"Competence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grade a longer or shorter period, in turn vicar, cure, vicar-general, canon, head of a seminary, sometimes coadjutor, and almost always have distinguished himself in some office, either as preacher or catechist, professor or administrator, canonist or theologian. His full competence cannot be contested, and he enjoys a right to exact full obedience; he has himself rendered it up to his consecration; "he boasts of it," and the example he proposes to his priests is the one he has himself given.[5249] On the other ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... took his second courtship quietly and leisurely, marrying the lady at length in 1628, after a wooing of thirteen years. "He seems," says Mr. A.H. Bullen, his latest biographer, "to have acquired in some way a modest competence, which secured him immunity from the troubles that weighed so heavily on men of letters." His second wife also brought him a portion. More than four years before this marriage he had returned to Exeter ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... however, to analyze some features of these second and third fundamentals, especially in their interdependent phases, and next to consider the subject of mine statistics, for the latter are truly the microscopes through which the competence of ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... had to wife a thou sand daughters of kings, high-bosomed maids, as they were moons: I was blessed with a thousand sons as they were fierce lions, and I abode a thousand years, glad of heart and mind, and I amassed treasures beyond the competence of all the Kings of the regions of the earth, deeming that delight would still endure to me. But there fell on me unawares the Destroyer of delights and the Sunderer of societies, the Desolator of domiciles and the Spoiler of inhabited spots, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of oppression, though extorted from a whole people by the iron hand of severity,—that these cries of a whole people, attended even with authentic documents sufficient to satisfy the mind of any man, may be totally insufficient to convict the oppressor in a court; and yet to that court, whose competence he denies, to that very court, he appeals, in that he puts his trust, and upon that ground he refuses to perform the just promise he had given of any explanation to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... enabled us to shew some gratitude for benefits heaped upon us? How much greater are these privations to my uncle and aunt now that they are so much more advanced in years, and have been so much longer accustomed to competence and ease; and shall we repine or even regret, unless it is on their account? surely, my dear Emma, not ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... with all the candour of her competence. "She can't come herself—except just to the door." Then as she thought afresh: "Can't she come even to the ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... by the State and he was proposed for a medal of honour and—singular dream of Frenchmen—he was decorated in 1889. He died March 27, 1906. Not a long, but a full life, a happy one, and at the last, glory—"le soleil des morts," as Balzac said—and a competence for his dear ones. And it is to the honour of such writers as Roger Marx, Anatole France, Hamel, Morice, Mauclair, Verhaeren, Geffroy, that they recognised the genius of Carriere from the beginning. In 1904 Carriere was made honorary president of the Autumn Salon and was the chief guest of these ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... single night. For another, he considered such a journey a needless expense. This, however, he did not mention, but contented himself with the suggestion that it would seem a reflection upon Mrs Grantly's competence to do anything of the kind; and that consideration weighed heavily with his wife where the other would have been brushed aside as immaterial and irrelevant. "I can't understand it," the Squire remarked plaintively; "I did not know there had ever ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... that genius, that noblest gift of God to man, is nourished by poverty. Its greatest works have been achieved by the sorrowing ones of the world in tears and despair. Not in the brilliant salon, not in the tapestried library, not in ease and competence, is genius usually born and nurtured; but often in adversity and destitution, amidst the harassing cares of a straitened household, in bare and fireless garrets, with the noise of squalid children, in the turbulence ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... one pleases. Much of the existing wealth probably never would have been created if men had not had this right. But there is a limit to the working of this motive, and other motives often are more effective. Many a man after gaining a competence continues to work for love of wealth and power in his own lifetime, as the miser continues to toil for love of gold. When men without families die wealthy, when men not having the slightest interest in ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... humorous vein run wild, some latitude allow. I learned the habit from the best of fathers, who employed Some living type to stamp the vice he wished me to avoid. Thus temperate and frugal when exhorting me to be, And with the competence content which he had stored for me, 'Look, boy!' he'd say,' at Albius' son—observe his sorry plight! And Barrus, that poor beggar there! Say, are not these a sight, To warn a man from squandering his patrimonial ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... entirely and genuinely gay entertainments that assemble the society of the real New York—the three and a half millions who work and play hard and live plainly and without pretense, whose ideals center about the hearth, and whose aspirations are to retire with a competence early in the afternoon of life, thenceforth placidly to assist in the prosperity of their children and to have their youth ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... either over-fond of their pleasure or untrained boys. Brave lads they are, but none of them have been taught that it is only by mental strain, or the ceaseless toil of his body, the man without an inheritance can win himself a competence now. This is why they want a leader who has known hardship and hunger, instead of ease, and won what he holds with his own hand in place of having it ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... entered business. With these reserves, she came to New York to work in department stores for the purpose of gaining experience in salesmanship and a more thorough knowledge of corsets. She expected to be able to command a high salary as soon as she had thus increased her competence. She went at first to a new and attractive Sixth Avenue store, where, working eight hours and a quarter a day, she earned $10 a week. Laid off at the end of five months, she was idle a month before finding employment at another Sixth ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... handsome competence as city editor of the old Morning Sentinel at Laramie City, and had married and gone to housekeeping with a gas stove and other luxuries, my place on the Sentinel was taken by a newspaper man named Hopkins, who had just graduated from a business college, and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... God, will contain only so much positive truth as the human mind is capable of receiving; whether that truth is attained by the exercise of reason, or communicated by revelation. It must necessarily be both limited and alloyed, to bring it within the competence of finite human intelligence. Being finite, we can form no correct or adequate idea of the Infinite; being material, we can form no clear conception of the Spiritual. We do believe in and know the infinity of Space and Time, and the spirituality of the Soul; but the idea of that ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the conventional measuring-stick on him," her husband answered, with that tolerance which so often surprised her. "Maybe his ways are pretty crude. But he's feverishly hewing a competence—which is what we're all after—out of pretty crude material. And he's just a kid, after all, with a kid's tendency to go to extremes now and then. I kinda like the beggar's ambition ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... save my dignity by telling him that if it was my seamanship he was alluding to I wanted him to understand that a fellow who had survived being turned inside out for an hour and a half by Captain R- was equal to any demand his old ship was likely to make on his competence. However he didn't give me a chance to make that sort of fool of myself because before I could open my mouth he had gone round on another tack and was addressing himself affably to Mr. Powell who swinging his leg never took his ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... There is no such thing as a descent to pauperism for those who will work. By little and little the working couple thrive and prosper, and as their family—New Zealand families run large, by the way—multiplies and grows up round them, they are able to enjoy the comforts of a competence they could never have attained at home. Some settlers, who originally came out, man and wife, as government immigrants drawn from the peasant class, are now wealthy proprietors of broad acres, flocks, and herds; and are able to send their sons to college and their daughters ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... from that instrument with something approaching hopefulness. He'd seen Evelyn very near and very closely. She did not look happy, but she did look alert rather than worn. And Denham was displaying a form of competence in the face of danger which was really more than would have been expected in a Ph.D., a M.A., and other academic distinctions running to most of the letters of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... preclude rigid honesty in the application of firmly held principles, it is more difficult with the many. And if it is hard to exclude bias, inaccuracy, over- statement, and inadequacy from the work even of a small and chosen group, it is still harder to be certain of complete competence if the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... certain amount of money, and he was surprised to find how fast it accumulated. When he had been some fifteen years in his office, a great-uncle of his died, leaving Hugh quite unexpectedly a sum of a few thousand pounds, which, together with his savings, gave him a small but secure competence, as large, in fact, as the income he ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gentlemen who first insisted upon it. However, as none of them wholly abandon that post, it will not be safe to leave it behind me unattacked. I believe no one will wish their interpretation of that act to be considered as authentic. What shall we think of the wisdom (to say nothing of the competence) of that legislature which should ordain to itself such a fundamental law, at its outset, as to disable itself from executing its own functions,—which should prevent it from making any further laws, however wanted, and that, too, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cultivation, every mine developed, every forest made to contribute to the creature comfort of man, there should be remunerative work for all. You know that, with the aid of wealth-creating machinery every laborer should be able to acquire a competence to comfort his declining days. You know that until Need is satisfied and Greed is gorged there can be no such thing as overproduction—that under normal conditions when there's a plethora of necessaries, the surplus energy of the nation ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... countries. The Japanese plan seems simple and judicious (see ante, p. 461). Paul and Victor Margueritte (Quelques Idees, pp. 3 et seq.), while realizing that the conflict of feeling in the matter of personal associations involves decisions which are entirely outside the competence of legal tribunals, recognize that such tribunals are necessary in order to deal with the property of divorced persons, and also, in the last resort, with the question of the care of the children. They should not act in public. These writers propose that each party should ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... as I hope we shall be by and by, from this desert isle. I have seen enough of you, Frank Harness, to feel confident that I can trust my daughter's happiness to your keeping; but you must first secure a name and a competence for yourself before you can dream of asking her to be your wife. You see, my boys I may perhaps have overheard more of your whispered conversation than you thought! I can give Kate nothing, for I am a ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... with a heavy heart, feeling that, whatever her father might believe, the choice would be between the sacrifice of Aurelia or of her father's agency, which would involve the loss of home, of competence, and of the power of breeding up her darling Eugene according to his birth. She did not even know what her father had written, and could only go about her daily occupations like one under a weight, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and farming. A blindfolded person touches one or other of the saucers with a wand and so discovers his or her fate. Again, three broad beans are taken; one is left in its skin, one is half peeled, and the third is peeled outright. The three denote respectively riches, competence, and poverty. They are hidden and searched for; and he who finds one of them knows accordingly whether he will be rich, moderately well-off, or poor. Again, girls take slips of paper and write the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... "philosophic study," and has found that Massachusetts has had a "pretty fair run of the power of the Union,"—whatever that may be. The phrase is unfortunate, for it reminds one too much of the handsome competence with which a father once claimed to have endowed his son in giving him the run of the streets since he was able to go alone. But let us test Mr. Cushing's logic by an equivalent proposition. He is executor, we will suppose, of an estate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a thread). Thou art Aryaman. Thou art Savitri. Thou art Ravi. Thou art that ancient king of great celebrity known by the name of Ushangu. Thou art he who protects all creatures in diverse ways. Thou art Mandhatri (because of thy competence to gratify all creatures). Thou art he from whom all creatures start into life. Thou art he who exists in diverse form. Thou art he who causes the diverse hues to exist in the universe. Thou art he who upholds all desires and all attributes ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... could not do things like other people. Short of being an Urquhart, who could do everything and had everything, whose passing car flamed triumphant and lit the world into a splendid joy, and was approved under investigation with "quite all right"—short of that glorious competence and pride of life, one might surely be an average man, who could walk from San Pietro to Florence without tumbling on the road at dawn. Peter sighed over it, rather crossly. The marvellous morning was ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... thongs about the guilty heart. Bound by these shackles, long my lab'ring mind, Obscurely trod the lower walks of life, In hopes by honesty my bread to gain; But neither commerce, or my conjuring rods, Nor yet mechanics, or new fangled drills, Or all the iron-monger's curious arts, Gave me a competence of shining ore, Or gratify'd my itching palm for more; Till I dismiss'd the bold intruding guest, And banish'd ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... viceroyalties of our former American colonies, ought not to be given exclusively to one specified class; and the election of governor should be free, although with the limitation that only ex-ministers and high dignitaries of the army or of any other institution, who merit through their lofty talents, known competence, and proved morality, that Espana should entrust to them its representation and the exercise of its sovereignty in so precious a portion of its domains, should be eligible to it. Thus jointly do the prestige of the Spanish name the complications ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... bombarded by moonlight. In this way I was enabled to gather much scattered evidence, which will help, perhaps, to make clear his career. But I fear—and offer my excuses for this—to disappoint professional members of the aviation corps, who will find neither technical details nor the competence of the specialist. One of his comrades of the air,—and I hope it may be one of his rivals in glory,—should give us an account of Guynemer in action. The biography which I have attempted to write seeks ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... of this more than dubious statement, and proceeded to answer questions as to his competence. Was there anybody at the Empire who could certify as to this? The sergeant was about to call up the Empire Shops, but reconsidered; if Jimmie had actually worked in a machine-shop and in a bicycle-shop, they would surely be able to find something for him in the army. In an hour of such desperate ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... discussion, "we aren't in the market for timber in the ordinary, speculative sense. I happen to know that particular stand of cedar, or I wouldn't be interested. We're a body of returned men engaged in making homes and laying the foundation for a competence by our joint efforts. You would really lose by selling out to us. We would only buy on stumpage. If you were a broker I would offer you so much, and you could take it or leave it. It would be all one to us. We have a lot of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... deeply regretted he had incurred. At length he learned that Lord Vargrave had been refused,—that Evelyn was free; and within a few days from that intelligence, the admiral was seized with apoplexy; and Legard suddenly found himself possessed, if not of wealth, at least of a competence sufficient to redeem his character as a suitor from the suspicion attached to a fortune-hunter and adventurer. Despite the new prospects opened to him by the death of his uncle, and despite the surly caprice which had mingled with and alloyed the old admiral's kindness, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... than continue to be a travelling showman. I had now been a straggler from home most of the time for thirteen years, and I cannot describe the feelings of gratitude with which I reflected that, having by the most arduous toil and deprivations succeeded in securing a satisfactory competence, I should henceforth spend my days in the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... commodious chapel, known as Lady Whittlesea's, Denmark Street, Mayfair, being for sale, I have determined on venturing my all in its acquisition, and in laying, as I hope, the foundation of a competence for myself and excellent sister. What is a lodging-house at Brighton but an uncertain maintenance? The mariner on the sea before those cliffs is no more sure of wind and wave, or of fish to his laborious net, than the Brighton house-owner ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Catholic superstition may sink to dust, with all its absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... especially to be regretted that his applications, first to the Marquis of Exeter's steward and then to Earl Fitzwilliam's, for the situation of gardener were unsuccessful, because the employment would have been congenial to his tastes, and the wages, added to his annuities, would have been to him a competence. ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... your house was your father, if I remember right, the deceased Prince Urban, whom I had the honor of knowing when I served in the zouaves. He was a fine Roman nobleman, and did honor to his name. What I have told you is proof that I have some competence in the matter of a duel.... Well, we have always held that seconds were constituted to arrange affairs that could be arranged, but also to settle affairs, as well as they can, that seem incapable of being arranged. Let us now inquire into the matter; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... collar-bone by a fall from his horse in mounting. He is recovering well, but much bruised. I came home with Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam. He told me a dictum of old Sir Gilbert Elliot, speaking of his uncles. "No chance of opulence," he said, "is worth the risk of a competence." It was not the thought of a great man, but perhaps that of a wise one. Wrought at my review, and despatched about half or better, I should hope. I incline to longer ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... protecting the equal rights of all, whether they be rich or poor. No agrarian sentiment has ever prevailed among them. The honest poor man, by frugality and industry, can in any part of our country acquire a competence for himself and his family, and in doing this he feels that he eats the bread of independence. He desires no charity, either from the Government or from his neighbors. This bill, which proposes to give him land at an almost nominal price out of the property of the Government, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... none at all. He was provided for in his old age. During more than thirty years he had saved and scraped and invested and added to the little sum of money left him by his father, an honest old notary of the old school, until he possessed what was a very comfortable competence for a childless old man. He had a small house of his own near the Pantheon, in which he occupied two rooms, letting the rest, and he had a hundred thousand francs in government bonds, besides a few acres of vineyard on the slope of ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... residence (distant several hundred miles away.) Excellent opening for young men fresh from first-class public school or college-life: who should, of course, be prepared to "rough it" a little before making competence or large fortune, by delightful pursuit of agriculture. No restrictive civilisation. No drains. Excellent supply of water and heavy floods as a rule, during three months of year, bringing on Spring crops without expense of irrigation. Very low death-rate, most of population having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... notoriously amongst the lowest and basest of human creatures, called 'honourable gentlemen'! In such a state of things, who is to expect patient industry, laborious study, frugality and care; who, in such a state of things, is to expect these to be employed in pursuit of that competence which it is the laudable wish of all men to secure? Not long ago a man, who had served his time to a tradesman in London, became, instead of pursuing his trade, a stock-jobber, or gambler; and, in about two years, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... steady eyes, a wide brow, smooth matronly bands of hair, and a wholesome, homely New England character, sweet, yet with a tang to give it a flavour, like the apples on the tree near the old-fashioned, long-armed well. Peter could gain no competence from the stony farm, no consent from the girl. It was to win both that ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... latter two writers, however, we have an otherwise competent artist handicapped by a personality so marked that, whatever he may nominally write about, the result is, above all else, an exposure of the writer's idiosyncrasies. Then, too, the laws of any locale wherein Mr. Pickwick achieves a competence in business, or of a society wherein Vautrin becomes chief of police, are upon the face of it extra-mundane. It suffices that, as a general rule, in fiction-making the true artist finds an ample, if restricted, field wherein the proper functions of the preacher, or ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... not unfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... they saw, from the loop-holes of their retreat, every house and barn consumed, their cattle shot, and all their property of food, clothing, and furniture destroyed. They were thus, in an hour, reduced from competence to the extreme ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... self-esteem, through the subjection of their intelligent will to the dictation and incapacity of the masters imposed upon them. For a noble officer to respond to the requisitions of an extemporized bourgeois municipal body,[3333] to subordinate his competence, courage, and prudence to the blunders and alarms of five or six inexperienced, frightened, and timid attorneys, to place his energy and daring at the service of their presumption, feebleness, and lack of decision, even when their orders or refusal of orders are manifestly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence (about a fourth of a fortunate barrister's gains) which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope. Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of gossip—these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is, for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure. But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the gossips of Malines should feel some envy at the marriage Lucille was about to make with one whose competence report had exaggerated into prodigal wealth, whose birth had been elevated from the respectable to the noble, and whose handsome person was clothed, by the interest excited by his misfortune, with the beauty of Antinous. Even that misfortune, which ought to have levelled all distinctions, ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Preston, transformed into the grand and awful figure of Ahasuerus; and Nora was so eager to know what part she could take; and Mrs. Sandford entered into the scheme with such utter good-nature and evident competence to manage it. Ella Stanfield's eyes grew very wide open; and Mrs. Fish was full of curiosity, and the Linwoods ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... adulterated flour, tainted provisions, and bad water, they contracted diseases, and died in great numbers, without having once seen a foot of the Holy Land, for the recovery of which they had abandoned their peace, their competence, and their native country. These aggressions did not pass without complaint. Many of the crusading chiefs impugned the fidelity of their allies, exposed the losses sustained by their armies as evils voluntarily inflicted on them by the Greeks, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to enjoy a brighter lot than Hadassah, when beautiful, gifted, and beloved, a happy wife, a rejoicing mother, she had dwelt near Bethsura in Idumea, the possessor of more than competence, and the dispenser of benefits to many around her. Hadassah had in her youthful days an ambitious spirit, a somewhat haughty temper, and a love of command, which had to a certain degree marred the beauty of a character ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... with highly technical matters, hardly suitable for popular lecturing, and in which my own competence is small. All the better for my conclusion, however, which at this point is this. The whole notion of truth, which naturally and without reflexion we assume to mean the simple duplication by the mind of a ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... impossible for art, or any of the higher creative activities, to flourish under any system which requires that the artist shall prove his competence to some body of authorities before he is allowed to follow his impulse. Any really great artist is almost sure to be thought incompetent by those among his seniors who would be generally regarded as best qualified to form an opinion. And the mere fact of having ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... list of publications is subject to modification in response to requests by members. From time to time Bibliographical Notes will be included in the issues. Each issue contains an Introduction by a scholar of special competence in ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... rich or poor according to what they possess but to what they desire. The only rich man is he that with content enjoys a competence. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... fairly well. Mowbray has had a Lift in his Inland Revenue Office, and now is secure, I believe, of Competence for Life. Charles wrote me a kindly Letter at Christmas: he sent me his own Photo; and then (at my Desire) one of his wife:—Both of which I would enclose, but that my Packet is already bulky enough. It won't go off to-night when it is written—for here (absolutely!) comes my Reader (8 p.m.) to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... an end. Soon after his return H. received a pension, and from 1767-68 he was under-sec. to General Conway, then Sec. of State. In 1769 he retired, and returned to Edin. with an income of L1000 a year which, time and place considered, was an ample competence, and there he spent the remainder of his days, the recognised head of the intellectual and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the mild merits of domestic life, The patient suff'rer, and the faithful wife. Thus grac'd with humble virtue's native charms Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia's arms, Secure with peace, with competence, to dwell, While tutelary nations guard her cell. Yours is the charge, ye fair, ye wife, ye brave! 'Tis yours to crown ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and careful and proportioned pile of bricks that arches over it and that was thus to form, constructionally speaking, a literary monument. Such is the aspect that to-day "The Portrait" wears for me: a structure reared with an "architectural" competence, as Turgenieff would have said, that makes it, to the author's own sense, the most proportioned of his productions after "The Ambassadors" which was to follow it so many years later and which has, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... execution. From this conception of things each subordinate science was obliged to make its investigations in two perfectly distinct regions: it had at first to determine the material facts within its competence—such as the position of the stars, for instance, or the symptoms of a malady; it had then to discover the beings which revealed themselves through these material manifestations, their names and their characteristics. When once it had obtained this information, and could lay its hands upon ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... farming, the mining of coal, the manufacture of steel or the selling of merchandise, is the exception, while the man, in whatever calling, who rears and educates a family and at the same time lays by a small competence is the normal American product. The moral is that a $500-a-year-income farm is a more important factor to the national welfare than a ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... many of the finest numbers—as, for example, the Valkyrie's Ride, the prelude to the third act of "Siegfried," the march in "The Dusk of the Gods"—have been deliberately massacred. One cannot criticise such conducting: it does not rise near enough to competence to be worthy of criticism. But one has a right to ask why this young man, who should be serving an apprenticeship in some obscure opera-house, is palmed off on the public as "the best artist procurable"? He scarcely seems to possess ordinary intelligence. ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... judge, two parties in the Established Church—the 'Moderates' and the 'Evangelicals' (also called 'The Wild Men', 'the Highland Host' or the 'High Flyers'). The Evangelicals became the majority and 'they carried matters with a high hand. They passed Acts in the Assembly ... altogether beyond the competence of a Church established by law.... The State refused to admit their claims. The strong arm of the law restrained their extravagancies. Still they maintained that their proceedings were justified, and required by the doctrine ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... there was a wide sphere of ecclesiastical rule with which the Emperor had no concern at all, it was held by the papalists that there was nothing done by the Emperor in any capacity which it was not within the competence of the ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... or embark in the industry on their own account. The laboring force on an estate is provided chiefly by Tamil coolies from southern India, and numbers from one to two thousand. Both men and women contrive to lay by a competence at a wage rate of from eight to fifteen ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... safe and happy in a new association with a woman who, more than any other, held his life in her hands. He was getting a new basis for life in friendship and love. Shored up by affection and sympathy, and with a modest competence in his hands for all present and immediately prospective needs, his dependent nature ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... to his love and duty to let it be, and I trust to you, Giles, to make this easy for him, either to get him away while he is yet young, to lead a fresh and manly life in some one of our colonies, or to find some career at home for him which shall provide him with a competence, that if such a temptation should come in his way, he may not find it ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Laissez-moi tranquille in my illusions, if illusions they be. Ah, you cannot conceive what a new life opens to the man who, like myself, has passed the dawn of his youth in privation and fear, when he suddenly acquires competence and hope. If it lasts only a year, it will be something ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sank with them, and some hundreds more; and as the beautiful auburn hair of my wife was borne up from her shoulders, upon which it had been hanging loose, and floated a second or two on the wave after her head had disappeared, I sighed at the remembrance of the transitory enjoyment of competence and love which I had ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... forms of literature, she had always felt more than she had hitherto had occasion to betray; and now all these folded sympathies shot out their tendrils to the light. Mr. Deering knew how to express with unmatched clearness and competence the thoughts that trembled in her mind: to talk with him was to soar up into the azure on the outspread wings of his intelligence, and look down dizzily yet distinctly, on all the wonders and glories of the world. She was a little ashamed, sometimes, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... is a competence for the missus and kids," he kept on repeating to himself, "and the way to finger that competence is to get power." He never owned to himself that this thirst for power was one of the greatest curses of his life; and it did not occur to him that his lust for authority, and his ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... N. sufficiency, adequacy, enough, withal, satisfaction, competence; no less; quantum sufficit[Lat], Q.S.. mediocrity &c. (average) 29. fill; fullness &c. (completeness) 52; plenitude, plenty; abundance; copiousness &c. Adj.; amplitude, galore, lots, profusion; full measure; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... competence in space did not shock him greatly. What bothered him was his lack of control over the situation. Had he seen them and passed on about his business, he recounted ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... with a man who forms one of the great majority of those who gain a moderate competence in business life, his days spent in the wearisome routine of mercantile life, his nights in painful figurings about that delusive "deal" which is to settle satisfactorily all questions of financial perplexity, our talk turned on books, literary celebrities, the ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... spectacles," resumed Mrs. Jaynes. "Now let us look at the matter in a worldly point of view. He is able to give you not only a place, but the very highest position in society; he can offer you, not wealth, but competence, which is better than either poverty or riches. Why, my dear, there are a hundred girls in this town, many of whom excel you in everything which men think desirable in a wife, except, perhaps, the poor, perishable quality of beauty,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... fatal letter, which fell into his hands, convinced him of the injury done him. He took his wife apart, and, feigning a resignation which he did not feel, "My love," he said, "I loved thee, I love thee still: I thought, too, that thou wert content with our competence, and wouldst not have quitted thine husband for any other in the world: I have been convinced otherwise. A letter from Girard informs me, that with thine own consent the king, whom thy portrait has pleased, desires to see thee this very day. It is a misfortune, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the Ecclesiastical Committee had affirmed the competence of the diocesan officials, it received from the Archchancellor Cambacrs a petition stating that the nuptial blessing given to Napoleon and Josephine had not been preceded, accompanied, or followed by the formalities prescribed by the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... their uses. At once coarser than his rival and infinitely more refined and gentle, he had mastered lessons which the other had never found the need of learning, or else had learned too readily and then dismissed. He had thoroughness for the other's competence; insight into human nature, and a vast sympathy, for the other's facile handling of men; a deep devotion to the right for the other's loyalty to party platforms. The very core of his nature was truth, and he himself is reported to have said of Douglas that he ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... slightly. The impressive effect of his fine iron-grey head, and marked features, his scrupulously perfect dress, and general look of competence and ability, was deplorably undone by the signs in him of bewilderment ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... comprehend what these words meant at the end of the Republic. In Donatus' day a "potter" was a day-laborer in loin-cloth and leather apron, earning about twenty cents for a long day of fourteen hours. Needless to say, Vergil's leisured competence during many years did not draw from such a trickling source. Donatus had forgotten that in Vergil's day the economic system of Rome was entirely different. At the end of the Republic, the potters of Northern Italy conducted factories ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... perplexing and mysterious occurrence over which you have no control or understanding. The causes of disease are clear and simple, the sick person is rarely a victim of circumstance and the cure is obvious and within the competence of a moderately intelligent sick person themselves to understand and help administer. In natural medicine, disease is a part of living that you are responsible for, ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... to be in good health, being hard-pressed on a little truckle-bed, than to roll, and to be ill in some broad couch; so too it is better in a small competence to enjoy the calm of moderate desires, than in the midst of superfluities ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... heart she had trampled on forty years before. Though both of them were well on in life, the news of their engagement made little of a sensation. The widow was still fair; the wooer was quiet, refined, and courtly, and the union of their fortunes would assure a competence for the years that might be left to them. The church of St. Paul, on Broadway, was appointed for the wedding, and it was a whim of the groom that his bride should meet him there. At the appointed hour a company of the curious had assembled in the edifice; a rattle of wheels was heard, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... sister was an ancient lady, resident in Philadelphia, the relict of a merchant, whose decease left her the enjoyment of a frugal competence. She was without children, and had often expressed her desire that her nephew Frank, whom she always considered as a sprightly and promising lad, should be put under her care. She offered ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... on a page where the right of royal initiative in Council had been thoughtfully underlined by the Professor; and he discovered with astonishment that a whole series of constitutional questions lay altogether outside the competence of ministers to deal with until they had been first formally submitted to the King himself. Under this heading he found that no financial proposal touching on Crown lands, or on grants to the royal family, could ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... work was actually done by the English navigator was in no measure due to the sagacity of the Admiralty—whose officials procrastinated in an inexplicable fashion even after the Investigator had been commissioned and equipped—but to his own promptness, competence and zeal, and the peculiar dilatoriness of his rivals. Baudin's vessels reached Ile-de-France (Mauritius) in March, 1801, and lay there for the leisurely space of forty days. Two-thirds of a year had elapsed before ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... were charming before their faces when she wanted to be pleasant to them. Amabel seemed to see her son from across the wide chasm that had opened between them; but, looking at his figure, suddenly grown strange, she felt that Augustine's manners were 'nice.' The fact of their niceness, of his competence—really it matched Lady Elliston's—made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. There was no uncertainty ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... were shipped for the West Indies was known; that, as slaves, they were liable to the severities of labour, or the temper of masters, was also known; but in a country like England, where every man is occupied with the concerns of public or private life, and where the struggle for competence, if not for existence, is often of the most trying order, great evils may occur in the distant dependencies of the crown without receiving general notice from the nation. It seems to have been one of the singular results of the war with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... hastily sketched the situation in which Jeanne D'Aubrey was placed, with a chance of securing a competence could her husband be communicated with, and allowed to sign the important paper within the specified ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... have been, Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots: Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death, As I have done the rest of my misleaders, Not to come near our person by ten mile. For competence of life I will allow you, That lack of means enforce you not to evils: And, as we hear you do reform yourselves, We will, according to your strengths and qualities, Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord, To see perform'd the tenour of our word. ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... capacity as such, and such other officials as are clothed with judicial competence by ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... was soon invited to become the minister of a large congregation. This settlement Priestley considered, at the time, to be "the happiest event of his life." And well he might think so; for it gave him competence and leisure; placed him within reach of the best makers of apparatus of the day; made him a member of that remarkable "Lunar Society," at whose meetings he could exchange thoughts with such men as Watt, Wedgwood, Darwin, and Boulton; and threw open to him the pleasant house ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... it may make you more at ease to hear that my father was an apparitor, and I went to Oxford as a servitor, so that in birth you have the advantage of us. Of course, I do not mean that every one does not in the abstract prefer prosperous matches, but John has a fair independent competence, and can afford to do as he pleases; and, for my part, I should be very sorry if this ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exacting professions with too large a literature of their own to leave any leisure for historical investigation. If one has the opportunity to get a good start, or, in the talk of the day, the right sort of a "pull," I can recommend business as a means of gaining a competence which shall enable one to devote one's whole time to a favorite pursuit. Grote was a banker until he reached the age of forty-nine when he retired from the banking house and began the composition of the first volume of his history. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... Pilgrim spirit of my guardian! We were at variance on a thousand points; but our chief and final dispute arose from the pertinacity with which he insisted on my adopting a particular profession; while I, being heir to a moderate competence, had avowed my purpose of keeping aloof from the regular business of life. This would have been a dangerous resolution, anywhere in the world; it was fatal, in New England. There is a grossness in the conceptions of my countrymen; they will not be convinced that any good ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... construction; a corps of engineers, technicians and skilled workers, and a substantial mass of humanity which provided the energy needed to erect the temples, monuments and other remains which testify to the political, economic, and cultural competence of the ruling elements and the technical skills present in the ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... received, directly upon his arrival, on 4 September 1506, the degree of doctor of theology. That he did not attach much value to the degree is easy to understand. He regarded it, however, as an official warrant of his competence as a writer on theological subjects, which would strengthen his position when assailed by the suspicion of his critics. He writes disdainfully about the title, even to his Dutch friends who in former days had helped him on in his studies for the express purpose of obtaining ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... should have said at once, "Let this matter be investigated, and here am I to aid in the investigation," Soon after this folio was brought into public notice, Mr. Charles Knight proposed that it should be submitted to a palaeographic examination by gentlemen of acknowledged competence; but so far was Mr. Collier from yielding to this suggestion, that we have good reason for saying that it was not until after the volume passed, in 1859, into the hands of Sir Frederic Madden of the British Museum, that the more eminent Shakespearian scholars in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... had become sick of "the smoke and the grandeur and the roar of Rome" (Od. III, 29, 12); his Sabine retreat would be an asylum and a haven; would "give him back to himself"; would endow him with competence, leisure, freedom; he hailed it as the mouse in his delightful apologue craved refuge in the country from the splendour and the perils ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... comfort. Up to the year of the great pestilence that civilization had prospered, had produced a long series of generals, inventors, architects, sculptors, painters, musicians, poets, authors, and orators. Everywhere men had shown self-confidence, capacity, originality, power and competence and had achieved success ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... were cordially appreciated by Mendelssohn and other masters; in 1868 ill-health forced him to resign his musical appointments in Halle, but by the efforts of Liszt, Joachim, and others, funds were raised by means of concerts to ensure him a competence for life; he published upwards of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... confidence of her own home circle. Her faithful sister Mary, a most successful teacher in the public schools of Rochester for a quarter of a century, and a good financier, who with her patrimony and salary had laid by a competence, took on her shoulders double duty at home in cheering the declining years of her parents, that Susan might do the public work in the reforms in which they were equally interested. Now, with life's ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... state pays, and at a rate immeasurably higher than our own remuneration to labour even in the United States. According to their theory, every child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age, and there terminating the period of labour, should have acquired enough for an independent competence during life. As, no matter what the disparity of fortune in the parents, all the children must equally serve, so all are equally paid according to their several ages or the nature of their work. Where the parents or friends choose to retain a child in their own service, they must pay into the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... would be no organized households, and, consequently, none of that earnest endeavor for competence and respectability, which is the mainspring to human effort; none of those sweet, softening, restraining and elevating influences of domestic life, which can alone fill the earth with the glory of the Lord and make glad the city of Zion. This love is indeed heaven ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... much astonished. To do him justice he had for some time, ever since Ringfield's advent in the village in fact, found himself wishing that he might sincerely reform and offer Pauline the honour of marriage, and with it some hopes of a respectable competence. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... station to that he how occupied. He was by birth and education a gentleman; but partly owing to his own mismanagement and extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether unavoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of supporting his family, which at that time consisted of a wife and two children. He was not without some share of talent; but ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... sweeps, and dashes in all directions. Sometimes as many as three of the crew of the Jasper B. would be knocked to the deck or into the water by a boom at the same time. But Cleggett noted with satisfaction that they were plucky; they stuck valiantly to the job. A doubt assailed Cleggett as to the competence of Cap'n Abernethy, but he was loyal ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... important, so far-reaching, that his mind at moments seemed as if like to snap, to break, but which was accepted by nine-tenths of humanity without a second thought, as lightly as the most superficial detail of daily life. But how others acted was not his concern; he must consider his own competence to bear the burden—the perilous burden he had asked, and which ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... sufficiency"—perfect competence to meet just the present emergency. A sufficiency, let us mark, absolutely independent of Nature's resources,—a sufficiency beautifully illustrated by "unlearned and ignorant" Peter and John in the presence of the learned Sanhedrim. Let us rejoice and praise God as we trace these three ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... the messenger, then, must be the study of men. He must specialise in human nature, and his understanding must go down into its very depths. Every addition to the volume and accuracy of his knowledge will mean addition of power and competence. Those writers who impress us most are those who understand us best. The physician who most commands our confidence and, as a consequence, does us most good is he whose description of our symptoms most nearly corresponds with ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... of their own. The Bhadralok, or Upper Crust, consists of two Brahman and ten Kayastha (writer-caste) families. Among the latter group Kumodini Kanta Basu's took an unquestioned lead. He had amassed a modest competence as sub-contractor in the Commissariat during the second Afghan War, and retired to enjoy it in his ancestral village. His first care was to rebuild the family residence, a congenial task which occupied five years and made a large hole in his savings. It slowly grew into a masonry structure ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... with their mother's policy, they were waiting for something to turn up—waiting, in utter uncertainty, and with dubious prospects, to achieve by marriage the security and competence which they must not work for, or they would utterly lose caste in the old social world ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and an education superior to the schooling of any high-school graduate. It is true that I am an infant in the eyes of the law, so I have not the right to hold the ear of the law long enough to explain my competence." ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... cited; but simply because they are mostly unobtrusive, and to be found only by that deliberate search which nobody makes. I say nobody, but I am wrong. Successful search has been made by one whose competence as an observer is beyond question, and whose testimony is less liable than that of all others to any bias towards the conclusion that such inheritance takes place. I refer to the author ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... precisely what one wanted, what one had not (if one had it) would be as bad. He had never been self-conscious—it was not the custom of his generation—and, having but little imagination, had never suspected that he was laying up that quality for his descendants, together with a competence which secured them ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Diderot's last years, but no copy of it was given to the public before 1813-14, when M. Guizot published extracts from an autograph manuscript confided to him by Suard. Diderot, with a characteristic respect for competence, with which no egotism can ever interfere in minds of such strength and veracity as his, began by urging the Empress to consult Ernesti of Leipsic, the famous editor of Cicero, and no less famous in his day (1707-1781) for the changes that he introduced into the system of teaching in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... time his father died, without leaving him, a younger son, a competence. Nor would his great relatives give him an office or sinecure by which he might be supported while he sought truth, and he was forced to plod at the law, which he never liked, resisting the blandishments and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would "never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he lived." And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to say, he considered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... investment. We employed the seventy thousand francs left me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on this we get nine per cent, and we have stock besides. Since this transaction, which was concluded some ten months ago, our income has doubled, and we now possess a competence, I can complain of my marriage in a pecuniary point of view no more than as regards my affections. My vanity alone has suffered, and my ambition has been swamped. You will understand the various petty troubles which have assailed ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... council of war was appointed to try him, composed of Marshals Massena, Augereau, Mortier, and three lieutenants. It would have been better for Ney had he submitted himself to their verdict; but he unwisely denied their competence, and demanded, as a peer of the realm, to be tried by his peers, and it was a tribunal which showed him no mercy. It does not appear that the king desired his death; but Talleyrand declared that it would be a grand example, and the royalists ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... least forty-five, treated George, without any appearance of effort, as a coeval. George immediately liked him, and the mere existence of Mr. Soulter had the effect of dissipating nearly all George's horrible qualms and apprehensions about his own competence to face the overwhelming job of erection. Mr. Soulter was most soothing in the matter of ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... little sis," said Wayland, drawing her to his bosom, "have I not told you that when you have acquired an education, you can become a teacher, which will surely prove an occupation more congenial to your taste, and by it you can gain an ample competence ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... more and more anxious to realise a competence speedily, every time I look to the future, and reflect on the true objects of life, and the likeliest means of procuring them. I am desirous to be able to realise the projects I have formed before the age of feeling ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... I do there, Mr. Jeorling, and what could I ever have done there? There was nothing before me but poverty. Here, on the contrary, in these Islands of Desolation, where I have no reason to feel desolate, ease and competence have come ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... work proved a success, not only in public acceptance and esteem, but even in a temporal view, bringing to him at last a modest competence, which he accepted with surprise and gratitude. To the last of a very long life, he was the same steady, undiscouraged worker, the same calm witness against popular sins and proclaimer of unpopular truths, ever saying and doing what he saw to be eternally right, without the slightest consultation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... competence to extract the truth from that guileless maiden, Henrietta in nowise questioned. "The child," she complacently told herself, when preparing to set forth on her mission, "is ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Nevertheless, she was a grand and noble creature. And I—in love! Not so discouraged as you may suppose; for Lord Rainsforth often hinted encouragement which even I could scarcely misconstrue. Not caring for rank, and not wishing for fortune beyond competence for his daughter, he saw in me all he required,—a gentleman of ancient birth, and one in whom his own active mind could prosecute that kind of mental ambition which overflowed in him, and yet had never had its vent. And Ellinor!—Heaven forbid I should say she loved me, but something ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and who swear for fame. Behold the schools in which plebeian minds, Once simple, are initiated in arts Which some may practise with politer grace, But none with readier skill! 'Tis here they learn The road that leads from competence and peace To indigence and rapine; till at last Society, grown weary of the load, Shakes her encumbered lap, and casts them out. But censure profits little. Vain the attempt To advertise in verse ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... compass of a modest bookshelf. But the province of human knowledge has become so wide that, however much "general information" a man may have, he can truly know nothing unless he studies it as a specialist. It is, perhaps, largely as a reaction against the Jacksonian theory of universal competence that the avowed ideal of American education to-day is to cultivate the student's power of concentration—to give him a survey, elementary but sound, of as wide a field as possible, but above all to teach him so to use his mind that to whatever corner of that field he may turn for his walk in life, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the people at home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none of the professional man's singleness of purpose, might on the basis of a complete story have lost sight of the war in a melee of faction and counter-faction about the competence of the officers. Instead, therefore, of letting the public act on all the facts which the generals knew, the authorities presented only certain facts, and these only in such a way as would be most likely to ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... that, so far from being discharged, he will be promoted at the end of a month, and will eventually be made editor of the paper. Undoubtedly this is a magnificent boast, but to make it good means a complete transformation in the character of this man's work—namely, from entire incompetence to competence of an unusual sort, all within a month's time. You are the man who has made this extraordinary boast. To clear the ground before I begin to show you where your trouble is, please tell me how you propose to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... their competence and the comforts which it brings shield women of the higher and middle classes in this country, in a great measure, from certain snares of the devil in which multitudes of their poorer sisters miserably fall. If those who enjoy this protection throw away their advantage by turning ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... a dispassionate voice behind them, "that a person of limited intelligence, on being assured that he would certainly one day enjoy an adequate competence if he closely followed the industrious habits of the thrifty bee, spent the greater part of his life in anointing his thighs with the yellow powder which he laboriously collected from the flowers of the field. ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... it," Henri Verbier answered: he was leaning his elbows on the window-sill and gradually drawing closer to the young cashier. "I don't suppose that an important position like the one you hold, requiring absolute integrity and competence, is given without fullest investigation. Your work is not tiring, but that does not mean it would be entrusted ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... occupant of the throne was too engrossing for Ralegh to weigh the character of the individual. He imagined himself not merely pardoned, but trusted by the depositary of boundless national resources, which he was conscious of an infinite competence to employ. His admiration of the capabilities of the royal Prerogative, if utilized as he perceived that they could be utilized, embraced its titular tenant whoever he might be. He was dominated by an intense sense of all he might accomplish for the indistinguishable ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... those tempting little arithmetical sums by which it is demonstrated that paying so much for ten acres of barren land, and so much for planting it with vines or oranges, the income in three years will be a competence to the investor and his family. People do not spend much time now in gaping over abnormal vegetables, or trying to convince themselves that wines of every known variety and flavor can be produced within the limits of one flat and ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... earnings of the absentee author when American Consul at Liverpool, and had obtained from Hawthorne a promise on the eve of his departure for his post, ... that he would send him all he could spare from his official income, to be carefully nursed into a competence for his family. Never was better advice given or wiser service performed by publisher to author. The investments thus made became the means of comfort to the returned writer in the maturity of his years and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... should be made a condition in the Irish Division which was not so in the Ulster Division—nor, indeed, so far as I know, anywhere else at that time. Men who had been officers of Ulster Volunteers got their commissions as a matter of course; the officer of National Volunteers had to prove his competence in the cadet company. General Parsons fully admitted this difference of treatment, and justified it by saying to Redmond that in consequence of it he would be very sorry to change officers with the Ulster Division. One cannot refuse to admire such a spirit; but he ought to have ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... them. She applied for her old position at the hotel, and after some delay secured it. This was a great relief to her, for she would never have consented to being a burden on her sister and it assured her a competence as long ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... the need of the Mediator if we would come to the Father; it is to realise, in principle, the need of the Atonement, the need, and eventually the fact. When the modern mind therefore presents itself to us in this mood of philosophical competence, judging Christ from the point of view of the whole, and showing Him His place, we can only insist that the place is unequal to His greatness, and that His greatness cannot be explained away. The mind which is closed to the fact of His unique claims, ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... to tide him over, had not even made up his mind that Tweet was not a rank faker; yet Tweet seemed to be taking it for granted that his case was won, and that they were to go from the breakfast table to Morgan & Stroud's to enter the road to competence. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... was Shelley's as that of his own contemporaries—Keats, half chewed in the jaws of London and spit dying on to Italy; de Quincey, who, if he escaped, escaped rent and maimed from those cruel jaws; Coleridge, whom they dully mumbled for the major portion of his life. Shelley had competence, poetry, love; yet he wailed that he could lie down like a tired child and weep away his life of care. Is it ever so with you, sad brother; is it ever so with me? and is there no drinking of pearls except they be dissolved in biting tears? "Which of us has his desire, or having ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... in a plain brick house on East Thirty-Ninth Street. He was a down-town merchant, and in possession of a snug competence. Mrs. Fenton was his own cousin, but he had never offered to help her in any way, though he was quite aware of the fact that she was struggling hard to support her little family. He had a son Raymond who was by no means as plain in his tastes as his ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... burden of dependence; but it was accepted at the sacrifice of all his life's hopes. True, that in those days the experiment of a sea-faring life had often, even in instances which he recalled, brought forth fortune and an ability to settle down in peaceful competence in after life. But there was Diana. Would she wait for him? Encircled on all sides with lovers, would she keep faith with an adventurer gone for an indefinite quest? The desponding, self-distrusting side of his nature said, "No. Why ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... lord, excuse me, if I am obliged So soon to interrupt you. I acknowledged, Say you, the competence of the commission? I never have acknowledged it, my lord; How could I so? I could not give away My own prerogative, the intrusted rights Of my own people, the inheritance Of my own son, and every monarch's honor [The very laws of England say I could ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... me to think that Janet cannot, through my act, be given that ease and tranquillity of spirit which come from competence. But, my dear Rupert, you will be of full age in seven years more. Then, if you are in the same mind—and I am sure you will not change—you, being your own master, can do freely as you will. In the meantime, to secure, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... startled. Dicky's words brought something to my mind that I had completely forgotten. I was the heiress to all that Jack possessed, not great wealth, it is true, but enough to insure me a modest competence for the rest of ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... lucky rustic, this upstart lout, rich without deserving it for any competence he had, was giving himself the airs of an intelligent dealer, presuming to approach Rafael, "his deputy," with a proposal for a freight-rate bill to promote the shipping of oranges into the interior of Spain! As if a little thing like a bill in Congress ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a few moments' intercourse proved to me that Madame Guix's competence extended far beyond the bounds of her metier. She was a splendid worker, and no task was too difficult, so long as it furthered our purpose—namely, that of being ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... advantageous to find them again and colonize one of them for this purpose. Regarding this as certain, the Marques thinks that the exploration and colonizing in question should be mainly at these islands, being committed to some person of competence, care, and fidelity. For this he judges that the said Sevastian Vizcayno would be suitable, because he would know, as well as anyone could, the way to the harbor of Monte Rrey, being already acquainted with it. If the commission were entrusted to him, it would be well for him to go from Acapulco ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... be rich and honorable; to enjoy ease; and to pursue pleasure. But how small is the number of those who compass these objects! In this country, the great body of mankind are, indeed, possest of competence; a safer and happier lot than that to which they aspire; yet few, very few are rich. Here, also, the great body of mankind possess a character, generally reputable; but very limited is the number of those who arrive at the honor which they so ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... made the indulgences of competence to me, I hope I shall relinquish them without a sigh. Had you done nothing more than screen my infancy and youth from hardship and poverty, than supply the mere needs of nature, my debt to you ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... and moral death as well as raise themselves from darkness to light. Some of this sort are to be found among the nobles and senators themselves,—a few among the very dregs of the people, but most among those who, securing for themselves competence and independence by their own labor in some of the useful arts, and growing thoughtful and intelligent with their labor, understand in some degree, which others do not, what life is for and what they are for, and hail with joy truths which commend themselves to both their reason and ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... about very much found this to be about all that they could do. So, the rock pile grew to be the accepted goal of all the Negro men who wore themselves out in other service without laying aside a competence or establishing themselves permanently in the good graces ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... examination for clerks, and none for legislators, is not this an anomaly? Ask the honourable member for Muckborough on what acquisitions in history and mental and moral philosophy he founds his claim of competence to make laws for the nation. He can only tell you that he has been chosen as the most conspicuous Grub among the Moneygrubs of his borough to be the representative of all that is sordid, selfish, hard-hearted, unintellectual, and ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... this justice was administered by the nobility may have excited a certain degree of popular interest; but the question of the transference of the courts from the hands of the senatorial judices would probably never have been heard of, had not the largest item in this judicial competence had a decisively political bearing. The Roman State had been as unsuccessful as others of the ancient world in keeping its judicial machinery free from the taint of party influences. It had been accounted one of the surest signs of popular sovereignty ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... at the bottom of all this to a great extent. If the parents would put their children in the way of earning a competence earlier than they do, the children would soon become self-supporting and independent. As it is, under the present system, the young ones get old enough to have all manner of legitimate wants (that is, if they have any ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler |
