Inability

Examples

• The English and the Germans (he indignantly declared) were always reviling the Italians for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White.
• Left to herself, Gerty mused distressfully upon her friend's plight, and her own inability to relieve it. Edith Wharton. The House of Mirth.
• It seems as if he must go mad in the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
• It's a mistake due to poverty of imagination and inability to learn from experience. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• When this is done, it is generally the effect of fraud, and not of inability; and the longest apprenticeship can give no security against fraud. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
• All the stultification of the stand-pat mind may be described as inability, and perhaps unwillingness, to nourish a fruitful choice of issues. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.
• The weight, therefore, of an independent empire, which you seem certain of our inability to bear, will not be so great as you imagine. Benjamin Franklin. Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin.
• The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
• The inability thus to solace her outraged feelings gave her a paralyzing sense of insignificance. Edith Wharton. The House of Mirth.
• Most of us have at times been annoyed by the inability to secure water on an upper story, because of the drawing off of a supply on a lower floor. Bertha M. Clark. General Science.
• There was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to understand his meaning. Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist.
• Calling on his nearest friend the next morning for even a pair of suspenders, Mr. Andrews was met with regrets of inability, because the burglars had also been there. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
• It was a most affectionate letter, and expressed great and true regret for his inability to attend. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. North and South.
• The wound, and consequent inability of Argyropylo, caused Raymond to be the first in command. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
• The weakness I have suggested is one that all statesmen share in some degree: an inability to interpret adequately the world they govern. Walter Lippmann. A Preface to Politics.

Typed by Darla