"Impractical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it, dear Miss Smith,—just it. Your heart is good, but you need strong practical advice. You know we weak women are so impractical, as my poor Job so often said. Now, I'm going to arrange to endow this school with at least—at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. One condition is that my friend, Mr. Cresswell here, and these other gentlemen, including sound Northern ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... replied, "that is ever the cry of the selfish. They believe that they merit all the blessings of health, distinction and wealth that may come to them, and they condemn their less fortunate brother as one deserving his fate. The poor, the weak and the impractical did not themselves bring about their condition. Who knows how large a part the mystery of birth and heredity play in one's life and what environment and opportunity, or lack of it, means to us? Health, ability, energy, favorable environment ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... tendency, in the midst of a variety of inconsistent doctrines, to leave the conclusion undetermined. He brought everything to a practical standard; he admired the exalted purity of stoical morality, but he feared that it was impractical. He believed in the existence of one supreme creator, in his spiritual nature, and the immortality of the soul; but his belief was rather the result of instinctive conviction, than of proof ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... myself to such a life as people had led eighteen hundred years ago. I thought that if I took the example of the Saviour's life for my guiding star, I would certainly get along very well. Undoubtedly this would have sufficed in a spiritual sense, but I found that it would be impractical as applied to my temporal welfare and the requirements of the present time. For I could not perform miracles nor could I live as the Saviour had done, roaming over the country and teaching the natives. And then, seeing that there were ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... warned them against being led away by the Socialists, those foolish, unreasonable, impractical people who wanted to see an immediate improvement in their condition; and he reminded them that Rome was not built in ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... backward or forward, as might be required, and thus deliver the concrete from the end of the belt directly over the place in which it was to be deposited in the bench-walls. As a matter of fact, it was found impractical in operation to move the gantry readily, owing to its great weight, which was supported on only four ordinary car wheels and their bearings, and it was found more convenient to leave the arm in one position near the center, letting the concrete drop on the platform above ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... All sorts of impractical schemes tormented her feverish brain. She would appeal to the manager of the place. She was a woman. She would understand. She would do any work, anything, for her bare keep. Take care of the rooms, wait on table, anything. ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... at Berlin, Conn., was a precocious child, and a morbid and impractical, though versatile man, with a fatal facility in writing verse on all manner of subjects and in nearly every known metre. His sentimentalism appealed to a wide circle, but his was one of the tapers which were extinguished by Lowell. He ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... described in the foregoing pages, represents the game as it is played with unlimited hands, that is where no limits are set on the number of points permissible in the score of a hand. It is impractical, however, to play with unlimited hands in a game where a stake has been set due to the inconsistencies of the winning hand scores; one may win with a hand of 200,000 points, whereas the ordinary or average winning hand numbers ...
— Pung Chow - The Game of a Hundred Intelligences. Also known as Mah-Diao, Mah-Jong, Mah-Cheuk, Mah-Juck and Pe-Ling • Lew Lysle Harr
... "Oh, impractical! impractical! Wholly a back-eddy in the forward-moving current. You can't go back of a world-wide movement. Things are too complicated now for everybody to do his share of anything. It's as reasonable, as to suggest that everybody do his share ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... first place, the get-rich-quick swindles, the out-and-out impostures, which have deceived the credulous into investments that never could pay. Bonanza mines, impractical inventions, town lots laid out on the prairie, orange groves that existed only on paper-such bogus hopes have enticed many an honest man and woman, who could ill afford to lose, into turning over their small earnings to the brazen exploiters.[Footnote: For cases, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the —— Congress was not unlike the closing of the several preceding Congresses. There was the same unbusiness-like, impractical haste; the same hurried, unjust, and utterly inadequate adjustment of unfinished, ill-digested business, that would not have been tolerated for a moment by the sovereign people in any private interest they controlled. There were frauds rushed through; there were long-suffering, righteous demands ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... abandoned his college in order to run a cotton mill was free to make his own choice of a calling; but he was never pardoned for bankrupting the mill. If one is bound to be a low man rather than an impractical idealist, he should at least make sure of his ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... earnest men and women in Chicago did not set out to find a way of abolishing prostitution; they set out to find a way that would conform to four idols they worshiped. The only cure for prostitution might prove to be "immoral," "impractical," unconstitutional, and unpopular. I suspect that it is. But the honest thing to do would have been to look for that cure without preconceived notions. Having found it, the Commission could then have said to the public: "This is what ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... effect of Montgomery upon the newly arrived was rather pleasing, with a something rather provincial, quite in keeping with its location inland. Streets, various in length, uncertain in direction and impractical as to pavement, ran into Main street at many points; and most of them were closely built with pretty houses, all of them surrounded by gardens and many by handsome grounds. Equidistant from the end of Main street and from each ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... instead of judging; he had criticised effects and done nothing for causes; his head was full of plans such as a political party lays upon the shoulders of a leader,—matters of private interest brought to an orator supposed to have a future, a jumble of schemes and impractical requests. Far from coming fresh to his work, he was wearied out with marching and counter-marching, and when he finally reached the much desired height of his present position, he found himself in a thicket of thorny bushes with a thousand conflicting wills to conciliate. If the statesmen ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... disliked his speech the other night so heartily that it drove me to sit down when I reached home and put my reflections into verse; into a form of verse, moreover, which (I was scornfully aware) Mr. Blank would understand as little as the matter of it. He would think them both impractical. Heaven ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... defenders of property who look upon the Church as impractical; who consider the Golden Rule as something all right for the minister to talk about on Sundays, but something useless to try to follow during the week. Those men criticize the Church for preaching love, for talking the Sermon on the Mount, and for being what they say ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... general method of putting the propeller-shaft in place. The young boat-builder will readily understand that it would be very impractical merely to bore a hole in the hull of the boat to put the propeller-shaft through. In this way water would surely leak into the hull and the boat would sink in a short time. Some method must be evolved to keep the water out of the hull, and yet allow ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... dining-room. You point out to her the advantage of being away from the smell of the cooking. At that she gets personal: tells you that you are the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness accuses the whole male sex of being impractical. The mere sight of an empty ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... alone with these cutthroats, and you certainly can't venture into the jungle with me; yet someone must go in search of your father. He is more than apt to wandering off aimlessly, regardless of danger or direction, and Mr. Philander is only a trifle less impractical than he. You will pardon my bluntness, but our lives are all in jeopardy here, and when we get your father back something must be done to impress upon him the dangers to which he exposes you as well ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... very impractical to business men. When you have to build up a factory system from the machinery itself, you have something gigantic on your hands. And that is the task on which Mr. Dennison and Mr. Howard embarked. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... the lower house of the State Assembly, one term in Congress, then a failure which drove him from public life. Now he returns as a bolter from his party, a leader in a new organization which the conservatives are denouncing as "visionary," "impractical," "revolutionary." ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... wary to be caught. "Later on," I would reply to him; "when I have made my way, when I am stronger to withstand your wheedling. Then I will go with you, if you are still in existence, my sentimental little friend. We will dream again the old impractical, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... for one, my dear, though I meant no reproach in it. You get too many compliments as it is. Frank, like all young, inexperienced people, has many impractical ideas, that time will cure. Young enthusiasts of every age are going to turn the world upside down, but I note that it goes on very ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... Attorney-General on the 6th of November, 1913, parts of which were published in newspapers about that time. In this letter he said that Mr. LaDow was egotistical, arrogant, negligent, extravagant, visionary and impractical, showed favoritism to prisoners, and was totally unfit for the position he held. He goes ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... and her father, and North paused, placing a hand on the deputy's arm. The spirit of his renunciation had been strong within him, but another feeling was stronger still, he found; an ennobling pride in her devotion and trust. What a pity the finer things of life were so often the impractical! He pushed past the ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... to achieve a telephone he had entirely neglected his school of vocal physiology, which was now abandoned. Georgie Sanders and Mabel Hubbard were his only pupils. Though Sanders and Hubbard were genuinely interested in Bell and his work, they felt that he was impractical, and were especially convinced that his experiments with the ear and its imitations were entirely useless. They believed that the electrical telegraph alone presented possibilities, and they told Bell that unless he would devote himself entirely to the improvement of this ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... possible to take up the various elements or divisions of psychological study as determined by a consensus of psychologists, and to illustrate each in turn from the three types of management; but the results from any such method would be apt to seem unrelated and impractical, i.e., it would be a lengthy process to get results that would be of immediate, practical ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... one of the most impractical men that ever lived, but in the exuberance of his nature and in his rare unselfishness he started a dozen social reforms in England, any one of which should have given fame to its founder. He gave away a great fortune in gifts to the public and in private generosity. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... hold that against him; he'd an idea I'd turn out a genius of some sort or other, I believe.... Well, he failed and died all in a week, and I found myself left with an extensive wardrobe, expensive tastes, an impractical education—and not so much of that that you'd notice it—and not a cent.... I was too proud to look to my friends for help in those days—and perhaps that was as well; I sought jobs on my own.... Did you ever keep books ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... was on sea or land and longs to attain the unfulfilled ambitions of the soul, even when these in full measure are not possible. Sometimes these ambitions are so unrelated to the possible that the romantic has in certain usage become synonymous with the impractical or the absurd; but this is not its meaning in literature. The romantic may not always be "of imagination all compact," but it has a tendency in that direction. To the romanticists a reality of the imagination is as satisfying as a reality of the prosaic reason; ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Accepting, with a fine courage of faith that most important preventive discovery since vaccination, the mosquito dogma, the Crescent City marshaled her defenses. This time there was no panic, no mob-rule of terrified thousands, no mad rushing from stunned inertia to wildly impractical action; but instead the enlistment of the whole city in an army of sanitation. Every citizen became a soldier of the public health. And when, long before the plague-killing frost came, the battle was over, New Orleans had triumphed not only in the most brilliant hygienic victory ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... EXAMINING THE URINE.—In diseases of the urinary apparatus, a careful examination of the urine is very necessary in order to be able to form a correct diagnosis. In domestic animals it is impractical to attempt to determine the exact amount of urine passed within a certain time, but we can make a general estimate of the quantity passed by carefully observing the animal and noting the condition of the bedding in the stall. The sample of urine to be examined is best taken from urine collected ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... was one of the first voyagers, and he didn't come back—he stayed there, living in a space-suit for three or four years, and got a brand-new education. Martian science always was hot, you know, but they were impractical. They were desperately hard up for water and air, and while they had a lot of wonderful ideas and theories, they couldn't overcome the practical technical difficulties in the way of making their ideas work. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... to operate the ships, and we again turned to our competitor, Mr. Mather, in the hope that he would add this to his cares. Unfortunately, because of his obligations to others, he felt that this was impractical. I asked Mr. Gates ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... then, such a purely poetic, spiritual, impractical passion is perhaps the cause of Mr. Belloc's note and career. It is the passion of a poet. Assuredly actuated by such a feeling, he has developed his practical and political opinions: the true poet is ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... wasting time in talking about it," he told the grateful members who sought to press his hands. "Go home and organize. I've got your name. Get your neighbours into line, and keep me informed. I'll pay for the postage-stamps. I'm no impractical reformer, and if we're going to do this thing, we'll have to do ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... either her own or the family support lest the family or herself suffer. It must be in the nature of a leasehold upon her chosen career to be retaken for full occupancy as soon as the children are out of hand and she has begun to feel the call of empty hours to the old familiar task. This is not an impractical plan, as many women are proving by experience. And as has been previously demonstrated, society in the past has wasted the work-power of women past the childbearing age in more ruthless and stupid prodigality than any other of its treasures. Third, as has been before indicated, married women ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... evaluate the loss to them inherent in a wrecked landscape, a spoiled stream, and such things, or the positive worth of an unspoiled section of countryside. But it is becoming obvious enough that objections to environmental destruction are not necessarily sentimental, naive, or impractical. A bit late, realization is growing that the world has a certain longstanding wholeness with which people interfere massively at their own peril. Landscape in the widest sense—the sense of the integrity of a place ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... It is impractical for the manufacturers to make complete foundation drawings, as they are not familiar with the lay-out of pipes and the relative position of other apparatus in the station. All that the manufacturers' drawing is intended to do ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... even accorded me certain pecuniary assistance as to their publication—though I must admit that to accept it of you was very distasteful to me. Ah!" Felix Kennaston cried, with a quick lift of speech, "impractical child that I am, I had not thought of that! My love had caused me to forget the great barrier that ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... woolen-goods business. There was old Hon. Calvin Dow, a pensioner of David Morrison, now passed on to the considerately befriending Stewart, and Mac Tavish was deeply disgusted with a man who was so impractical in his business affairs that, though he had been financially busted for ten years, he still kept along in the bland belief, based on Stewart's assurances, that money was due him from the Morrisons. Whenever Mac Tavish went to the safe, obeying Stewart's word, he expressed sotto voce ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the hardship, for he carried on his back a bulky bundle of clothes for Lovin Child; enough to last the winter through, and some to spare; a woman would have laughed at some of the things he chose: impractical, dainty garments that Bud could not launder properly to save his life. But there were little really truly overalls, in which Lovin Child promptly developed a strut that delighted the men and earned him the title of Old Prospector. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... a brilliant, talented, impulsive seventeen-year-old girl, who is suddenly required to fill her mother's place at the head of a household, with a literary, impractical father to manage. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... old servant fret and ponder, but no assurance came. A true insight into art might have opened many doors to her. Yet, through a life devoted to the externals of it, Mata had been tolerant of beauty, rather than at one with it. The impractical view of life which art seemed to demand of its devotees was enough to arouse suspicion, if not her actual dislike. Uchida was a hero because he had been bold enough to shake himself free from lethargic influences, and achieve ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... the highest and best, by conviction with no sense of compulsion or obligation, impractical if not dangerous ideal, for it can be actually realized only by the rarest moral genius. For most of us, the best education is that which makes us the best and most obedient servants. This is the way of peace and the way of nature, for even if we seriously try to keep up a private ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... difficulty. The possibility of the vehicle itself moving occurred to us; but, as I pointed out, the task of replacing their heavy apparatus in it, and then reassembling the apparatus in a new position, made such a step impractical. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... was a Greek to Barrington Erle, from whose hands he feared to accept even the gift of a vote. Parliamentary hermits were distasteful to him, and dwellers in political caves were regarded by him with aversion as being either knavish or impractical. With a good Conservative opponent he could shake hands almost as readily as with a good Whig ally; but the man who was neither flesh nor fowl was odious to him. According to his theory of parliamentary government, the House of Commons should be divided by a marked line, and every member ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... and heard her soft breathing, which became a part of the muffled undercurrent of the sleeping city. In all those closely packed houses, where the obscurity was broken here and there by a lighted window, other human beings were breathing, sleeping, dreaming, like Patty and herself, of some impractical and visionary to-morrow. Of something which had never been, but still might be! Of something which they had just missed, but might find when the sun rose again! Of a miracle that might occur at any moment and make everything different! ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... dredging. It was thought that a schooner rig allowed more adjustment of sail area and thus would give better handling of the boat under all weather conditions. This was important because oyster dredging could be carried on in rough weather when tonging would be impractical. Like the Maryland terrapin smack, the Carolina sharpie schooner adhered closely to New Haven principles of design and construction. However, Carolina sharpie schooners were larger than terrapin smacks, having an ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... moods, and now dreams." He seated himself comfortably at her feet. "You would cause me to believe you a most impractical ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... these strange, impractical, unnatural beliefs, because of the sincerity of others. It's better to do, and to be the thing we can ourselves ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... that home mixing cannot be practically done, especially upon a small scale. From both information and personal experience I know the contrary to be the case. With a tight floor or platform, a square-pointed shovel and a coarse wire screen, there is absolutely nothing impractical about it. The important thing is to see that all ingredients are evenly and thoroughly mixed. A scale for weighing will also be a convenience. Further information may be had from the firms which sell raw materials, or from ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... with revolver shots were finally rescued from their shift-mates and more or less scraped up from the screening-room floor—they were in very bad shape—and carted off to be patched up for questioning. The members of this group had been impractical idealists, and besides, some of them had lost their nerve, as was evidenced by the discovery of abandoned explosives and detonators in the locker room and ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... the colonial officials ever defied the King or his ministers, or ever failed to profess their intent to follow the royal instructions loyally and to the letter. They had a much safer plan. When the provisions of a royal decree seemed impractical or unwise, it was easy enough to let them stand unenforced. Such decrees were duly registered in the records of the Sovereign Council at Quebec and were then promptly pigeonholed so that no one outside the little circle ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... madness of venturing single-handed into the den of the Wood King. What had I to hope for? What chance, however remote, was there of successfully wresting that blooming prize from the arms of her captor? Force was out of the question; stealth was utterly impractical; as for cajolery, apparently the sole remaining means of winning back the Princess—why, one might as well try the persuasion of a penny flute upon a hungry eagle as seek to rouse Ar-hap's sympathies for bereaved Hath in that way. Surely to go forward would mean my own certain destruction, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... be easy to think that these men, occupied so much with translations, and intent on the re-introduction of Greek medicine, might have depended very little on their own observations, and been very impractical. All that is needed to counteract any such false impression, however, is to know something definite about their books. Gurlt, in his "History of Surgery," has some quotations from Serapion the elder, who is often quoted by Rhazes. In the treatment of hemorrhoids Serapion advises ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... impractical. Parasight was worthless beyond the borders of the null. No surrogate could penetrate it and no weapon would operate within it. It would be most unsafe for any true man to enter. There, one would be subject to gross, physical attack and ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... explain to you just how deeply I am interested in the saving of human life. That comes first with me. My theories, as you call them, come second. I cannot undertake the promotion of these theories as a salaried advocate. This is the only stupid and impractical thing that my grandfather ever did, I believe. He must have known that the terms of the will could not be carried out. Mr. Dodge is right. It was his way of leaving the property to me after declaring that he would not do so, after adding the ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... mia' said Roseton, in the soft accent of Italy, 'as the eminent but slightly impractical Hungarian—I refer to Kossuth—said, Staten Island "is lovely, but exposed." We should not be safe there. Listen; in my house I have prepared a secret chamber, fifty feet square, plentifully supplied with healthful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... youth there sets in a period of intense and intolerable complexity. With the soda-jerker this period is so short as to be almost negligible. Men higher in the scale hold out longer in the attempt to preserve the ultimate niceties of relationship, to retain "impractical" ideas of integrity. But by the late twenties the business has grown too intricate, and what has hitherto been imminent and confusing has become gradually remote and dim. Routine comes down like twilight on a harsh landscape, softening it until it is tolerable. The complexity is too subtle, too ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... maps in Peace-time. Of course, the men, and particularly the patrol leaders, must understand how to read a map and find their way by it, and all non-commissioned officers and men out of their first year's service must be trained in so doing, but it is altogether impractical, and therefore a bad preparation for war, if in the interests of better manoeuvre results maps are issued in uncounted numbers even on the larger scales, so that not only every patrol leader, but every orderly, can obtain one for a couple of pence. In War, and particularly ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... an energetic September, succeeded in putting all the furniture to rights and in evoking curtains and linen. Anybody, even the impractical Father, can fill a house with furniture, but it takes two women and at least four weeks to make the furniture look as though it had grown there. She had roamed the fields, and brought home golden-rod and Michaelmas daisies and maple leaves. ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... first to introduce rifles into Ceylon, which were then regarded by the highest authorities in the island as impractical innovations, too difficult to sight, whereas an ordinary gun could be used with ball more ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... in this book I promise to take good care of all the books I read in the Library and of those I take home and to obey the rules of the Library." Such a method of registration is not impractical, even in a large library provided the work is carefully ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... the practical or impractical suggestions implied in the quotation above, which is from the last paragraph of Thoreau's Village, is the same transcendental theme of "innate goodness." For this reason there must be no limitation except ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... word for 'thought'. A thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term 'gedanken experiment' is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because it can be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but must be used with care. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... man of genius be insufficiently supplied with that trouble and sorrow which is supposed to be quite indispensable to his best work. But here and there the thinkers are beginning to realize that the irritable, impulsive, impractical nature of the genius, in even the most favorable environment, is formed for trouble "as the sparks to fly upward." They see that fortune has slain its hundreds of geniuses, but trouble its ten thousands. And they conclude ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... commercial classes looked down upon the writer, the painter, the musician, the philosopher or the sculptor. Regarding these "sentimentalists" as easy, legitimate and defenseless objects of prey, and as incidental and impractical hangers-on in a world where trade was all in all, the commercial classes at all times affected a certain air of encouragement of the fine arts, which encouragement, however, never attempted to put a stop to piracies of publication or reproduction. How ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... all to Bonnie, all the happenings at seminary and church, what the theologues had said about his being impractical and irregular, and Bonnie, with a tender smile, leaned down and kissed the words in the letter, and murmured, "Dear impractical beloved!" ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... you can do now. You could have shown me my mistake. How much better to have learned it then, from you, than later, by my own experience! You could have swept me off my feet, just as Frank did. You did nothing. If I had sought evidence to prove how impractical you are, as compared with my super-practical husband, I would have found it in the way you handled, or rather failed to handle, ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... apparent favor the cause of colonization received from the press, it was an impractical, impossible, wild, and visionary scheme that could not be carried to the extent its projectors designed. It lost strength yearly, until all were convinced that the Negro would be emancipated here and remain here; that it was as impossible to colonize a race of people as to colonize ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... on which it is impractical to affix a notice to the copies directly or by means of a durable label, a notice is acceptable if it appears on a tag or durable label attached to the copy so that it will remain with it ...
— Supplementary Copyright Statutes • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... observations, naive, pungent. Presently there came a poignant edge to his trailing tones. After giving the subject new points of view, showing him to have studied Whitechapel as well as Kicking Horse Pass, he contended that no social problem could be solved by a bill so crudely radical, so impractical. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a care in those delicious days that followed, I wandered down Sixth Avenue to New York's then most correct shops, buying clothes and clothes and clothes. I bought practical and impractical gifts for the twins back in Wisconsin and for all the family and those good friends who ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... get late-blooming varieties, the leading ones established in Oregon being the Mayette and the Franquette. Other varieties will undoubtedly be introduced in the next few years that will withstand frost in regions where walnut planting now seems impractical. Mr. Henry Hewitt's one tree that blooms the fourth of July, at an elevation of 1,000 feet, is evidence of the possibilities in this direction. Air drainage ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... coarse, though none is so important, as that which falls commonly into the hands of statesmen—instruments strong in texture, and by reason of their rudeness not liable to sudden impressions, may be the best. That it is which we mean when we declare that a scrupulous man is impractical in politics. But the same man may, at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same period, be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the circumstances of the occasion may affect him. At one moment the rule of simple honesty will prevail with him. "Fiat ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... magazine published it without giving the author any compensation. Gray was soon hit upon as the author. Unfortunately, the success of the poem gave no increased income to the poet. Dodsley, the publisher, is said to have made about a thousand pounds from the various poems of Gray, but Gray had the impractical idea that it was not dignified for a poet to make money ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Mr. Heath's heavy voice again, "I tell you, Dave, it can't be done. It's impractical. Why, no car could ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... contain much fat, protein, and little carbohydrates. Chestnuts, however, contain much of the latter foodstuff. Because they contain protein, nuts may be used as substitutes for meat. But most nuts are expensive. For this reason in many households they are impractical as everyday foods. ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... impossible, however, to keep this spiritual insight from getting ultimately into a social program. It appealed to motives too deep and powerful to make possible its segregation as a religious sentiment. For however impractical an ideal this thought of human equality may seem in general, and however hard it may be to grant to others in particular, it is never hard for us to claim for ourselves. If ever we are condescended to, does any assertion rise more quickly in our ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... to the omission of any authority after a cultivar-name. Many cultivars are first described in reports of trials, in catalogues, and other anonymous publications; this makes the quoting of an authority impractical, but there is provision in the Code for writing the raiser's or introducer's name in brackets after the cultivar-name if so desired, thus: Weigela ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... to deal with had something excessive about him; he was headstrong, tactless, impractical, enormously energetic, a prodigious worker, a conceiver of grandiose projects, and a relentless hunter of patrons. He was at home with his social superiors and had some pretentions to literary culture, he had a coarse gift for the vivid ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... the press of panic, Lady Boyle being old and infirm. Ah, but your talking friend would interest you, and you might accept the talk in infinitesimal doses, you know. Lamartine has surely acted down the fallacy of the impractical tendencies of imaginative men. I am full of France just now. Are you all prepared for an outbreak in Ireland? I hope so. My husband has the second edition of his collected poems[174] in the press by this time, by grace of Chapman and Hall, who accept all risks. You speak of Tennyson's vexation ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... you your army and navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be but a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber." But this elevated and sublime wisdom was regarded as a philosophical abstraction, as a vain and impractical view of political affairs, well enough for a writer on the "sublime and beautiful," but absurd in a British statesman. Colonel Barre and Fox supported Burke; but their eloquence had not much effect on the Commons, and the ministry ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... ground. They generally know just where they are, which is not surprising, for they do not, for the most part, either in the world of mind or spirit, frequent unusual places. The finespun speculations of the philosophers and the impractical dreams of the artist make small appeal to them; the world they live in is a sharply defined and clearly lighted and rather limited place. They like to say to this man come and he cometh, and to that man go and ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... hopelessly about you at the stupid faces of your fellow passengers. How can people be so clownish? Of course, there is always the chance that the elevator will fall and that you will all be terribly hurt. But that is too much to expect. You dismiss it from your thoughts as too impractical, too visionary. Things don't work out as happily as that ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... almost beyond endurance. For the next two or three days the newspapers printed caustic contributions from fellow architects and builders, in each of which the luckless Medcroft was taken to task for advocating an impractical and fatuous New York hobby in the way of construction,—something that staid old London would not even tolerate or discuss. The social chroniclings of the Medcrofts in Vienna, as despatched by the correspondents, ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... and impractical as were many of his ideas, to an age tired of absurdities and pretensions and injustice, and suffering deeply from the abuses of both Church and State, his attractively written book seemed almost inspired. The Social Contract virtually became ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... practical people the world knows. And, on the other hand, those who take great pride in speaking of their own practicality are many times the least practical. Or again, in some ways they may be practical, but so far as life in its totality is concerned, they are absurdly impractical. ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... inevitable consequence of such artificial infiltration, seems to me to be the least of these evils. Far worse is the circumstance that unsatisfactory results tend to cast doubts on intelligent men. What is impractical or impossible to simple argument will remove this doubt from the minds of intelligent men. What is unpractical or impossible to accomplish on a small scale, need not necessarily be so on a larger one. A small enterprise ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... longer tenable, they hasten to say, "The people are right, and something must be done. Unfortunately, there is no way of legally doing anything at present, and we must be patient until a way is discovered." Way after way is suggested, only to be dismissed as "dangerous" or "impractical" or "unconstitutional." The years pass; the clamor persists, becomes imperious. The politicians pass a law that has been carefully made unconstitutional. This gives the exploiters several years more of license. Finally, public sentiment ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... pyramids. When they had finished here they might want to look over the country around what is now Bagdad, but then only near the capital city of Nebuchadnezzar's empire. This is about eight hundred miles away, an impractical trip by helicopter, so they would return to the platform, climb to a few hundred thousand feet, and scoot over in a few minutes. Here they would land again in some uninhabited spot and repeat the maneuver. This country was probably sprinkled with ...
— The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel • Arthur W. Orton
... in southern Minnesota, I first thought to procure black walnut and hickory trees from some farmer in that district. Through acquaintances in St. Peter, I did locate some black walnut trees only to find that it was impractical to dig and transport trees of the size I wanted. A nursery near St. Paul supplied me with some and I bought twenty-eight large, seedling black walnut trees. I was too eager to get ahead with my plans and I attempted, the first year ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... infect other animals with their own rank diseases, or cut out other animals' organs, or kill and dissect them, hoping thus to learn how to offset their neglect of themselves. Conditions among them will be such that this will really be necessary. Few besides impractical sentimentalists will therefore oppose it. But the idea will be to gain health by legerdemain, by a trick, instead of by taking the ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... that after all these years of struggle we should now discard this One Big Union goal and unite with political Socialists to create an American Bolsheviki. And in that proposal he demonstrates the impractical artlessness of the Left Winger. The I. W. W. is a Socialist who is a materialist. The Left Winger is a Socialist who is an ideologist. The I. W. W. seeks for verities and for concrete, ponderable power. The Left Winger follows the intoxicating ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... for keeping this a secret, other than your fear of confessing that you violated a few bigoted and idiotic mining rules—which, after all, are binding only upon sentiment—and which your success has proved to be utterly impractical?" ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... of which the dramatist has seemed willing for once to be identified. We may even incline to the belief that Moliere would have dismist Dr. Stockman as lacking in common-sense, and in the sense of humor, and also as a creature both conceited and self-righteous, pitiably impractical and painfully intolerant. And we are quite at a loss even to guess what the French playwright-psychologist, who has left us the unforgetable figure of Celimene would have thought of Hedda Gabler, that strangest creation of ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... don't overestimate myself in the least, Elice girl. Practically, commercially, I'm a zero. I'm simply not built that way. If I'm ever of any use in the world, ever amount to anything whatever, it will be in an impractical, artistic way. Whether I'll ever win out so—oh, for light, for light!... Frankly, the new novel is going badly, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... odd match: Floretta, pale, polite, impractical and intensely romantic; Thad, florid, rough and to the point. Yet the married pair seemed to be happy together. Winslow went to sea on several voyages and, four years after the marriage, remained at home for ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... did not discover the means by which the end was accomplished; he used the discovery of other men, and turned their impractical theories and inventions to practical uses, and, in addition, invented many theories of his own. The man who does old things in a new way, or makes new uses of old inventions, is the one who achieves great things. And so it was the reading of the discovery of Hertz that started the boy on the train ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... some sign of the "crank," the impractical dreamer. She was confident that this question would reveal the man she had been warned against—that in answering it he would betray his true self. But he disappointed ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... prevent her from loving the elder, though their characters (hers and his) were not made to comprehend each other; and her lack of enthusiasm in the days of his literary apprenticeship was natural enough in a parent who understood only too well the impractical, improvident mind he possessed, and feared its consequences. The fact was that Balzac ill supported remonstrances from his own family, and especially from his mother, and, when irritated by them, forgot every benefit he ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... principles on which language is formed had it pleased Professor Townsend to withhold them. 4. "Sufficient reason"! Then there were reasons why Professor Townsend ought to have kept these good things all to himself; only, they were not sufficient. 5. "Practical benefit"! Is there any such thing as impractical benefit? Are not all benefits practical? and, if they are, what purpose does the epithet practical serve? 6. Consented to what? It is easy to see that the Doctor means acceded to the request, but he is a long way from saying so. The object writers usually have in view is to convey thought, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... sat down at the far side of the hut awaiting she knew not what impending fate. She could not sleep so filled was her mind with wild schemes of escape though each new one must always be discarded as impractical. Half an hour after the warrior had returned her to her prison he rose and entered the hut, where he tried to engage in conversation with her. Groping across the interior he leaned his short spear against the wall and sat down beside her, and as he talked he edged closer and closer until ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... definition; for this political or social movement is based upon a system of a priori reasoning which often is vague and lacking in deductions from practical experience. Socialism also is unreal in its assumptions and impractical in its conclusions, so that a person finds it almost impossible to give a definition that will include within its scope all the Socialistic vagaries and explain all the suppositions based upon nonexistent facts. Bearing this difficulty in mind, ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... made stagnant by superstition. I only added it because this is a peculiar case of a statement of fact that turns out to be a statement of falsehood. It is constantly said of the Irish that they are impractical. But if we refrain for a moment from looking at what is said about them and look at what is DONE about them, we shall see that the Irish are not only practical, but quite painfully successful. The poverty ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... English-speakers—the American people. In this they do not follow Cecil Rhodes, a chief propagandist of their main design. It is true that the idea of getting Americans to participate in any formal union with all the rest of their brethren by race and tongue seems now impractical. But time works wonders. Mr. Gladstone foresaw the United States a people of six hundred comfortable millions, living in union before the end of the next century. The hegemony of the English-speaking nations seems likely to be within attainment by that one of them which appears destined ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Comanche was there on the white plain to serve the present, and temporary, purpose of housing and feeding the thousands who had collected there at the lure of chance with practical, impractical, speculative, romantic, honest, and dishonest ideas and intentions. Whether it should survive to become a colorless post-office and shipping-station for wool, hides, and sheep remained for the future to decide. As the town appeared under the burning sun of that August ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of the new arrivals. Rosine looked healthy and very much alive. She was gazing at the strange scenes around her with amused interest. There was a faint blush upon her round cheek as she greeted her old admirer. Mr. Hemstetter shook hands with Johnny in a very friendly way. He was an oldish, impractical man—one of that numerous class of erratic business men who are forever dissatisfied, and seeking ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... do see him you'll understand. Nice old chap as ever lived. Only impractical, dreamy. Gentle as a sheep—and no more capable of running that big, expensive plant than a motherly old ewe. That's where the trouble is. When father's closed down on him and edged him out—quietly, you understand—it'll be the best thing that ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... with such good-natured carelessness did he handle this uncongenial employ that he had repeatedly to make good from his own pocket the losses he entailed upon the government. Even this unsatisfactory labor failed the impractical author about the period of the death of King Philip II (1598). He was imprisoned for debt, and sank into such abject poverty that he depended on his friends for bread. How much the gloomy Philip II is satirized in Cervantes' masterpiece has ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... Impractical men have told me that right will always triumph of itself; it needs no fighters to support it. The man who believes that is ignorant, and such ignorance is dangerous. Right is always trampled down when no fighter upholds it. But men will ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... slept on. That strain in him which had made his maternal ancestors gentlemen-adventurers in Tudor times, and cavaliers in the days of Charles the First, and Jacobites with James the Second, and roysterers with George the Fourth—loyal, swashbuckling, and impractical, daring, dashing, lovable, absurd, bound to come to grief one day or another, as they had come—that strain lying dormant, Ashley was free to wake in the spirit of the manufacturer of brushes. In other words ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... first determined that it was possible to split an atom. It is difficult to forget that even after World War II some of our most respected scientists sold short the idea of developing long-range missiles. Impractical, they said; visionary. But 6 years after the United States went to work seriously on missiles, an operational ICBM with a 9,000-mile range was ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics |
