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Unfit   /ənfˈɪt/   Listen
Unfit

verb
1.
Make unfit or unsuitable.  Synonyms: disqualify, indispose.



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"Unfit" Quotes from Famous Books



... replaced by ugly stone walls or wooden fences. It is only in their own grounds that landlords can afford to court picturesqueness, and in this part of the country the American who is said to have objected to hedges because they were unfit for seats whence to admire the landscape, might safely sit down anywhere; only, as matters are seldom perfectly arranged, there is very little to admire but a flat expanse of wheat, barley and grass. This part of Cheshire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... the train, his staggering step advertising how unfit he was for any such attempt, watched him mount the platform where she had seen the man that looked like Blatch; and then the conductor swung his lantern, the wheels began to revolve, she half cried out, and Selim at the end of his patience, bolted with her and never stopped running till he ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... New York should be the temporary seat of government; there was jealousy and wrangling over this, as over most other matters involving state pride, but Hamilton believed that should the prize fall to Philadelphia, she would not relinquish it as lightly as New York, which geographically was the more unfit for a permanent gathering, and that the inconvenience to which most of the members, in those days of difficult travel over a vast area, would be subjected, would force them the sooner to agree upon a central and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... way. On the second mate's watch being called, one of the men remained in his hammock, sending word by one of his shipmates to the officer of the watch that he was ill and unfit for duty. The second mate, instead of reporting the circumstance to the master, and having it inquired into, as was the proper course, jumped at once to the conclusion that the man was merely feigning sickness, in order to avoid the performance ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

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

... laughing, "you are ignorant barbarians, unfit to live. When I am freed you had best look to yourselves, for I shall return and nail you to ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... interesting letter from a fellow's most affectionate. Give soldiers full rations and regular mail, then there can nowhere be found a more rational set of men than they. But letters are sometimes like our crackers and pork, unfit for use. Such letters do no good—they are no good. There is a sheet full of writing, to be sure, but it is about something that neither interests nor concerns us. Those letters that tell us about the little things of home; the farm, the horses, the cattle, the dogs ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... of merely entering upon the labors of others, but cut out a large sphere of independent work, preparing himself for it by undertaking manual labor in building and other handicraft employment, in addition to teaching, which, he says, "made me generally as much exhausted and unfit for study in the evenings as ever I had been when a cotton-spinner." Whilst laboring amongst the Bechuanas, he dug canals, built houses, cultivated fields, reared cattle, and taught the natives to work as well as to worship. When he first started with ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... and will admit two carriages abreast. The sidewalks are narrow, and in places will accommodate but one person. The pavements are of a composition manufactured in England from slag, pleasant and even, and durable when no heavy strain is brought to bear upon them, but easily broken, and unfit for heavy traffic. The streets are swept once a day by hand, and, strange to ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... Lady Whitburn across the Earl and the Countess, "what for but to make them as feckless as the priests, unfit to handle ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... took in our settlement in his rounds, which resulted in a majority of those who attended his services uniting with the Methodist church. The ministers who came from the Old Country in those early days were singularly unfit for new settlements. The Anglican on landing assumed he was the only duly accredited clergyman, and was offended at his claim being slighted, while his feelings were jarred by the lack of conditions he considered essential ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... take to mean a "jagged whetstone," very unfit for its purpose; but what is the force ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

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

... the abbot, his even lips closing after the words, with a look of final decision, "I will not go with you. First, because I am unfit to be a leader of armies, and secondly, because such life as there is left in me can be better used at home than in following a camp. Lastly, I would that this good fight might be fought soberly and in earnest, neither in the fever of a fanatical fury nor, on ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... conceptions. Apparently, however, all these usages of purification by fasting go back to the idea that the body, which is identified with the human personality, is in its ordinary state nonsacred[386] and therefore unfit for the performance of a sacred act, and that it is rendered especially unfit by contact with a ritually unclean thing. Ordinary food, nourishing the body and becoming a part of it, thus maintains it ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... be—partly because those of Europa do not have any inducement to go to those islands, and partly because, since the Spaniards there are so few, there cannot be many persons sprung from these kingdoms who rise to the priesthood; further, because the Indians are generally unfit for that holy ministry. In view of all the above, who does not see that the orders avail themselves of their right in resisting the burden of the visitation which the bishops are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... however, is never used, and is indeed altogether unfit to be eaten, until submitted in one form or other to the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... five-and-twenty, called Yakov Aratov. With him lived his father's sister, an elderly maiden lady, over fifty, Platonida Ivanovna. She took charge of his house, and looked after his household expenditure, a task for which Aratov was utterly unfit. Other relations he had none. A few years previously, his father, a provincial gentleman of small property, had moved to Moscow together with him and Platonida Ivanovna, whom he always, however, called Platosha; her nephew, too, used the same name. On leaving the country-place where ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... as this girl will have plenty of money to spend, I think it would be a good thing if he were to marry her. If Felix had L20,000 a year, everybody would think him the finest fellow in the world.' In saying this, however, Mr Paul Montague showed himself unfit to gauge the opinion of the world. Whether Sir Felix be rich or poor, the world, evil-hearted as it is, will never think ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... and Mr. Chandler made some remarks unfit for repetition, but which were greeted with shouts of laughter. After much dodging and doubling on the financial question, Fitzgerald agreed to pay two thousand five hundred dollars, if all his demands were ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... Indians may yet be obtained. These Village Indians represent at the present moment the type of life found from Zunyi to Cuzco at the epoch of the Discovery, and, while they are not the highest, they are no unfit representatives ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... in the beginning, many a Y man who had left home with the best intentions, became disappointed and disgusted and so unfit for service. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

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

... the troops under pain of death; and money was issued to the several captains for the pay and equipment of their companies. The two captains of horse received 50,000 crowns, with which they were each ordered to levy and equip fifty horsemen; besides which, several merchants and others, very unfit for warfare, enrolled themselves. It was well known that these men were quite unfit for being soldiers; but they were constrained to enlist on purpose to exact money from them for their discharge, which in fact they purchased by furnishing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... proved that Marion was in the right, and that there is no policy like sticking to a man's duty. For, behold! presently Charleston was invested by a large British army, and the American general (Lincoln) finding Marion was utterly unfit for duty, advised him to push off in a litter to his seat in St. John's parish. Thus providentially was Marion preserved to his country when Charleston fell, as it soon ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... proved too strong for his weak will. He had resumed drinking. No one knew it but his wife and one confidential friend. He rarely took much; never so much as to be brutal at home, or unfit for business at the office; but enough to prove to him that he was not his own master. The shame of his bondage he felt keenly, powerless as he felt himself to break the chains. The week after I left home his wife left also for a ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... All seemed unfit for conversation; a certain dizziness had interrupted the activity of their minds; and except to sing they were tongue-tied. There was present, however, one tall, powerful fellow of doubtful nationality, being neither quite Scotsman nor altogether Irish, but of surprising clearness of conviction ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Three things must be attended to in the education of youth. They must be taught, fed and governed and each of these requires very different qualifications. They who are the best qualified to teach are often the most unfit to govern, and it is generally advisable that neither of these have anything to do with providing victuals. In the English universities all these affairs are perfectly distinct. The tutors only teach, the proctors superintend the discipline, and ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

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

... vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... but his expectation was not fulfilled. Umman-minanu was struck down by apoplexy, on the 15th of Nisan, and though his illness did not at once terminate fatally, he was left paralysed with distorted mouth, and loss of speech, incapable of action, and almost unfit to govern. His seizure put a stop to his warlike preparations: and his ministers, preoccupied with the urgent question of the succession to the throne, had no desire to provoke a conflict with Assyria, the issue ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... neither like my gate nor my garments, the one untoward, the other unfit, both unseemly. O Phillida! But yonder stayeth one, and therefore say ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... mortified his body to such an extent that his breath was offensive and could not be endured. Yet he afterwards forsook it, and charged his brethren that they should not inflict injury upon the body; for he saw very well that he had rendered himself unfit to be of service to his brethren. Therefore St. Peter requires nothing more than that we should be sober,—that is, mortify the body to such an extent as to prevent its being in our apprehension too ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... defiled, as I made myself a partaker of the sins of others, which sins I brought with me; and other such unscriptural statements were made by this brother. Thus we spent again about two hours and a half in intercourse, whilst this teaching elder and one of the other elders considered me unfit to take the Lord's supper with them on the coming Lord's day, but the two other elders and several other brethren who were present were quite ready to break bread with me, and with any who love our Lord Jesus. Brother—now ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller

... schools be established and supported by Government—not mere common schools, where reading, writing, arithmetic, and perhaps some of the higher branches may be taught; but training and industrial schools. Where the soil or climate is unfit for husbandry, other means of improving their condition might be resorted to. In the barren grounds, bordering on the Arctic regions, rein-deer still abound. Why should not the Indians succeed in domesticating these animals, and rendering them ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... garden, was, as every one knew, a private asylum and sanatorium conducted by Dr. Legrand. He had come there half a dozen years ago, and for some time there had been only a few inmates, not dangerously insane, but unfit to be at large, and two or three others who had retired into this retreat to end their days in peace. In the last few months, however, the number of residents had vastly increased. Certainly every room in the house must be occupied, the larger rooms probably divided into two or three, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... House we had by far the largest proportion of men over military age. I question whether three out of the seventy could have passed the standard then exacted—for two or three of the younger men were medically unfit. In these circumstances the War Office would have been well advised to waive a regulation or two to facilitate matters; but the rigour of the rules was maintained. One of my colleagues, a man in the early forties, offered to join as a private; he was refused. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... reformation can have their full efficiency.... Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement tends to lower his consciousness of dignity and responsibility, to weaken the motives which govern his relations to his race, to impair the foundations of character and unfit him for independent life. To consign a man to prison is commonly to enrol him in the criminal class.... With all the solemnity and emphasis of which I am capable, I utter the profound conviction, after twenty years of constant study of our prison population, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... feelings were too many for him. Naturally, Williams gave the Contessa the benefit of no doubt as to her reputation. He was entirely convinced, as is the fashion of his class, that all that could have been said of her was true, and that she was as unfit for the society of the respectable as any wretched creature could be. "That foreign madam" was what he called her, in the privacy of the housekeeper's room, with many opprobrious epithets. Mrs. Freshwater, who was, perhaps, more good-natured than was advantageous to the housekeeper and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... bosom your merchant-vessels. What use? Have not some things been made useless—in your sense of the term—that they might be preserved from destruction? The gorgeous-plumed birds, and brightly-enameled fish of the tropics, are unfit for food—so, to your mind, of no use. I wonder if this holds good in cannibal countries; if so, it would be no protection to poor Molly O'Molly if ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... done serious damage to this tree. The grubs of this insect burrow in the sapwood and kill the tree or make it unfit for commercial use. The locust miner is a beetle which is now annually defoliating trees of this species ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... whether he might not, in spite of such temporary touch of madness, be well fitted for his parish duties. Sorrow had afflicted him grievously; but that sorrow, though it had incapacitated him for the management of his own affairs, had not rendered him unfit for the ministrations of his parish. Such were the arguments now used in his favour by the women around him; and the men were not keen to contradict them. The wish that he should be acquitted and allowed to remain in ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... clothes," thought the Emperor. "Besides, if I had an outfit, I could find out which of my servants are unfit for the offices they hold; I should know the wise from the stupid! Yes, this cloth must be woven for me." And he gave the men much money that they might begin at ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... day found her in a high fever, utterly unfit to play, face to face with the thought that she had been cut short in her career. Lucien hid the papers from her, and looked them over in the dining-room. The reviewers one and all attributed the failure of the piece to Coralie; she had overestimated her strength; she might be the delight ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... hunting clerkships in your dry goods emporium, and your farmers, who imagine themselves each a Cincinnatus called to office, will be asking for appointment as deputy county assessor or courthouse custodian. Few things can so unfit a Kansas fellow for the real business of life as a term in the lower house of the Kansas legislature. If you are a merchant, I'm a farmer, and we will both be booming the state when these present-day boomers are gone back East to wife's folks, ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... now to become of a nature in which the rest of the company could have no share whatever, they were all, except Mr. Sandford, retiring; when Miss Milner called Miss Woodley back, saying, "Stay you with me; I was never so unfit to be left without ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... pick these persons up," she assented languidly. "They remind me of a headline I saw in the paper this morning—'Tons of Hams Unfit for Human Consumption.' Are any of you girls coming my way? I can give two or three of you a lift ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... the rain, when the hay has dried, they have decided to stack it, and, in order to accomplish this as speedily as possible, that two women for each of them shall follow their scythes. On the part of the old man go his wife, a woman of fifty, who has become unfit for work, having borne eleven children, who is deaf, but still a tolerably stout worker; and a thirteen-year-old daughter, who is short of stature, but a strong and clever girl. On the part of his nephew go his wife, a woman as strong and well-grown as a ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... the vibrios, which crowded the liquid as motile threads, are destroyed and disappear. After the action of the air, only fine amorphous granules can be found, unfit for culture as well as for the transmission of any disease whatever. It might be said that the air ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... They had unrestrained curiosity as to the beginning and end of my journey. I said "Waimea, Hamakua," when they all chorused, "Maikai;" for a ride of forty miles was not bad for a wahine haole. I said, "Wai, lio," (water for the horse), when they signified that there was only some brackish stuff unfit for drinking. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... other all their lives in harmony and happiness. But if a girl be given away in marriage by the parents, according to their choice and not hers, and she be mated to a helpmate unmeet for her, because ill-shapen or ill- conditioned or unfit to win her affection, then are they twain likely to be at variance each with other for the rest of their days; and endless troubles result to them from such ill-sorted union. Nor are we bound by another law which bindeth modest virgins of the race ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... duty of citizenship is jury service," Mr. Bailey said, "and while women are physically capable of performing that service there are reasons, natural, moral and domestic, which render them wholly unfit for it.... We go to the court house for stern, unyielding justice. Will women help our courts to better administer justice? They will not. Nobody is qualified to decide any case until they have heard all the testimony on both sides but the average woman would ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... parenthetically, my sister, that it may be that our views on that subject, coming from the northern States as you and I have done, have not been according to the mind of the Lord. I would have no man a slave because of misfortune, but if a man proved himself unfit to rule himself, I'm not sure ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... my age I aspired, at one time, to play heroes in tragedy; but after two or three trials, I was pronounced, by the manager, totally unfit for the line; and our first tragic actress, who was a large woman, and held a small hero ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

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

... a political advantage. They will even play up this poor little uneducated, and no doubt, mentally unfit country girl, and put in her picture and quotations from her hysterical speeches. They never think—or care—for the effect this will have on her, filling her head with all sorts of notions. This paper is absolutely without a soul, and seems determined to corrupt the country. And on the Women's ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... so much too often as things are. Can't you guess what it is? I couldn't help taking up my life of Wandering Jew, because I was dismissed from the hospital! Didn't you understand that, my dears? I thought I was telling you over and over again. Yes, dismissed as unfit to be a nurse, and so I was, according to the order of the institution first, and human love and pity last. But all's well that ends well, you know, and now that my wanderings seem to be over and I am in my right place at length, I feel like one who ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... a morale officer the writer was told that the principal problem with the Negroes, especially after the selective draft, was in classifying them fairly and properly. Some were in every way healthy but unfit for soldiers. Others were of splendid intelligence and manifestly it was unjust to condemn them to the ranks when so many had excellent qualities for non-commissioned and commissioned grades. The Service of Supply solved the problem so far as the ignorant were concerned; all could ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... protest, he serves them to us for breakfast, tiffin and dinner, and the household sits with injured countenance, and silently holds me responsible. As for the nine and one wind bags that begin their wheezing and squeaking before breakfast, my thoughts are unfit for publication! This morning I was awakened by the strains "Shall we meet beyond the River?" Well if we do, the keys will fly that's all there is about it! Once in a while they side-track it to "Oh! to be nothing, nothing!" That is where I fully agree and if they would only ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... Williams, after whom he was named, this man had been afterwards trained at St. John's College, and had actually taken a part in the founding of the Melanesian Mission. When at length he was pronounced unfit for the sacred ministry on account of his impetuous disposition, he became a teacher in the mission school at Otaki. Here he remained until 1861, when the governor's aggressive policy determined him to cast in his lot with his threatened countrymen. Settling ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas

... would have settled into greater compactness as it arose in height, and all its various proportions been in harmony. We should have built slowly but surely. But when there was thrown upon us a mass of material wholly unfit for any political structure, and we were compelled to pile it in hap-hazard, it was not long before the goodly edifice began to show ugly seams, and the despotisms of Europe pointed to them with scorn, and asked tauntingly ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... There must be some course of action upon which presently she must determine. What could it be? How could she take arms against her new, vast sea of troubles, so far more great than falls to the average woman, no matter how ill, how afflicted, how unfit for the vast, grim conflict which ends at last ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... some time or other fall into the error I have been describing. In the ardour of your anxiety for some beloved relative, you may be induced to persevere in such close attendance on the sick-bed as may seriously injure your own health, and unfit you for more useful, and certainly more self-denying exertion afterwards. How much easier is it to spend days and nights by the sick-bed of one from whom we are in hourly dread of a final separation, whose helpless and suffering state excites the strongest feelings of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... sentient from the term common to both in the word creation or creature—and then to attribute the capabilities of the sentient to the insentient, as a mere figure to express the hopes of men with regard to the perfecting of the insentient for the comfort of men, were a violence as unfit in rhetoric as in its own nature. Take another part of the same utterance: 'For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now:' is it not manifest that to interpret such words as referring to the mere imperfections of the insensate ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... infrequently important occasions on which the society of friends must be for a time abandoned; and he who would prevent this because he cannot easily bear the separation, is of a weak and unmanly nature, and for that very reason unfit to fill the place of a friend. In fine, in all matters you should take into consideration both what you may reasonably demand of your friend, and what you can fitly suffer him to ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... tumble them in the dust. Domestic cats may mioul in the garden at night to a certain extent, but a line must be drawn; after that they must be chased up trees and barked at, if necessary, all night. Opossums and native cats are unfit to cumber the earth, and must be hunted into holes, wherever possible. Cows and other horned animals must not come into the yard, or even look over the garden fence, under penalties. Black fellows must be barked at, and their ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... he would be able easily to destroy the flying barbarians. And when he, as had been arranged, had moved forward first, while Gratian was kept behind with the Jovian legion, that young prince being as yet of an age unfit for battle or for hard toil, Valentinian, like a deliberate and prudent general, took off his helmet, and reviewed his centuries and maniples, and not having informed any of the nobles of his secret intentions, and having sent back his numerous body of guards, went forward ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... out at the stars, some such difference as actually exists between ourselves and our longitudinal antipodes. For our conception of the cosmos is of a sunlit world throbbing with life, while their Nirvana finds not unfit expression in the still, cold, fathomless awe of the midnight sky. That we cannot thus directly account for the difference in local coloring serves but to make that difference of more human interest. The dissimilarity between the Western and the Far Eastern attitude of mind has in it something ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... internal disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July 22, and a third on July ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... home, and we are told that this objection to our movement was altogether dishonest, contemptible, and ridiculous. It is not always such. Good men and true, and sometimes wise men, also, really in their souls believe that if a woman touches a ballot, her hand will be unfit for domestic duties; that if she teaches in the public congregation, she can not act well her part in the family circle. As I listened to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who bears a name of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

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

... very good, except by moments, to his younger children. He was not, indeed, an unkind father to any of them; but he had never forgiven Providence for leaving him with his motherless family upon his hands, a man so utterly unfit for the task. Perhaps he did not put this exactly into words, but he felt it deeply, and had never got over it. There were so many things that he could have done better, and there were so many people who could have done this better; and ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

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

... Rochester, she had never yet been separated. She had now to part with her, in all probability, for ever. It was a heart-breaking reflection to both. Knowing it would only renew their affliction, and perhaps unfit Amabel for the journey, Mr. Bloundel had prevailed upon his wife not to see her in the morning. The moment had, therefore, arrived when they were to bid each other farewell. The anguish displayed in his wife's countenance was too much for the grocer, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... gleaming through every playful word, renders some of these recent stories as attractive to the old as to the young, seems to me no less to unfit them for their proper function. Children should laugh, but not mock; and when they laugh, it should not be at the weaknesses and the faults of others. They should be taught, as far as they are permitted to concern themselves ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... former reproach of "A pretty guide!" and while Blanche explained the sufferings of all the assembly at their tardiness, Tom, without knowing it, elucidated what had been a mystery to the doctor, namely, how they ever met, by his indignation at Norman's having assumed the guidance for which he was so unfit. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... force, and of that important Town, but had a greater Reputation and Interest in Yorkshire itself, than at that present any other Man had: the Earl of Cumberland being at that time, though of entire affection to the King, much decayed in the vigour of his Body, and his mind, and unfit for that Activity which the Season required. And it cannot be denied, that the Earl of Newcastle, by his quick march with his Troops, as soon as he had received his Commission to be General, and in the depth ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

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

... the church, are to be governed, and are not to govern; yet forasmuch as deacons are ordinary officers in the Church of God, of which she will have constant use in all ages, and which at first were divinely appointed, and after frequently mentioned in the New Testament; it will not be thought unfit, before we conclude this section, touching the divine right of Christ's church-officers, briefly to assert the divine right of ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

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

... of frugal living, and its worth, To-day, my friends, Ofellus shall set forth ('Twas he that taught me it, a shrewd clear wit, Though country-spun, and for the schools unfit): Lend me your ears:—but not where meats and wine In costly service on the table shine, When the vain eye is dazzled, and the mind Recoils from truth, to idle shows resigned: No: let us talk on empty stomachs. Why? Well, if you'd have me ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... especially feminine, will think this a hard fate for the pious first wife but the idea would not occur to the Moslem mind. After bearing ten children a woman becomes "Umm al-banti w'al-bann"a mother of daughters and sons, and should hold herself unfit for love-disport. The seven ages of womankind are thus described by the Arabs and I translate the lines after a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... corner of the South there comes a cry that the Negro as a laborer is unsatisfactory. It is said that he is inefficient, unreliable, indolent, lazy, in short, that he is unfit to do the work the South wants done. Less than two decades ago it was just the opposite. Then, it was said that the Negro was unfit for everything else except work. How inconsistent! We admit that there ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards

... world, the Saskatchcwan has its poles of opinion; there are those who paint it a paradise, and those who picture it a hell. It is unfit for habitation, it is to be the garden-spot of America—it is too cold, it is too dry—it is too beautiful; and, in reality, what is it? I answer in a few words. It is rich; it is fertile; it is fair to the eye. Man lives long ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... from a city of nearly 50,000 to one of 20,000 and the reputation of the place was such that a bill was proposed in Congress to purchase the ground on which the city stood and utterly destroy it as unfit for ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... apothecary at my bedside, who has been giving me an account of the examination of the physicians by the Privy Council.(253) The physicians, one and all, declared his Majesty to be, at present, unfit for public business; but when Mr. Burke, who was a leading man, and the most forward in asking questions, put this to them, whether there was any hope of his Majesty's recovering, they did not scruple to say that they had ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... the story of Peter and Paul, which contains all the highest qualities of a modern fairy tale, including that of being wholly unfit for children; and indeed the motive with which I have introduced it is not childish, but rather full of subtlety and reaction. It is in fact the almost desperate motive of excusing or palliating the pages that follow. Peter and Paul are the ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... occur has happened. I am in bitter disgrace, and I am grateful that grandfather died before it came upon me. I have been dismissed from the Academy. The last of the "Fighting" Macklins has been declared unfit to hold the President's commission. I am cast out irrevocably; there is no appeal against the decision. I shall never change the gray for the blue. I shall never see the U. S. on my saddle-cloth, nor salute my country's flag as it comes fluttering down ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... he had become, he was unworthy to be even touching his cap to her! And as she nodded and went briskly on, he would have given anything to turn and walk a little way with her, for it seemed to him that this might fumigate his morals. But he lacked the courage, and, besides, he considered himself unfit to ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

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

... at total possession, men prefer the shortest and easiest ways of obtaining it. Works of the imagination, and fictions, illustrative of life and society, which are now multiplied to an indefinite extent, unfit the common mind for those grave and serious studies which were once almost the only road to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... has really been disappointed, and is really unable. I am unwilling to distress him further. I see this is a business I am unfit for. I was bred a farmer and it was folly in me to come to town, and put myself at thirty years of age an apprentice to learn a new trade. Many of our Welsh people are going to settle in North Carolina where land is cheap. ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... want you to tell me. That's why I have requested this interview. I want you to examine me, Sir Horace, to put me through those tests you use to determine the state of mind of the mentally fit and mentally unfit. I want to know if it is my fault that I am what I am, and if it is myself I have to fight in future or the devil that lives within me. I'm tired of wallowing in the mire. A woman's eyes have lit the way to heaven for me. ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... was discharged. He came out with his left hand permanently disabled; he had lost the use of it, as Mercury told him in the "Viaje del Parnaso" for the greater glory of the right. This, however, did not absolutely unfit him for service, and in April 1572 he joined Manuel Ponce de Leon's company of Lope de Figueroa's regiment, in which, it seems probable, his brother Rodrigo was serving, and shared in the operations of the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... truths have indeed been empirically established and acted upon by farmers, while yet there has been no conception of them as science; such as that particular manures are suited to particular plants; that crops of certain kinds unfit the soil for other crops; that horses cannot do good work on poor food; that such and such diseases of cattle and sheep are caused by such and such conditions. These, and the every-day knowledge which the agriculturist ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

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

... best for cutting, and those on the side for grinding it to pieces? That the mouth, through which this food is conveyed, should be placed so near the nose and eyes as to prevent the passing unnoticed whatever is unfit for nourishment?... And canst thou still doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this should be a work of chance, or of wisdom ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

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

... kind of work? They want to make women unwomanly, to make them unfit for the only duties women ought to perform. You know very well my opinions about ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... their benefit from the kind readers of the "Christian" paper. They numbered many hundreds, and Miss Macpherson undertook care and responsibility concerning them, for which the strength and powers of an older labourer were totally unfit. In this, and countless other instances, Miss Macpherson has proved herself ever ready to "fulfil the law of Christ" (Gal. vi. 2). The case of these infant toilers had rested on her heart from the first moment she had been made acquainted ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... faculties, powers, tastes, and whatever is good and worthy in a man. Enjoyments, relaxations, delights, indulgences which are beneficial, I do not denominate "luxury." All indulgences which fit us for our duties are good; all which tend to unfit us for them are bad; and these latter I call luxuries. Some one will say, perhaps, that some indulgences are merely indifferent, and produce no appreciable effect upon body or mind; and it might be enough to dismiss such things ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

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

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

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

... only when I found, from common talk of the company at the Wells, and from narrowly watching one, who I once thought of asking the most sacred question a man can put to a woman, that I became aware how unfit she was to be a country gentleman's wife; and that this fair creature was but a heartless worldly jilt, playing with affections that she never meant to return, and, indeed, incapable of returning them. 'Tis admiration such women want, not ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Macbeth a woman "naturally cruel,"[116] "invariably savage,"[117] or endued with "pure demoniac firmness."[118] If ever there could have existed a woman to whom such phrases could apply—a woman without touch of modesty, pity or fear,—Shakspeare knew that a thing so monstrous was unfit for all the purposes of poetry. If Lady Macbeth had been naturally cruel, she needed not so solemnly to have abjured all pity, and called on the spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to unsex her; nor would she have been loved to excess by a man of Macbeth's character; for ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... For Nature gave him strength and fire, to soar On Fancy's wing above this vale of tears; Where dark cold-hearted sceptics, creeping, pore Through microscope of metaphysic lore; And much they grope for Truth, but never hit. For why? Their powers, inadequate before, This idle art makes more and more unfit; Yet deem they darkness light, and their vain ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... think of rallying again; the whole inhabitants become panic-struck, and the conquerors have only to bind the slaves, and carry off their plunder and their victims. Such of the prisoners as, through age or infirmity, are unable to endure fatigue, or are found unfit for sale, are considered as useless, and I have no doubt are frequently put to death. The same fate commonly awaits a chief, or any other person who has taken a very distinguished part in the war. And here it may be ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, pathetic, nerveless and workworn, showing white in the uncertain light of the street, and clutching forward for food which was already unfit to eat. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... off from the harbors of the Caribbean Sea, by mountain-ranges. On account of their pleasant climate the mountain-valleys constitute the chief region of habitation. The plains are flooded in the rainy season and sun-scorched during the period of drought; they are therefore unfit for human habitation. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

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

... in a large majority. The type of a not uncommon class in Illinois tradition was a member from the South who could neither read nor write, and whose apparently ironical patronymic was Grammar. When first elected he had never worn anything except leather; but regarding his tattered buckskin as unfit for the garb of a lawgiver, he and his sons gathered hazelnuts enough to barter at the nearest store for a few yards of blue strouding such as the Indians used for breech- clouts. When he came home with his purchase and had called together the women of the settlement ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... unfit for much now, I confess," he said in a tone of relief. He saw she was not seriously alarmed, and it was a comfort to confide so ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... took a great interest in me (my father) had just established me in the City as an analytical chemist and mining engineer. Now, if there was one thing in the world for which I was peculiarly, and I may even say extraordinarily, unfit, it was that very useful profession; but it is a well-known fact that the fondest parents are not always the most discriminating in the choice of professions for their sons. So I had spent two years in a ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... thank you, my son!" said Don Miguel, somewhat fluttered. "I hope no violence will be necessary. I used strong language, very strong language, to Don Diego Moreno. I—I told him that I considered him a person entirely objectionable, unfit to sweep the road before the Senorita Montfort's feet. He went away very angry. I thought we should hear no more of him; but it seems that he still retains his presumptuous idea. Without doubt, it will be best, my dear child, for you to seek the northern ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... beard was looked upon as a token of dangerous free-thinking. The reading of books written in foreign languages, or even written in Hebrew, when treating of secular subjects, brought upon the culprit untold hardships. The scholastic education resulted in producing men entirely unfit for the battle of life, so that in many families energetic women took charge of the business and became the wage earners, [2] while their husbands were losing themselves in the mazes of speculation, somewhere in the recesses of the rabbinic ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... service's 20,146 Negroes (269 officers and 19,877 airmen), approximately 5 percent of its strength, for the purpose of reassigning those eligible to former all-white units and training schools and dropping the unfit from the service.[16-2] As Secretary of the Air Force Symington made clear, his integration plan would be limited in scope. Some black service units would be retained; the rest would be eliminated, "thereby relieving the Air Force of the critical problems involved in manning these ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

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

... bed talking among other things of my sister Pall, and my wife of herself is very willing that I should give her L400 to her portion, and would have her married soon as we could; but this great sicknesse time do make it unfit to send for her up. I abroad to the office and thence to the Duke of Albemarle, all my way reading a book of Mr. Evelyn's translating and sending me as a present, about directions ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... been very trying tor Miss Evelyn, and she was so evidently nervously agitated that my mother begged her to go to her room, and lie down to repose herself, as after so much agitation she must be quite unfit for any school work, and that she herself would hear our lessons that morning and give us an afternoon's holiday in honour of the happy ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... there had remained an ample store, had, as may be readily imagined, soon fermented under the influence of a July sun. The tea, too, notwithstanding our careful efforts at drying it on newspapers and pieces of board, ere long became musty and unfit for use. There was, literally, nothing left, except the salted meat and a few crackers, hardly sufficient ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... deemed important, and if carried into effect will, it is believed, promote the harmony of the service. The plan proposed for retiring disabled officers and providing an asylum for such of the rank and file as from age, wounds, and other infirmities occasioned by service have become unfit to perform their respective duties is recommended as a means of increasing the efficiency of the Army and as an act of justice due from a grateful ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... short horn is easily prepared for a show, and, as fat will cover faults, the temptation is often too great to be resisted; and hence it is not uncommon to see the finest animals rendered unfit for breeding purposes by over-feeding. The race is susceptible of breeding for the production of milk, as several families show, and great milkers have often been known among pure-bred animals; but it is more common ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... "Still, it had some weight. You see, it isn't difficult to get lazy and slack, and I'd done nothing except a little fishing and shooting for several years. I didn't want to sink into a mere lounger about country houses and clubs. It's pleasant, but too much of it is apt to unfit one for ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... Dick. "It will depend on what condition the Dartaway is in. She may be so broken up as to be unfit for anything, and then it ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... day of the war. I had not seen him or heard of him since then. He told me that he had been unable to shake off a bronchite, caught in the trenches. It was the old story. When he left the hospital, the medical board declared him unfit for further service and warned him against returning soon to city life. The hope of recovery lay in ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... wept, and shook with dread, "I've meikle sin upon my head, And, oh! I am unfit to dee, And go to heaven thy bride to be. Leave me! oh leave me! flit away, And give me ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... big week is over! Lord George's sentence, after all the communications of how terrible it was, is ended in proclaiming him unfit for the King's service. Very moderate, in comparison of what was intended and desired, and truly not very severe, considering what was proved. The other trial, Lord Ferrers's, lasted three days. You ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... vulgar jests, and harsh diatribes, there is no language strong enough with which to denounce her. On the principle that a strawberry is quicker to spoil than a pumpkin, it takes less to render a woman obnoxious than to make a man unfit for decent company. I am no lover of butter-mouthed girls, of prudes and "prunes and prism" fine ladies; I love sprightliness and gay spirits and unconventionality, but the moment a woman steps over ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... do nothing of the kind! Don't you see that it would be as much as saying that I am unfit for my work? Miss Bruce thinks it quite as important that I should be with you for games as for work; perhaps more so, for there is more likelihood of your getting into mischief. I don't like feeling ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... they were—fierce and unapproachable—for no one ever handled them but Pete, and he had no time to give to their higher education. If they had the strength to pull, he would see that they did it; he never used a dog physically unfit, and was perfectly willing to go through with them any of the severe hardships they were forced to endure. Did he not, without hesitation, drive them mercilessly through black night and raging blizzard to bring a freezing ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

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

... besides, a great master of military tactics; but the Panther knows nothing of politics, is ignorant of everything that belongs to civil affairs. A king must be a judge and a minister as well as a warrior. The Panther is good for nothing but fighting; so it, too, is unfit to ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... take life. One extreme case where a patient's heart was weakened when it ought to have been strengthened, led to the discovery that practically all of one particular drug offered for sale in New York City was unfit to use and calculated to kill in the emergency where alone it would be used. Yesterday four lives and several million dollars were lost in a New York fire because the hose was rotten or weak. As inspection and testing were needed to insure hose equal ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... being raised every fifteen or thirty years. (2) Through most of India the unchecked oppression of usurers, in whose toils many millions of landholders are so bound as to lack means or motive for the proper cultivation of the soil. (3) A system of law and police totally unfit for small cultivators—witness the plague of litigation, appeals as 250 to 1 in England, habitual perjury, manufactured crime, and blackmailing by corrupt native police, all destructive of rural amity, co-operation, and industry. (4) Taxation oppressive both in quantity and quality: demanded, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland

... Professional Seekers for Truth. Their Cross, so called from an inanimate Object of Price which wrought Woe to a well meaning New York Couple. The Missing St Michael, a tale of Italianate Americans which is full of Vanities and, though alluring to the Sophisticated, quite unfit for the Simple Reader. The Lustred Pots, again a mere interlude, but of a grim sort, as it grazes the Sixth Commandment and The Balaklava Coronal, which, notwithstanding its exotic title, is mostly of our own People, showing the Triumph of ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather



Words linked to "Unfit" :   gibbous, kyphotic, afflicted, flabby, disabled, soft, dipped, ill, crippled, broken-backed, unfitness, modify, swaybacked, maimed, apraxic, disqualify, lordotic, gimpy, knock-kneed, humped, bowed, crookback, subhuman, spavined, indispose, humpbacked, halt, flaccid, change, lame, bandy-legged, unsound, bandy, apractic, game, unsuitable, sick, alter, impaired, qualify, bowleg, fit, mutilated, gammy, hunchbacked, handicapped, bad, swayback, bowlegged, crookbacked, unhealthy, halting



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