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aptitude
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  • Herbert was not unintelligent—in fact, he was quite smart, with a particular aptitude for electronics and mechanics.   (source)
  • I have been told that you have already shown aptitude at resisting the Imperius Curse.   (source)
  • Today is the day of the aptitude test that will show me which of the five factions I belong in.   (source)
  • Laila told her of his aptitude for solving riddles, his trickery and mischief, his easy laugh.   (source)
  • Your file shows that you were identified several years ago as having high aptitude.   (source)
  • And the milestones of his training: Dutchy passes his physical and scores high on the mechanical aptitude test.   (source)
  • When it came time to apply to college, Joy got a perfect score on the math portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test.   (source)
  • Your scores on the aptitude tests are phenomenal and your teachers see your potential.   (source)
  • Immediately I'd think of the Air Force, but as a freshman in high school I had taken the aptitude test and failed miserably.   (source)
  • Adam has a special aptitude for figures and it worries Samuel that soon he will have nothing more to teach him in this field, having exhausted his own knowledge.   (source)
  • An aptitude test he had taken in the eighth grade had measured his "ability to learn" and ranked him in the 6th percentile.   (source)
  • Minnie showed "a remarkable aptitude for the work," Holmes wrote in his memoir.   (source)
  • Her aptitude for the program was making it easier to expand it to others in her pod, and by the end of the second week, a dozen others in the room were answering survey questions, too.   (source)
  • Becoming a successful McDonald's franchisee, he noted, didn't require "any unusual aptitude or intellect."   (source)
  • You're a jock who doesn't compete in his best sport, a student who doesn't excel where his aptitude is highest, and you surround yourself with a supporting cast straight out of 'The Far Side.   (source)
  • The only thing Carter had shown aptitude for was summoning butter knives and pooping birds.   (source)
  • In his view, the F's were all due to attitude, not aptitude.   (source)
  • It's not unusual to find someone with his aptitude.   (source)
  • It was in those days that he devised his rather simplistic theories concerning the relationship between a woman's appearance and her aptitude for love.   (source)
  • Some people have a natural ear for languages or a special aptitude for math.   (source)
  • He was the only brother to show an aptitude for business—he was his father's last hope.   (source)
  • In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline.   (source)
  • Each of you has been chosen for my class because we believe you might possibly have an aptitude for riding.   (source)
  • I told her I had no aptitude whatsoever for those things, and was that a real scorpion on that guy's belt buckle that was just in here?   (source)
  • My human life had not prepared me for things that came naturally, and I couldn't make myself trust this aptitude to last.   (source)
  • It made me think he had some aptitude for his training, though I'd gotten the feeling that he thought his apprenticeship was somehow beneath him.   (source)
  • It also involved pulling up stumps all day, an activity he had no interest in or aptitude for.   (source)
  • The butcher's burly grace, watch him trim a chop, see how he belongs to the cutting block, to the wallow of trembling muscle and mess—his aptitude and ease, the sense that he was born to the task restored a certain meaning to these eviscerated beasts.   (source)
  • Edna soon proved her aptitude, and so her parents sent her to attend a primary school for girls in the nearby French colony of Djibouti.   (source)
  • Some applicants didn't score high enough on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the intelligence test all potential recruits take before entering the military.   (source)
  • They think I've got no aptitude for the supernatural.   (source)
  • She was very busy with the house, because Clara had once more turned her back on all the household chores, claiming; that she had never had an aptitude for them.   (source)
  • Unwittingly, he had discovered deep within himself a fertile aptitude for smoking with a cigarette holder.   (source)
  • Their daily lesson: distinctive-ness can be dangerous, so it's best to develop an aptitude for not being noticed.   (source)
  • But in their professional roles, the only ritual they cared about was engraving the multiplication and periodic tables as well as Newton's laws into the brains of their Ethiopian pupils, who were uniformly smart and who had a great aptitude for arithmetic.   (source)
  • It was common knowledge that the night-floor stewards in the major hotels were armed, selected as much for their marksmanship as for their aptitude for service.   (source)
  • But Felicia showed no aptitude for the stage.   (source)
  • If the boy showed any aptitude for arms, some knight might even take him as a squire.   (source)
  • First test to be administered: physical aptitude.   (source)
  • He likened it to when my sister Christy showed a passion and aptitude for playing the piano.   (source)
  • Outstanding leadership ability, high academic standing, loyalty to the Institute, and military aptitude.   (source)
  • Paper #68 said, "The true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration."   (source)
  • But like Marse Robert, Grant possesses a savant's aptitude for warfare—indeed, he is capable of little else.   (source)
  • Unless his lawyers try to block it, Doctor Mira will test him, determine his emotional and mental state, the probability factor of his aptitude toward violence.   (source)
  • ALAN: I haven't the aptitude.   (source)
  • [Early aptitude for metaphor) Maybe you saw Strohmyer's picture in Time magazine last week along with the article in which he was called easily the most spectacular broken field runner at least since Tom Harmon and perhaps Red Grange.   (source)
  • Ever go looking for a job and get an intelligence test or an aptitude test or a personality inventory for your pains?   (source)
  • When I objected that I didn't feel any aptitude for salesmanship, she asked how I'd like to lend her my leather belt so she could whack some sense into me.   (source)
  • The placement officer let me list my lesser preferences, in order, and I caught four more days of the wildest aptitude tests I've ever heard of.   (source)
  • Vasia did not show any great talent for drawing but he had enough aptitude to enter a school of industrial design.   (source)
  • Lamar from the beginning under his mother's direction showed a notable aptitude for study.   (source)
  • It was Mr. Samgrass's particular aptitude to help others with their work, but he was himself the author of several stylish little books.   (source)
  • I'm an older hand at it… with much more natural aptitude at it than you have….   (source)
  • If they showed no aptitude for any of these trades, they became field hands and, in the opinion of the negroes, they had lost their claim to any social standing at all.   (source)
  • She took an aptitude test in which she answered questions which seemed silly--which weighs the most, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers, was an example.   (source)
  • Often I looked for vocational hints in magazines, and I considered training at night school to become a court reporter, should I have the aptitude, and even going back to the university for something bigger.   (source)
  • …battles lost not alone because of superior numbers and failing ammunition and stores, but because of generals who should not have been generals, who were generals not through training in contemporary methods or aptitude for learning them, but by the divine right to say 'Go there' conferred upon them by an absolute caste system;   (source)
  • He was fond of music and the arts, had a special aptitude for languages, and before he was sure of his vocation he had tasted all the familiar pleasures of the world.   (source)
  • He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer—a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon.   (source)
  • The fact is that I have little aptitude for reflection.   (source)
  • Dr. Gottlieb tells me that you have a natural aptitude for cloistered investigation but that you have been looking over the fields of medical practice and public health before you settled down to the laboratory.   (source)
  • Evidently she had great natural aptitude for her work.   (source)
  • Whether out of fear or aptitude, David went through these first steps with hardly a single error.   (source)
  • At first the work had been tolerable from its novelty, but now it grew irksome; and when he discovered that he had no aptitude for it, he began to hate it.   (source)
  • She handled her brushes with a certain ease and freedom which came, not from long and close acquaintance with them, but from a natural aptitude.   (source)
  • It was evident to me then that I existed in the same manner as all other men, that I must grow old, that I must die like them, and that among them I was to be distinguished merely as one of those who have no aptitude for writing.   (source)
  • Lily was naturally proud of her mother's aptitude in this line: she had been brought up in the faith that, whatever it cost, one must have a good cook, and be what Mrs. Bart called "decently dressed."   (source)
  • She had the aptitude of the struggler who seeks emancipation.   (source)
  • Rogojin is not fair to himself; he has a large heart; he has aptitude for sympathy.   (source)
  • As I have said before, I had no aptitude for mathematics; the different points were not explained to me as fully as I wished.   (source)
  • I have neither aptitude nor inclination for fiction.   (source)
  • You have shown, besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes, upon the whole, for behaving well in them.   (source)
  • Ivan Ilych possessed this capacity to separate his real life from the official side of affairs and not mix the two, in the highest degree, and by long practice and natural aptitude had brought it to such a pitch that sometimes, in the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow himself to let the human and official relations mingle.   (source)
  • An honest man, with too much faith in human nature, little aptitude for business and intricate detail, he had had large opportunity of becoming acquainted at first hand with much of the work before him.   (source)
  • It is further recorded in the same books that he showed a great aptitude for mathematical studies as well as map-making, and carried away a prize (The Life of Lord Lawrence, tree-calf, two vols.   (source)
  • From this assertion Mrs. Penniman saw no reason to dissent; she possibly reflected that her own great use in the world was owing to her aptitude for many things.   (source)
  • It would be a great mistake to suppose that Dorothea would have cared about any share in Mr. Casaubon's learning as mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the neighborhood of Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epithet would not have described her to circles in whose more precise vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing, apart from character.   (source)
  • Their noise increased to a chorus of baas, upon which Oak pulled the milk-can from before the fire, and taking a small tea-pot from the pocket of his smock-frock, filled it with milk, and taught those of the helpless creatures which were not to be restored to their dams how to drink from the spout—a trick they acquired with astonishing aptitude.   (source)
  • He called his species of work, for which he possessed special aptitude, "shaving barbers."   (source)
  • The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes.   (source)
  • I say that according to all probability I shall not be able to undergo the fatigues of the siege of La Rochelle, and that it would be far better that you should appoint there either Monsieur de Conde, Monsieur de Bassopierre, or some valiant gentleman whose business is war, and not me, who am a churchman, and who am constantly turned aside for my real vocation to look after matters for which I have no aptitude.   (source)
  • You have no aptitude for science!   (source)
  • Certainly they will, in their gentleness, their lowly docility of heart, their aptitude to repose on a superior mind and rest on a higher power, their childlike simplicity of affection, and facility of forgiveness.   (source)
  • The wild effervescence of his mood—which had so readily supplied thoughts, fantasies, and a strange aptitude of words, and impelled him to talk from the mere necessity of giving vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas had entirely subsided.   (source)
  • And Georgy liked to play the part of master and perhaps had a natural aptitude for it.   (source)
  • He was an adroit courtier, a great hypocrite, and nothing more; he had no special aptitude for affairs, and no intellect, but he knew how to manage his own business successfully; no one could get the better of him there, and, to be sure, that's the principal thing.   (source)
  • She found him, however, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors, and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother; she found him very capable of being a pleasant companion, and only prevented from being so always, by too great an aptitude to fancy himself as much superior to people in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs. Jennings and Charlotte.   (source)
  • Chapter IX: The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude And No Taste For Science, Literature, Or Art.   (source)
  • Lori, because of her good grades and art portfolio, had been accepted into a government-sponsored summer camp for students with special aptitudes.†   (source)
  • "My point is, maybe that's not where your aptitudes lie," she said.†   (source)
  • "These aptitudes," said Jen Shinnan.†   (source)
  • I am pleased, of course, because of your aptitude test results.   (source)
  • For the briefest moment, I questioned whether they knew about the aptitude test.   (source)
  • What sort of character and aptitude tests do the Ministry do on you, if you get enough NEWTs?   (source)
  • It showed that he had an aptitude for almost nothing.   (source)
  • Math aptitude is another thing, but people aren't meant to be overly bright in everything.   (source)
  • "This simulation is different from the aptitude test," he says.   (source)
  • Having aptitude for Erudite isn't a bad thing.   (source)
  • The test was designed to measure his aptitude for a variety of careers.   (source)
  • So you have no idea what my aptitude is?   (source)
  • Most of the Divergent get two results in the aptitude test.   (source)
  • They are used only for the aptitude tests, so I have never been in one before.   (source)
  • "So I take it Amity wasn't one of the factions you had an aptitude for," he says, grinning.   (source)
  • Do you ever administer the aptitude tests?   (source)
  • If she's got aptitude for Erudite, how can we be sure she's not working for Erudite?   (source)
  • Don't you think someone with the aptitude for multiple factions might have a loyalty problem?   (source)
  • I have equal aptitude for Erudite as I do for Dauntless and Abnegation, after all.   (source)
  • You had aptitude for Erudite, didn't you?   (source)
  • Why did I never wonder how Eric and Jeanine knew that I had aptitude for three factions?   (source)
  • I know I belong in Dauntless because everything I did in that aptitude test told me so.   (source)
  • Sometimes that testing involved re-administering the aptitude test.   (source)
  • Nothing like what I just described ever happened to him in the aptitude test simulation, I know.   (source)
  • Yeah, but he doesn't have aptitude for Erudite.   (source)
  • We've got the same aptitude for magic as most royal lines, but … we've got problems, too.   (source)
  • Life thus far had convinced him of his aptitude for two things: sickness and suffering.   (source)
  • Probably the one with scientific aptitude was Benjamin, the male who had devised new, important equipment for the Rehabilitation Center.   (source)
  • "It's almost perverse," he said, "having so much athletic equipment here when there's no athletic aptitude at all."   (source)
  • The harvest counselor who interviews her seems to assume that, in spite of aptitude scores, every Unwind must be an imbecile.   (source)
  • The school reps flocked around me because of my high academic achievements, and because I had done exceptionally well on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), ranking somewhere in the low ninetieth percentile—again, unheard of from a student in the inner city of Detroit.   (source)
  • …the first several years to a study of the French (covering their idioms and forms of address, the personalities of Napoleon, Richelieu, and Talleyrand, the essence of the Enlightenment, the genius of Impressionism, and their prevailing aptitude for je ne sail quoi), the Count and Osip spent the next few years studying the British (covering the necessity of tea, the implausible rules of cricket, the etiquette of foxhunting, their relentless if well-deserved pride in Shakespeare,…   (source)
  • Elite universities often require that students take an intelligence test (such as the American Scholastic Aptitude Test) for admission.   (source)
  • 'Yes, as I was saying, Potter, Professor Lupin thought you showed a pronounced aptitude for the subject, and obviously for an Auror —'   (source)
  • She mentioned that there was one who had singular skills at caretaking, another who loved newchildren, one with unusual scientific aptitude, and a fourth for whom physical labor was an obvious pleasure.   (source)
  • 5, but I agreed to return because he seemed to be very excited about the aptitude tests and I thought that he might be depressed.   (source)
  • I told her the way they created hexagons, they must be the ones who could do math in their heads, and she smiled and said, yes, nest builders had true math aptitude.   (source)
  • Then you would be required to undergo a stringent series of character and aptitude tests at the Auror office.   (source)
  • "Yes and no. My conclusion," she explains, "is that you display equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite."   (source)
  • Our classes are cut in half today, so we will attend all of them before the aptitude tests, which take place after lunch.   (source)
  • I could tell him I've been worried for weeks about what the aptitude test will tell me—Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity, or Dauntless?   (source)
  • If you had shown an automatic distaste for the knife and selected the cheese, the simulation would have led you to a different scenario that confirmed your aptitude for Amity.   (source)
  • "Aptitude tests today," I say.   (source)
  • Even among the Divergent, you are somewhat of an oddity, because you have aptitude for three factions.   (source)
  • We each had to choose a research focus in Erudite initiation, and mine was the aptitude test simulation, so I know a lot about the way it's designed.   (source)
  • "A flexible personality," she says, "would probably have aptitude for more than one faction, don't you agree, Ms. Prior?"   (source)
  • The floor, the walls, and the ceiling are all made of the same light panels, dim now, that glowed in the aptitude test room.   (source)
  • Tori was a tattoo artist and an aptitude test volunteer—how did she know how to alter the aptitude test program?   (source)
  • Who told me what three factions you had an aptitude for, and what our best chance was to get you to come here, and to put your mother in the last simulation to make it more effective.   (source)
  • "No one has ever gotten three, not because of aptitude, but simply because in order to get that result, you have to refuse to choose something," he says, moving closer still.   (source)
  • "Obviously we don't know," he says, "but there are nearly a dozen mysterious deaths recorded among the Dauntless from the past six years, and there is a correlation between those people and irregular aptitude test results or initiation simulation results."   (source)
  • Now, in the last year or so his marks dropped just a touch, and his aptitude tests weren't the highest, but he has such a wonderful, enthusiastic outlook on life, I'm sure he'd be an asset… ' 'Mrs McAllister!' broke in Webb.   (source)
  • You're a high school dropout, your aptitude scores are way below average, and you have the body of a skinny rat with the eyesight of Stevie Wonder.   (source)
  • My throat tightens as I remember following her into the aptitude test room, my eyes on her hawk tattoo.   (source)
  • One set, for example, was simple aptitude tests developed by the Institute for Educational Research, a precursor to the group that now develops the SATs.   (source)
  • That's one of the reasons why everyone in the city has to take the aptitude test at sixteen—if they're aware during the test, that shows us that they might have healed genes.   (source)
  • You see, Mr. McDaniels, a boy with Max's aptitude and creativity cannot flourish in a program that does not recognize and develop his unique skills.   (source)
  • I wanted to ask who the "we" were who thought I might have an aptitude for riding, but I was scared to say anything and just scrambled after her like everyone else.   (source)
  • We cannot agree in the political heresy that says: For forms of government let fools contest—
    That which is best administered is best—
    But we can say that the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.   (source)
  • The thirteen-year-old is the family expert on the computer not just because he has the greatest aptitude for electronic equipment or because he uses computers the most, but also because when new information about the family computer arises, he is the one assigned, automatically, to remember it.   (source)
  • "Scholastic Aptitude Practice Test, English, Part III" floats at eye level, atop a long column of words-"cacophony," "metaphor," "alliteration"-and choices of definitions.   (source)
  • Among other things, it crowds out a vision that drove him all but crazy: the look on some MIT professor's face when he sees Cedric's abysmal score of 75 out of a possible 160 on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, or PSAT.   (source)
  • By the light of the flashlights I can just make out the tattoo of a hawk on the back of her neck, the first thing I spoke to her about when she administered my aptitude test.   (source)
  • I add the aptitude test to a mental list of things that were once so important to me, cast aside because it was just a ruse to get these people the information or result they wanted.   (source)
  • She administered my aptitude test.   (source)
  • I see Tobias standing in the middle of the lawn, wearing mixed faction colors—a gray T-shirt, blue jeans, and a black sweatshirt with a hood, representing all the factions my aptitude test told me I was qualified for.   (source)
  • He had no qualifications, no experience, and no aptitude in administration, but since Bernie could talk a Baptist into burning a Bible, the superintendent had no other choice.   (source)
  • But he was so earnest, so doggedly determined to sweat it out — he didn't have any aptitude but he kept on trying — that I must have done that, subconsciously.   (source)
  • I'll give the aptitude tests and you do the interviews.   (source)
  • In that great kitchen, with its multiplicity of spits, small enough to roast a lark and large enough to roast a boar, the Friar had learned a thing or two about sauces, and in his lonely years at Acoma he had bettered his instruction by a natural aptitude for the art.   (source)
  • I had it until I took up public speaking, developed my voice, and learned that I had an aptitude for science.   (source)
  • —destiny had fitted itself to him, to his innocence, his pristine aptitude for platform drama and childlike heroic simplicity…   (source)
  • 'He was very earnest,' the Superior said"—Cordelia imitated his guttural tones; she had an aptitude for mimicry, I remembered, in the school-room—"   (source)
  • He found poker the most useful of all Southern customs, poker and a steady head for whisky; and it was his natural aptitude for cards and amber liquor that brought to Gerald two of his three most prized possessions, his valet and his plantation.   (source)
  • The crowd outside was quiet yet, perhaps out of respect for the church, out of that aptitude and eagerness of the Anglo-Saxon for complete mystical acceptance of immolated sticks and stones.   (source)
  • No, not asking even then, but just looking at that huge quiet house, saying 'What room is Judith sick in, papa?' with that quiet aptitude of a child for accepting the inexplicable, though I now know that even then I was wondering what Judith saw when she came out the door and found the phaeton instead of the carriage, the tame stableboy instead of the wild man; what she had seen in that phaeton which looked so innocent to the rest of us—or worse, what she had missed when she saw the…   (source)
  • He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no aptitude for any new business.   (source)
  • The young lady's aptitude for playing a part at short notice was remarkable.   (source)
  • She had learned by experience that she had neither the aptitude nor the moral constancy to remake her life on new lines; to become a worker among workers, and let the world of luxury and pleasure sweep by her unregarded.   (source)
  • It would not matter that you have no talent, talent does not run about the streets in these days, but you have not the beginning of an aptitude.   (source)
  • This boy began very early, almost in his infancy (so they say at least), to show a brilliant and unusual aptitude for learning.   (source)
  • So the first task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little aptitude or inclination—practical business.   (source)
  • The former, with a greater degree of activity, of common-sense, of information, and of general aptitude, has the characteristic good and evil qualities of the middle classes.   (source)
  • He, who had in her opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in which he would have been certain to play a leading part—he had sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the slightest regret.   (source)
  • She felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in the Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a tall chimney might be considered essential.   (source)
  • CHAPTER XLV At about the week's end from his return to Mansfield, Tom's immediate danger was over, and he was so far pronounced safe as to make his mother perfectly easy; for being now used to the sight of him in his suffering, helpless state, and hearing only the best, and never thinking beyond what she heard, with no disposition for alarm and no aptitude at a hint, Lady Bertram was the happiest subject in the world for a little medical imposition.   (source)
  • To this act of desertion he was led, not only by his own inclinations, but by his anxiety on account of Smike, who, having to sustain the character of the Apothecary, had been as yet wholly unable to get any more of the part into his head than the general idea that he was very hungry, which—perhaps from old recollections—he had acquired with great aptitude.   (source)
  • Daniel Touchett, to his perception, was a man of genius, and though he himself had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning enough of it to measure the great figure his father had played.   (source)
  • I inquired of you if poisons acted equally, and with the same effect, on men of the North as on men of the South; and you answered me that the cold and sluggish habits of the North did not present the same aptitude as the rich and energetic temperaments of the natives of the South.   (source)
  • Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it is not yet dark enough.   (source)
  • "The fact is, count," answered the mother, agreeably flattered, "he has great aptitude, and learns all that is set before him."   (source)
  • Her resources were of the obvious kind; but even if one had not the journalistic talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going to want, one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to being frivolous and hollow.   (source)
  • Lydgate, who had the muscular aptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or twice in the early days after his arrival in Middlemarch taken his turn with the cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no leisure for the game, and no inclination for the socialities there.   (source)
  • The word talent, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it.   (source)
  • Now, our friend the Colonel had a great aptitude for all games of chance: and exercising himself, as he continually did, with the cards, the dice-box, or the cue, it is natural to suppose that he attained a much greater skill in the use of these articles than men can possess who only occasionally handle them.   (source)
  • But at the bottom she hated to be violent, and she was conscious of no aptitude for organised resentment.   (source)
  • And positively and actually Mr Pyke DID drink it, and Mr Pluck helped him, while Mrs Nickleby looked on in divided admiration of the condescension of the two, and the aptitude with which they accommodated themselves to the pewter-pot; in explanation of which seeming marvel it may be here observed, that gentlemen who, like Messrs Pyke and Pluck, live upon their wits (or not so much, perhaps, upon the presence of their own wits as upon the absence of wits in other people) are…   (source)
  • Not only would a democratic people of this kind show neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would probably never arrive at the possession of them.   (source)
  • He had what was called under the old regime, the double hand, that is to say, an equal aptitude for handling the sabre or the musket as a soldier, or a squadron or a battalion as an officer.   (source)
  • Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude for partisan warfare.   (source)
  • It is from this aptitude, perfected by a military education, which certain special branches of the service arise, the dragoons, for example, who are both cavalry-men and infantry at one and the same time.   (source)
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