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Insufficient   Listen
adjective
Insufficient  adj.  
1.
Not sufficient; not enough; inadequate to any need, use, or purpose; as, the provisions are insufficient in quantity, and defective in quality. "Insufficient for His praise."
2.
Wanting in strength, power, ability, capacity, or skill; incompetent; incapable; unfit; as, a person insufficient to discharge the duties of an office.
Synonyms: Inadequate; scanty; incommensurate; unequal; unfit; incompetent; incapable; inefficient.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insufficient" Quotes from Famous Books



... it to the decision of the Pope. Pius IV. did, indeed, make a concession on this point in favour of several districts in Austria; but as the Catholics did not desire such a concession and the Lutherans refused to accept it as insufficient the indult remained practically a dead-letter, and ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... must make. My surveyorship is lost, and I have no expectation, nor any desire, of regaining it. My purpose is simply to make such a defense to the Senate as will insure the rejection of my successor, and thus satisfy the public that I was removed on false or insufficient grounds. Then, if Mr. U. should give me occasion,—or perhaps if he should not,—I shall do my best to kill and scalp him in the public prints; and I think ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... paucity of information, and the proof of its efficacy can be found in the fact that, so far as the author knows, there was not a single ship, afterwards commanded by officers who underwent this training, lost through insufficient knowledge of the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... find one who knows me and who knows you, and whom you know, and who can leave his leaf lard long enough to come here and identify me all right. Can you identify yourself in such a way that when I put in my $2,000 you will not loan it upon insufficient security as they did in Cincinnati the other day, as soon as ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... it, but I am certain of it—soon he will be incapable of work. I can see his poor hands tremble now. He will not even have a right to a pension. If he could not continue to work in the office he could hardly obtain a meagre relief, and that by favor only. And for long years I can only hope for an insufficient salary. Oh! to think that the catastrophe draws near, that one of these days he may fall ill and become infirm, perhaps, and that we shall be almost needy and I shall be unable to surround him with care in his old age. That ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... in white but insufficient raiment, out of the stoke-hole of the Lord Clive, from the Straits Settlements, and beyond, into London. He had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of London, where all the women are white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are white, and he ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... saw it. We retired together to a room apart. He was dispirited; called for and drank rapidly a bottle of Champagne;—it was insufficient. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... is present the better; but the brown affords a valued product, which will be duly noticed. It is essential to the purity of the reds, that the madder should be freed from both these colours; and it was probably due to insufficient aqueous washing of the root, that the old lakes were dull and muddy, mere brick-reds of ochrous hues. For many years, however, lakes have been prepared perfectly transparent, and literally as beautiful and pure in colour as the rose; qualities in which they are unrivalled by the lakes ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... from anything connected with his work, he told himself, it would be different. He thought bitterly how he had struggled with insufficient equipment and inadequate makeshifts of every kind to hold the Company system together that the pioneers might have the water, without which the work of reclamation could not be done. He knew every stake and pile and plank and crack and patch ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... was under discussion, reference was made to the action of a repulsive force exerted by the sun upon the matter of the comet's tail. On this, some one addressed a long letter to a Glasgow newspaper, announcing that he had long ago proved that the sun's attraction alone is insufficient to account for the planetary motions. His reasoning was amazingly simple. If the sun's attraction is powerful enough to keep the outer planets in their course, it must be too powerful for Venus and Mercury close by the sun; if it only just suffices to ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... I am not glad that you decided as you did. I am glad—very. You are in your rightful place, and I am only too thankful to hear about you, and read—and watch. But—we are jealous creatures, we women, you know, and I want to know whose and what arguments prevailed, when mine were so very insufficient." ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... And truly, reading over those barrow-loads of pleadings and RELATIONES, one has to admit that, taken as a reason for seeing oneself ruined, and one's Mill become the big gentleman's who fancies carp, they do seem considerably insufficient. The Law-Pleadings are duly voluminous. Barrow-loads of them, dreariest reading in Creation, remain; going into all manner of questions, proving, from Grotius and others, that landlords have rights upon private rivers, and another sort upon public ditto; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... not contributed a single mark to bring the scheme to fruition, but when it is working all the money required will be instantly found. At present the inventor of this delightful little scheme finds himself with insufficient capital to go ahead. It is his intention to secure that capital. There are many ways by which this can be done. He has already borrowed L40,000 ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... and to any person he may choose, and may deprive his heirs of any share in his estate, without any explanation or any express declaration of disinheritance. The fact that a will is unjust and unreasonable, in the absence of proof of undue influence, or insufficient capacity, will not render the ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... always short of money. He lived extravagantly, and his increased salary was insufficient to meet his wants. When Harry saw him drive a fast horse through the streets on Sundays, and heard him say how often he went to the theatre, what balls and parties he attended—when he observed how elegantly he dressed, and that he wore a gold chain, a costly breastpin and several ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... picturesque happenings that had crowded his twenty-eight years, and now he let himself run on, seeing again in his mind's eye the faces and the scenes of many lands, none of them, however, more strange than his present surroundings. The only difficulty was his insufficient vocabulary; but his mind was a quick and retentive one and each new word, once captured, came at his bidding. Also, Pocahontas was a bright listener; she guessed at much he could not express and helped him ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... from the wall. No light reached the ground there. The tiny crescent of Walden's farthest moon cast an insufficient glow. Nothing could be ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... solemnity, replied the youth, who seemed admirably to have caught up the spirit of the dialogue—"and it grieves me the more to know, that, under this view of the case, I can no more satisfy you than I can serve myself. It is quite unlucky that your influence is insufficient to procure me admission into your fraternity; since it is impossible that I should pay the turnpike, when the club itself, by refusing me membership, will not permit me to acquire the means of doing ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... because of no war or shipbuilding, then that sum would be kept, and the following year there would be no repartimiento nor would the amount be again collected. And supposing that the sum that was collected should be insufficient because of the many expenses of that year, then the Indians would be again asked for what should seem necessary. If this were done with due system and method in using the chest, and in a Christian spirit, each Indian would be saved, besides his discomforts, persecutions, and afflictions, more ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... impost of wine, L100—in all, L2790; and these are all the true means of that great office." It is probable that Williams under-stated the revenue, but it is certain that the income, apart from gratuities, was insufficient. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... anticipated. He received no support from Mr. Fillmore's administration, was indeed secretly betrayed by it everywhere, and quite openly by its officials in the Southern States. He did not receive the strength of his party, and the strength of his party would have been insufficient to elect him. But overwhelming as was the defeat, it did not necessarily involve destruction. The Whigs had been beaten almost as badly when Clay ran against Jackson in 1832, and yet the party had rallied ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... creativeness is conditioned by the desire for it, nay, is perhaps mainly seeking to obtain it. Whenever he spontaneously and truly creates artistic forms, he obeys the imperious vital instinct for congruity; nay, he seeks to eke out the insufficient harmony between himself and the things which he cannot command, the insufficient harmony between the uncontrollable parts of himself, by a harmony created on purpose in the things which he can control. To a large extent man ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... with little chance of betterment, he does not differ greatly in these respects from vast multitudes of men among whom he moves, whether they be white, yellow, brown, or black. The conditions of his life are little by which to condemn him, just as they would be insufficient in the case of others. Moreover, all classes certainly do not so condemn him, or do they look upon him in quite the same light. By the Parsees, for instance, he is not regarded as wholly unclean. Many of them keep English-bred dogs, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... attended the Federal arms in the West. General Johnston, who had been restored to command there at the solicitation of Lee, had found his force insufficient to oppose General Sherman's large army; the Confederates had accordingly retreated; and General Sherman, almost unresisted, from the exhaustion of his adversary, marched across the country to Savannah, which fell an easy prize, and thence advanced to Goldsborough, in North Carolina, ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... about the year 1537, detained Calvin in Geneva, pointing out to him that the place could be made the safe centre of a reformation more active and thorough than that of Luther. Farel and Calvin regarded Lutheranism as an incomplete work,—insufficient in itself and without any real grip upon France. Geneva, midway between France and Italy, and speaking the French language, was admirably situated for ready communication with Germany, France, and Italy. Calvin thereupon adopted Geneva as the site of his moral fortunes; he made it ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... with the wholesale provision-dealer as planned. The lunch hour proving insufficient for the discussion, a family dinner, a few days later, served to continue it. The dealer's family were not very enthusiastic ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... snapped. Two of the old ladies, Mrs. Blair and Miss Dyer, who were settled in the Home for life, and who, before going there, had shown no special waywardness of temper, had proved utterly incapable of living in peace with any available human being; and as the Home had insufficient accommodations, neither could be isolated to fight her "black butterflies" alone. No inmate, though she were cousin to Hercules, could be given a room to herself; and the effect of this dual system on these two, possibly ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... years of their Birmingham life, to see faces that they did not know, that they could not yet sympathise with the emotions caused in Deerbrook by the appearance of a stranger. They walked on, forgetting in conversation all about the gig and black servant. Hester had not been pleased by the insufficient attention she had met with in both the shops she had visited, and she did not enjoy her walk as was her wont. As they trod the crisp and glittering snow, Margaret hoped the little Rowlands and Greys were happy in making the snow-man which had been the vision of their imaginations since ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... for although his judgment told him that the grounds of hope thus held out to him were very insufficient, he was impressed by the thoroughly confident tone of the widow and felt ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... but twenty-seven years of age. His lectures were interesting, instructive, and suggestive. Weber thought that, in order to thoroughly understand physics and apply it to daily life, mere lectures, though illustrated by experiments, were insufficient, and he encouraged his students to experiment themselves, free of charge, in the college laboratory. As a student of twenty years he, with his brother, Ernest Henry Weber, Professor of Anatomy at Leipsic, had written a book on the 'Wave Theory and Fluidity,' which brought its authors a considerable ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... administrative officials, maintaining that it passed the measure upon recommendation of the administrative branch, or that branch failed to carry out its policy. If the administrative officials are neglectful, they shift the blame onto the council, and insist that the difficulty lies in insufficient legislation. Under such conditions, the average citizen has no way of telling where the blame ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... seized on a dozen booksellers and publishers into his messengers' hands.(3) Some of the foreign Ministers have published the preliminaries agreed on here between France and England; and people rail at them as insufficient to treat a peace upon; but the secret is, that the French have agreed to articles much more important, which our Ministers have not communicated, and the people, who think they know all, are discontented that there is no more. This was an inconvenience I foretold to the Secretary, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... Squire at 30, everybody says so. M. W. (Note in the MS.)]: and his son and heir, Master Foker, being much maltreated at Westminster School because of his father's profession of brewer, the parents asked if I would take charge of him; and paid me a not insufficient sum for ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of New York society was more de rigueur than now. Sometimes, for example, persons living under a cloud of insufficient magnitude to place them behind prison bars, feeling their disgrace, took flight for Texas. Instead of placing the conventional P.P.C. on their cards the letters G.T.T. were used, meaning that the self-expatriated ne'er-do-well had "gone to Texas." I have always understood ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... truth to make the erroneous notion pass as true. At bottom, the human soul loves truth, nor willingly believes or receives a lie. Our intellectual sin is synecdoche, the putting a part truth for a whole truth. Generalization is dangerous intellectual exercise. Our premise is insufficient, and our conclusion is self-sufficient, like some strutting scion of a decayed house. Trace the origin of this idea of a poet's non-sanity. He was not ordinary, as other men, but was extraordinary, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... thirty miles distant, in want of all the necessaries of life. He had lived there, from the period of his flight, in so private a manner, that all the enquiries that had been set on foot, by the benevolence of Mr. Falkland, or the insatiable malice of Mr. Tyrrel, had been insufficient to discover him. The first thing that had led to the detection was a parcel of clothes covered with blood, that were found in a ditch, and that, when drawn out, were known by the people of the village to belong to this man. The murder of Mr. Tyrrel was not a circumstance that ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... attitude on the part of the listener. To the writer at least, there remains one vital lack in Berlioz's music,—that of the dissonant element. It often seems as if his conceptions could not be fully realized for want of sheer musical equipment, largely due to insufficient early training. For what is music without dissonance? Surely "flat, stale and unprofitable" even if, in Berlioz's case, this deficiency is offset by great rhythmic vitality and gorgeous color. Yet in his best works[241] there is such a strong ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... Personality, and its Survival of Bodily Death," Mr. Myers gives a brief summary of the Report; but he condenses the thirty-six pages of the original Report and its appendices into four pages of "Human Personality," which are quite insufficient to convey an adequate idea of the Report itself. Also, the cost of Mr. Myers' book debars from it the mass of readers. This Report was followed up a little later by a brief article by Mr. Myers, forming an ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett

... fellow was on hand each morning, in stormy as well as in clear weather, at daybreak, ready and willing to perform to the best of his ability whatever he was directed to do. Several times he became so weak and faint from the severe labor, that the frugal breakfast he had eaten at home proved insufficient, and he was compelled to ask for a few mouthfuls of food before the regular dinner hour arrived. Although he always remained late, he was never invited to stay to supper, Mr. Ashton's understanding being that the mid-day meal was the only one to which the lad ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... smartness, was made alcalde. In 1827 or early in 1828 he ran away, and with a companion, Cipriano, and a large following, soon made himself the terror of the rancheros of the neighborhood. One expedition sent against him resulted disastrously, owing to insufficient equipment, so a determined effort under M.G. Vallejo, who was now the commander-in-chief of the whole California army, was made. May 29 he and his forces crossed the San Joaquin River on rafts, and arrived the next day at the scene of the former battle. ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... peace. But ever since the form of State was changed into a Republic, continuous strife has prevailed and several wars have taken place. Forcible seizure, excessive taxation and bribery have been of everyday occurrence. Although the annual revenue has increased to 400 millions this amount is still insufficient to meet the needs. The total amount of foreign obligations has reached a figure of more than ten thousand millions yet more loans are being contracted. The people within the seas are shocked by this ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... learned; and public historiographers, as amongst those ancient [611]Persians, qui in commentarios referebant quae memoratu digna gerebantur, informed and appointed by the state to register all famous acts, and not by each insufficient scribbler, partial or parasitical pedant, as in our times. I will provide public schools of all kinds, singing, dancing, fencing, &c. especially of grammar and languages, not to be taught by those tedious ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... as the cities of Flanders or the empire. The disastrous campaign of Taiilebourg lessened the prestige of the duke, and Henry quitted Gascony without so much as attempting to settle its affairs. In the following years weak seneschals, with insufficient powers and quickly succeeding each other, were unable to grapple with ever-increasing troubles. The feudal lords dominated the countryside, pillaged traders, waged internal war and defied the authority of the duke. In the autonomous towns factions had arisen as fierce ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... ration was quite insufficient to satisfy their hunger: hardly enough to satisfy the necessities of a healthy adult. The consequence was, that all day long, and all through the night, scores of the emigrants went about the decks, seeking ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... pressure to which one could respond, Bernard had really little taste for giving himself up, and he never did so without very soon wishing to take himself back. He had now given himself to something that was not himself, and the fact that he had gained ten thousand francs by it was an insufficient salve to an aching sense of having ceased to be his own master. He had not been playing—he had been played with. He had been the sport of a blind, brutal chance, and he felt humiliated by having been favored by so rudely-operating a divinity. ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... Both the water and the mud of the Nile have duties to perform,—the water to irrigate; the deposit to fertilize; but these duties are not regularly performed: sometimes the rush of the inundation is overwhelming, at others it is insufficient; while at all times an immense proportion of the fertilizing mud is not only wasted by a deposit beneath the sea, but navigation is impeded by the silt. The Nile is a powerful horse without harness, but, with a bridle in its mouth, the fertility of Egypt might ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... the rooks rose. The trees which they touched so capriciously seemed insufficient to lodge their numbers. The tree-tops sang with the breeze in them; the branches creaked audibly and dropped now and then, though the season was midsummer, husks or twigs. Up went the rooks and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... Washington thought he might be forced to surrender if he remained, so he decided to leave a garrison at Fort Washington and take the army into camp at White Plains (New York). A great many of his men were sick or wounded, and the hospital arrangements were poor and insufficient. The disabled men were lying in crowded sheds, stables and any other places of shelter that could be found. Washington did all he could to relieve their sufferings, and in a letter to Congress, he ...
— George Washington • Calista McCabe Courtenay

... surprised by one of them, a monster of enormous size. One of my guards came up at the moment she was being carried off; he fired his musket at the brute, and hit it under the fore-leg, or arm-pit, which is the only vulnerable part. But the wound was insufficient to check the cayman's progress, and it disappeared with its prey. Nevertheless, this little bullet hole was the cause of its death; and here it is to be observed, that the slightest wound received by the cayman is incurable. The shrimps which abound in the lake get into the orifice, gradually ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... when words are insufficient to express one's feelings. Austin found himself at one of these places. His heart had been almost broken with sorrow for the shattered home circle, and the deepest desire of his heart was to gather the children together again and if possible build for them a home where they could ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale

... deepest part, made not the slightest attempt to look over the parapet, much less to use his rifle. There is this much of excuse for him, that on the very instant that they reached the cover of the trench a bursting high-explosive had caught the four men next in line to him. The excuse may be insufficient for those who have never witnessed at very close hand the instant and terrible destruction of four companions with whom they have eaten and slept and talked and moved and had their intimate being for many months; but those who have known such happenings will understand. Bunthrop's sergeant ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... rights. Petitioners face a heavy burden in seeking to have the regulations invalidated as facially unconstitutional. . . . The fact that the regulations might operate unconstitutionally under some conceivable set of circumstances is insufficient to ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

... great affections; and now baby reigned supreme in the heart of Clarissa. She had plenty of money now at her disposal; Mr. Granger having fixed her allowance at three thousand a year, with extensive powers should that sum prove insufficient; so the Bohemian household under the shadow of St. Gudule profited by her independence. She sent her brother a good deal of money, and received very cheery letters in acknowledgment of her generosity, with sometimes a little ill-spelt ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... satellite usually exhibits a disc which is simply black; but on occasions observers have called it purple or purplish. Although during totality the Moon is illuminated by a full allowance of Earth-shine (light reflected by the Earth into space), yet from all accounts this is always insufficient to reveal any traces of the irregularities of mountains and valleys, etc., which exist on ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... of hue and cry to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, but nothing came of it. From somewhere in that labyrinth of unfinished building and scaffolding fenced in by high hoardings a bomb had been thrown of insufficient power to do much damage to anybody. The Prefect of Police, riding in close attendance on the royal carriage, had himself vaulted the barrier, on the side whence it had seemed to come, and reported that he had found no trace of any one. Pieces ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... to his room without seeing any one, except the sister whom she generally found there. By what gradations their intimacy grew I cannot inform my reader, for on the events lying upon the boundary of my story, I have received very insufficient enlightenment; but the result it is easy to imagine. I have already hinted at an early disappointment of Miss St. John. She had grown greatly since, and her estimate of what she had lost had altered considerably in consequence. But the change was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... prepare a road. At this time, there were over one thousand wagons of the "Mormons" rolling westward, and the line of march soon reached from the Mississippi to Council Bluffs. There were in the company not half enough draft animals for the arduous march, and but an insufficient number of able-bodied men to tend the camps. The women had to assist in driving teams and stock, and in other labors of the journey. Yet with their characteristic cheerfulness the people made the best, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage

... perceive in her face nothing but the most unaffected surprise. "I observe," he said, "that you have as much generosity as intelligence, and I read in your eyes the forgiveness I solicit. A pardon pronounced by your lips is insufficient for me, and I need the forgiveness of your ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... is usually the result of derangement of the liver in the mother, or of her insufficient or improper nourishment, and it occurs more frequently when the child is from two to five ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... with the strength of the tide, she would have gained the open sea, by the route over which she had so lately passed. But a single minute of trial convinced the bold mariner that his decision came too late. The wind was insufficient to pass the gorge, and, environed by the land, with a tide that grew stronger at each moment, he saw that delay would be destruction. Once more the light vessel yielded to the helm, and, with every thing set to the best advantage, she darted along ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... Now when electromagnets are to be employed with rapidly alternating currents, such as are used for electric lighting, the frequency of the alternations being usually about 100 periods per second, slitting the cores is insufficient to guard against eddy currents; nothing short of completely laminating the cores is a satisfactory remedy. I have here, thanks to the Brush Electric Engineering Company, an electromagnet of the special form that is used in the Brush arc lamp when required for the purpose of working in an alternating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various

... dear Reader, we brag of Liberty, and boast of our Laws: but the Blessings of the one, and the Protection of the other, seldom fall to the Lot of the Poor; and especially when a rich Man is their Adversary. How, in the Name of Goodness, can a poor Wretch obtain Redress, when thirty Pounds are insufficient to try his Cause? Where is he to find Money to see Council, or how can he plead his Cause himself (even if he was permitted) when our Laws are so obscure, and so multiplied, that an Abridgment of them cannot be contained in fifty Volumes ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous

... becomes so by the manumission itself, this is manumission in fraud of creditors. It is, however, now settled law, that the gift of liberty is not avoided unless the intention of the manumitter was fraudulent, even though his property is in fact insufficient to meet his creditors' claims; for men often hope and believe that they are better off than they really are. Consequently, we understand a gift of liberty to be avoided only when the creditors are defrauded ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... true that the rations of men and horses are actually insufficient in campaign? This is strange economy! To neglect to increase the soldier's pay five centimes! It would better his fare and prevent making of an officer a trader in vegetables in order to properly feed his men. Yet millions are squandered each year ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... referring to the list of passengers, I found that he had engaged passage for himself, wife, and two sisters—his own. The state-rooms were sufficiently roomy, and each had two berths, one above the other. These berths, to be sure, were so exceedingly narrow as to be insufficient for more than one person; still, I could not comprehend why there were three state-rooms for these four persons. I was, just at that epoch, in one of those moody frames of mind which make a man abnormally inquisitive about trifles: and I confess, with shame, that I busied myself in a variety of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... antiquity and in our own day. Slavery, infanticide, celibacy, wars and massacres, large estates, and pestilence have all been named as causes; but I am inclined to think that all these influences together are insufficient to account for so rapid a decline. The toll of war was lighter by far than in periods when the population was rising; infectious disease (unless we suppose, as some have suggested, that malaria became for the first ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... Ruritanian as ever. As usual we find that distressful country, here called Varavia, in the throes of dynastic upheaval, which centres, in a manner also not without precedent, in the figure of a young and beautiful Princess. This lady, the last of her race, had been adopted as ward—on, I thought, insufficient introduction—by the hero, Sir Francis Vyse. The situation was further complicated by the fact that in his youth he had been the officer of the guard who ought to have prevented the murder of Sonia's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various

... could well understand the exuberant allowance of eggs to one pod; a rich foodstuff easily obtained evokes a large batch of eggs. But the case of the pea perplexes me. By what aberration does the mother abandon her children to starvation on this totally insufficient vegetable? Why so many grubs to each pea when one pea is sufficient only ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... inexperience. I swear to you, it was nothing but my inexperience and insufficient means. Judge for yourself. The salary I get is not enough for tea and sugar. And if I have taken bribes, they were mere trifles—something for the table, or a coat or two. As for the officer's widow to whom they say I gave a beating, she's ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... daily programme will be found to be a very varied one—too much so, indeed, to suit the taste of the English, whose notions of the fitness of things are offended by the sight of a steeple-chase and a flat-race on the same track. The Normans, on the contrary, finding even this double attraction insufficient, add to it the excitement of a trotting-match in harness and under the saddle. And such trotting! "Allais! marchais!" shouts the starter in good Norman, and away go the horses, dragging their lumbering, rattling Norman carts, guided by equally ponderous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... their combined earnings supporting a paralytic father. The older girl met with an accident involving the loss of both eyes, and the financial support of the whole family devolved upon the younger girl, who worked hard and conscientiously for three years, supplementing her insufficient factory wages by evening work at glove making. In the midst of this devotion and monotonous existence she made the acquaintance of a girl who was a chorus singer in a cheap theater and the contrast between ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... Josephine—now found that the little house in the Rue de la Victoire was too small for him; that it must be altered even as the street had been. The modest and tasteful arrangements which had sufficed the Widow Josephine de Beauharnais, appeared now to her young husband as insufficient; the little saloon, in which at one time he had felt so happy at the side of the viscountess, was no longer suited to his actual wants. Large reception-rooms and vestibules were needed, magnificent furniture was necessary, for the residence ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... for weeks in private about the lethargy of the people—the slowness of men to enlist. But they seemed to me to complain with insufficient reason. For now they come by thousands. They do need more men in the field, and they may conscript them, but I doubt the necessity. But I run across such incidents as these: I met the Dowager Countess of D—— yesterday—a woman of 65, as tall as I and as erect herself as a soldier, who might be ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... little knowest, my child, what a heap of cares and sorrows thou graspest at." History does, indeed, prove that "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." New perplexities now burst upon the king. The Protestants, many of them irritated by his conversion, and by the tardy and insufficient concessions they received, violently demanded entire equality with the Catholics. This demand led to the famous Edict of Nantes. This ordinance, which receives its name from the place where it was published, was issued ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... believes, feels himself called upon to regard it with scorn! Is it not a truth that even when we know what is required of us to be good, that self-knowledge is a dead letter to us? reading and reflection are insufficient to impel us to it; it is only the living speech of a man gifted with power which can here be of avail. The soul is shaken to its centre, the impressions it receives are more profound and lasting. In the brother who speaks to you, there is a life, and a living and breathing spirit—one which you ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico

... more clearly and distinctly express the subject?matter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... of paralysis; anger looked round for an object on which to vent itself, but hardly knew whom to select. Besides, people had really insufficient information as to what had happened. The Siecle printed a fairly turbulent article at once, but no exciting language in the papers was required. Even a foreigner could perceive that if it became necessary to defend Paris after a second defeat, the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... army's chief of staff after 1858, and Von Roon, the great administrator, who filled the office of minister of war, he changed the organization of 1814, which had become insufficient. Instead of brigades formed in war time, half of men in active service and half of reserves, regiments were now recruited by a three (instead of a two) years' service and reinforced in case of need by the classes ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... Emperor; and in the Plaza of Vera Cruz, surrounded by the garrison, he proclaimed a republic, on the 2d of December, 1822. He joined in his insurrection the name and the influence of Victoria, yet both were insufficient to save him from a complete route at the hands of Echevarri. At the critical moment in the affairs of Santa Anna, the Grand Lodge of the Ecosces decreed the overthrow of Iturbide, and sent orders to General Echevarri, who was a member of the order, to unite his forces to those of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... reasons, seemingly quite insufficient to any one but Patsy, she was escaping every day to plot black treason with Kennedy McClure, whenever that worthy old gentleman was not either at Barnet Fair or Smithfield Market, the only two places in London which had any interest ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... As for the insufficient eyebrows, they symbolized, as it were, a meagre and restricted life, vaguely acknowledged as the dispensation of an obscurely hostile but consistent Providence; a Providence far too awful and exalted—as well as hostile—to interest itself benignantly in so small and neutral a personality as ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley

... the room for something with which to fight the man. She seized an iron frying-pan and struck him with all the force she could summon, but the blow was insufficient. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock

... for nothing, except for things that can't be purchased. Still, want is the great abomination which distresses me. I can understand that you should have felt everything crumbling when charity appeared to you so insufficient a remedy as to be contemptible. Yet it does bring relief; and, moreover, it is so sweet to be able to give. Some day, too, by dint of reason and toil, by the good and efficient working of life itself, the reign of justice will surely come. But now it's I that am preaching! ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... corridor—in the direction, indeed, of the room where Mr. Dunster lay. He made his way there, walking on tiptoe, although his feet fell noiselessly upon the thick carpet. A single light was burning from a bracket in the wall, insufficient to illuminate the empty spaces, but enough to keep him from stumbling. The corridor towards the south end gradually widened, terminating in a splendid high window with stained glass, a broad seat, and a table. On the right, the ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... adulteration of all food-stuffs, and more particularly of all alcoholic liquors, which prevailed not alone in the West End of London, but in every city. Home products could only be obtained in clubs and in the houses of the rich. Their quantity was insufficient to admit of their reaching the open markets. In the cities we lived entirely upon foreign products, and their adulteration had reached a most amazing limit ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... under way, there did not seem to be any spare space from stem to stern. There were over twelve hundred persons on board, as I was informed.[2] Unfortunately many of them carried with them the seeds of disease. The infection contracted under a tropical sun, being aggravated by hardships, insufficient food, and the crowded condition of the steamer, developed as the voyage proceeded. Panama fever in its worst form broke out; and it was not long before the main deck was literally covered with the sick. There was a physician attached to the ship; but unfortunately he was ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... see that the aversion that has been inculcated from without tends to disappear wherever the man-established conventions lapse or cease to govern either through the comparatively small numbers of black men being insufficient in certain localities to cause fear in the white men living there, as in some seaport towns, or through the temporary break-down of the customary standards of society brought about by war and revolution, as in those parts ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... bleaker and barer the farther north one travels. But the bare ruggedness and naked strength of the north have perhaps the deeper appeal. To those who have to sail its waters and wrest a living from the harvest of the sea, this must be a cruel shore, with its dangers from rocks and icebergs and fog, and insufficient ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... been so often stated, such as falling prices, increased mortgages, contentions between capital and labor, decreasing value of silver, increased relative value of gold, they must be attributed to some other cause than our insufficient supply of circulation, for not only has the circulation increased in these twelve years 80 per cent., while our population has only increased 36 per cent., but it has all been maintained at the gold standard, which, it is plain, has ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... aggrandizement. The boy lived till he was about ten years old, when he caught a fever, which at that time raged in Jamaica, and, after a few days' illness, died. His mother was carried off by the same disease; and Mr. Hartley, left alone in the midst of his wealth, felt how insufficient it was to happiness. Remorse now seized him; he returned to England in search of his deserted daughter. To this neglected child he now looked forward for the peace and happiness of the remainder of his life. Disappointment in all his inquiries for some ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... with its hollow falsehoods; it was the land in her own fancy which the stage seemed to centre and represent. There the poetry found a voice,—there it struggled into imperfect shape; and then (that land insufficient for it) it fell back upon itself. It coloured her thoughts, it suffused her soul; it asked not words, it created not things; it gave birth but to emotions, and lavished itself on dreams. At last came love; and there, as a river into the sea, it poured its ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Maine, near Moosehead lake. This State aid, however, proved of no immediate service, as purchasers could not be found for several years for property so remote. Appeals to capitalists, lotteries, and State aid proved insufficient; the main burden fell upon the stockholders. In accordance with the provisions of the charter, assessments had been levied, as occasion required, up to 1816, 99 in number, amounting to $670 per share; and the corporation was still staggering under ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various

... the first Napoleon being informed that a certain army contractor had cheated the government by supplying the troops with very inferior and insufficient food, sent for him to inquire into the affair. "How is this?" said the Emperor: "I understand you have been violating your contract." "Sire," was the answer, "I must live." "No," replied the monarch, "I do not see the must. It is not necessary that ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... insufficient, no supposition too incompatible with reason, for Mrs. B. to build her alarms upon. Sometimes, although we lodge upon the second story, she imagines that the window is being attempted; sometimes, although the register ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... it was that the gloomy Indian Jimmie Friday, despite his tuberculosis begotten of insufficient nourishment, was happy in these strange days—even to the extent of looking with wondrous eyes on the nooks which we loved—nooks which previously for him had only sheltered possible "dead-falls" or not, as the discerning eye of the trapper ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... that chills her pupils to the heart. She has knowledge, indeed much knowledge, but she lacks wisdom, hence her knowledge becomes weakness and not power. She has spiritual hysteria which manifests itself in her manner, in her looks, and in her voice. Her spiritual strength is insufficient for the load she tries to carry and her path shows uneven and tortuous. She nags and scolds in strident tones that ruffle and rasp the spirits of her pupils and beget in them a longing to become whatever she is not. She is noisy where quiet is needful; she causes disturbance ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... reference to our exact science and our theistic view of the world. Instead of doing this, we have often enough seen friend and foe of the idea of miracles, as soon as the question was even touched upon, at once set to work with the insufficient conceptions of old rationalism and supernaturalism, and thus raising objections and attempting solutions which could satisfy nobody. Especially every inadequate idea {359} which was put forth by the advocates of faith in miracles, was gladly accepted by its adversaries; for ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... boat hauled up and sheltered beneath them. He leapt to his feet with a joyful exclamation. Here was the means of crossing the river; but the boat had to be brought over. Once afloat this would be easy enough, but he was sure that his own strength would be insufficient to launch her, and that he should need the aid of at least one man. On returning to camp he called aside the sergeant of his company, James Grant, who was from his own estate in Nithsdale, and whom he knew ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... planted cannot be prepared in season to enable the farmer to put his seed directly in the hill and yet give the cabbage time sufficient to mature. Where the climate is unpropitious, or the quantity of manure applied is insufficient, it is possible that transplanting may promote heading. The advantages of planting directly in the hill, are a saving of time, avoiding the risks incidental to transplanting, and having all the piece start alike; for, when transplanted, many die and have to be replaced, ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory

... life to be potent and frequent causes of variations, which, being not infrequently inherited, result in the formation of varieties and even species, but considers these causes if taken alone as no less insufficient to account for observable facts than the theory of functionally produced modifications would be if not supplemented by inheritance of so-called fortuitous, or spontaneous variations. The difference ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... system, Constantine was forced to impose heavy taxes upon his people. Every year the emperor subscribed with his own hand, in purple ink, the indiction, or tax levy of each diocese, which was set up in its principal city, and when this proved insufficient, an additional tax, or superindiction, was imposed. Lands, cattle, and slaves were all heavily taxed, and the declining agriculture of the empire was finally ruined by the exorbitant demands of the state. In Campania alone, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... be angry with me; I admire her so. Please let me explain. Islip is no paradise—quite the reverse; but the faults of Islip are not your faults. The children are ignorant; but you pay for a school. The people are poor from insufficient wages; but you are not paymaster. Your gardeners, your hinds, and all your outdoor people have enough. You give them houses. You let cottages and gardens to the rest at half their value; and very often they don't ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... experimental foundation for a conviction which they had reached by a shorter cut. It is undoubtedly trying to learn that, though your conclusions may be all right, your reasons for them are all wrong, or, at any rate, insufficient. ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of religious or political differences, or both, are the Essenes, the Nazarites, the Herodians and the Galileans. The Essenes were characterized by professions of ultra-piety; they considered even the strictness of Pharisaic profession as weak and insufficient; they guarded membership in their order by severe exactions extending through a first and a second novitiate; they were forbidden even to touch food prepared by strangers; they practised strict temperance ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... which secures a fair or fairly fair division of the spoils. Then there is "personal honesty," which subdivides into three kinds—legal, moral, and instinctive. Legal honesty needs no definition. Moral honesty defies definition—how untangle its intertwinings of motives of fear, pride, insufficient temptation, sacrifice of the smaller chance in the hope of a larger? Finally, there is instinctive honesty—the rarest, the only bed-rock, unassailable kind. Give me the man who is honest simply because it never occurs to him, and never could occur to ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips



Words linked to "Insufficient" :   skimpy, low, stingy, lean, quantity, depleted, short, meager, scant, meagerly, poor, deficient



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