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... you on this point, once and for ever, Eveena. To me this seems matter of right, not of favour or fitness. But favour and fitness here go with right. I could no more endure to place another before or beside you than I could break the special bond between us, and deny the hope of which the Serpent" (laying my hand on her shoulder-clasp, which, by mere accident, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... real evidence of overseas service presented itself during March when physical examinations were in order to test the physical fitness for overseas duty. Several, who it was deemed could not physically stand foreign service, were in due time transferred to various posts of the home-guards. Several transfers were also made to the ordnance department; a number of chemists were ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... Militia, were given the Militia rank of Major. Steele enlisted a number of men, mostly ex-Mounted Policemen, as scouts, his whole corps, thus augmented, being generally called Steele's scouts. Perry, who was selected by Superintendent Cotton on account of special fitness, brought with him a nine-pounder gun, which did unique service in demoralizing and scattering Big Bear's murderous and pillaging band, to whose outrages we have already referred. These two Police detachments ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... know as the survival of the fittest, the mere's capacity had snuffed out her weaker spouse's incompetency; she had taken her place at the helm, because she belonged there by virtue of natural fitness. There were no tender illusions which would suffer, in seeing the husband allotted to her, probably by her parents and the dot system, relegated to the ignominy of passing his days washing dishes—dishes ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... for using the different kinds of animal food, and to the various circumstances that may contribute to its being more or less wholesome. The killing of animals by the easiest means, and not previously abusing them by over-driving, or in any other way, materially affects their fitness for food, and ought therefore to be carefully attended to. The high flavour, or taint in meat, which so many English palates prefer, is in fact the commencement of putrefaction; and of course meat in this state is very improper for food, particularly for persons with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... or their creatures the lawgivers of the commonwealth about to be created. So outrageous were the crimes of these miscreants at this and subsequent periods, that even the very creatures of Pierce and Buchanan, chosen especially for their supposed fitness to assist in these villanies, turned away, one after another, sickened at the sight of them, and forfeited forever the favor of their masters by shrinking from an unqualified ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... the fitness of things was sometimes outraged; one of the reasons why she longed to grow up was that she might have things of her own; things bought for her and made for her as they always were for Linnet. But Linnet was pretty and good and was going away ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... ideal qualifications for a trustee of a public library—a fair education and love of books being taken for granted—are: sound character, good judgment, common sense, public spirit, capacity for work, literary taste, representative fitness. Don't assume that because a man has been prominent in political business or social circles he will make a good trustee. Capacity and willingness to work are more useful than a taste for literature without practical qualities. ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... conditions of life and new relations in society. These changed circumstances bring to us thoughts, new ideas, new projects, new purposes, and new ambitions, of which our fathers never thought. We have need, therefore, of new adjustments in life. The law of fitness comes up before us at this point, and we are called upon, as a people, to change the currents of life and to shift them into new and broader channels. I do not ignore the intellectual evils which have fallen upon us. Neither am I indifferent to the political disasters we are still ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... Veronese masters were managing crowds of figures and rendering distances successfully. Altichiero puts in homely touches from everyday life with a freedom which shows he has not yet mastered the principles of selection or the dignified fitness which guided the great masters; as, for instance, in the case of the old woman, among the spectators of the Crucifixion, who shows her grief by blowing her nose. He lets himself be drawn off by all manner of trivial detail and of gay costume; but again in such frescoes as S. Lucia, ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... got together all this information, and he himself being in a somewhat precarious condition as to his own affairs, Mr Maguire resolved upon using his information boldly. He had a not incorrect idea of the fitness of things, and did not fail to tell himself that were he at that moment in possession of those clerical advantages which his labours in the vineyard should have earned for him, he would not have run the risk which ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... loss to find in history, any government whatever that so little took or takes into account the intrinsic and intellectual fitness of an individual for the office entrusted to him, as does the government of Mr. Lincoln. I cannot imagine that it could have been always so, under previous administrations. It seems that in the opinion of the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... future outcome, if then foretold, would have seemed scarcely possible of occurrence, there, after all, were certain conditions which would have rendered the contingency even at that time not only possible, but in accordance with the everlasting fitness of things. For, curiously enough, personal relations of a certain character held with this institution would have given me, even in 1853, a sense of acquaintance with it such as individually I had with no other ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... general weal, not a personal or family aggrandizement. His example might teach others, that offices were created for the public good, not for private emolument. If aspirants for office at the present day, were to regard its perquisites less, and their fitness for the discharge of its duties more, the country would enjoy a greater portion of happiness and prosperity, and a sure foundation for the permanence of these be laid, in the more disinterested character of her counsellors, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most directly to please himself was his marrying Miss Archer; though in this case indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Isabel, who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Ralph of course found a fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth. It was certain ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... delayed to do so. She felt sure that the moment she gave the command he would leave every thing and come to do her bidding. But she hesitated. Even in her unscrupulous mind there was a perception of the fitness of things, and she was slow to call to her assistance the aid of the man who so deeply loved her, when her purpose was to remove or to punish her rival in the affections of another man, or rather an obstacle in the way of securing his affections. Deprived thus of all aid, it was difficult for ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... the pale one's heels—his tusks not dangerous, having been shortened and banded. Yet they were sharp enough to make the pale one turn and defend himself. And desperately he fought, using every faculty of his nature—every value of his wild fitness. Still the crook in him showed. It was all faster now than in the beginning, but he was not exhausted, he was not broken; only a bit less certain, a breath less quick, when he tried the same old trick—to get in back of Neela Deo's ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... other people may be resorted to on the occasions already described in Part I., Chapter 5, of this work, but the possibility of their acquisition, their fitness for cohabitation, the danger to oneself in uniting with them, and the future effect of these unions, should first of all be examined. A man may resort to the wife of another, for the purpose of saving his own life, when he perceives that his ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... fortune which agreeably widened his horizon. Such a combination of circumstances might well justify a young man in thinking himself of some account in the universe; and it seemed the final touch of fitness that the mourning which Denis still wore for poor Arthur should lend a new distinction to his somewhat ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... government in which all patriotic citizens might well rejoice. Much against his own will, after repeated solicitation on the part of leading Democrats, and many Republicans, who appreciated his character and fitness, he again consented to become the candidate of his party for responsible office; and, at the election which followed, so great was the desire for a change in municipal matters, and so general the confidence in Mr. Cleveland as the man under whose direction the needed reform ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various

... that he's late in the mornings, Albert, and some of them are beginning to question his fitness ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum

... fitness of the soul for the operations that are proper to it; and it manifests itself by means of its inward harmony, beauty, and health. Different phases of virtue are distinguishable so far as the soul is not pure spirit, but just as the spirit should rule ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... Chloe, seeding raisins, when she was not asleep. Before another table stood Sally Madeira, her brown, round arms bared to the elbow, flapping cake batter with a wooden paddle. With her sense of eternal fitness the girl was a fine housekeeper as easily as she was a sweet singer and a good horsewoman. She had kept the past beautifully intact in the old brick-floored room. Overhead hung strings of red peppers, streaks of scarlet on the heavy ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... of Swiss politics. He found, he says, the effects of the Referendum to be admirable. Jobbery and extravagance are unknown, and politics, as there is no money in it, has ceased to be a trade. The men elected to office are taken from the ranks of the citizens, and are chosen because of their fitness for the work. The people take an intelligent interest in every kind of local and federal legislation, and have a full sense of their political responsibility. The mass of useless or evil laws which legislatures ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... disagreeable. Everything about her was displeasing, her careless enunciation, queer little face, coarse clothes, impulsive, crude ways, even occasional mistakes in grammar. She told herself that the child had no breeding, no manners, no sense of the fitness of things. There was no reason why she should admit her into the circle of her intimates merely because the two had been thrown together by the exigencies of an attack of scarlet fever. Such a fortuitous relation would be severed in the shortest ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... of 1868, while he held the office of Lord Advocate, Mr. Gordon passed the Scotch Reform Bill, and it is to his efforts that the Universities of Scotland are indebted for direct Parliamentary representation. It seems, therefore, consistent with the fitness of things that a constituency which he himself had been the means of creating should become his own. To Mr. Gordon we are also indebted for the Titles to Land Act, passed during the session of 1868, by which the whole conveyancing system of Scotland has been consolidated, and placed on ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... all the while the raiders were drawing nearer and nearer their intended goal. Every pilot and observer in that squadron had been carefully selected with a view to his fitness for the gigantic task that had been laid out ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... not mean—I only meant to think it out, and understand what is Divine and what is in the eternal fitness of things." ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... defect, and perhaps having no weakness or defect which embarrassed their usefulness in civilian occupation; but both the strength of the Army and justice to the men involved require that the test of fitness for military service should be the sole guide, and the judgments of the most expert physicians have been relied upon to give us an army composed of men of the highest possible ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... talk. One might as well reason with a bee as to the form of his cell, or with an oriole as to the construction of his swinging nest, as try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures, which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... reasons for preferring a general to any special knowledge. The fitness resulting will depend upon yourself. And when you marry you will, as you know, be rid of the responsibility. So far your father and you are of one mind; he does not think it fair that a married man should be burdened with any family ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... those men, and in case of need, to say to them "Put yourself into physical condition for this service." If it had such a right, by what law under the constitution of the United States could Lucy Stone ask to vote and not expect to have her military fitness inquired into, and be asked to put herself into physical ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... are presumed to be represented. This indicates that the day is not far off when the so-called race question will cease to be a political factor, and that all political parties will recognize merit and not race, fitness and not color, experience and not religion, ability and not nationality as the tests by which persons must be judged, not only in the administration of the government but in the industrial field as well. For the accomplishment ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... Abolition of Christianity is only a satirical exaggeration of this position. The virtues commended in the Spectator are those which make for the well-being of society— good sense and dignity, moderation and a sense of fitness, kindness and generosity. They are to be practised with an eye to their consequences; even virtues must not be allowed to run wild. Modesty is in itself a commendable quality, but in Captain Sentry it becomes a fault, because it interferes ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... that half a dozen hands under me were to be told off for the express purpose of giving the hull, spars, standing and running rigging, and sails a thorough overhaul, and executing such repairs, etcetera, as might be found necessary to bring the ship to, and maintain her in, a condition of perfect fitness for ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... the feast he went to perform his devotions on Mount Arafa. This hill, situated about a mile from Mecca, is held in great veneration by the Mussulmans as a place very proper for penitence. Its fitness in this respect is accounted for by a tradition that Adam and Eve, on being banished out of paradise, in order to do penance for their transgression were parted from each other, and after a separation of sixscore years met again upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... in color, the more exclusively do we see this confined to yellow. This was long saved from vulgar uses and associations. It had a significance to the ancients, such as it does not have to us. There was a fitness in their decorating the temples and the statues of the gods with gold, and silver, and ivory, and amber, and gems. These offerings symbolized light, and light stood for the happier destinies of man,—for the milder and gentler influences which lead to good; while darkness typified malignant ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... partners, keeping his real object strictly in the background and enlarging upon his great regard for Ralph and Elsie, and their obvious fitness for each other. Captain Perez liked the scheme well enough, provided it could be carried out. Captain Eri seemed to think it better to let events take their own course. However, they both agreed to help if the ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... by forcing Douglas to answer this question, sought to destroy, and, as history shows, did destroy, the popular conception of Douglas's fitness for public office. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... together in an unknown SUBSTRATUM: all which ideas are nothing else but so many relations to other substances; and are not really in the gold, considered barely in itself, though they depend on those real and primary qualities of its internal constitution, whereby it has a fitness differently to operate, and be operated ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... which we are so continually reminded as that we must not pretend to judge of the reasonableness and fitness of the Divine dispensations, and there may therefore be good cause for the San Gennaro affair, though we cannot fathom it. Still, as the generality of people of education have given it up, one wonders at the orthodox few whose belief lingers on. There are other ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... county judge with proof of residence and two Canadian witnesses. He must not be a criminal, and he must be of age. That is all that is required to change a Pole or a Sicilian or a Slav into a free and independent Canadian fully competent to apprehend that voting implies duties and fitness as well as rights. The contest was going to be very close. A few of the party leaders could not bear to have those newcomers wait a long three years for naturalization. They got together and they forged ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... emancipation of the Catholics by the substitution of a political for the religious test of fitness for citizenship. Although the Anglican bishops and clergy and many laymen were strongly opposed to Catholic emancipation, Pitt would probably have been able to carry his scheme had it not been for royal antagonism. The king believed, erroneously ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... his marriage with Jessie Benton, daughter of the burly, doughty, honest-purposed, headstrong senator from Missouri. But his earlier career, when closely examined, and, even more than that, his later career, during the Civil War, showed doubtful fitness for any duties demanding clear purpose, consecutive thought, adhesion to a broad policy, wisdom in counsel, or steadiness in action. Had he been elected in 1856 one of two things would undoubtedly have followed: either the Union would have been permanently ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... and temper would be concealed except from the President, and whose action would be impressive, consistent, and dramatic. The press was to know only what it wished to know, without provocation. The main effort should convince the President of the unfitness of one candidate and the fitness of the other. There were to be no public meetings or loud denunciations. What cared the officials for mere cries of rage? Arthur found his task delightful, and he worked like a smith at the forge, heating, hammering, and ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... sometimes say of a person who exhibits much of his father's disposition, He has got a deal of his father in him. And I can understand how Christ in us in this sense should be, or should kindle, the hope of glory. For the mind of Christ is man's fitness for glory. The mind of Christ, and the life to which it prompts, are the things to which eternal glory is promised. But I couldn't understand Mr. Jones. Either he had no ideas on the subject, or he failed to convey them ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... string of the bow, the archer drawing back the string adds to the elasticity of bow and string his own strength, and the shaft is off to do the archer's will. There is in this story an illustration for all Christian workers. Fitness for service lies first of all in divine endowment. God has given to each one of us special and peculiar qualifications. If we live as we ought to live, exercising the gift that is in us; the painter may paint for His glory; the poet may sing and speak of Him; the preacher may ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman

... emotional chord would have vibrated to the musical tones of her soft and well-modulated voice. But our young friend was not to be thus gratified. It is contrary to the laws which govern the order of the universe that an eternal fitness should adapt ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... enterprise. This was its work and mission until the war ended. Its "agents" were chosen from among the wounded veteran officers of our army, or were detached from active service by reason of their supposed fitness on account of character or attainments. Almost every one of them had won honor with the loss of limb or of health; all had the indorsement and earnest approval of men high in command of our armies, who had personal knowledge of their character and believed in their fitness. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... know,' replied the prince, 'that commerce could develop such an oracle; it is a subtle sense of fitness you ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... measure, and no violent changes were made. The First Chamber was to consist of 50 members, appointed by the Provincial Councils; the Second Chamber of 100 members, chosen by an electorate of male persons of not less than 25 years of age with a residential qualification and possessing "signs of fitness and social well-being"—a vague phrase requiring future definition. The number of electors was increased from (in round numbers) 100,000 to 350,000, but universal male suffrage, the demand of the socialists and more advanced liberals, was ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... appointed Mr. Chase to the vacant seat, and the general voice recognized the great fitness ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts

... have each brought with them their own reward. Every difficulty vanquished, every image of beauty embodied, every new facility of skill acquired, has been in itself a real and enduring satisfaction for its own sake, and for the sake of its fitness to the whole,—the beautiful perfect whole he ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... for example, has a dozen unique properties that condition life. Carbon dioxide is absolutely necessary to life. The properties of the ocean are so beautifully adjusted to life that we marvel at the exactness of its fitness. [Yet no design!]. Finally, the chemical properties of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are equally unique and unreplaceable. The evolution of environment and the evolution of organisms have gone hand in hand." And ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... was far otherwise. Here, slavery existed in its strict severity; it came into being in connection with material conditions,—that is, in connection with a soil especially favorable to agriculture,—and it maintained its existence by reason of its fitness, its indispensableness, to certain social conditions; it could not, therefore, be changed or annulled without running counter both to the inveterate tendencies of Nature and the still more inveterate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... to pass through without injurious effect. When the clayey dough is ready to be used a sufficient quantity is rolled into a ball. The dough, if worked by a careful artist, is first tested as to its fitness for molding by putting a piece of the paste to the tongue, the sensitiveness of which is such as to detect any gritty substance or particles, when the fingers fail to do so. The ball is hollowed out with the fingers into the shape of a bowl (this form constituting the foundation for all varieties ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... impression of nobility free from all trace of meanness, and of self-willed force capable of the loftiest generosity. Zulma was a spoiled child, but this defect never dwindled to silliness. None understood better than she the relative fitness of things. There was never a speck of hypocrisy in her composition, and not the slightest shade of suspicion. Her character was diaphanous. She could check her thoughts and hold her tongue as few of her sex at her age ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... about his fitness as commander, for I have never seen him in the field. But I am astonished at his election, as he himself was, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... moved to Holstein, where his father failed to make a success of an agricultural undertaking for which he seems to have lacked fitness, young Moltke entered the Royal Danish Military Academy as a cadet, and there passed his lieutenant's examination with distinction; but he sought and found a commission under the Prussian eagle. He entered the eighth grenadiers at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. A year later, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... other cases it had been saved up. That Latin feminine ability to hold an awkward position with impregnable serenity, and, like the yellow Mississippi, to give back no reflection from the overhanging sky, emphasized this superior fitness. That bright, womanly business ability that comes of the same blood added again to their excellence. Not to be home itself, nothing could be more like it than were the apartments let by Madame Cecile, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... appears in another way. There are four general covenants, of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of Christ. It is therefore an act of audacious folly to increase or diminish the number of the Gospels. As there is fitness and order in all the other works of God, so also we may expect to find it in the case of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... this call? A. This divine call is named a vocation to the priestly or religious life. We can discover it in our constant inclination to such a life from the pure and holy motive of serving God better in it, together with our fitness for it, or, at least, our ability to prepare for it, also in our true piety and mastery over our ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous

... sarcophagus is encased in silver plates. This rests beneath a fret-work canopy supported on slender pillars. There is an abundance of ornament everywhere, but the close examination of its detail shows beauty and fitness in every part. For example, if we compare the statue of the saint, of which we have spoken, which stands at the end of the shrine most exposed, with the statue of Vischer himself, which is at the opposite end, we shall see how the saint, with his symbols and ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... that these regulations would ultimately remove the evils in the Greek and Roman systems, and do it away entirely from the fitness of things, as there existing; for Greek and Roman slaves, for the most part, were the equals in all respects of their masters. AEsop was a slave; Terence was a slave. The precepts in Colossians iv. 18, 23, 1 Tim. vi. 1-6, and other places, show, unanswerably, that God as really sanctioned ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... Drake had a mind to look into Venta Cruz to surprise some of the treasure on its way. He, therefore, sent away his brother, with two pinnaces and a steady man named Ellis Hixom, to examine the Chagres River, and to bring back a report of its fitness for boats such as theirs. Having seen them stand to the west, Drake ordered his men aboard early in the morning of the 31st July. The sweeps were shipped and the sails hoisted, and the pinnaces made off with their captured wine ship to rejoin Captain Rause at the Isles of Pines, or Port Plenty. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... No emigrant will be sent out in response to any application from abroad where the emigrant's expenses are defrayed, without references as to character, industry, and fitness. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... face like an impression on metal that cools into solidity. From the beginning he had conducted his courtship, as he had conducted his sacred office, with the manner of a gentleman and the infallibility of an apostle. Doubt of his perfect fitness for either vocation had never entered his head. Had it done so he would probably have dismissed it as one of the insidious suggestions of the lower man—for the lower man was a creature who habitually disagreed with his opinions and whom his ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... on pretence of their being not Danish, but German, and her subsequent retention of them for herself on the plea of their having always been not German, but Danish, are applauded as acts perfectly consistent with each other and with the eternal fitness of things. And all this is urged in the best possible faith. Of the recited enormities, were not some, steps to the regeneration of France—others, to the unifaction of Germany? And what are myriads of lives in comparison ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... activities hitherto reserved to men must at least be open to them, and many of these activities, certain functions of citizenship[21] for example, must be expected of them. Moreover, whatever the lines may be along which the fitness of women to labor will be experimentally determined, the underlying position must be established that for the sake of individual and race character she is to be a producer as well as a consumer of social values.[22] As soon as this ethical necessity ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... officers to be appointed in the Cretan churches (1:5-16). Special moral and spiritual fitness is set forth as necessary in view of the peculiar character of the Cretans and ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... powers of oratory, wielding a ready and able pen, animated by a generous and indomitable spirit, willing to spend and be spent in the cause of benevolence and humanity, he had every qualification for the task but experience. Speaking of his fitness for carrying out the measures of educational reform and improvement in Connecticut, and of the results of his efforts, Horace Mann said, in the "Massachusetts Common School Journal," "It is not extravagant to ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... resolution, which had a fit proposer in a distinguished representative of the north, was seconded by one [himself] who had no other fitness for the office than that he was altogether of the south, and had been taught by a long study of our literature to believe that north and south had a like interest in the promotion of a right study of Celtic. We were a mixed race, and the chief elements of the mixture ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... winning him over to the brighter and better side of life, were, by a view of all the circumstances of his present destiny considerably diminished. While, at the same time, not a few doubts and misgivings, which had never before so strongly occurred to me, with regard to his own fitness, under any circumstances, for the matrimonial tie, filled me altogether with a degree of foreboding anxiety as to his fate, which the unfortunate events that followed but ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... wonderful system attached no premium to rapidities of transition. "I couldn't quite—don't you know?—take my rebound with a rush; and I suppose I've been instinctively hanging off to minimise, for you as well as for myself, the appearances of rushing. There's a sort of fitness. But I knew you'd understand." It was presently as if she really understood so well that she almost appealed from his insistence—yet looking at him too, he was not unconscious, as if this mastery of fitnesses ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... be a sort of moral fitness between the beginning and the end of certain alliances or acquaintances. This sentiment is not very clearly expressed. I am about to illustrate it by an important event in my political life. During my absence Dubois had made rapid steps towards being a great man. He ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to me you will understand. I make them because I deny my grandfather's fitness to make a will in the last moments of his existence, and at such an age. I saw him a few weeks ago, and he was not fit to be trusted with the management of ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... aided in his suit by the Earl of Essex and others of his friends in Essex's party. Sir Robert Cecil, while encouraging Sidney and professing friendship, secretly aided Lord Cobham for the post. Sidney's military fitness for so responsible a charge was constantly urged against Cobham's lack of martial experience, but the Queen, after a long delay, during which much heat developed between the contestants and their friends, finally decided in favour of her relative, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson



Words linked to "Fitness" :   fit, seaworthy, habitability, soundness, qualification, habitableness, unseaworthy, competence, making, fettle, shape, competency, unfitness, suitableness, suitability, condition



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