"Ineffectual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cesarini's flight was soon discovered and recaptured; but all search for Cesarini himself proved ineffectual, not only in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud, but in the surrounding country and in Paris. The only comfort was in thinking that his watch would at least preserve him for some time from the horrors of want; and that by the sale of the trinket, he might be traced. The police, too, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IX • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... attire. He seldom wore a coat, "but generally appeared in a plaid gown, and was always seen with a pipe in his mouth." John Eliot, the noble preacher and missionary to the Indians, warmly denounced both the wearing of wigs and the smoking of tobacco. But his denunciations were ineffectual in both matters—heads continued to be adorned with curls of foreign growth, and pipe-smoke continued ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... an empire suddenly so great, was but a temporary phenomenon. Fate had decided that the grand and wise Knut was to be short-lived; and to leave nothing as successors but an ineffectual young Harald Harefoot, who soon perished, and a still stupider fiercely-drinking Harda-Knut, who rushed down of apoplexy (here in London City, as I guess), with the goblet at his mouth, drinking health and happiness at a wedding-feast, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... before the court was torn down, one-third of its tenants were Greeks. Their slum over yonder is dead, black, given over to smoky chimneys and bad draughts, with red-eyed and hopeless men and women forever blowing the bellows on ineffectual fires. Ours is alive if it is with fighting. There is yeast in it, and bright skies without, if not within. I don't believe there is a bellows to be had in New York. Our slum, with its greater crowd, has more urgent need of sharp attention, chiefly because ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... war, the plan of the armed neutrality was formed and put in execution: but it was inconvenient, expensive, and ineffectual. This being the case, the problem is, does not commerce contain within itself, the means of its own protection? It certainly does, if the neutral nations will employ ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... about international good-will and co-operation? After all, the approaches to the human problem from without in and from within out are not antithetical, but supplementary. This tunnel must be dug from both ends and until the Church thoroughly grasps that fact she will lead an incomplete and ineffectual life. ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... of twelve, noon, a field-piece burst upon the stillness of the sultry day, and the band began the strains of "The Star-spangled Banner." Every hat was taken off, and an instant later, efforts to restrain it being ineffectual, six miles of solid cheering encompassed the latest ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... her direction. There, after a moment, he distinguished the sheepshead, barred in black and white, wavering about the piling. His companion was fishing with a short, heavy rod from which time had dissolved the varnish, an ineffectual brass reel that complained shrilly whenever the lead was raised or lowered, and a ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... point,' said Somerset. 'For I observed you to employ the word "indiscriminate." Now, surely, a scavenger's barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate, and, pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal.' ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... dear," said the bishop, striving, as was usual with him, by some meek and ineffectual word to teach his wife that she was occasionally led by her energy into error. He never persisted in the lessons when he found, as was usual, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... have laid upon our souls, (and I could heartily wish Christians would do it at least once a week) it will be an innocent and warrantable spell, to render the witchery of the flesh, world, and devil, fruitless and ineffectual upon our spirits, while the soul may say with David, "Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praise ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... even among the remote villages of England. What Crabbe and the bulk of the parochial clergy called "a sober and rational conversion" seemed to those who had fallen under the fervid influence of the great Methodist a savourless and ineffectual formality. The extravagances of the Movement had indeed travelled everywhere in company with its worthier fruits. Enthusiasm,—"an excellent good word until it was ill-sorted,"—found vent in various shapes that were justly feared and suspected by many of the clergy, even ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... made an ineffectual search for those who had played the trick. They soon discovered that the bags had been thrown through the ventilator, but, by the time a committee of investigation had gone to the loft, the four ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... which had been practised through the spring and summer still consisted, broadly speaking, in the advance of lines of Infantry behind a creeping barrage. These lines were too often held up by pill-boxes, against which the creeping barrage was ineffectual, and once delay which had not been calculated on occurred, the creeping barrage was proved doubly useless, for it had outdistanced the speed of the advance. The change in tactics necessary to reduce ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... crepuscule, cockshut time|; break of day, daybreak, dawn. moonlight, moonbeam, moonglade[obs3], moonshine; starlight, owl's light, candlelight, rushlight, firelight; farthing candle. V. be dim, grow dim &c. adj.; flicker, twinkle, glimmer; loom, lower; fade; pale, pale its ineffectual fire [Hamlet]. render dim &c. adj.; dim, bedim[obs3], obscure; darken, tone down. Adj. dim, dull, lackluster, dingy, darkish, shorn of its beams, dark 421. faint, shadowed forth; glassy; cloudy; misty &c. (opaque) 426; blear; muggy|, fuliginous[obs3]; nebulous, nebular; obnubilated[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... themselves, and when in madness they swept it away, it was not as one renouncing an error, but as one impatient of the truth which the error is still believed to contain. They flung it away, not as an ineffectual restraint, but as a restraint; not because it was no longer an instrument of justice for the determination of truth, but because they feared that it might again become such. In brief, trial by jury was abolished only ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... inform him of that great marvel and enigma of the ocean; of its repeated appearance to the inhabitants of their islands; and of the many but ineffectual expeditions that had been made in search of it. They took him to a promontory of the island of Palma, from whence the shadowy St. Brandan had oftenest been descried, and they pointed out the very tract in the west where ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... ineffectual lunges he succeeds in clutching the coveted article in the cleft of the pole, and draws it ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... invisible but deadly gases from the century-old corruption that rose to meet him and were unconsciously inhaled. Then, as the fumes mounted to his brain, sober reason was ousted from her throne and imagination rioted unchecked, peopling the void with horrors and ineffectual phantoms. From the sashless windows grotesque faces stared down upon him, scowling malignantly, while others, with still more hideous smile, invited him to enter and become one of their dreadful company. Insane laughter re-echoed in his ears, and the music of lutes, irresistible in its languor-compelling ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... true; for I have observed that with ashes, gravel, or, if these are not to be gotten, with dust itself they usually thicken the water, as if the earthy particles being rough would scour better than fair water, whose thinness makes it weak and ineffectual. And therefore he is mistaken when he says the thickness of the sea water hinders the effect, since the sharpness of the mixed particles very much conduces to make it cleansing; for that open the pores, and draws out the stain. But since all oily matter ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Indivisible nedividebla. Indolent senenergia. Indomitable nedresebla. Indorse dorseskribi. Indubitable neduba. Induce decidigi, alkonduki. Indulge indulgi. Indulge (one's self) indulgigxi. Indulgence indulgo. Industrious diligenta. Industry (business) industrio. Inebriate ebrii. Ineffectual vana. Ineligible neelektebla. Inert senmova. Inertia inercio. Inestimable netaksebla. Inevitable neevitebla. Inexact malgxusta. Inexhaustible nekonsumebla. Inexpedient nenecesa, nekonvena. Inexperience malsperteco. Inexplicable neklarigebla. Inexpressible neesprimebla. Inextricable ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... May from Santa-Maria, taking a south-westerly course, and in twenty-seven days the American continent was sighted at the place which was named Venezuela, because the houses being built upon piles reminded the beholders of Venice. Hojeda, after some ineffectual attempts to hold intercourse with the natives, with whom he had several skirmishes, next saw the Island of Margarita; after sailing about 250 miles to the east of the river Orinoco he reached the Gulf of Paria, and entered a bay called the Bay of Las Perlas, from ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... speak! Merciful Providence!" she exclaimed aloud, "What can I do? what shall I do? Barbara! Alas! alas! she hears me not—Dear Constance! This is worse than faintness," she continued, as exertions to restore her proved ineffectual; for Constantia, exhausted by her efforts to appear tranquil, and to chime in with the temper of her guest, until tortured at the very mention of Burrell's ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... present purpose much the same ground as the French, in that they too have made the shift from the dynastic State to the national commonwealth. The British started late, but the discipline of servitude and unmitigated personal rule in their case was relatively brief and relatively ineffectual; that is to say, as compared with what their German cousins had to endure and to learn in the like connection. So that the British never learned the lesson of dynastic loyalty fully by heart; at least not the populace; whatever may be true for the privileged classes, the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... colonies; and to appease them, and to avoid such a public calamity, a detachment of the 42d regiment of root was that year sent from the garrison of Fort Pitt, to remove such settlers as were seated at Red Stone Creek, &c.—but the endeavours and threats of that detachment proved ineffectual, and they returned to the garrison, without being able to execute their orders.—The complaints of the Six Nations however continuing and increasing, on account of the settling of their lands over the mountains, General ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... A sounding trumpet to his strenuous lips, 20 And shapes the drifts To curves of transient loveliness, he slips Upon the pasture's ineffectual brown A swan-soft vestment ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... go, they replied with snarls, and refused to obey. Their open defiance of his authority sent Marks into a rage. He tried to lash them, but in his blinded condition his aim was poor and his efforts ineffectual. ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... have practice without theory, he says, the superstructure without the foundation, the fruit without the root, works without the {190} faith which produces works: and such being the nature of his undertaking, he fares accordingly, a spectacle of ineffectual goodness, wondering why the world declines to listen to his so reasonable gospel. But the world continues to cling to an ultra-rational Gospel because it is instinctively aware that morality rests upon ultra-rational sanctions. Ethicism may borrow from Christianity ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Polly had a feeling—A young rabbit must have very much the feeling, when after a youth of gambolling in sunny woods and furtive jolly raids upon the growing wheat and exciting triumphant bolts before ineffectual casual dogs, it finds itself at last for a long night of floundering effort and perplexity, in a net—for the rest of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... eyes on the indignant Mrs. Silk and fell fast asleep. It was a sound sleep and dreamless, and only troubled by the occasional ineffectual attempts of his hostess to arouse him. She gave up the attempt at last, and taking up a pair of socks sat working thoughtfully the other side of ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... sanitary work in the Delta pointed out to a well-to-do farmer's wife in a cholera year that she was running terrible risks by having her cesspool quite close to the door of her house, and so placed that it was contaminating all the drinking-water used by her and her family. At last after many ineffectual remonstrances he ordered the removal of this sure and certain road to death by cholera. The woman was furious, and ended up a battle royal by telling him that though for the moment he could oppress the poor and triumph over the Godly, it would ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... to travel is the road of irony and documentation, both of which will hold him back from ineffectual rages and thereby serve to enlarge his influence. Such genius for controversy as his may be neither expected nor advised to look for quieter paths; it feels, with Bernard Shaw, that "if people are rotting ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... being boys either very idle or very ignorant, and, as they kept tumbling backwards over the thwarts, one gentleman and I were left to do all the work. On our way we came upon an Indian in a bark canoe, and spent much of our strength in an ineffectual race with him, succeeding in nothing but in getting aground. We had very great difficulty in landing, and two pretty squaws indulged in hearty ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the Conditioned," as a ground of faith in the Infinite Being, is utterly void, meaningless, and ineffectual. Let us re-state it in Hamilton's own words: "The conditioned is the mean between two extremes, two inconditionates exclusive of each other, neither of which can be conceived as possible, but of which, on the principle of Contradiction and Excluded Middle, one must be admitted ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... a part he was of me his great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or books without an ineffectual turning and reference to him.... He was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension. I seem to love the house he died at more passionately than when he lived.... What was his mansion is consecrated to me ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... necessary, and supplying them with proper books; and, in short, by endeavoring, so far as may be, to supply the place of parents. It is seldom that such a course would fail to secure steady service, and such affection and gratitude, that even higher wages would be ineffectual to tempt them away. There would probably be some cases of ungrateful returns; but there is no doubt that the course indicated, if generally pursued, would very much lessen ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... peace and bind over parties who threatened offence.[1] Fifty years later, in the reign of Richard II, it was found necessary to provide further measures for repressing forcible entries on lands. The course of justice was interrupted and all these provisions were rendered in a great degree ineffectual by the lawless spirit of the times. The Statute of 1379 recites that "our Sovereign Lord the King hath perceived ... that divers of his Liege People claiming to have Right to divers Lands, Tenements, and ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... ripping of cloth, the tearing of flesh, and something hot gushed over Phil's shoulder and arm. His own blow landed, but not squarely, and, as he stumbled forward, his lithe, vicious antagonist sprang aside, making another wild but ineffectual sweep with the knife he held in his right hand. Before Quentin could recover, the fellow was dashing straight toward the petrified, speechless men at the end of the porch, where they had been joined by some of ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... man of the Tiers Estat: "that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes, troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... disappoint the devotion of the Christians, and to intercept the future honors of these martyrs, who had been punished, like their predecessors, by the enemies of their religion. The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions ineffectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred to the Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries introduced his worship into the bosom ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... butterfly to do among bulls and bears? He had been a tea-merchant for a little longer, but had soon tired of pekoe and souchong. Then he had tried selling dry sherry. That did not answer; the sherry was a little too dry. Ultimately he became nothing, a delightful, ineffectual young man with a perfect profile and ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... rose up at the same time, and advancing towards him, frantically waving its arms, and repeating the words Edmund had just uttered. He was in a frenzy of despair, and rushing to the door, as the spectre had come up to him, he had made an ineffectual effort to open it, and was busily engaged in kicking its stout timbers to attract the attention ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... and his successors. The prosperous turn Horace's own life had taken was ripening him fast, and undoing the bad effects of earlier years. We have passed for good out of the society of Rupilius Rex and Canidia. At one time Horace must have run the risk of turning out a sort of ineffectual Francois Villon; this, too, is over, and his earlier education bears fruit in a temper of remarkable and ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... father will pray that he may not obtain. 'True.' And when the father, in the heat of youth or the dotage of age, makes some rash prayer, the son, like Hippolytus, may have reason to pray that the word of his father may be ineffectual. 'You mean that a man should pray to have right desires, before he prays that his desires may be fulfilled; and that wisdom should be the first object of our prayers?' Yes; and you will remember my ...
— Laws • Plato
... An ineffectual aunt in the critical years of adolescence! Mic-co did not suggest that his cousin's sex ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... industry was faced by the double difficulty of preserving its market from the import of English cloth, through Hanseatic ships, and of obtaining the necessary raw material. The restrictive measures taken against the import of English cloth proved ineffectual, and Spanish wool, which was tried as a substitute for English, was of inferior quality. Ypres was the first to suffer, in spite of the solicitude of the dukes, who reduced commercial taxes in its favour. Its population fell from 12,000 in 1412 to 10,000 in 1470, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... that sunk to oblivion around them. Of how many more will the same remark prove true! What encouragement is thus given to the industrious! With such encouragement, how inexcusable is the negligence which suffers the most interesting and important truths, to seem heavy and dull, and fall ineffectual to the ground, through mere sluggishness in their delivery! How unworthy of one who performs the high function of a religious instructer, upon whom depend, in a great measure, the religious knowledge and devotional sentiment ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... inside the grove, where I met Charles Ewing and John Hunter, and we stood looking at the troops on the road, heading toward the city. A band of music was playing at the head, and the column made one or two ineffectual starts, but for some reason was halted. The battalion of regulars was abreast of me, of which Major Rufus Saxton was in command, and I gave him an evening paper, which I had bought of the newsboy on my way out. He was reading from it some piece of news, sitting ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... General Tighe, who had won distinction in the Indian Service, was appointed to command the British troops in German East Africa. During this month there was some desultory fighting along the edges of Kilmanjaro, and repeated but ineffectual attempts were made to cut the Uganda Railway line; otherwise there were no hostile movements worthy of note in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Charles Montague, Congreve admits that his play has faults, but does not take in hand those adduced above, with the exception of the objections to Maskwell and Mellefont. 'They have mistaken cunning in one character for folly in another': an ineffectual answer, because the extremity of cunning is equally destructive of dramatic balance. He defends his use of soliloquy very warmly: of which it may be said that, so long as his rule—that no character may overhear the soliloquiser—is observed, it is a tolerable convention, but a ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... or even from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One capital is covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads grow out of two bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures are all fighting, or devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost, and yet in an ineffectual way, as if they would fight for ever, and come to no decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs did I notice, nor a single peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely Byzantine), but mermaids with two tails (the sculptor having perhaps seen double at the time), strange, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... convent near Perth, where he was residing, and barbarously murdered him by oft-repeated wounds. His faithful queen, rushing to throw her tender body between him and the sword, was twice wounded in the ineffectual attempt to shield him from the assassin; and it was not until she had been forcibly torn from his person, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... these statements, and believed as much of them as he chose. However he waived the subject of the cause of the disaster; the fact that it had occurred was undeniable; and the remedies for such emergencies were immediately resorted to. But all proved alike ineffectual, for the simple reason that the irrevocable fiat had gone forth, and Blanche Damer was appointed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... we were ourselves laughing merrily over the baby's ineffectual efforts to catch a bunch of scarlet roses which George dangled above her head, and, altogether forgetful of Evelyn's sneer, bumped our heads together in trying to ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... crowns, Of battles through the world compelled to cease, Of bolts that guard the God who guards the peace, And haughty Parthia through defeat and shame By Caesar taught to fear the Roman name: 'Tis strength that lacks: your dignity disdains The mean support of ineffectual strains, And modesty forbids me to essay A theme whose weight would make my powers give way. Officious zeal is apt to be a curse To those it loves, especially in verse; For easier 'tis to learn and recollect What moves derision than what claims respect. He's not my friend who hawks in every place ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Brethren! Countrymen! The perfidious act of your reckless enemies to render ineffectual the late resolves of the body of the people, demands your assembling at the Old South Meeting House, precisely at ten o'clock this day, at which time the bells ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... Marseillois hymn. I said nothing to him, but sat observing him. He stood for some time staring at the mules and talking incoherent nonsense in French. At last he said, "I am not so drunk but I can ride," and proceeded to lead his mules towards the gate. When out of the town he made several ineffectual attempts to mount the smallest mule which bore the saddle; he at length succeeded, and instantly commenced spurring at a furious rate down the road. We arrived at a place where a narrow rocky path branched off, by taking which we should avoid a considerable circuit round the city ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... distresses new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before them "like a thing reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and revenges of life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path; they counsel a meticulous[31] footing; but their serene, marred faces are more eloquent and tell another story. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the charm which captivates without the aid of nature, and without which her utmost bounty is ineffectual. But it cannot be assumed as a mask to conceal insensibility or malevolence; it must be the genuine effect of corresponding sentiments, or it will impress upon the countenance a new and more disgusting deformity, affectation: it will produce the grin, the simper, the stare, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... entertainments of the servants' hall paled their ineffectual fires before the superior effulgence of those delightful visions which I now possessed the power of summoning at will; books or stories of travel and adventure alone had now any charm for me; and these I devoured with an appetite which ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... tough philosophy. His rough laugh chafed her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in the breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual. Unworthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she glowed upon him in a way that would have sent her higher adorers into an egoistic paradise. The candy man's hard eyes looked upon her with a half-concealed ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... done up, dead beat, exhausted, shattered, demoralized; graveled &c (in difficulty) 704; helpless, unfriended^, fatherless; without a leg to stand on, hors de combat [Fr.], laid on the shelf. null and void, nugatory, inoperative, good for nothing; ineffectual &c (failing) 732; inadequate &c 640; inefficacious &c (useless) 645. Phr. der kranke Mann [G.]; desirous still but impotent to rise [Shenstone]; the spirit is willing but ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... having left his old friend Crabshaw, suddenly halted, and stood stock still, notwithstanding all the stripes and tortures he underwent; or if he moved at all, it was in a retrograde direction. The thief, seeing all his endeavours ineffectual, and himself in danger of being overtaken, wisely quitted his acquisition, and fled into the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... spite of the arbitration of the King of France the civil war continued in England; but Louis did not seek any way to profit by it so as to extend, at the expense of his neighbors, his own possessions or power; he held himself also from their quarrels, and followed up by honest neutrality ineffectual arbitration. Five centuries afterwards the great English historian, Hume, rendered him due homage in these terms: "Every time this virtuous prince interfered in the affairs of England, it was invariably ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... commented Mrs. Applegate from the porch. But Charley-Joe, with an almost hypnotic fixity in his yellow eyes, and who during the last few minutes had several times opened his mouth wide in an ineffectual attempt to mew, suddenly found his voice with ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... of the distracted husband may be conceived, when all efforts to restore life proved totally ineffectual. Servants were despatched for medical men—Hartley, and every other who could be found. The General precipitated himself into the apartment they had so lately left, and in his haste ran, against Middlemas, who, at the ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... saw an eye like his. It gave me not fear, but horror! The more I encountered him, the more uncanny he appeared. The lock of the arm at the back of the neck, those holds known as the Nelson and the half-Nelson, and the ancient "hip lock," and the ineffectual schoolboy "grapevine"—he would none of things so crude, and slipped out of them like a snake. Continually I felt his hands, and where he touched there was pain—on my forehead, at the edge of the eye sockets, at the sides of my neck, in the middle ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... to an endeavour to wean my brother's affection from Madame de Sauves, in order to counterplot Le Guast in his design to bring about a division, and thereby to effect our ruin. I used every means with my brother to divert his passion; but the fascination was too strong, and my pains proved ineffectual. In anything else, my brother would have suffered himself to be ruled by me; but the charms of this Circe, aided by that sorcerer, Le Guast, were too powerful to be dissolved by my advice. So far was he from profiting by my counsel that he was weak enough to communicate ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... however, is insufficient, and it is noteworthy that the ruler felt it to be so. To begin with, it is largely negative: there are three negatives in this twentieth verse for one affirmative, and negations cannot redeem us. The law is also external. As a proof that it is ineffectual, I ask, Have you ever rejoiced in it? Have you ever been kindled by it? Have all its precepts ever moved you like one single item in the story of the love of Jesus? Is the man attractive to you who has kept the law and done nothing more? Would not the poor woman who anointed our ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... so furious, that they sometimes broke the trees, to which we were often under the necessity of tying them; sometimes they tore asunder the cartilage of the nostril, through which the ropes ran, and got loose. On these occasions, all the exertions of our men to recover them would have been ineffectual, without the assistance of some young boys, whom these animals would permit to approach them, and by whose little managements their rage was soon appeased. And when, at length, they were got down to the beach, it was by their aid, in twisting ropes round their legs, in the manner they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... should never see him again," when a slight, accidental indisposition disturbed the whole arrangement. The royal youth was taken ill with the measles; upon which the French troops which had embarked at Dunkirk disembarked. A fatal delay was occasioned; and the French fleet, after an ineffectual voyage, went "sneakingly home," "doing," as one of the most active Jacobites remarks, "much harm to the King, his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... of the force with which you handle the subject,"—and ex-President Noah Porter, "I thank you very sincerely for sending me a copy of your last book; I had already read it nearly twice, and found much in it very admirable and timely,"—I could very well afford to pass over Dr. Royce's ineffectual "criticisms" with indifference. But when he insinuates to the uninformed public that these same "criticisms" have the weighty sanction of Harvard University, it is quite another matter. That calls upon me to defend myself against so ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... tells us that the light of the sun probably comes from its contraction; and that that process of contraction will go on until, at some point within the bounds of time, though far beyond the measure of our calculations, the sun himself shall die, the ineffectual beams will be paled, and there will be a black orb, with neither life nor light nor power. And then, then, and after that for ever, 'they that love Him' shall continue to be as that dead sun once was, when he went forth in his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bit frightened, but still holding on to the slate, which Cohen was making ineffectual efforts to regain, replied, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... punishment has always been ineffectual in preventing crime, for the reason that the very passion responsible for the crime masters the fear.... It is difficult to discuss these ravages on a purely physical basis, for the ramifications of cruelty are cumulatively intense, the higher they are carried. Ignorance ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... for tea, Mark." She paused, characteristically tentative, wavering, fearful of intruding, a gentle, kindly, ineffectual presence. "And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... knout in the hands of Remorse. He was daily and nightly haunted by plans and pictures whose feverish unreal beauty he remembered having seen through a hundred times. Those Fata Morgana plans, should he again waste on them the effort of construction? The result had been a chaos of aimless, ineffectual days. Those pictures, why were they brought again to mock him? Were they not horrible impossibilities? Were they not, through the paralysis of his executive faculties, mere startling likenesses of Disappointment? ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Commons on the 5th of March. "When I recollect," said Lord Cochrane on that occasion, "the imputations cast upon my character, and circulated industriously previous to any legal proceedings, the conduct pursued at my trial, the verdict obtained, the ineffectual endeavours; to procure a revision of my case in the Court of King's Bench, and the infamous sentence there pronounced, together with my expulsion from this House without being suffered to expose its injustice—when ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... with showers and dripped upon a little with ineffectual suns, slid restlessly away from me, and I locked my office door one night, reflecting that it was the night of the first of May, and that ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... power of disposition as we wish. We would gain a particular advantage of another; and the thought of the old Roman lawyer who died before Justinian, or that of Rome's great orator Cicero, annihilates the act, or makes the intention ineffectual. This act, Moses forbids; that, Alfred. We would sell our land; but certain marks on a perishable paper tell us that our father or remote ancestor ordered otherwise; and the arm of the dead, emerging ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Blister did not relieve, the Application of a second, and afterwards keeping up a Discharge from the Part by Means of the Epispastic Ointment, carried off the Pain. In others, where the mild Diaphoretics were ineffectual, Sweating, with the G. Guaiac, or Dover's Powder, and such other Medicines, after the Fever was gone, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... old enemy, the ague, reappear. In 1786 he said, in a letter, "I write to you with a very aching head and disordered frame.... Saturday last, by an imprudent act, I brought on an ague and fever on Sunday, which returned with violence Tuesday and Thursday; and, if Dr. Craik's efforts are ineffectual I shall have them again this day." His diary gives the treatment: "Seized with an ague before 6 o'clock this morning after having laboured under a fever all night—Sent for Dr. Craik who arrived just as we were setting down to dinner; who, when he thought my ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... flagrant defiance of the highest duties and the most sacred obligations, the Legislature passed these resolutions, to nullify the anticipated decisions of the court. We have seen, however, that this executive and legislative usurpation was ineffectual. The court stood firm, not a single judge wavered, and, by a unanimous decree, reversed the legislative and executive repudiation—vindicated the majesty of the law and the Constitution—upheld the sacred cause of truth and justice—resisted the popular frenzy, and defied the unprincipled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Listen to me yet further: when I have ceased, I will listen to you. It is in vain that you place man in cities; it is in vain that you fetter him with laws; it is in vain that you pour into his mind the light of an imperfect morality, of a glimmering wisdom, of an ineffectual religion: in all places he is the same,—the same savage and crafty being, who makes the passions which rule himself the tools of his conquest over others! There is in all creation but one evident law,—self-preservation! ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... House of Parliament, to facilitate the passing of the bill. He again declined to answer. He was anxious, he said, to treat the House with all possible respect, but he thought it hard to be compelled to accuse himself. After several ineffectual attempts to refresh his memory, he was directed to withdraw. A violent discussion ensued between the friends and opponents of the ministry. It was asserted that the administration were no strangers to the convenient taciturnity of Sir John Blunt. The Duke ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... whether you do not is in the hands of God," the General said. "I don't think Nell will mind very much if your sword-arm is ineffectual or not. You've done enough for honour, anyhow. And I'm not going to betray any more of the child's secrets. You'd better come and hear them yourself. I'll tell you what: come on Christmas Day. Come to lunch and bring your bag with you. I daresay ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... world, he would soon, in his own refined phraseology, convince me that I was "no great shakes." Being now nearly sixteen, I began to make conjectures upon my future destiny; and a sorrowful accident at once determined in what line I should make my ineffectual attempts upon fame. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... imitated Nature too carelessly,—not deeply perceiving that wisdom and virtue, striving in man to resist senescence and decay, must in a goddess accomplish their purpose, and preserve her in perpetual bloom. Yet even decay and disease are often ineffectual; the young soul gleams through these impediments, and would be poorly expressed in figures of age. Accepting, therefore, this ideal representation, age and wisdom can never be companions; youth is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... had not breath sufficient to keep its vestal fire alive, and a lady with two children besides living intruders. A net from the top was filled with bags, baskets, and band-boxes. Our night was sad indeed, and the groans of our fellow-travellers and the ineffectual fluttering of a fan which the Officer used proved how little they were satisfied with the order of things. The children were crammed with a succession of French Plums, almonds, garlicked mutton, liqueurs, and hock, all of which ingredients the kind ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... has transformed these giants into windmills to deprive me of the honour of the victory; such is his inveterate malice against me; but in the end, all his pernicious wiles and stratagems shall prove ineffectual against the prevailing edge ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... with much trouble, and after many ineffectual attempts; but I refrain from pointing out the particular passages which I have supplied, so as not to disturb the historical interest of the greater part of my readers. For modern criticism, which has now attained to a degree ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... could defend with desperate courage their own flimsy fortifications of wood, earth, and loose stones; but they could not pull down with ropes the solid German fortresses of stone and cement, and their spears were ineffectual upon the shining armor. Their conquest was inevitable; the conquered territory being divided between the knights and the Latin Church. So Koenigsberg and many other Russian towns were captured and then Teutonized, by joining them to the cities of ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... been reserved to signalize the lives of a Cato or a Brutus, on the eve of fatal revolutions; to foster in secret the indignation of Thrasea and Helvidius; and to occupy the reflections of speculative men in times of corruption. But even in such late and ineffectual examples, it was happy to know, and to value, an object which is so important to mankind. The pursuit, and the love of it, however unsuccessful, has thrown its principal lustre on ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... her at deadly close range. With the projectiles from 25 guns of the "Congress" and 15 of the "Cumberland" rattling on her armour, riddling her funnel, and destroying davits, rails, and deck-fittings, the "Merrimac" steamed straight for the "Cumberland," which made an ineffectual attempt to avoid the coming collision. At the last moment some men were killed and wounded in the gun-deck of the ram by shots entering a port-hole. Then came a grinding crash as the iron ram of the "Merrimac" struck the "Cumberland" almost at right angles on the starboard side under her ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... be agreeable to all-powerful Jove, who has already overthrown the citadels of many cities, yea, and will even yet overthrow them, for transcendent is his power. For this were disgraceful even for posterity to hear, that so brave and so numerous a people of the Greeks warred an ineffectual war, and fought with fewer men; but as yet no end has appeared. For if we, Greeks and Trojans, having struck a faithful league,[85] wished that both should be numbered, and [wished] to select the Trojans, on the one hand, as many as are townsmen; and if we Greeks, on the other ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... handkerchief to her eyes. The word 'dead' was ineffectual to express her feelings. 'Murdered!' she ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... night. He asked the first, my mother the second, and so on, everyone saying the question asked and then asking the next. It fell to my mother to ask Effectual Calling at me. I said the answer with propriety and emphasis. "Now, madam," added I, "my question to you is: What is Ineffectual Calling?" ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Indians, who had all been forced back into the forts. Crook had sent a picket of soldiers to the edge of the basalt cliffs and these men, with long-range rifles, did some little execution on the defenders of the forts, although the distance was so great that their fire was largely ineffectual. Night found the soldiers ensconced behind boulders on the very rim of the ravine, the Indians in the forts. In little squads the {306} soldiers were withdrawn from the battlefield and sent down to the camp in the valley to get something to eat. They ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... what avails that, when other agents of the governments so represented apply themselves with assiduity to stultify the very measures which their colleagues are endeavouring to effect. As might have been anticipated, their sittings at Ragusa proved as ineffectual as those at Mostar, and in three weeks' time they once more adjourned, and have not since reassembled. Whatever difference of opinion may have existed amongst the members on this point, at any rate they professedly agreed ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... Renaissance classicists, who of course condemned it, and the native rimers, but was brought to a peaceful conclusion by Samuel Daniels' A Defence of Rhyme in 1603. In a prefatory note to the second edition of Paradise Lost, Milton delivered an arrogant but ineffectual counterblast. Rime, he said, was "no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... abuse, rendered it ineffectual,' v. 93; 'They may be invited on purpose to abuse him,' ii. 362; 'You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... class, or pretenders to sorcery, and allege that all diseases proceed from witchcraft, and pretend therefore to cure them by supernatural means, for which reason they are employed in desperate cases, when the exertions of the ampives and vileus have proved ineffectual; They have likewise a kind of surgeons, called gutarve; who are skilful in replacing luxations, setting fractured bones, and curing wounds and ulcers. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Chilese doctors used bleeding, blistering, emetics, cathartics, sudorifics, and even glysters. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr |
