Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Unskillful" Quotes from Famous Books



... piece of discarded Carrara marble among waste rubbish beside a street in Florence, which some unskillful workman had cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. No doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled. But Michael Angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... effects of the progress of sentimentalism was the decline of satire. Peculiarly the weapon of the classical school, it had fallen into unskillful hands: Churchill, though keen and bold, lacked the grace of Pope and the power of Johnson. Goldsmith might have proved a worthier successor; but though his genius for style was large, his capacity for sustained indignation was limited. Even his Retaliation is humorous ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... were four imputations concerning General Warren. The first implied that Warren failed to reach me on the 1st of April, when I had reason to expect him; the second, that the tactical handling of his corps was unskillful; the third, that he did not exert himself to get his corps up to Gravelly Run Church; and the fourth, that when portions of his line gave way he did not exert himself to restore confidence to his troops. The Court found against him on the first and second counts, and ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... does not understand the game, abstains from the weapons of the Campus Martius: and the unskillful in the tennis-ball, the quoit, and the troques keeps himself quiet; lest the crowded ring should raise a laugh at his expense: notwithstanding this, he who knows nothing of verses presumes to compose. Why not! He is free-born, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... part which ought to be dissembled: And this I am sure is a most admirable part of Eloquence; as Tully in his Epistle to Atticus says, 'Tis rare to speak Eloquently, but more rare to be eloquently silent: And this unskillful Criticks are not acquainted with, and therefore are wont oftner to find fault with that which is not fitly exprest, than commend that which is prudently conceal'd: I could heap up a great many more things to this purpose, but I see no need of such a trouble, since ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin

... good places in one of the canoes, and Sam was placed in charge of the other two Indians. Each boy was furnished with two guns and plenty of ammunition. Being eager to get to the hunting grounds, they each selected a paddle, and were found to be not unskillful in the use of them, even in birch canoes, after a few lessons from ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... recommend that he carefully study the Solomonic proverb: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding." In other words, never pull your trigger until sure you're loaded; for while a fizzle causes the unskillful to laugh, it cannot but "make the judicious grieve." Every man capable of tracing effects to their efficient causes, who chanced to hear or read President George T. Winston's address before the Association of Superintendents and Principals of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... till hee changed his habit by putting on the office of an unskillful Servingman, intending to garde Terentia to ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... wire mesh toward the banana. He also used a bit of wire in the same way, but was unable thus to get the food. As soon as a stick was placed in his cage, he grasped it and used it in a very definite, although unskillful, way to pull the banana toward him. He was extremely eager and impatient, but nevertheless persistent in his efforts, and within five minutes from the beginning of the first trial, he had succeeded in getting two pieces of banana, using always his left hand to manipulate the stick. ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... bee-culture as they are set forth in this Manual, will never under any circumstances find it necessary to provoke to fury a colony of bees. Let it be remembered that nothing can be more terribly vindictive than a family of bees when thoroughly aroused by gross abuse or unskillful treatment. Let their hive be suddenly overthrown or violently jarred, or let them be provoked by the presence of a sweaty horse, or any animal offensive to them, so that the anger at first manifested by a few, is extended to the whole community, and the most severe and sometimes dangerous consequences ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... have been informed of the character of the slaver, or she would not have attempted to cripple her so persistently. Duff, after eating, returned to the quarter-deck, where he watched with folded arms the rather unskillful efforts to handle the long twelve pounder pointed sternwards from the Wanderer's waist. At each discharge a chorus of cries from the hold reminded him of their living cargo, deepening still more his disgust at the nature of the venture into which he ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... realize that unskillful, mechanical work, done always with a mental reservation that it is merely a temporary expedient, keeps women's wages low, destroys confidence in female capacity, and has definite bearing not only on the individual woman's earning capacity, but on her character as well. Girls must learn ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson

... a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskillful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... good readers and good speakers of all pupils, but it can do much. And it is a fact worthy of observation that those who are most sceptical as to the possibilities of elocutionary culture, are invariably those who are themselves unskillful ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... mortal wound. Dr. Beverly R. Cole was Surgeon-General to the Committee brigade, and a member of the Committee. Months afterward he declared in a public statement of the case that King died from the unskillful treatment of the surgeons, and maintained that with proper treatment he would have recovered. Still it was the wound which superinduced his death; and Casey had fired the ball which ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara

... between the buyer and seller to see which should cheat the other. On the first day of his attendance he witnessed a specimen of the mode in which a dexterous clerk could sell an article to a lady which she did not want. An unskillful clerk had displayed too suddenly the entire stock of the goods of which she was in search; upon which she rose to leave, saying that there was nothing she liked. A more ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... seems to have had a tender sentiment for the sex, but perfectly free from libertinism. Neither was he an habitual gamester. The strictest scrutiny has detected no settled vice of the kind. He was fond of a game of cards, but an unskillful and careless player. Cards in those days were universally introduced into society. High play was, in fact, a fashionable amusement, as at one time was deep drinking; and a man might occasionally lose large sums, and be beguiled into deep potations, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... Wood's Ath. III. 711-713.—Hyde, writing from Breda, April 16, 1660, says to a Royalist correspondent: "This very last post hath brought over three or four complaints to the king of the very unskillful passion and distemper of some of our divines in their late sermons; with which they say that both the General and the Council of State are highly offended, as truly they have reason to be ... One Dr. Griffith is mentioned." Ibid., ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... her hand, and looking into the large blue eyes sparkling so mirthfully, "Helen, I tell you if I could find an amiable girl, brought up in all the beautiful simplicity of the country, no matter how unskillful in the world's ways—one who, ignorant of my wealth and standing, would unite her fate to mine for better or for worse—then, Helen, I could fall at her feet, and worship her as the star ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... a number of cases of idiocy, madness, and epilepsy caused by the unskillful provoking of hypnotic sleep. One case is sufficiently interesting, for it is almost exactly similar to a case that occurred at one of the American colleges. The subject was a young professor at a boys' school. "One evening he ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... a piece of discarded Carrara marble among waste rubbish beside a street in Florence, which some unskillful workman had cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. No doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled. But Michael Angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... unskillful or unprincipled, the whole profession is not found fault with, but the individual is blamed and another one found who will do better, but it is not so in most cases where a nurse proves unsatisfactory. The ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... we, of course, take account of the quality of the men who perform it, and the work of a skillful man is counted as more units of labor than that of an unskillful one. ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... was completed, the Pasha proceeded to the gardens of Soubra to witness its effect. The machine was set to work, and, although constructed of bad materials, and of unskillful workmanship, its powers were greater than had been contracted for; yet the Arabs, from interested motives, declared against it. The Pasha, however, though evidently disappointed, admitted that it was equal to four of the ordinary kind, and, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... somewhat more convenient for unskillful laborers to work in a wide ditch than in a narrow one, and although the laborers frequently protest that they cannot work so rapidly in narrow ditches, yet it is found that, in contract work, by the rod, they usually open the ditches ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... worthy of the time. To her influence on the king, after her private marriage to him, is attributed much that is inauspicious in the latter part of his reign, the combination of ascetic devotion and religious bigotry with the most flagrant immorality, the appointment of unskillful generals and weak- minded ministers, the persecution of the Jansenists, and, above all, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had secured religious freedom ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... occasions have been found in Rome, in my time. They are generally works of the fourth century of our era, cut in glass by unskillful hands, and they show the portrait-heads of SS. Peter and Paul, in preference to other subjects of the kind. This fact is due not only to the special veneration which the Romans professed for the founders of their church, but also to the habit of celebrating their anniversary, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... my commercial career to a close. The manager and I parted good friends, but he made no secret of his satisfaction at getting rid of me. I was as unskillful in the matter of tying up parcels at the end of my term of service as I was at the beginning. But I had been of some use in the matter of clearing the store of rats. The cat and I had become very good friends; it was quite a wrench parting with ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... being well fed that many take as the sign of whether they are well nourished or not. It digests well, even when eaten rapidly, and perhaps partly for this reason is favored by the hurried man of affairs. It is easy to prepare and hence is appreciated by the cook, who knows that even with unskillful treatment it will be acceptable and require few accessories to make an agreeable meal. Its rich flavor helps to relieve the flatness of foods like rice, hominy, beans, or bread. From this point of view there is no such thing ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose

... hand, and looking into the large blue eyes sparkling so mirthfully, "Helen, I tell you if I could find an amiable girl, brought up in all the beautiful simplicity of the country, no matter how unskillful in the world's ways—one who, ignorant of my wealth and standing, would unite her fate to mine for better or for worse—then, Helen, I could fall at her feet, and worship her as the star of my ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... the speed of the stream, to hold good steering way. The canoe danced lightly amid gray surges and spray as if alive and enthusiastically enjoying the adventure. Some of the passengers were pretty thoroughly drenched. In unskillful hands the frail dugout would surely have been wrecked or upset. Most of the season goods for the Cassiar gold camps were carried from Glenora to Telegraph Creek in canoes, the steamers not being able to overcome the rapids except during high water. Even then they had usually to line two of the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... in charge of the other two Indians. Each boy was furnished with two guns and plenty of ammunition. Being eager to get to the hunting grounds, they each selected a paddle, and were found to be not unskillful in the use of them, even in birch canoes, after a few lessons from ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... beautiful"—i.e. they offend against the spirit of harmony inherent in every Greek. Still less are they in genteel favor when, the preliminary boxing round being finished, they put off their boxing thongs and join in the fierce "Pancration," a not unskillful combination of boxing with wrestling, in which it is not suffered to strike with the knotted fist, but in which, nevertheless, a terrible blow can be given with the bent fingers. Kicking, hitting, catching, tripping, they strive together ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... confidence, the statement may by its firmness overcome counter-motives or by its uncertainty reinforce them. Even hand or arm movements by their motor suggestion may focus the desires of the customers, while unskillful, erratic movements may scatter the attention and lead to an inner oscillation ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... neck is— In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis? I make no apology; I've learned owl-eology, I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskillful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail. Mister Brown! Mister Brown! Do take that bird down, Or you'll soon be the laughingstock all over town!" And ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... a Minister and as a Christian, was impeached by those enemies. They represented him as an unfaithful, or unskillful laborer in the gospel, and as one who was not a subject ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... world was now preparing a more subtle attack; and under the seeming compulsion of common prudence no less than of old friendship, he found himself flung into the very center of the sort of life he had with such pains avoided. It may be doubted whether he was not, like an unskillful swimmer, ignorant of his danger; but it is certain that, had he been able to search out his own heart with his former acuteness of self-judgment, he would have found the first germs of inclinations and feelings ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... their charges, were very solicitous about the care of their books. Readers were warned to handle the books with care, to be careful about turning the leaves and especially to keep their fingers off the ink. Evidently the ancient readers had the tendency common to unskillful readers everywhere to trace the lines with their fingers as they read. The books were classified by subject matter, numbered, and catalogued. Some of these ancient catalogues showing the exact contents of the monastic libraries and ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... the bodywork. To make matters worse, it was a Sunday and all the population had gone to a fete in a neighbouring village, so that I could not find a workman. Those that I found the next day were so unskillful that I had to spend two mortal days ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... of Mills, and the life of Henry Obookiah have come a few incidents and facts, but mainly in the record of Dr. Spring have we found our Story of One Short Life. Such hid treasure should find the light, even though quarried by unskillful hands. ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker

... of the battle of Five Forks there were four imputations concerning General Warren. The first implied that Warren failed to reach me on the 1st of April, when I had reason to expect him; the second, that the tactical handling of his corps was unskillful; the third, that he did not exert himself to get his corps up to Gravelly Run Church; and the fourth, that when portions of his line gave way he did not exert himself to restore confidence to his troops. The Court found against him on the first ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... remarkable was the assistance lent by Mrs. Eliot to her husband's labors in her capacity as a medical assistant. The difficulty of commanding the attendance of well educated physicians, by the sparse population of the colony, rendered it almost indispensable that a mother should be not unskillful in properly treating those childish ailments which beset the first years of life. Mrs. Eliot's skill and experience as a doctress soon caused her to be sought for by the sick and suffering. Among ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler









Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |