"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
... greater part of such accumulations may be considered as funds rescued from unproductive consumption, to be laid out productively in various important branches of industry; and whilst, therefore, in this view, the provident Institutions deserve encouragement from all classes, they more particularly suggest to the gentlemen acting in the different Emigrant and Agricultural ... — First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... the religion of the country. The multiplication and addition of cats were a perpetual instruction in arithmetic. Naturally, any inattention to the wants of a cat was punished with great severity in this world and the next; so my good mother numbered her patrons by the hundred. Still, with an unproductive husband and seventeen children she had some difficulty in making both ends cats'-meat; and at last the necessity of increasing the discrepancy between the cost price and the selling price of her carnal wares drove her to an ... — The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... were but lately back from their wedding-trip. Adrian, after several years of unproductive traffic in exotic literature, had finally made a hit; he had been able not only to lay a telling piece of work at the dear one's feet, but also—by a slight discounting of future certainties—to put a good deal of money in his purse. He had at last found a way to ... — Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... an unproductive hour, at the end of which there were two ineffectual pulls, one at the Nicholson fly, the other a second or two later at the bait. The former was not enough to rattle off the stone from the loop of line; the latter ran out a yard and ... — Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... head. "We're rather foolish about Belfast in Dublin," he said. "After all, real work is done here, isn't it? And the chief industry of Dublin ... what is it? Absolutely unproductive! Porter! Barrels and barrels of it, floating down the Liffey and nothing, nothing real, floating back! I like that man Arthurs. I wish to heaven we had him ... — Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... to be our willing slave and bondsman, we, too, have some dawning notion. Will years of study and observation give us the power to wield the wand at will? We cannot but believe it. Our vast and fertile downs were never destined to be idle and unproductive for months and months, dependent only on the niggard ... — The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... during their lives, but which will be their own and their descendants freehold for ever, than to continue starving themselves and their children on barren patches and crofts of four or five acres of unproductive land in the Highlands. We have experienced all the charms of a Highland croft, as one of a large family, and we unhesitatingly say, that we cannot recommend it to any able-bodied person who can leave it for a more promising outlet for himself and family. While ... — The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... first floor was equally unproductive of clews, save those already noted, which showed, at least so Tom believed, that Mr. Petrofsky had been surprised and overpowered while ... — Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... land hitherto unproductive, or even death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in all ... — What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... agreeing in its prevailing skull-forms with the Mediterranean race of N. Africa, was settled in the Aegean area from a remote Neolithic antiquity, but, except in Crete, where insular security was combined with great natural fertility, remained in a savage and unproductive condition until far into the 4th millennium B.C. In Crete, however, it had long been developing a certain civilization, and at a period more or less contemporary with Dynasties XI. and XII. (2500 B.C.?) the scattered ... — Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... themselves to pay the government for their subsistence from the first income of the crop. The other 7,200 included the paupers, that is, all Negroes over and under the self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospitals. This class, however, instead of being unproductive, had then under cultivation 500 acres of corn, 790 acres of vegetables, and 1,500 acres of cotton, besides working at wood chopping and other industries. There were reported in the aggregate over 100,000 acres of cotton ... — A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... comes for Death to approach, he shall not find me unprepared or faint-hearted. Our faith hopes for and awaits the deliverance to which it leads us. Yet as long as we are upon earth we must attend to our daily task. And mine shall not lie unproductive. However trifling it may seem to others, to me it is indispensable. My soul's tears must, as it were, have lacrymatoria made for them; I must set fires alight for those of my dear ones that are alive, and keep my dear dead in ... — Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... common, excites no surprise; and the stream of population rushes on without stopping one instant to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the necessary cause ... — A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and benches all the weary afternoon, her head drooped on her chest, over some novel from the "Library;" and then returns to tea and shrimps, and lodgings of which the fragrance is not unsuggestive, sometimes not unproductive, of typhoid fever. Ah, poor Nausicaa of England! That is a sad sight to some who think about the present, and have read about the past. It is not a sad sight to see your old father—tradesman, or clerk, or what not—who has done ... — Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... rotation we keep about all of our farm under control; but the smaller farms were necessarily cropped more continuously to support the family, and they became so unproductive that many of them have been completely abandoned for agricultural purposes; and even some of the large plantations were poorly managed, one part having been cropped continuously until too poor to pay for cropping, while the remainder was allowed to grow up in scrub brush and 'old-field' ... — The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... mediaeval impulses: feudalism, which metamorphosed the relative positions of the people and the nobles, and the recognition of papal supremacy, which altered not less thoroughly the standing of the church. While these changes were not unproductive of good at that time, they were distasteful to the nation, and soon became injurious, both to freedom and knowledge, until at length, under the dynasty of the Tudors, the ecclesiastical shackles were cast off, and the feudal bonds began ... — Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... is an appropriate winter doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort for ... — Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... acknowledged, and, if I do not greatly mistake, it must surely soon perceptibly modify in our favor. Our opponents "triumph far more than they conquer us," as Tacitus says. They will not be able to hold their narrow, malicious, negative, and unproductive thesis much longer against our quiet, assured, positive progress in Art-works. A consoling and significant symptom of this is that they are no longer able to support their adherents among living and working ... — Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... of Brittany as are near to the sea-coast present marked differences to the inland regions, where raised plateaux are covered with dreary and unproductive moorland. These plateaux, again, rise into small ranges of hills, not of any great height, but, from their wild and rugged appearance, giving the impression of an altitude much loftier than they possess. The coast-line is ragged, indented, ... — Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... group was formerly covered by a bed of mould, which, after an earthquake, disappeared, and was believed by the residents to have been washed by the rain through the broken masses of underlying rock; the island was thus rendered unproductive. Chamisso (See Chamisso, in Kotzebue's "First Voyage," volume iii., pages 182 and 136.) states, that earthquakes are felt in the Marshall atolls, which are far from any high land, and likewise in the islands of the ... — Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... likely her cares and responsibilities would be doubled. She would have less of Marcus's society, and the world would have claims upon them. The long three years' honeymoon was over, but, thank God, something else was over too,—the dread of approaching poverty, the sadness of unproductive labour, of work done only for love's sake ... — Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... and his children enjoyed every luxury wealth could provide. Still, Daniel was content to be known as a business man; he deported himself modestly and kindly; he pursued with all his old-time diligence the trade which in earlier days he had found so unproductive of riches. His indifference to the pleasures which money put within his reach was passing strange, and it caused the ... — The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... the number of laborers, by securing a larger return from those now employed, and by the permanent occupation of the fertile soil of the South by a large portion of the Union army, as settlers and cultivators, who have heretofore spent their energies upon the comparatively unproductive soil of the North. ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and yet so much division and hatred prevail between those who say it. It is the blind belief in our own faultlessness, it is the hard and assuming spirit of correction, which excite the temper, and make the truth unproductive of good. Why should we present truth in a disfiguring dress, when she is in herself so pure and beautiful? I know, my dear girl, that you only wish to do that which is right and good, and whoever aims rightly at that object will not fail of ... — The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... Russia does not afford such a variety, or large supply of articles of commerce, as might be expected: this is owing to the ungenial and unproductive nature of a very large portion of its soil, to the barbarous and enslaved state of its inhabitants, and to the comparatively few ports, which it possesses, and the extreme distance from the ocean or navigable rivers of its central parts. We have already ... — Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... with meeting the requirements of the college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless: we yearn, Alexander-like, for something ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... never see plainly what I ought to do. The love of the better will have stood between me and the good. Yearning for the ideal will have lost me reality. Vague aspiration and undefined desire will have been enough to make my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductive nature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required of me, may not my very remorse be a ... — Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Corporation," went on Denison, "has several large deposits of radioactive ore in Utah in what is known as the Poor Little Rich Valley, a valley so named because from being about the barrenest and most unproductive mineral or agricultural hole in the hills, the sudden discovery of the radioactive deposits has made it ... — The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... work on Theism (1852), in which the use of miracles as an evidence was depreciated. It is hoped that it will not be considered improper to have named a writer, whose sex might be expected to shelter her from remark; but her writings are too able to be unproductive of influence. ... — History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Tooth outfit, and was swinging back now by way of the Lava Beds, where Tom had said that they were going. It was because Tom had named that as his destination that Lance had ridden elsewhere to find him; good reasoning, but so far unproductive of results. ... — Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... the foliage, to induce stocky growth. Nothing is more injurious to stove plants than to keep them growing late in the season, and thus to prevent the ripening of the wood, which will render them more liable to injuries in winter and more unproductive of ... — In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... decline of Italy must be attributed to other causes. These I believe to have been the extinction of commercial republics, the decay of free commonwealths, iniquitous systems of taxation, the insane display of wealth by unproductive princes, and the diversion of trade into foreign channels. Florence ceased to be the center of wool manufacture, Venice lost her hold upon the traffic between East and West.[242] Stagnation fell like night upon the land, and the population suffered ... — Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... view this was an enormous success, though unproductive of glory. It destroyed at a blow a centre of commerce and supply powerfully contributive to the maintenance of the enemies of Great Britain; both to their hostile operations, and to the indirect but no less vital financial ... — Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... nearly a year, while doing some of his most important work. Here he wrote his treatise On Monastic Vows, declaring that they are wrong and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September 1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last ... — The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town—called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"—was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and ... — Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... equally sterile soil, all sand and gravel, descending in a gentle slope to the embankment of the railway line. It was indeed a stretch of country lost to culture, where the few good patches of loam remained unproductive, inclosed within the waste land. But the spot had all the beauty and exquisite wildness of solitude, and was one that appealed to healthy minds fond of seeing nature in freedom. And on that lovely night one could nowhere have found more perfect and ... — Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... committee, but I know their individual opinions in an informal way. Messrs. Meech and Barradale don't say much; Mr. Owen thinks we will never do much in Mongolia working upon so distant a base as Peking; Mr. Lees thinks it a pity to take up such a seemingly unproductive field while so many more promising fields call for attention; he moreover thinks that the only way to do much for Mongolia is through China; Dr. Edkins thinks I spend too much time and labour over the Mongols, his idea being seemingly a combination of Mongol and Chinese work, with a preponderating ... — James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... assistance, and trade had already found new auxiliaries, so that on the 1st of October last the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a national bank more than one-half of whose capital was either lying unproductive in its vaults or in the hands ... — A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... labor and the products of tropical Africa. In reference to the benefits which had been derived from her West India colonies, before the suppression of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the command of the productions of the ... — Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... exceeded 1,500,000 miles annually, and that 1,040 new post-offices have been established. It hence appears that under judicious management the income from this establishment may be relied on as fully adequate to defray its expenses, and that by the discontinuance of post-roads altogether unproductive others of more useful character may be opened, till the circulation of the mail shall keep pace with the spread of our population, and the comforts of friendly correspondence, the exchanges of internal traffic, ... — A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... a morning newspaper and followed every tentative line of investigation which presented itself to her, but messages to each stage of the journey back to Limasito and exhaustive questioning of the few individuals with whom Tia Juana had come in contact in New York were alike unproductive of result. ... — The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... an author—viz. one S.T. Coleridge—who repeated that same doctrine without finding any evil in it. Look at the first part of the Wallenstein, where Count Isolani having said, "Pooh! we are all his subjects," i. e. soldiers, (though unproductive labourers,) not less than productive peasants, the emperor's envoy replies—"Yet with a difference, general;" and the difference implies Sir James's scale, his vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy.—Malthus again, in his population-book, contends ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... use solely to select the pistillate varieties; for these, although the most profusely productive when well fertilized, are liable to overrun their staminate neighbors, and soon render the "strawberry patch" unproductive, or productive only of small or imperfect fruit. The leading pistillates offered in the catalogues now are Crescent, Col. Cheney, Windsor Chief, Jersey Queen, Big Bob, Manchester, Green Prolific, Golden Defiance, Champion, Park ... — Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... mutton. To-day there are less than half a dozen families left, and they survive by cutting cord wood from the sheep pastures! We must haul our wool from the Argentine, and our mutton from Montana, while our own land goes back to unproductive wilderness. As the road draws near the long hill down into Monterey, there stands a ruined house beside it, one of many ruins you will have passed, the plaster in heaps on the floor, the windows gone, ... — Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... communication with the Boers in the field, though his oath of neutrality was taken and he was availing himself of our hospitality. On one occasion Captain G. S. Higginson spent the night in an empty house in the town in an attempt to mark this fox to ground, but unfortunately his vigil was unproductive ... — The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... Rivers, and over the rich and fertile plains stretching southward from the lake shores? Let the teeming populations—let the hundreds of millions of annual products that have succeeded to the but recent dreary and unproductive haunts of the red man—answer that question. That very preponderance of free States which the Senator from New York contemplates with such satisfaction, and which has moved him exultingly to exclaim that there is at last a North side of this Chamber, has been hastened by ... — The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... deliberation concluded to denounce Bernal Diaz as a myth." For the evidence here promised we have searched with a patience of investigation which, if applied to the problem of perpetual motion or squaring the circle, could not, we humbly think, have been wholly unproductive; and these are the results. "The author of 'Bernal Diaz' says the march to Jalapa was accomplished in one day;—a proof that he never saw the country.... Cortez makes the ascent the work of three days, ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... investigation of the soil and subsoil will frequently afford most useful indications respecting the value of land. It may be laid down as an axiom that a soil to be fertile must contain all the chemical ingredients which a plant can only obtain from the soil, and chemistry ought to be able to inform us in unproductive soils what ingredients are wanting. It also is able to inform us if any poisonous substance exists in the soil, and how it may be neutralized; when lime, marl, and chalk are ... — The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... their oaths nothing ensued, and even the civilities and compliments she received from Lady Jane's particular friends and acquaintance, though in a more polite style, were equally unmeaning and unproductive. Days passed without leaving a ... — Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... circular flower-bed, extended a short distance on either side of the house. But not too much land was put to such unproductive use; and the small lawn was closely bordered by a corn-field on the one side and on the other by an apple orchard. Beyond stretched the tobacco—and wheat-fields, and behind the house were the vegetable garden ... — Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... pretty plain speaking as to the late hero between the two men. Edmund Grosse half drawled out far the worst comments of the two; he liked the lawyer and let himself speak freely. And although the visit was apparently wholly unproductive of other results, it was a decided relief to his feelings. Then he heard that Rose had come back to London, and he went to see her. It was about nine months since she had become a widow. She was alone in the big beautifully furnished ... — Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... ascribe to Arthur even the main credit of these results: they were the effect of that spirit of industry which ever characterises the native of Great Britain, and which nothing can wholly extinguish. Nor was this prosperity without alloy. The unproductive improvement encouraged, was sometimes unhealthy. The settlers were deeply involved: the valuation of property was raised beyond reasonable calculation. The pleasing delusion was cherished by the members of the government, whose official and private interests concurred ... — The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... brings great changes in our inclinations, and with a change of inclination often comes a change of opinion. Add, that the pleasures of the senses sometimes give rise to contempt for mental gratifications as too dry and unproductive and that the delicate and refined pleasures of the mind, in their turn, scorn the voluptuousness of the senses as gross. So, no one should be surprised that in so great a diversity of aspects and movements, ... — Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... St. David's stands, and was founded in honour of the apostle St. Andrew, is called the Vale of Roses; which ought rather to be named the vale of marble, since it abounds with one, and by no means with the other. The river Alun, a muddy and unproductive rivulet, {124} bounding the churchyard on the northern side, flows under a marble stone, called Lechlavar, which has been polished by continual treading of passengers, and concerning the name, size, and quality of which we have treated ... — The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... land of Cape Leveque is low, and presents a sandy beach lined by a rocky reef, extending off the shore for a mile, on many parts of which the sea was breaking heavily: the land was clothed with a small brush wood, but altogether the coast presented a very unproductive appearance, and reminded us of the triste and arid ... — Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... against that. Or, at least, it did not seem that fighting was any use. One may punch a bag, but the bag does not mind, and at last one grows weary of unproductive quarrelling. One shrugs one's shoulders, settles to the collar, and accepts whatever destiny the gods, in their wisdom, have ordained. Is life the anvil upon which the gods beat out their will? It is not so. The ... — Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... "values," but the grandeur of this connection was brought home to me neither by the high lopsided stoop of its very, very East Side setting, nor by the appearance of a terrible massive lady who came to the door while I was in quite unproductive parley with an unmistakably, a hopelessly mystified menial, an outlandish young woman with a face of dark despair and an intelligence closed to any mere indigenous appeal. I was to learn later in the day that she's a Macedonian Christian whom the Chataways ... — The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... to have some splendid mania or other. Even the most selfish of young people are endowed with a superfluity of life, a capital sum of energy which has been advanced to them and cannot be left idle and unproductive: they are for ever seeking to expend it on a course of action, or—(more prudently)—on a theory. Aviation or Revolution, a muscular or intellectual exercise. When a man is young he needs to be under the illusion that he is sharing in some great movement of humanity and is renewing ... — Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Pope Paschal [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a prebend, ... — Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... habits disqualified him for the responsible position he occupied on board. Perry Dornwood, either from remorse, or the consciousness that he had ruined himself and his future prospects, had ended the life which had been so unproductive to ... — All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... coeval with our sires, Not young, but vigorous; and of the Greeks, 985 Achilles may alone with him contend. So saying, the merit of superior speed To Peleus' son he gave, who thus replied. Antilochus! thy praise of me shall prove Nor vain nor unproductive to thyself, 990 For the half-talent doubled shall be thine. He spake, and, doubling it, the talent placed Whole in his hand. He glad the gift received. Achilles, then Sarpedon's arms produced, Stripp'd from him by Patroclus, his long spear, 995 Helmet and shield, which ... — The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... would depart for the little room he slept in and used as work-place over at the carpenter's house among the vineyards. He kept his books there, his rows of pipes and towering little heap of half- filled match-boxes, and there he wrote his clever studies that yet were unproductive of much gold and brought him little more than pleasant notices and occasional letters from enthusiastic strangers. It seemed very unremunerative labour indeed, and the family had done well to migrate from Essex ... — A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... is familiar to all. Any newspaper will furnish facts and figures vividly exemplifying some aspect of the matter. For while only a handful of persons in any country are sincerely anxious under present conditions to reduce the colossal sums every year wasted on the unproductive work of armament; an increasing interest in the matter testifies to a vague alarm and anxiety concerning the ultimate issue. For it is felt that an inevitable crisis lies at the end of the path down which the nations ... — The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... ineffective instrument for military and commercial purposes. How much can it carry, allowing for return trains, chiefly empty? Where is Russia, with a debt equal in charge to our own, to find forty millions sterling for such a work, which would be wholly unproductive? It is true that, by employing troops and Turkomans, the work may be done cheaply; but all this will take a ... — Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... reasons for throwing up his tenancy, and his adventures were soon noised abroad throughout the town. He was the last tenant of the sombre house. Thenceforward no one could be induced to rent it or even to occupy it rent free. It was commonly regarded as a whisht, gruesome spot, and was totally unproductive to its owners. Its subsequent history has already ... — The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... single bell which might be heard tinkling for a mile or two over the fells, stood all alone about half a mile from the Squire's gate. Vavasor was a parish situated on the intermediate ground between the mountains of the lake country and the plains. Its land was unproductive, ill-drained, and poor, and yet it possessed little or none of the beauty which tourists go to see. It was all amidst the fells, and very dreary. There were long skirtings of dark pines around a portion of the Squire's property, and at the back of the house there ... — Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... means of replacing. Estate after estate was sold for several generations, till, at last, my father found himself the heir to a half-ruined castle on the borders of the ocean, and a few thousand acres of unproductive land in the same neighbourhood. My mother, who is now a saint in heaven, was as much so as a mortal can be when on earth; and although my noble father inherited much of the true pride of ancient ancestry, he was free from the folly ... — The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... obviously applicable to all the productive routes in the United States. And we have seen the injustice of taxing the letters on routes that are productive or self-supporting, to defray the expense of the unproductive routes which the government is bound to ... — Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... and give only yellows when crossed with agouti. But Cuenot and others have shown that all of the yellows are heterozygous, and when crossed with agoutis give both yellows and agoutis. We are led, therefore, to suppose that an ovum carrying the yellow factor is unproductive if fertilised by a spermatozoon which also bears this factor. In this way alone does it seem possible to explain the deficiency of yellows and the absence of homozygous ones in the families arising from the mating of yellows together. At present, ... — Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... makes and sends them their diseases, bad weather and bad crops, and that he makes and supports witches. He owns a large country adjoining that of his brother, with whom he is continually at variance. His fields are unproductive; thick clouds intercept the rays of the sun, and consequently destructive frosts are frequent; game is very scarce, and not easily taken; ravenous beasts are numerous; reptiles of every poisoned tooth lie in the path of the traveller; streams ... — A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... most of these persons are too lazy to work, and as we will not need their money, we shall be very glad to see them go. But with regard to their real capital—their factories, farms, mines or machinery—that will be a different matter... To allow these things to remain idle and unproductive would constitute an injury to the community. So a law will be passed, declaring that all land not cultivated by the owner, or any factory shut down for more than a specified time, will be taken possession of by the State and worked ... — The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... propagation of the Faith, the Crown constituted a powerfully endowed Church, which, while it did splendid service in converting and civilizing the natives, engrossed much of the land in the form of mainmort, and filled the new world with thousands of idle, unproductive, and often licentious friars. With an innate distrust and fear of individual initiative, it gave virtual omnipotence to royal officials and excluded all creoles from public employment. In this fashion was transferred to America the crushing political and ecclesiastical absolutism of the mother ... — The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... best of Lapland witches, Stilled the sorcerers and wizards. Then he banished all their heroes, Banished all their proudest minstrels, This one hither, that one thither, To the lowlands poor in verdure, To the unproductive uplands, To the oceans wanting whiting, To the waterfalls of Rutya, To the whirlpool hot and flaming, To the waters decked with sea-foam, Into fires and boiling waters, Into everlasting torment. Then the hero, Lemminkainen, Sang the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, ... — The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... a kind of unforeseen ruin, which suddenly attacked the landed proprietors and utterly deprived them of the hope of subsistence; for, in the case of estates that were deserted and unproductive, the owners or tenants of which had either died or abandoned their country and hidden themselves after the misfortunes they had undergone, Justinian did not hesitate to impose a tax. Such were these "impositions," which were of frequent occurrence ... — The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... down his working-class origin. There was stigma enough in the fact of it, but shamelessly to flaunt it in the face of the world—her world—was going too far. Though her engagement to Martin had been kept secret, their long intimacy had not been unproductive of gossip; and in the shop, glancing covertly at her lover and his following, had been several of her acquaintances. She lacked the easy largeness of Martin and could not rise superior to her environment. She had been hurt ... — Martin Eden • Jack London
... after this, to say that the search in the wood for Sir Francis Varney was an unproductive one, and that the morning dawned upon the labours of the brother and of Mr. Marchdale, without their having discovered the least indication of the presence of Varney. Again puzzled and confounded, they stood on the ... — Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... was no more, but the memory of his ambition outlived him. His son Philip, equally emulous and unscrupulous, was too narrow-minded and subtly cautious to initiate an expensive enterprise encompassed by so many hazards—as materially unproductive as it was devoid of immediate political importance. Indeed the basis of the first expedition was merely to discover a Western route to the rich Spice Islands, already known to exist; the second went there to attempt to establish Spanish empire; and the third to search for, and annex to, ... — The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702 Private Phineas ... — The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Waste, in this connection, applies to that which is made so by devastation or ruin, or gives an impression of desolation, especially as combined with vastness, probably from association of the words waste and vast: waste is applied also to uncultivated or unproductive land, if of considerable extent; we speak of a waste track or region, but not of a waste city lot. Vacuous refers to the condition of being empty or vacant, regarded ... — English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... all the states. The increase of great estates shown by the census figures probably bears little or no relation to real farming, consisting mainly of great stock grazing ranches in the West, and unproductive gentlemen's estates in ... — Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... outrun their uses. The machinery to produce wealth, of which man's own energies have become a part, may well work on irrespective of happiness. Indeed, the industrial ideal would be an international community with universal free trade, extreme division of labour, and no unproductive consumption. Such an arrangement would undoubtedly produce a maximum of riches, and any objections made to it, if intelligent, must be made on other than universal economic grounds. Free trade may be opposed, for instance (while patriotism takes the invidious ... — The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... explained as expressions of death, for a regression to a Nirvana-like state can be most easily formulated in such a delusion. Other clinical conditions may temporarily and superficially resemble stupor on account of the attention being misdirected and applied to unproductive imaginations. To employ our metaphor again, in these false stupors the current is switched to another, invisible machine but not cut off as ... — Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... addressed. The St. Petersburg official, for example, who writes edifying disquisitions about peasant indolence, considers that for himself attendance at his office for four hours, a large portion of which is devoted to the unproductive labour of cigarette smoking, constitutes a very fair day's work. The truth is that in Russia the struggle for life is not nearly so intense as in more densely populated countries, and society is so constituted that all can live without very strenuous exertion. The Russians ... — Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of dingy serge by the next shower—had his action for the infliction of penalties, it would be a more litigious world even than it is. With thimble-riggers, chain-droppers, fortune-telling gipsies, and the like, the law wages a most unproductive war. Penal statutes and the police do little to put them down, while there are fools whose silly selfishness or vanity makes them ready dupes: if these fools would become wise and prudent, all the penalties might ... — Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... his father's unfortunate speculations had been the purchase of certain shares in some Welsh mines. The money thus invested had remained, for the last nine years, wholly unproductive. Mr. Woodstock explained that things were looking up with the company in question, who had just declared a dividend of 4 per cent. on all ... — The Unclassed • George Gissing
... pathway of the great caravans which formerly carried on trade between Europe and India. It consists largely of a high plateau, surrounded by mountains. Large parts of the country are sandy and dry from lack of sufficient rain, and therefore are unproductive. The people are a branch of the Aryan race. They doubtless lived a nomadic life, and were obliged to be ever ready to defend themselves. Success in defense against the frequent assaults of their surrounding enemies stimulated them to become a nation ... — History of Education • Levi Seeley
... continue! But some men are too valuable to be thrown away on the mission field; they are such successful workers, pastors, evangelists, leaders of thought. They could not possibly be spared. Think of the waste of burying brain in unproductive sand! Apparently it is so, but is it really so? Does God view it like that? Where should we have been to-day if He had thought Jesus too valuable to be thrown away upon us? Was not each hour of those thirty-three years worth more than a lifetime ... — Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... with the trained technicians in mechanics and industrial organization are competent as a producing group to carry the responsibility, one need we may be sure will be eliminated which, has been an irritating and an unproductive element in industrial life; I mean the need the workers have had for the cultivation of class isolation. As the workers become in the estimation of a community and in their own estimation, responsible members ... — Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... became evident to the committee, that their mission was to be unproductive of results. The government did not take kindly to them, nor would the Bishop of Quebec and his clergy trust the vague expressions of the United Colonies, whose statute books, they pointed out, still bore the most bitter and unchristian sentiments ... — The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Tapp? Hi-mighty! what you forgot this time? Fishhooks? Goin' fishin', be you? Wal, in my 'pinion you're throwin' your hook into unproductive waters around here, as ye might say. Even ... — Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. [13:7]And he said to his vine dresser, Behold, I have come three years seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none; cut it down; why should it make the ground unproductive? [13:8] And he answered and said to him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, and put on manure; [13:9]and if it bears fruit, well; but if not, at a future time ... — The New Testament • Various
... environment and causes in the social environment. The causes in the physical environment should not be overlooked, even though to a great extent they may not be amenable to social control. Much poverty in certain regions is caused simply by the unpropitious physical environment, such as unproductive soil, bad climate, and the like. Added to these unpropitious factors in the environment we have also great natural calamities, such as tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Every one is familiar with the great amount of misery which is caused, temporarily at least, ... — Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... the Northern Pacific Railroad, yet for want of means it cannot be done, unless foreign capitalists can be induced by land grants, at least to invest sufficient to make the road finally, and be made to see that their present large unproductive investments in Canada railroads can be made productive in the use of ... — Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened ... — Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... emblems of religion are very elaborate, or the reverse, according to the locality, the chosen spot in rich and fertile valleys generally being favored with better and more artistic affairs, and more of them, than the comparatively unproductive uplands. This is evidently because the inhabitants of the latter regions are either less wealthy, and consequently cannot afford it, or otherwise realize that they have really much less to be thankful for than their comparatively fortunate ... — Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... professions, the priests, preachers, lawyers, editors, lecturers, etc., whose chief function heretofore has been to fool the working class into supporting or at least submitting to the present system. Now, when the income of these unproductive laborers, an income drawn from the class hostile to the proletariat, shall sensibly decrease or, worse still, cease, these educated members of the liberal professions will desert the army of Capital and bring a much-needed reinforcement ... — Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... times from the body; that its retention is incompatible with sound health and vigor of body and mind. This is a very fallacious idea. The seminal fluid is too precious—nature bestows too much care in its elaboration for it to be wasted in this unproductive manner. It is intended, when not used for the purpose of procreation, to be reabsorbed again into the system, giving vigor of body, elasticity and strength to the mind, making the individual strong, active, and self-reliant. When kept as nature intended, it is a perpetual fountain ... — The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and debris of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in itself. And occasionally, once in a great while, they ran against ... — The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... circumstances of the time, such an amount of human suffering, that no king who had any regard for the happiness of his subjects could have consented to it. Khufu must have forced his subjects to labour for a long term of years—twenty, according to Herodotus—at a servile work which was wholly unproductive, and was carried on amid their sighs and groans for no object but his own glorification, and the supposed safe custody of his remains. Shafra must have done nearly the same. Hence an evil repute attached to the pyramid builders, ... — Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... laments about things which cannot be helped, or requests about those which are trivial; because to be thus disposed with respect to these things is consequent only upon real anxiety about them. Again, he is the kind of man to acquire what is beautiful and unproductive rather than what is productive and profitable: this being rather the part of an independent man. Also slow motion, deep-toned voice, and deliberate style of speech, are thought to be characteristic of the Great-minded ... — Ethics • Aristotle
... or two, concerning boundaries through unproductive mountain ranges we shall arbitrate and feel virtuous. For gold mines and good pasture lands, mixed up with a little honour to give respectability to the business, we shall fight it out, as previously. War being thus ... — Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... farmer who lived about five miles from Pretoria just over the pass near to the famous Wonder-boom tree which is one of the sights of the place. Should we need this wagon it could always be sent for; or, if we found the Lydenburg hunting-ground, which he was so set upon visiting, unproductive or impossible, we could return to Pretoria over the high-veld and pick it ... — Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... successful grafts. These grafts have made wonderful growth this season, and are quite capable of bearing large quantities of nuts next season. My crew of walnut grafters are becoming well known over a radius of 100 miles, and the work they are doing is a road to profit for many an owner of unproductive ... — Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... questionable, however, whether the system of valuation which is accurate in the case of a guano or other rapidly acting substance, is applicable to farm-yard manure, the effects of which extend over some years. A deduction must be made for the years during which the manure remains unproductive, and also for the additional expense incurred in carting and distributing a substance so much more bulky than the so-called portable manures, and it would not be safe to estimate its value at more than 7s. or 8s. ... — Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... Judith trapped rabbits and caught fish. She did many things besides, however, as by that time family funds were so low and the farm so unproductive it was necessary for some member of the family to begin to make money. She was fourteen at the time her grandfather died—a slim long-legged girl giving promise of the beauty that the old soldiers and the drummer on the Rye House porch ... — The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... N. unproductiveness &c adj.; infertility, sterility, infecundity^; masturbation; impotence &c 158; unprofitableness &c (inutility) 645. waste, desert, Sahara, wild, wilderness, howling wilderness. V. be unproductive &c adj.; hang fire, flash in the pan, come to nothing. [make unproductive] sterilize, addle; disable, inactivate. Adj. unproductive, acarpous^, inoperative, barren, addled, infertile, unfertile, unprolific^, arid, sterile, unfruitful, infecund^; sine prole; fallow; teemless^, issueless^, ... — Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High ... — Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... many living authors are the sad witnesses of this fact, who, like so many Esaus, have sold their inheritance for a meal! I leave the whole school of Adam Smith to calm their calculating emotions concerning "that unprosperous race of men" (sometimes this master-seer calls them "unproductive") "commonly called men of letters," who are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians would be in, were these, as he tells us, in that state when "a scholar and a beggar seem to have been very nearly synonymous terms"—and this melancholy fact that man of ... — Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... this belief in the dogma of purgatory. When he reflects that those contributions are upon a more liberal scale than any others which the Spanish nation pays, and that the product is sunk by the most unproductive of all the classes in society, he will then be able to arrive at some conjecture as to who and what are the Roman Catholic clergy of Spain. These contributions, be it remembered, are paid, on every day in the year, in all parts of the Peninsula, and by persons of every ... — Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Europe. It is bounded, on the west, by the strait connecting our sea with the ocean;[62] on the east, by a vast sloping tract, which the natives call the Catabathmos.[63] The sea is boisterous, and deficient in harbors; the soil is fertile in corn, and good for pasturage, but unproductive of trees. There is a scarcity of water both from rain and from landsprings. The natives are healthy, swift of foot, and able to endure fatigue. Most of them die by the gradual decay of age,[64] except such as perish by the sword or beasts of prey; ... — Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... till after his death; but what a number of ideas must have been in circulation before such an author could arise! Many branches of human knowledge have, since that time, been more extensively cultivated, but such branches as are totally unproductive to poetry: chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and rural and political economy, will never enable a man to become a poet. I have elsewhere [Footnote: In my Lectures on the Spirit of the Age.] examined ... — Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... men, the sound common sense of this peasant woman's observations made him reflect upon the wealth which would necessarily accrue to the country if all these unemployed and consequently ruinous hands—so much unproductive force—were available for the great industrial works that would ... — The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... class, Theo began to have him a good deal at the Bunk. She found many little offices there for him, such as to look after and keep tidy 'The Theodora,' the family boat, and to help in the obstinately unproductive garden. In this way the acquaintance between the three boys became a week-day as well as a Sunday one. Alick and Ned, in particular, rapidly found themselves to be kindred spirits. In each was ingrained a powerful love of adventure. Alick, a great reader, who had devoured already ... — The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... shows that modern graves in China differ little if at all from the ancient ones; in fact in Canton "my hill," or "mountain," is synonymous with "my cemetery." In order to fix the taxes at a just figure, stock was taken of the salt- flats, the unproductive lands, and the tracts liable to periodical inundation. Areas rescued from the waters were protected by dykes, and subdivided for allotment by sloping banks, but without introducing the rigid nine-square system. Good lands, ... — Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Remember, but for these loppings of affliction you might have effloresced into the rank luxuriant growth of mere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the outward display of Religiousness, without the fruits of true Religion. You might have lived and died unproductive cumberers, deceiving others and deceiving yourselves. But He would not suffer you to linger in this state of worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely, these severest cuttings and incisions of the pruning knife, ... — Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... so overcome was I by the sudden joy which seized upon me, and seemed to turn my melancholy inside out. Those words of hatred had been as a torch illumining the gloom of my despair, for they had shown me that my existence was not altogether barren and unproductive. The life which has known the heaven of true love cannot be called a failure. There is no wall so high, no distance so great, no separation so complete as to defy the ineffable commerce of two loving hearts! Lona, then, was still mine, despite all obstacles. ... — The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... suited for the abode of men could scarce have been found, or even imagined. The soil was sterile, unproductive, and rarely visited by game worthy of being hunted. The few roots and other articles of food they were enabled to raise, ... — The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... who yet stand in need of relief. It would be mischievous and wasteful to relieve such persons without exacting labour from them, and just as reprehensible to employ them in digging holes and filling them up again, or in any other occupation equally useless and unproductive. If their work is to be obtained, it should be directed into some channel that will benefit themselves and the community. Public roads, harbours, piers, breakwaters, and the like, appear an obvious outlet for the labour thus placed at the command of the Board; and we are ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... and reserve and repression are parts of the dignified office of the preacher, but carried too far may degenerate into weak and unproductive effort. Perfection of English style, rhetorical floridness, and profundity of thought will never wholly make up for lack of appropriate action in the work of ... — Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... high as the tide flows. They are called here, though I do not know why, ratoon oysters. The abundance of fish solves the problem which has puzzled many, how the Minorcan population of St. Augustine live, now that their orange-trees, upon which they formerly depended, are unproductive. ... — Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... paradise, whose plumes command high prices in the European markets; their chief avocation in recent years has been staging imitation cannibal feasts for the benefit of motion-picture expeditions. But, unknown and unproductive as it is at present, I would stake my life that New Guinea will be a great colony ... — Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the Government spent fully one-half of its total income on works of piety. No country except in time of war ever devoted so much to unproductive expenditures. The enormous quantities of copper used for casting images not only exhausted the produce of the mines but also made large inroads upon the currency, hundreds of thousands of cash being thrown into the melting-pot. In 760 it was found that ... — A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mistaken for the prickly greasewood which infests the more alkaline regions; nor the rabbit-brush with its blossom so like the goldenrod, but with a very disagreeable odor. No man who knows will ever buy land where the greasewood grows thickly; it is unproductive because of the large percentage of alkali. But the ancient-looking sage is a pretty sure indication of fertility of soil. Mother Nature is sometimes hard pushed to find dresses for all her poorer areas; of course the better portions of the land east or west, north or south, care for their clothes ... — Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... The King of Denmark, however, having a higher opinion of the value of science, promised Tycho the first canonry that should fall vacant in the cathedral chapter of Roskilde, so that he might be assured of an income while devoting himself to financially unproductive work. In 1568 Tycho left Rostock, and matriculated at Basle, but soon moved on to Augsburg, where he found more enthusiasm for astronomy, and induced one of his new friends to order the construction of a large 19-foot quadrant of heavy oak beams. This was ... — Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... add to these causes of discontent the vastness in number of the regular clergy, the "friars" and "monks" already referred to, who consumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will be sufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something very much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but their preachings ... — German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax |