"Gainful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better than she did, I cannot promise you that you shall fare so well, because they are still desirous of war that hope that it may be profitable to them; and the strongest security you can give of peace, is to make it gainful. Otherwise men will rather choose that whereby they may break your laws, than that whereby your laws may break them. Which I speak not so much in relation to the nobility or such as would be holding, as to the people or them that would be getting; ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... voyages to the South Sea being mentioned;—JOHNSON. 'Sir, if you talk of it as a subject of commerce, it will be gainful[725]; if as a book that is to increase human knowledge, I believe there will not be much of that. Hawkesworth can tell only what the voyagers have told him; and they have found very little, only one new animal, I think.' BOSWELL. 'But many ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... superior excellence those weapons, which in that warlike age it was the boast of all men to manage with spirit. But when he heard his daughter recommend, as the readiest road to this pacific state of mind, that her lover should renounce the gainful trade in which he was held unrivalled, and which, from the constant private differences and public wars of the time, was sure to afford him a large income, he could withhold his wrath no longer. The daughter had scarce recommended to her lover the fabrication of the implements of husbandry, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... in him was not the useless lie Of boasting pride or laughing vanity: It was the gainful, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of food and raiment in rearing a child may be stated at about 8, 9, or 10 dollars; and the age at which it begins to be gainful to its owner ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... gainful kind of writing[56], and, in his eighteenth year, offered to the stage a comedy, borrowed from a Spanish plot, which was refused by the players, and was, therefore, given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... is as much trade now, and as much gotten by trading, as there ever was in this nation, at least in our memory; and if we will allow other people to judge, they will tell us there is much more trade, and trade is much more gainful; what, then, must be the reason that the tradesmen cannot live on their trades, cannot keep open their shops, cannot maintain themselves and families, as well now as they could before? Something extraordinary ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... or Natural and Experimental History, on which to found Philosophy, (Sylva Sylvarum.) "Our natural history is not designed," he says, "so much to please by vanity, or benefit by gainful experiments, as to afford light to the discovery of causes, and hold out the breasts of philosophy." This includes his patient search for facts—nature free, as in the history of plants, minerals, animals, etc.—nature ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Sandridge, but I will, by God's mercy, see an end of these businesses. I hope I shall find favour with you to see your card. I pray God it be so true as the card shall be which I will bring to you, and I hope in God that your skill in navigation shall be gainful unto you, although at the first it hath not proved so. And thus with my most humble commendations I commit you to God, desiring no longer to live than I shall be yours most faithfully to command. From this ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... from some of those champions of the Covenant, whose deeds and sufferings were his favourite theme. He is said to have held, at one period of his life, a small moorland farm; but, whether from pecuniary losses, or domestic misfortune, he had long renounced that and every other gainful calling. In the language of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his kindred, and wandered about until the day of his death, a period of nearly ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... expressed sympathy, too, for the desperate straits in which Great Britain found herself. "At a time when her floating bulwarks were her whole safeguard against slavery, she could not view without alarm and resentment the warriors who should have manned those bulwarks pursuing a more gainful occupation in American vessels. Our merchant ships were crowded with British seamen, most of them deserters from their ships of war, and all furnished with fraudulent protections to prove them Americans. To us they were not necessary." On the contrary, "they ate the bread and bid ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... 201: "Nu tekst umraedha at nyju um Vinlandsferdh, thviat su ferdh thikir baedhi godh til fjar ok virdhingar," i. e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for the voyage thither was both gainful and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... not be so hopeful as to call it a comfort yet," she said, "too vague is its shape for that. It is a faint plan which I have built on my knowledge of Gilli's nature. As well as I, you know that he cares for nothing but what is gainful for him. Now if I could manage to make myself so ugly that no chief would care to make offers for me... is it not likely that my father would cease to value me and be even glad to get rid of me, to you? I would disfigure myself in no such way that the ugliness ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... this time, conducting itself with its usual duplicity, contrived to make a gainful traffic by the sale of dispensations from the penalties incurred by such as fell under the ban of the Inquisition, provided they were rich enough to pay for them, and afterwards revoking them, at the instance of the Castilian court. Meanwhile, the odium, excited by the unsparing rigor ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... that the advance of the British definitely stopped, or, in other words, when General Joffre and Sir John French realized that further effort against the defenses of the Germans on the ridge beyond the Aisne would only mean loss of life to no gainful purpose, the bombardment of Rheims began. The old city had suffered severely during the German advance upon the Marne. Still, it had not been pillaged, and when the Germans retreated across the Aisne the old city held much of its glory unimpaired. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... period of age, females pursuing gainful occupations are to males as one to three; in the second, one to six; and in the third, one to twelve. The actual increase over the numbers given in the census for 1860 is 1,551,288. The reasons for this almost incredible variation have already been suggested; and their operation became ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... Philip II., or so intent on prosecuting its own discoveries and conquests in the New World, that although by the successful enterprize of Magellan, its fleets were unexpectedly conducted by a new course to that remote region of Asia, which was the seat of the most gainful and alluring branch of trade carried on by the Portuguese, it could make no considerable effect to avail itself of the commercial advantages which it might have derived from that event. By the acquisition of the crown of Portugal, in the year 1580, the kings of Spain, instead of the rivals, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... this kind takes into the account the cost of the necessary number of slaves, in the same manner as he calculates the cost of the land. The uncertainty, too, of this species of employment, affords another ground of resemblance to commerce. Although gainful on the whole, and in a series of years, it is often very disastrous for a single year, and, as the capital is not readily invested in other pursuits, bad crops or bad markets not only affect the profits, but the capital itself. Hence the sudden depressions which take place ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... modern woman seems to lie, therefore, along educational lines. Not in a general and cultural education alone, but in a special and occupational interest and practice for women, married and unmarried. This should be preferably gainful, though not onerous nor incessant. It should, in fact, be a play-interest, in the sense that the interest of every artist and craftsman, who loves his work and functions through it, is a play-interest. Normal life without normal stimulation ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... efficiency, were suffered, without fear of punishment, to keep the numbers of their regiments incomplete, in order that they might appropriate the pay of the vacancies; while the men, independent and undisciplined, were allowed to spend their time in the pursuit of some gainful trade or peaceful occupation, instead of practising military exercises. The disputes concerning the appointment of a captain-general had impeded any fresh levies, the recruits refusing to take the oath to the States except in conjunction with the Prince of Orange, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... hereof, being utterly dismayed, desired to know "What cause there might be, to move him to sink so good a bark of his own, new and strong; and that, by his means, who had been in two so rich and gainful voyages in her with himself heretofore: If his brother, the Master, and the rest of the company [numbering 26] should know of such his fact, he thought verily they ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols |
