"Worthless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost before he had completed "Rob Roy." On Nov. 10, 1817, he writes to Archibald Constable announcing that the negotiations for the sale of the story to Messrs. Longman have fallen through, their firm declining to relieve the Ballantynes of their worthless "stock." "So you have the staff in your own hands, and, as you are on the spot, can manage it your own way. Depend on it that, barring unforeseen illness or death, these will be the best volumes which have ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that the governor was dependent on any more legislation to carry this into effect so as to enable him to fill his office. If he were, it would then become necessary to legislate about every other article, and so the constitution would be worthless, everything being required to be done over by the legislature before the constitution could ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... really tell," she confessed. "He brought a written introduction from Father Zosim—who, it seems, is a friend of Madame de S— too. She can't be such a worthless ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... handsome, oh, very handsome, as a girl, and clever, I assure you. I have often been almost glad that my brother did not live long enough to see her in her real colors. She married, very soon after Sylvia herself, a worthless Englishman—discharged from the army, I believe, who had probably been her lover for some time. Cary gave her a check for a hundred thousand to get rid of her the day after his wedding to Sylvia, and the pair ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... no longer governor; and Miss Read, to whom I had paid some courtship, had been persuaded in my absence to marry one Rogers, a potter. With him, however, she was never happy, and soon parted from him; he was a worthless fellow. Mr. Denham took a store, but died next February, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... could not falter, he could not be misled. But ours is, notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a degenerate age; and recreant knights are among us far outnumbering the true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, which they who perform them, in their blindness, know not to be such; and which are recompensed by rewards as worthless, yet eagerly grasped at, as if they were the immortal ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... confusion and beggary throughout the world: therefore that wiseacre deserves," &c. [Footnote: Howell's Familiar Letters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight," (pp 453-457 of edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan.," no year given; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letters were published in successive batches.] As Mr. Howell's own notions about marriage and its moralities were of the lightest and easiest, his severe virtuousness here is peculiarly representative. More interesting on its own account ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... only discovered the presence of the white ants by the bursting of the corks. I have had a portmanteau in my tent so peopled with them in the course of a single night that the contents were found worthless in the morning. In an incredibly short time a detachment of these pests will destroy a press full of records, reducing the paper to fragments; and a shelf of books will be tunnelled into a gallery if it happen to be in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... seaman, I daresay, but worthless and unreliable in an executive capacity, and I can't trust a ripping fine barkentine like the Retriever with that kind of man. I suppose he feels the hankering for a spree coming on right now. Skinner, if we gave the man Peasley permission to draw ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... de' Medici, a cousin, one of the younger branch of the family, assuming the mantle of Brutus, or liberator, stabbed Alessandro to death while he was keeping an assignation in the house that then adjoined this palace. Thus died, at the age of twenty-six, one of the most worthless of men, and, although illegitimate, the last of the direct line of Cosimo de' Medici, the Father of his Country, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... They took their fortune with something of the heroic calm of men to whom an idea was more than aught else. Jean Jacques' father, grandfather, and great-great- grandfather had lived here, no one of them rising far, but none worthless or unnoticeable. They all had had "a way of their own," as their neighbours said, and had been provident on the whole. Thus it was that when Jean Jacques' father died, and he came into his own, he found himself at thirty a man of substance, unmarried, who "could have had the pick of the province." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... panic has proven that the currency of the country, based, as it is, upon the credit of the country, is the best that has ever been devised. Usually in times of such trials currency has become worthless, or so much depreciated in value as to inflate the values of all the necessaries of life as compared with the currency. Everyone holding it has been anxious to dispose of it on any terms. Now we witness the reverse. Holders of currency ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... country, "Grammalogues," and some of which, attracted by their uniqueness, we had gathered. We were obliged to label and memorize each one, until it seemed as though the tablet would not hold another word, and the memory pouch would break under the weight of, what seemed to us, heavy, worthless stones. But after being polished with the emery of practice, the pebbles grew lighter, and seemed to lose their dull color, and ...
— Silver Links • Various
... plentiful. Then, all of a sudden, the moorland villages round were overtaken by an epidemic of spirit-rapping and table-turning. 'It wor sperrits here, sperrits there, sperrits everywhere—t' warld wor gradely swarmin wi 'em,' said Margaret bitterly. It was all started, apparently, by a worthless 'felly' from Castleton, who had a great reputation as a medium, and would come over on summer evenings to conduct seances at Frimley and the places near. 'Lias, already in an excitable, overworked state, was bitten by the new mania, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the governor. This man joined to much agricultural knowledge a perfect idea of the labour to be required from, and that might he performed by the convicts; and his figure was calculated to make the idle and the worthless shrink if he came near them. He had hitherto been employed at the spot of ground which was cleared soon after our arrival at the adjoining cove, since distinguished by the name of Farm Cove, and which, from the natural poverty of the soil, was not capable of making ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... had been sacrificed by the treaty, in respect to negroes, the Indian trade, and the navigation of the Mississippi, means had been found to protect the commercial interests of the North. With the same breath, however, he denounced the commercial articles of the treaty as utterly worthless, and adroitly charged the senate, by insinuation, with ignorance respecting the East Indian trade, falsely assuming that because the treaty did not, by express provisions, secure the East Indian coasting trade, and the direct voyage from India to Europe by American vessels, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... confess, however, to not having yet seen the writings upon this impracticable theme of Colonel Perronet Thompson. To write experimental music for choruses that are to support the else meagre outline of a Greek tragedy, will not do. Let experiments be tried upon worthless subjects; and if this of Mendelssohn's be Greek music, the sooner it takes itself off the better. Sophocles will be delivered from an incubus, and we from an ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... an analogous iron chain linking the merest trifles, the frivolous accidents, the apparently worthless coincidences that swell the sum of what we are pleased to call the nobly independent life of the "free-agent" Man? In the matrix of time, do human tears and human blood-drops leave their record, to be conned when ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... had discharged my two worthless maids that afternoon, and the new ones I had engaged hadn't come. The cook was the only servant I had ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... see, says that the wall will be proved with fire, that is, that God will try all men's work and see of what sort it is—good, moderate, or worthless. The worthless will disappear in the judgment, the moderate will be seen in its faulty condition, but the good will ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... relenting Turk, who admires his bravery, and pronounces over him a farewell eulogy. All writers agree that the last of the imperial Palaeologi was the best of his race; and had he not been so ill supported by his worthless subjects, and deserted by every Christian prince in Europe, he might have repelled the tide of Turkish invasion, though he would never have restored the glory of the empire. Yet gallantly did he front the storm, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... Hochelaga, and attempted to pass up the river beyond the village, but was stopped by the dangerous rapids now known as the St. Louis or Lachine. He returned to France in the spring of 1542, with a few specimens of worthless metal resembling gold which he found among the rocks of Cap Rouge, and some pieces of quartz crystal which he believed were diamonds, and which have given the name to the bold promontory on which stand ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... Olympian Feasts. True, some one has been wicked enough to observe that all chess-stories are divisible into two classes,—in one a man plays for his own soul with the Devil, in the other the hero plays and wins a wife,—and to beg for a chess-story minus wives and devils; but such grumblers are worthless baggage, and ought to be checked. The Chess Library has now become an important collection. Time was, when, if one man had Staunton's "Handbook," Sarratt, Philidor, Walker's "Thousand Games," and Lewis on "The Game of Chess," he was regarded as uniting the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... licentious in their amours, uncouth in their courtly speeches, prolix in their battles, silly in their arguments, absurd in their travels, and, in short, wanting in everything like intelligent art; for which reason they deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth as a worthless breed." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... been carried in July, and it would, therefore, have to be withdrawn and re-introduced! This ruling he confirmed on the following Monday, January 27th. Therefore, every one of the fair promises which Mr. Asquith had given us in November, 1911, proved to be absolutely worthless. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... folly of a threat, that of an order for her arrest. This he withdrew,—a worse fault, under the circumstances, than to have made it. He had taught Catharine that her only safety lay in action, if she would not be removed from the throne in favor of the worthless creature who had supplanted her in her ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... furnaces, and the proprietor spent a whole morning with his men in trying to make the stuff burn. They were unsuccessful, and finally, completely disheartened by their failure, they shut the furnace door and went off to dinner, uttering loud threats against the man who had sold them such worthless trash. Upon their return to the works they were filled with amazement, for the furnace door was red hot, and a fire of the most intense heat was roaring and blazing behind it. Since that time there has been no difficulty in selling anthracite ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... to talk to him, sir," said the driver, when Nekhludoff, having tipped the bowing ferryman, got into the cart again. "He is just a worthless tramp." ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... rejoiced in human sacrifices, and unrolled the pages of the Future by studying the records of the Past. At length she raised her noble and majestic head again. 'You are all inclined,' she said, 'to bestow more sympathy on a few worthless victims than on the tears and sufferings of a whole generation! And you forget that religious liberty, political freedom, a nation's tranquillity, science itself, are benefits which Destiny never vouchsafes to man without being paid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... and was followed by what remained of his army; the militia of South Carolina returned to their homes; its continental regiments were melting away; and its paper money became so nearly worthless, that a bounty of twenty-five hundred dollars for twenty-one months' service had no attraction. The dwellers near the sea between Charleston and Savannah were shaken in their allegiance, not knowing where to find protection. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... been attending a sale of furniture at the chief auctioneer's in Wolverhampton was slowly melting away, for the few lots still left to be sold mostly consisted of worn-out saucepans, broken towel-rails, and some shabby chairs, and such-like worthless articles. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... pavement, in winter some icy snow-laden wind rushing down the lonely streets. The population of Grenelle is said to be the worst of Paris, both the most vicious and the most wretched. The neighborhood of the Ecole Militaire attracts thither a swarm of worthless women, who bring in their train all the scum of the populace. In contrast to all this the gay bourgeois district of Passy rises up across the Seine; while the rich aristocratic quarters of the Invalides and the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... states are only valuable when subject to the free control of those to whom they appertain, and utterly worthless if to be determined by the sword of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... danger was in any man's power, but that it was the characteristic of a good man to do what was right, even when it was accompanied with risk. Upon this Saturninus put it to the vote that the consuls should proclaim Metellus to be excluded from fire,[110] water, and house; and the most worthless part of the populace was ready to put him to death. Now all the men of honourable feeling, sympathising with Metellus, crowded round him, but Metellus would not allow any commotion to be raised on his account, and he quitted the city like a wise and prudent man, saying, "Either matters will ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... everything, while the other portion were resolute in their purpose to destroy everything that then existed of a national character. This third party was mostly composed of those timid men whose votes count for much at ordinary periods, but who in extraordinary times are worse than worthless, being in fact incumbrances on bolder men. They loved the Union, because they loved peace, and were opposed to violence of all kinds; but their Unionism was much like Bailie Macwheeble's conscience, which was described as never doing him any harm. What they would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... I offer you this. Many times I have come bearing flowers such as my garden grew; but now I offer you this poor, brown, homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless. And yet—and yet—it is something better than flowers; it is a SEED-CAPSULE. Many a gardener will cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Polydamas* before the gate Proclaim, his counsels are obeyed too late, Which timely follow'd but the former night What numbers had been saved by Hector's flight? That wise advice rejected with disdain, I feel my folly in my people slain. Methinks my suffering country's voice I hear, But most her worthless sons insult my ear, On my rash courage charge the chance of war, And blame those virtues which they cannot share. No—if I e'er return, return I must Glorious, my country's terror laid in dust: Or if I perish, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... and suffered them to tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation excited by his claims and the scorn excited by his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid, worn-out, worthless and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow, but merely a spectral illusion and a cunning effect of light and shade, so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men. The miracles of witchcraft ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... was a queer young man," resumed the Dominie. "Nobody seemed to care anything about him. And when he left the settlement it was thought he had got into the city and became a worthless. But here he is, made a man of himself and has not ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... gift of God." And the wonder of it all is that God says to the weak ones like poor Jacob, "I have chosen thee and not cast thee away," and He never will, for "God keeps all His failures," not like man who throws his failures on one side as worthless. ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... tobacco which was due him was an instant and an advantageous medium of exchange everywhere, and especially in England whence nearly all his merchant supplies were obtained, this paper money that was forced upon him was a depreciated currency even within the colony, and absolutely worthless outside of it; so that the poor parson, who could never demand his salary for any year until six full months after its close, would have proffered to him, at the end, perhaps, of another six months, just one third of the nominal sum due him, and that in a species of money of no value at all ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... delivery. But he foresaw that, being a dream, it must be full of absurdities, which would surely betray themselves, and help his client. Besides, he was curious to hear all of the evidence, however ridiculous and worthless, against the prisoner. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... in the great entrance-room of the Louvre, filled with the luxurious orfevrerie of the sixteenth century, types perfect and innumerable: Satyrs carved in serpentine, Gorgons platted in gold, Furies with eyes of ruby, Scyllas with scales of pearl; infinitely worthless toil, infinitely witless wickedness; pleasure satiated into idiocy, passion provoked into madness, no object of thought, or sight, or fancy, but horror, mutilation, distortion, corruption, agony of war, insolence of disgrace, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of mine, called the "Dick Hamilton Series," starting with "Dick Hamilton's Fortune." Dick had come to New York for the purpose of making an investment and had had an encounter with a sharper, who had tried to sell him some worthless stocks. ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... the greatest respect—we fear that the reviewer's art is at a low ebb in these days. Often the side breezes of controversy, of private jealousy, or of personal interest, intervene to divert straightforward criticism; still more often does absolute incompetence render these guides worthless. A score of books may be seen, huddled together in an unbroken column of so-called criticism, with no other bond of union than their publication in course of the same week. The interested author, wading through this disconnected ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Kailasa, bringing a letter from Darpasara, in which he had written, "O fool! should there be any pity for the violator of the harem? If the old king, my father, now in his dotage, was foolish enough to favour the criminal for the sake of his worthless daughter, you had no need of his permission, and ought not to have been influenced by him. Let that vile seducer be immediately put to death by torture, and his paramour be shut up in ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... explanations which we have made it can easily be inferred what answer must be given to similar quotations. For the rule so interprets all passages that treat of good works that outside of Christ they are to be worthless before God, and that the heart must first have Christ, and believe that it is accepted with God for Christ's sake, not because of its own works. The adversaries also bring forward some arguments of the schools, which are easily answered, if you know what ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... woman's face, and seeing she bore the features of her sex, while her own knowledge reached none of those worthless characters of which this person was a specimen, she imagined that none of those could look as she did, and therefore found consolation in her seeming tenderness. She was even prevailed upon (by her promises to sit by her side and watch) to throw herself on the bed, and suffer sleep for a few ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... had been so mysteriously withdrawn; but it had stopped at the very moment it was so withdrawn; nor, despite all the skill of the watchmaker, has it ever gone since—that is, it will go in a strange erratic way for a few hours, and then come to a dead stop—it is worthless. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... many other magicians, that he was in the habit, when he regaled himself at an inn, of paying his bill in counterfeit money, which at the time of payment appeared of sterling value, but in a few days after became pieces of horn and worthless shells. [202] ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... who supposed all her sensibility dead by this time, discovered in herself a resentment of this ultimate betrayal. She had no resignation for this one. With a sort of mental sullenness she said to herself: "Well, I am here. I am here without any nonsense. It is not my fault that I am a mere worthless object of pity." ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... not told to throw his life away as a worthless thing. He is to lose it as the seed is lost in the sowing, as the money in the investing; to sacrifice it as the tool is sacrificed to that which it is carving. He who would be of real service to the world must cultivate the best in himself. ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... are burning," whispered Vavel, "and the documents, and the portraits, and the heap of worthless money. From to-day," he added, in a louder tone, "I begin to learn what it is to be a ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... seen by accident the passage in one of his letters to Mr. Murray, in which he denounces, as false and worthless, the poetical system on which the greater number of his contemporaries, as well as himself, founded their reputation, I took an opportunity, in the next letter I wrote to him, of jesting a little on this opinion, and his motives for it. It was, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... she did wait and with the very best grace in the world. For she helped Elinor pack a box of warm half-worn clothing for the worthless Sneaths in Rockham, and made some necessary repairs in her own ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... arguments derived from a consideration of the representative subcastes. It may be said that not only the Banias, but many of the low castes have legends showing them to be of Rajput descent of the same character as those quoted above; and since in their case these stories have been adjudged spurious and worthless, no greater importance should be attached to those of the Banias. But it must be remembered that in the case of the Banias the stories are reinforced by the fact that the Bania subcastes certainly come from Rajputana; no doubt exists that they are of high caste, and that they must either ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... for Thou are great, And greatness pity knows; I mourn my poor and worthless state, And ...
— Hymns from the Greek Office Books - Together with Centos and Suggestions • John Brownlie
... fevers, mesmerism and ill health come under this class. A man who gambles is liable to dream of cards; if he dreams of them in deep sleep the warning is to be heeded; but if it comes as a reverie while he sleeps lightly he should regard it as worthless. Such dreams reflect only the present condition of the body and mind of the dreamer; but as the past and present enter into shaping the future, the reflections thus left on the waking mind should not go ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... mother's good looks; but when they came, they were as ugly as the father and as ill-tempered as the mother. So it may prove with these hybrids—they may not always thrive in fresh water; they may not grow to a good size; they may not rise at the artificial fly; they may be worthless for the table. Nevertheless, it is desirable if possible that this should be ascertained. The progeny of a male Salmon and a female Trout may be much better or much worse fitted for a continual residence in fresh water than the ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... lonesome that there were times when life looked absolutely worthless; when the blue devils made him their plaything, and he saw Billy Louise looking scornfully upon him and loving some other man better; when he saw his name blackened by the suspicion that he was a rustler—preying upon his neighbors' cattle; when he saw Buck ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... says to him, saying such things, "May this, thy calling of me back, prove a mischief to thee, I pray; I despise the worthless omen." Nor does he drop his intended journey; and he tells his master, that he has seen Coronis lying down with a youth of Haemonia. On hearing the crime of his mistress, his laurel fell down; and at the same moment his usual looks, his plectrum,[73] ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... on a large portion of the present and following generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that their condition and fate shall be mainly left at the discretion of ignorant and often worthless parents; that there shall be no considerable positive exaction of local provision for the institution, or of attendance of those who should be benefited by it; that, in short, there shall not be a comprehensive application ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... not, in any respect, be preferable to the old one. I have reproached many of the people of this place, who, from their education and property, have a right to take an interest in the public affairs, with thus suffering themselves to be represented by the most desperate and worthless individuals of the town. Their defence is, that they are insulted and overpowered if they attend the popular meetings, and by electing "les gueux et les scelerats pour deputes,"* they send them to Paris, and secure ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... winnowing-machine they have at St. Edmundsbury: a mind fixed on the Thrice Holy, an appeal to God on high to witness their meditation: by far the best, and indeed the only good electoral winnowing-machine,—if men have souls in them. Totally worthless, it is true, and even hideous and poisonous, if men have no souls. But without soul, alas, what winnowing-machine in human elections can be of avail? We cannot get along without soul; we stick fast, the mournfulest spectacle; and salt ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... chief, who hated the missionaries, had a dog that chewed and swallowed a copy of the book of Psalms for the sake of the soft sheepskin in which it was bound. The enraged chief declared his dog to be henceforth worthless: "He would no more bite or tear, now that he had swallowed ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... heart. The knife does good. Yes, I know I've been worthless. But I'm not as bad as that. Don't you see how horrible the idea is to me? I must pay you back the money—and of course not come on you for any more. You've done too much for me already. It sometimes stuns me to think of it. It was ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... singular points of resemblance to our own "most mighty and dread sovereign," King James I. Both were learned, and both were eminently unwise;[28] both of them were authors, and both of them were pedants; both of them delegated their highest powers to worthless favourites, and both of them enriched these favourites with such foolish liberality that they remained poor themselves. Both of them had been terrified into constitutional cowardice by their involuntary presence at deeds of blood. Both of them, though of naturally good ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... late uneasiness of Mrs Harrel, still encreased the distress of Cecilia; and every moment she obtained for reflection, augmented her reluctance to parting with so large a sum of money for so worthless an object, and added strength to her resentment for the unjustifiable menaces which had extorted from her such a promise. Yet not an instant would she listen to Mr Arnott's offer of fulfilling her engagement, and charged him, as he considered her own ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... rolled up like a scroll; Harrington and Lilburne were laughed at for a time and forgotten, the country confessed the failure of its striving, disavowed its aims, and flung itself with enthusiasm, and without any effective stipulations, at the feet of a worthless king. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... "False friends, a worthless wife and a bad son have about finished up what he had. With good money after bad all the time there is nothing left but that little tumbledown ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... the other, reassuming his intellectual air. "One party is as worthless as the other ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... treat us with cold disdain, and European bankers might pronounce our securities worthless, but there was one quarter of the world from which even worse measure was meted out to us. Of all the barbarous communities with which the civilized world has had to deal in modern times, perhaps none have made so much trouble as the Mussulman states on the southern shore of ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Clinton in reply to George's inquiring look. "He no doubt gave himself the name because he has lived on the Plains all his life. He is a lazy, worthless vagabond, but what he doesn't know about Indians isn't worth knowing. If he would only wake up and display a little energy, he would be invaluable as ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... himself responsible for the mischief he occasioned by declaring the nation in a state of bankruptcy. He said, "No, not in the least. There was no other way of preventing enormous sums from being daily lavished, as they then were, on herds of worthless beings; that the Queen had sought to cultivate a state of private domestic society, but that, in the attempt, she only warmed in her bosom domestic vipers, who fed on the vital spirit of her generosity." He mentioned ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... not imply that the remaining ninety-eight or ninety-nine per cent could in fairness be called worthless. With occasional exceptions, rejected manuscripts have been prepared with considerable intelligence; knowledge of themes is shown in them; there is some real literary skill in evidence, and particular care has been taken to secure legibility, about nine-tenths of them being in ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... that he must remove the certificate from the office or destroy it, as the chance finding of it by a clerk would lead to its immediately being restored to its proper place, and the consequent discovery that his location over the old survey was absolutely worthless. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... to become of him now? His life was shattered; a heart like his could not love twice, and Micheline's image was too deeply engraven on it for it ever to be effaced. Of what use was all the trouble he had taken to raise himself above others? A worthless fellow had passed that way and Micheline had yielded to him. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... regret more than I do any differences between old friends; but my duty is to look solely to the consistency and integrity of the 'Review,' without which criticism is worthless; and this consideration leaves me no ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... being guessed at and almost guessed right, in certain quarters. Professional jealousy was on my track. I never fainted before in my life—so far as I can remember—but I might have done so elsewhere than in your dear house, after the strain of such an effort as I made to save that worthless woman—she was your cousin, which is why I fought for her so hard—How often is not justice deflected by Love! I might, somewhere else, when over-strained have had a fit of hysterics; and my disguise ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... jujubes carry more protein than dried figs or dates and more (50%) sugar than figs."—T.A.E.S. Bulletin no. 41. But the jujube has the disagreeable habit of sending up root sprouts which are a nuisance to destroy and, because the tree is grafted, the sprouts are worthless seedlings. It has occurred to me that this bad feature of the jujube might be partly offset if cuttings of the improved varieties could be made to grow by means of some of the root ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... faith. The only worth of the fuel is to feed the flame. Otherwise it is of no avail, but lies dead and cold, a mass of blackness. We are joined to God by faith. Whatever strengthens that faith is precious as a help, but is worthless as a substitute. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not know the prejudices of those among whom I live. We shall never make an aristocracy of ignorance understand that intellect ennobles. If I have not sufficient influence to compel them to accept M. David Sechard, I am quite willing to sacrifice the worthless creatures to you. It would be a perfect hecatomb in the antique manner. But, dear friend, you would not, of course, ask me to leave them all in exchange for the society of a person whose character and manner ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... are often the worst judges of their own wares. Were it practicable, as I believe it to be, that authors and men of letters could themselves be booksellers, the public would derive this immediate benefit from the scheme; a deluge of worthless or indifferent books would be turned away, and the name of the literary publisher would be a pledge for the value of every new book. Every literary man would choose his own favourite department, and we should learn from him as well as from ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... your life. Only for that, Frank Merriwell would be dead. Only for your nerve and bravery in shooting that ruffian, one of God's grandest men would have been murdered in cold blood. Since my college days I have loved and admired him above all other men. When you saved his life by taking another worthless life you did a noble deed. Had you not fled, I would have married you at the earliest possible moment. I ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... died a fortnight ago, and my consort succeeded to the throne. It is no longer necessary for us to conceal our marriage and our children. Here sit my twelve daughters, and their foster-parents, the labourer and his wife, shall dwell with me as my pensioners till their death. But you, worthless scamp, whom I have put in chains, shall also receive your just reward. You shall sit chained in a mountain of gold, so that your greedy eyes shall ever behold the gold without your being able to touch a particle. For seven hundred years ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Does it receive this name because its invariable stupidity suggests those other worthless commodities "rag" and "bob-tail," which, outside of theatres, are generally ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... blacksmith's helper, and had run away to join the Union army, where he had made his first acquaintance with "graft," in the shape of rotten muskets and shoddy blankets. To a musket that broke in a crisis he always attributed the death of his only brother, and upon worthless blankets he blamed all the agonies of his own old age. Whenever it rained, the rheumatism would get into his joints, and then he would screw up his face and mutter: "Capitalism, my boy, capitalism! 'Ecrasez l'infame!'" He had one unfailing ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... here they scrape, an' squeeze, an' growl, Their worthless nievfu' of a soul May in some future carcase howl The forest's fright; Or in some day-detesting ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to the lowest class of the inhabitants (Las Casas, Hist. Apol. cap. 197.) Ar. wakaijaru, worthless, dirty, wakaijatti ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... mean? Why was Vil Holland riding to town as fast as his horse could run? And what claim was he going to file? He had mentioned no claim—and if he had just made a strike, surely he would have mentioned it—last night. She knew that he already had a claim, and that he considered it worthless. He told her once that he hadn't even bothered to work out the assessments—it was no good. Was it possible that he was riding to file her claim? Was he no better than Bethune—only shrewder, more patient, ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... it, in this simple form, the subject of a drama, seems to be a thought of Schiller's own; but the praise, though not the merit of his undertaking, considerable rather as performed than projected, has been lessened by a multitude of worthless or noxious imitations. The same primary conception has been tortured into a thousand shapes, and tricked out with a thousand tawdry devices and meretricious ornaments, by the Kotzebues, and other 'intellectual Jacobins,' whose productions have brought what we falsely call the 'German Theatre' into ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of this stocktaking forces you to the conclusion that your riches are not so vast as you thought them to be, it is necessary to look about for the causes of the misfortune. The causes may be several. You may have been reading worthless books. This, however, I should say at once, is extremely unlikely. Habitual and confirmed readers, unless they happen to be reviewers, seldom read worthless books. In the first place, they are so busy ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the 7th of last month, cherishing this design in secret, he came to me, and began, in a friendly and insidious manner, to ask of me a gun which was in my chamber, and offered me for it, with the miserliness peculiar to him, many worthless objects, such as a brown sow and two sacks of oats. Divining at that time his criminal intentions, I endeavoured in every way to dissuade him from it: but the said rascal and scoundrel, Ivan Pererepenko, son of Ivan, abused me like a muzhik, and since that time has cherished ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... steps,—that is the thing to be desired, and which is, as yet, unattained. As a consequence, the prosecution of studies is by attempts and in ways that are generally imperfect, at best make-shift or provisional, often radically erroneous or worthless. Doubtless, the defects in method are now less glaring and influential at the two extremes of the sensibly-conducted infant school, and the well-appointed and leisurely collegiate course. There is no true study that is not what the origin of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... under artificial heat from single-eyes. Well-grown vines so propagated are as good as those grown by any other method, but the great disadvantage is that unless much care and skill are used, vines from these cuttings are poor and quite worthless. It is also a more expensive method than growing from long cuttings ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... no doubt that this constitutional vehemence of his, this hypertrophy of blood and muscle, injured his work and dimmed his reputation. Much of his work he ought to have burnt. His classical studies are worthless, his Life of Thackeray and his Travels are mere book-making. His novels, even the best, are revised and printed with scandalous haste. He speaks of a "toga virile" and of "the husband of his bosom," for wife; and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... which this class of topics as a rule receives in the light literature of the day makes it perilous to use information so forthcoming in evidence or quotation. Articles must be rendered palatable to the general reader, and thus become worthless ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... been with her constantly since—the crisis is past, but she is still too ill for me to leave her. I am coming to you just as soon as I can. And I am going to ask you to forgive me, to take me and make whatever you can out of my worthless self. Whatever of good there is in me has come through you. You have given me belief in purity and selflessness and hope ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... apparently result from the conditions of life continually inducing fresh variability. We have seen that when the seeds of pears, plums, apples, etc., are sown, the seedlings generally inherit some degree of family likeness. Mingled with these seedlings, a few, and sometimes many, worthless, wild-looking plants commonly appear, and their appearance may be attributed to the principle of reversion. But scarcely a single seedling will be found perfectly to resemble the parent-form; and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... other women,—by which his cousin had intended to say that Lady George was the same as herself. Augusta Mildmay had spoken of his Phoenix in the same strain. The Marquis had declared her to be utterly worthless. It was not that he wished to think of her as they thought, or that he could be brought so to think; but these suggestions, coming as they did from those who knew how much he liked the woman, amounted to ridicule aimed against the purity of ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... time, Shields was auditor of the state of Illinois. The finances of the state were in a shocking condition. The state banks were not a success, and the currency was nearly worthless. At the same time, it was the only money current, and it was the money of the state. These being the circumstances, the governor, auditor, and treasurer, issued a circular forbidding the payment of state taxes in this paper currency of the state. This was clearly ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... which had once distinguished it. In this year as never before men served their country with one hand and with the other filled their pockets by manipulating the currency which had fallen to be a worthless scrip. And it was in this year, when fidelity seemed a forgotten virtue, when men enlisted in the army and deserted to the enemy with equal indifference, that Benedict Arnold, entrusted at his own request with the command of West Point, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... engraving to a wonderful perfection. Its mechanical work is most exquisite, and reaches the whole effect of picture surprisingly. If the publishing public knew as well what to engrave as our engravers know how to engrave, we should not see our printsellers' windows teem with worthless works beautifully executed. We often wonder, as we stop occasionally to look at the display, where the purchasers are found for things that pain the eye and weary the mind to see—history, or landscape, or familiar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... forbearance ask, for All are worthless found, Man must aye take man to task for Faults while earth goes round. On this dank soil thistles muster, Thorns are broadcast sown; Seek not figs where thistles cluster, Grapes where ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... but a bag of costly pearls. The settlers by the lake needed horses and wagons, tools, implements of husbandry and building; and gold was valuable only as it represented a means of obtaining these. Gold became so plentiful and was withal so worthless in the desert colony that men refused to take it for their labor. The yellow metal was collected in buckets and exported to the States in exchange for the goods so much desired. Merchandise brought in by caravans of "prairie schooners," was ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... Darnley was a Catholic, and with Argyll, Chatellerault, Glencairn, and a host of other Protestant lords, had risen in arms against his sovereign and her consort. But Mary had chased her rebel brother and his fellows over the border into England, and by this very action, taken for the sake of her worthless husband, she sowed the first seeds of discord between herself and him. It happened that stout service had been rendered her in this affair by the arrogant border ruffian, the Earl of Bothwell. Partly ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... slipshod as is his statement of the historical points of the case, to say nothing of his utter ignorance of Hariot's biography and true position as an English man of science, one feels justified in rejecting it as worthless : as one also is compelled to do the vapid conclusions drawn from Montucla which have since found their way into many recent biographical dictionaries and into many pretentious articles in learned encyclopdias respecting Hariot and his works. The truth seems to be ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... the first shaft Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove How salt the savour is of other's bread, How hard the passage to descend and climb By other's stairs, But that shall gall thee most Will he the worthless and vile company, With whom thou must be thrown into these straits. For all ungrateful, impious all and mad, Shall turn 'gainst thee: but in a little while Theirs and not thine shall be the crimson'd brow Their course shall ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... will always attract a certain number of worthless recruits because it is so easy to get into the theatre somehow or other; there is no examination to be passed, no qualification to be proved before a person is entitled to call himself an actor. And then the life of an actor is unfortunately, in these days of long ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... the Confederacy whom I must praise. Amid the worthless and boastful aristocrats who have monopolized for themselves the name of "chivalry," I found one gentleman. This was Colonel Claiborne, at that time Provost-Marshal of Chattanooga. When he first visited us, he said boldly that it was a shame to keep ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... within him at the sight he there beheld. Yoosoof's Black Ivory was not of the best quality, but there was a good deal of it, which rendered judicious packing necessary. So many of his gang had become worthless as an article of trade, through suffering on the way down to the coast, that the boat could scarce contain them all. They were packed sitting on their haunches in rows each with his knees close to his chin, and all jammed so tightly together that none could rise ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... mockery of a title for the woman who had deliberately flung away from her as a worthless weed the white flower of love which ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... ascetic temper of her husband, had tendered less to diminish than increase. She had much of what is termed genius—its warmth of emotion—its vividness of conception—its admiration for the grand—its affection for the good, and that dangerous contempt for whatever is mean and worthless, the very indulgence of which is an offence against the habits of the world. Her tastes were, however, too feminine and chaste ever to render her eccentric: they were rather calculated to conceal than to publish ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of commercial intercourse are intimately and almost necessarily connected; where commerce does not in the first instance prompt man to discover new countries, it is sure, if these countries are not totally worthless, to lead him thoroughly to explore them. The arrangement of this work, in carrying on, at the same time, a view of the progress of discovery, and of commercial enterprise, is, therefore, that very arrangement which the nature of the subject suggests. The most important and permanent ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... forgot not only her relations and her home, but her honour and herself and everything in the three worlds, seized as it were by the very frenzy of devotion, and anxious only to immolate herself as a victim on the altar of his divinity. And strange! though he treated them all as more worthless than grass, throwing them away almost in the instant that he saw them, not one of them all ever took warning by the fate of her predecessors: and so far were they from shunning him as the common enemy of their entire sex, that on the contrary, they seemed to struggle with one another for the prize ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... named Clarke. Against the latter republication Shelley energetically protested, disclaiming in a letter addressed to "The Examiner", from Pisa, June 22, 1821, any interest in a production which he had not even seen for several years. "I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... are utterly powerless and worthless. The great body of the nation is adverse to all control, and in no degree submissive to the authority of those ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... they never will give up, till the strong man, who is stronger, enters with his larger learning out of the same book, with his mightier weapons out of the same armory, and spoils their goods, or makes them old and worthless, by the side of the new, resplendent, magic wealth he ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... and has endeavored as much as possible to reconcile them." That he did not altogether succeed is the opinion of Mr. Fiske, who says, rather caustically, that "from its mixing the first and second voyages of Vespucci [the account] is so full of blunders as to be worse than worthless to ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... before (ll. 1468-1486). "I taught you of kissing," says she; "that becomes every courteous knight." Gawayne says that he must not take that which is forbidden him. The lady replies that he is strong enough to enforce his own wishes. Our knight answers that every gift not given with a good will is worthless. His fair visitor then enquires how it is that he who is so skilled in the true sport of love and so renowned a knight, has never talked to her of love (ll. 1487-1524). "You ought," she says, "to show and teach a young thing like me some tokens of true-love's crafts; I come hither ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... the mean time, as you won't guarantee the book so that I can bring it back and get my money if I find it worthless, I must accept the publisher's word?" Erlcort ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... it will ever be any good to me, but I can assure you that it would be a far worse burden for me to carry round the sense of having injured you, however unwillingly—God knows I never meant you harm!—than to shoulder the chance of your place remaining worthless on my hands." ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... indiscreetly precipitated himself; sometimes they came of generous partisanship in behalf of friends, such friends, for example, as Sir Robert Howard, his brother-in-law, an interminable spinner of intolerable verse, who afflicted the world in his day with plays worse than plagues, and poems as worthless as his plays. It was to a quarrel for and a quarrel against this gentleman that we are indebted for the most trenchant satire in the language. Sir Robert had fallen out with Dryden about rhyming tragedies, of which he disapproved; and while it lasted, the contest was waged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... of 'em all, I reckon!" laughed Nort. "And during the ruction I managed to get to the place where Del Pinzo had hidden the deeds he stole. I took them out and put in some worthless documents so he wouldn't suspect. Then I came on here. Now I guess they won't pasture any sheep at ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... striking illustration of the inutility, as well as meanness, of ill applied praise; since even the eulogy of Dryden, however liberally bestowed and beautifully expressed, failed to save him from the most unmanly treatment at the hands of the worthless and heartless object, on whom it was wasted. It is melancholy to see Dryden, as may be fairly inferred from his motto, piqueing himself on being admitted into the society of such men as Rochester, and enjoying their precarious favour. Mr Malone has remarked, that even in the course of the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... in systems and models."[40] This is but a poor way, he thinks, to "the Land of Truth." {317} "It is but a thin and aiery knowledge that is got by meer speculation." "This is but spider-like to spin a worthless web out of one's own bowels." "Jejune and barren speculations may unfold the Plicatures of Truth's garment, but they cannot discover her lovely Face." "To find Truth," he says in another figure, "we must break through the outward shell of words and phrases which ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Hsiang-yn remonstrated, "you shouldn't talk so much reckless nonsense! All these worthless despicable oaths, disjointed words, and corrupt language, go and tell for the benefit of those mean sort of people, who in everything take pleasure in irritating others, and who keep you under their thumb! But mind don't drive me to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... me. My wife knows all about that. The knowledge of that occurrence is worthless as a piece ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... His nearer Presence. But, at the same time, we are led to think that a day will come when this present imperfect condition of His Kingdom will be brought to an end; when those who have been tried and found worthless will be cast out; and "The Kingdom of Heaven" as we know it, having been purged of all evil, will become the Kingdom of His glory ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... fit to shift and break. It is that distant years which did not take Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit: As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-god to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort And vibrant tail, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... stone, I should have been patient; even now [it is not too late to] repent; whatever was in thy unfortunate fate has happened; what wilt thou do next? Wilt thou live or die?' I replied, with excessive shame, that in this worthless wretch's fate it was so written, that I should live in such disgrace and distress after escaping such various dangers; it would have been better to have perished; though the mark of infamy is stamped on my forehead, yet I have not ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... else to do. I used up all my ambiguous terms over that daub he bought in the Piazza di Spagna—'reminiscential' of half a dozen worthless things, 'suggestive,' etc. I can't work them over ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... illustration of the Icelandic method of narrative at its best. It is a good story, well told, with the unities well preserved. The plot is one that is known to the heroic Sagas—the growth of mischief and ill-will between two honourable gentlemen, out of the villainy of a worthless beast who gets them into his quarrels. Haflidi has an ill-conditioned nephew whom, for his brother's sake, he is loth to cast off. Thorgils takes up one of many cases in which this nephew is concerned, and so is brought into disagreement with Haflidi. The end is reconciliation, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... never, on his own authority, would he have suppressed the complaint which the horse-dealer had lodged in court against his cousin the Squire, had it not been for the fact that, misled by false statements, he had believed it an absolutely unfounded and worthless piece of mischief-making. After this he passed on to consider the present state of affairs. He remarked that by neither divine nor human laws had the horse-dealer been warranted in wreaking such horrible vengeance as he had allowed himself to take for this ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and Baymouth, Pen did not speak much, though they rode very close together. He was thinking what a mockery life was, and how men refuse happiness when they may have it; or, having it, kick it down; or barter it, with their eyes open, for a little worthless money or beggarly honor. And then the thought came, what does it matter for the little space? The lives of the best and purest of us are consumed in a vain desire, and end in a disappointment: as the dear soul's who sleeps in her grave yonder. She had ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eye on a good thing an' not humbug too much. W'en I'm gone"—the austere old face softened—"I wouldn't like to think of her I've spent so much money on, an' rared with me own hand, as I did her an' her mother before her, growin' old an' sour an' lonely, or bein' a slave to some worthless crawler." The old voice grew perilously soft, and saved itself from a break ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... woman, to stand quite distinct from her sisters and companions in the light of the practical, active, ardent, honest heart—became the one mistress in the world for Harry Jardine, coveted and craved by him as the best gift of God, without which the others were comparatively worthless, and for which he could have been willing to sacrifice them one and all. Harry himself, in after years, confessed that since the moment he awakened from that leaden drowsiness on the moor, the image of Joanna Crawfurd, tending him as a mother her sick ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... brilliancy of the colouring, and the softness of the execution. It appeared to me a masterpiece as a picture. Like Ghirlandajo, Andrea has introduced portraits; and in the Florentine lady who stands in the foreground we recognize the features of his worthless wife Lucrezia, the original model of so many of his female figures that the ignoble beauty of her face has become ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... terribly cruel foe, without transportation of any character but our own legs, and with five hundred miles of dangerous, trackless waste between us and the settlements. We had an abundance of money, but the stuff was absolutely worthless for the present, as there was nothing we could buy ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... no admirer of the monks that swarm in Madeira—he represents them as a very worthless, and a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... you don't mind, we will skip a portion of the narrative—I discovered then why men in India usually go to England for their wives. Whilst in Simla on ten days' leave I had a foolish row with Lord Ventnor in the United Service Club—hammered him, in fact, in defence of a worthless woman, and was only saved from a severe reprimand because I had been badly treated. Nevertheless, my hopes of a political appointment vanished, and I returned to my regiment to learn, after due reflection, what a very lucky person ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... journeys in autumn to the hill, and in spring to the moors, the child grew to be almost a woman, and before any one seemed aware of it, she was a wonderfully beautiful maiden of sixteen. The casket was splendid, but the contents were worthless. She was, indeed, wild and savage even in those hard, uncultivated times. It was a pleasure to her to splash about with her white hands in the warm blood of the horse which had been slain for sacrifice. In one of her wild moods she bit off the head of the black cock, which the priest ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... myself I am," returned the other composedly. "When I take anything, at any rate I have the sense to take something worth carrying away—not a worthless rock like this. You must have had a fine time lugging it ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... position within the window-seat that paralyzed her limbs, nor the chill of the twilight that crept through vein and bone. For one sick second she believed herself to be dying, and would not have stirred a muscle or spoken a syllable to save the life which had suddenly grown worthless—worthless, since she was never to see Frederic again; be no more to him than if she had never laid her head upon his bosom; never felt his kisses upon lip and forehead; never lived upon his words of love as rapt mortals, admitted in trances to the banquet of the gods, eat ambrosia, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... to their idols the things they deem of value; civilized Parisians sacrifice their idols themselves, and to a thing that is worthless." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Wilkins, who was destined to become a bishop; and subsequently coming together in London, they attracted the notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence of the taste for knowledge which the most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with his father and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content with saying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things with regard to them. For he not only ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... local methods, it gave no further concern thereto. But presently it was rumored that the "Amity Claim" was in litigation, and that its possession would be expensively disputed by each of the partners. As it was well known that the claim in question was "worked out" and worthless, and that the partners, whom it had already enriched, had talked of abandoning it but a day or two before the quarrel, this proceeding could only be accounted for as gratuitous spite. Later, two San Francisco lawyers made their appearance in this guileless Arcadia, and were eventually ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... vindicate it. There is no subject which more fully displays our fallen nature, than that of reprobation. All mankind agree in opinion, that there ever has been an elect, or good class of society; and a reprobate, or worthless and bad class; varying in turpitude or in goodness to a great extent and in almost imperceptible degrees. All must unite in ascribing to God that divine foreknowledge that renders ten thousand years but as one day, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... shipping and found in greatest abundance, namely, the carp, buffalo, the coarser catfishes, and dogfish. The dogfish in the last few years has become a very important factor in the food supply, having been previously thrown away as worthless, but is now extensively used by a class of people in the larger cities and sold alive under the name of grass bass. In this aquarium has been carried, for a period of seven months, perhaps the largest amount in weight ever carried in an aquarium for that length of time with so small ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... to be large ciphers in a state, Pleased with an empty swelling to be counted great, Make their minds travel o'er infinity of space, Rapt through the wide expanse of thought, And oft in contradiction's vortex caught, To keep that worthless clod, the body, in one place; Errors like this did old astronomers misguide, Led blindly on by gross philosophy and pride, Who, like hard masters, taught the sun Through many a heedless sphere to ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... liabilities. It seemed cruel to him, for he believed that all his ventures were sound, and that if he were not forced to sacrifice his possessions, their future value would attest his sagacity. But at present the securities of speculative enterprises were practically worthless as procurers of ready money. The extreme circumstances had come upon him with startling rapidity, so that he found himself in the unpleasant predicament of having used for temporary relief some of the bonds belonging to the Parsons estate which he held as executor. He had forwarded these to Williams ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... in reply. We have no record of that famous speech. But he was not the man to be frightened by the word "treason," and did not hesitate to repeat his words more vigorously than before. As for the parsons, he declared, their case was worthless. Men who led such lives as they were known to have done had no right to demand money from the people. So bitterly did he denounce them that all those in the room rose and left ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and of the additional fact, that the garrison was invulnerable from the river side only, and that much of the artillery that manned the citadel was all but worthless, on the pretense of being a friend to the cause of Irish freedom and a deadly enemy to England, he learned that not only were there many Fenian sympathizers within the walls of the garrison, but that the city outside was literally alive with similar friends, some of whom ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... in no mood to listen to the man who had been her evil genius ever since her school-days. As he was speaking she was wondering if she dared go to Walter Murie and tell him everything. What would her lover think of her? What indeed? He would only cast her aside as worthless. No. Far better that he should remain in ignorance and retain only sad memories ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux |
