"Aimless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse than that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she would come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself down upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was quite beside herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad with fright. Elzbieta would explain to him that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... amnesty was issued, insuring freedom and rights of citizenship to all who renounced their calling—a privilege which many accepted, only to find their blood fire and yearn for the wild, aimless, and adventurous roaming on the seas, which gradually drew them back to their calling and away from the restraints of civilization. The capture of a pirate meant death, and, as no practicable defence was available, the prisoners usually entrenched themselves behind ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... glance! It was one of those things that we might justly call "little." Could anything have been more trivial, slight, and apparently inconsequential than this half involuntary act? Indeed it was too aimless even to have been prompted by a conscious effort of the will. But this book is one of the least results of that momentary sweep of the eye. Another was, that Van Berg did not enjoy the symphony at all, and was soon in a very bad humor. That casual glance had revealed, not far away, a face ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... down at her pencil and drawing aimless designs as she talked, "I suppose it is a good place to go. I've seen the pictures, of course, in the time-tables; and one of the railroad offices on Clark Street used to have some big photographs ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... Theodora still leaning on her eldest brother's arm, Johnnie gravely walking on the foot-path, studying his uncle, and Arthur, with the young Arthur pulling his whiskers all the time, was walking forwards and backwards, round and about his brother, somewhat in the ecstatic aimless fashion of a dog who meets ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... run like the wind, but could start like a shot from a rifle. That he got clean away before the opponents had found the location of the ball was partly due to this fact and partly to the fact that Yale's backs were messing around in a peculiarly aimless manner which, to the Princeton players, suggested a delayed pass or some equally heinous piece of underhand work. So Princeton piled through Yale's line to solve the difficulty, thinking little of the absurd youth who had shot around her left ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... dishabille, unless she expects company. It is sad to see these stifled existences; without any contact with the world outside, without any charm of domestic life, without books or culture of any kind, the Brazilian senhora in this part of the country either sinks contentedly into a vapid, empty, aimless life, or frets against her chains, and is as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... very enviable frame of mind; but the cause is obvious. He is as yet unsettled in life, and now that he has met again his Bonnie Jean, and seen his children, he is more than ever dissatisfied with aimless roving. 'I have yet fixed on nothing with respect to the serious business of life. I am just as usual a rhyming, mason-making, raking, aimless, idle fellow. However, I shall somewhere have a farm soon. I was going to say a wife too, but that must never ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... blind fight, and it waged with great fierceness, although in an aimless manner, for some moments. Several of the windows in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... for green pastures or the crystal brook, As I for the dear look, Whence I have borne so much, and—if aright I read myself and passion—more must bear: This makes me to one theme my thoughts thus bind, An aimless wanderer where is pathway none, With weak and wearied mind Pursuing hopes which never can be won. Hence to thy summons answer I disdain, Thine is no power beyond thy ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... few years later I was in Italy, and being not many miles from the town where I heard that she was buried, and a trifle overstrung by a few months delicious, aimless life in that wonderful country, I was taken with a sentimental ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... thought they did. But look at that creature's wavering, unsteady flight; his aimless wanderings, anywhere or nowhere; and compare it with the 'mounting up with wings as eagles', which a Christian soul may know, even in this life,—compare it with the swift 'return to God who gave it'—with the being 'caught up to meet the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... shade, The uncontaminated kiss Of a young dark-eyed country maid, A fiery, yet well-broken horse, A dinner, whimsical each course, A bottle of a vintage white And solitude and calm delight. Such was Oneguine's sainted life, And such unconsciously he led, Nor marked how summer's prime had fled In aimless ease and far from strife, The curse of commonplace delight. And town and friends ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... firmament, and by his erratic movements had caused all the statesmen of Europe to diverge temporarily from their normal and conventional orbits, one result being that the British Admiral Duckworth wandered in a somewhat aimless fashion through the Dardanelles to Constantinople, and had very little idea of what to do when he got there. Mr. Miller reminds us of events of great importance in their day, but now almost wholly forgotten: of how the ancient Republic of Ragusa, which had existed for eleven centuries ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... novels for the simple reason that we know not what else to call them. The former was begun, in his own words, "with no real idea of how it was to turn out"; its nine volumes, published at intervals from 1760 to 1767, proceeded in the most aimless way, recording the experiences of the eccentric Shandy family; and the book was never finished. Its strength lies chiefly in its brilliant style, the most remarkable of the age, and in its odd characters, like Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, which, with all their ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... side by side as if thar's somethin' in it for 'em; an' I reckons, rightly saveyed, thar is. However, the profits to Road Runners of them excursions ain't obvious, none whatever; so I won't try to set 'em forth. Them journeys they makes up an' down the trail shorely seems aimless to me. ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to them, and, clothed in flesh, he would go back to his tribe. At other times a vague and indescribable longing seizes a young person, a morbid appetite possesses them, or they fall a prey to an inappeasable and aimless restlessness, or a causeless melancholy. These signs the old priests recognize as the expression of a personal spirit of the higher order. They take charge of the youth, and educate him to the mysteries of their craft. For months or years he is condemned to entire seclusion, receiving ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Meffia, walking about the court, in her irritatingly aimless fashion, passed between Brinnaria and the edge of the tank. There was no earthly reason for her so doing, as Brinnaria was barely a yard from the margin of the pool, and on the other side of Brinnaria was the ample expanse of the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... in the general ugliness of that rain-swept dawn. Its maples were gaunt skeletons, its garden a sodden field over which the chickens were wandering in sad and aimless fashion. To my city-bred wife this home-coming must have been a cruel shock, but it was the best I could do, and whatever the girl felt, she concealed with a smile, resolute to make the best of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... worth, who we trust will be guilty of no crime, because he knows he would thereby seriously displease us. Obey his commands therefore. Do not dislike the reign of Law because it is new to you, after the aimless seethings of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... especially after her recent contact with a plague patient, but under the circumstances Elsa's absence was annoying. Moreover, suddenly the house had become uncomfortable, for every one in it seemed to be running about carrying articles hither and thither in a fashion so aimless that it struck him as little short of insane. Once or twice also he saw Elsa, but she, too, was carrying things, and had no ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the table d'hote in the mangy hotel in a narrow back street where the Merveilleux troupe had their crowded being, dined at a cheap restaurant near the railway station, and filled in the evening with aimless wandering up and and down the thronged Avenue de la Gare. Once he turned off into the quiet moonlit square dominated by the cathedral and the walls and towers of the Palace of the Popes. The austere beauty of it said nothing to him. It did not bring calm to a fevered ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Spectator,) opposed on most points to the present Government, "the late Ministers commenced a career, perilous in the extreme to all the best interests of the nation—demoralizing public opinion, wasting public resources, and entangling the country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, fast losing our moral ascendency in Europe—by a series of querulous, petty, officious, needless, undignified interpositions; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... performances on the bars and ladders. With this precaution, strains are easily avoided; even with this, the hand will sometimes blister and the body ache, but perseverance will cure the one and Russia Salve the other; and the invigorated life in every limb will give a perpetual charm to those seemingly aimless leaps and somersets. The feats once learned, a private gymnasium can easily be constructed, of the simplest apparatus, and so daily used; though nothing can wholly supply the stimulus afforded by a class in a public institution, with a competent teacher. In summer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the important laws of divergence (or differentiation) and complexity (or division of labour), which are the direct and inevitable outcome of selection. Finally, I marked off dysteleology as the science of the aimless (vestigial, abortive, atrophied, and useless) organs and parts of the body. In all this I worked from a strictly monistic standpoint, and sought to explain all biological phenomena on the mechanical and naturalistic lines that had long been recognised in the study of inorganic ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice—the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt" (querulous, trembling) voice, and he starting up, surprised, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... with a large chisel in one hand and a heavy mallet in the other. As I looked he walked up to the stone and began to knock great pieces off it with chisel and mallet. I paused to watch him, my curiosity aroused to know what he was doing in his apparently aimless work. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... course of contemplation thus traced in the psalm, we have these three points brought before us—first, the thought of life common to both clauses; second, the gloomy, aimless hollowness which that thought breathes into life apart from God; third, the blessedness which springs from the same thought when we look at it in connection with our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dilapidation. The few white men you meet in its streets, or see lounging lazily around its stores and warehouses, appear to lack all purpose and energy. Long contact with the negro seems to have given them his shiftless, aimless character. ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... desperately after it, through the fog. Wind and water took the sound up and tossed it about. Confused and bewildered, we beat about it and about it; it was behind us, before us, at our right, at our left,—crying on in a blind, aimless way, making us no replies,—beckoning us, slipping from us, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of the first degree—an aimless challenge coupled with the name of one recognisable spot, replied to by the haphazard retort of another place, frequently in no way joined to it, was regarded as an exceptionally fascinating sit-round game by ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... have not yet learned to act together, and find it far from easy even to fuse our principles and aims into a satisfactory statement. We have all been at times entertained by the futile efforts of half a dozen highly individualized people gathered together as a committee. Their aimless attempts to find a common method of action have recalled the wavering motion of a baby's arm before he has learned ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... No one thought of telling us anything about flowers and trees, which give such zest to one's aimless rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor about stones, so instructive with their fossil records. That entrancing glance through the windows of the world was refused us. Grammar ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... food, as a condition of being allowed to go at all. My enforced breakfast over, I went to look for Rubens. Ever since the day when it was first settled that I should go, the dear dog had kept close, very close at my heels. That depressed and aimless wandering about which always afflicts the dogs of the household when any of the family are going away from home was strong upon him. After the new trunk came into my room, Rubens took into his head a fancy for lying upon ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... what manner of words her husband had choked down. She stood and watched his face, waiting for him to lift his eyes. But he refused obstinately to lift them, and went on rearranging with aimless fingers the pens and papers on his writing-table. At length she plucked up her courage. "Husband," she said, "let us take counsel together. We are in a plight that wrath will not cure: but, be angry as you will, we cannot give Hetty to ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... overshadowed all the fair visions of his youth; or if he hopes, it is but the gleam of delirium, which something sterner than even duty extinguishes in the cold darkness of death. His energy survives but to vent itself in wild gusts of reckless passion, or aimless indignation. There is a touching poignancy in his expression of the bitter melancholy that oppresses him, in the fixedness of misery with which he looks upon the faded dreams of former years, or the fierce ebullitions and dreary pauses of resolution, which now prompts ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... makes the suggestion that he noticed a singular expression in the eyes of certain of the color blind difficult to describe. "In some it amounted to a startled expression, as if they were alarmed; in others, to an eager, aimless glance, as if seeking to perceive something but unable to find it; and in certain others to an almost vacant stare, as if their eyes were fixed upon objects beyond the limit of vision. The expression referred to, which is not ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... is a sad aimless life that such people lead—of course our excursion under their protection was an event to supply matter for ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... rose and mixed himself what he wanted, and began to walk leisurely about, the ice tinkling in the glass which he held. At intervals he quenched his thirst, then resumed his aimless promenade, a slight smile on ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There's a land — oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... substitution of human life for preparation, system, and skill; enthusiasm supplied the place of discipline; robbery produced military stores; and the dead bodies of her citizens formed epaulements against the enemy. Yet this was but the strength of weakness; the aimless struggle of a broken and disjointed government; and the new revolutionary power was fast sinking away before the combined opposition of Europe, when the great genius of Napoleon, with a strong arm ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... wondered, could have cleared the social horizon for Paula Breckenridge's daughter so effectively? With what brisk resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless European wanderings, cropped the child's artificially curled hair, given away the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks and hats. Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had entered ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... of wanderings more or less aimless, there has slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted,—so frequently does a certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This, however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definiteness: with each return its visibility seems to increase.... And the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... and the population very small indeed. Freed from all necessity for exertion, he shut himself up with his books, having his little round of parish work for relaxation, and never sought to emerge from the quiet of his aimless studies to struggle for fame and place in the laborious world. Mr. Fraser was what people call an able man thrown away. If they had known his shy, sensitive nature a little better, they would have understood that he was infinitely more suited for the solitary and peaceful lot in life which he had ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... speculated with impunity. But neither of these courses was adopted; the narrowness of mind and short- sightedness, which are the proper and inalienable privileges of all genuine patricianism, were true to their character also in Rome, and rent the powerful commonwealth asunder in useless, aimless, and inglorious strife. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... these powerful personal loyalties to racial ideals?... "Mere boys led to the slaughter" is the sentimentality one hears of the marching conscripts of European armies. Better even so than the curse of no supreme allegiance, or devotion, or readiness to sacrifice—than the aimless selfishness in which our ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... do not value Things Western as I ought, The trains,—that take us, whither? The ships,—that reach, what port? To me it seems but chaos Of greed and haste and rage, The endless, aimless, motion Of squirrels in ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... life, that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... desolation was most vividly present. In no weather could the impression of loneliness be stronger. The pines drooped and sobbed. Cascades, born somewhere in the dun firmament above, dropped down the mountain sides in ever-growing white threads. The rivers roared and plunged with aimless passion down the ravines. Stray little clouds, left behind when the wrack lifted a little, ran bleating up and down the forlorn hill-sides. More often, the clouds trailed along the valleys, a long ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the few Civil War veterans followed Champ Perry, in his rusty forage-cap, along the spring-powdered road to the cemetery. She met Guy; she found that she had nothing to say to him. Her head ached in an aimless way. When Kennicott rejoiced, "We'll have a great time this summer; move down to the lake early and wear old clothes and act natural," she smiled, but her ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... eager, though almost aimless haste, followed him with a light step till she saw him turn out of the vista, and then she lost sight of him. To walk with him undisturbed in so deep a seclusion; to improve the impression which she was sure she had made upon his heart; to teach ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... wretchedness. The richest became libertines; those of moderate fortune followed some profession and resigned themselves to the sword or to the church. The poorest gave themselves up with cold enthusiasm to great thoughts, plunged into the frightful sea of aimless effort. As human weakness seeks association and as men are gregarious by nature, politics became mingled with it. There were struggles with the 'garde du corps' on the steps of the legislative assembly; at the theatre Talma wore a wig which made him resemble Caesar; every one flocked to ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... gate, aimless, and before she was aware whither she was going, found herself in the confines of Pudmoor. How life turns in circles! Before, when she had run from the Ship, self-excluded, she had hasted to Pudmoor. Now, again, excluded, but by Iver, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... That aimless, happy-go-lucky journey was typical of Goldsmith's whole life of forty-odd years. Those who knew him loved but despaired of him. When he passed away (1774) Johnson summed up the feeling of the English literary ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... rather an aimless man. He was a brilliant sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because seamanship was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of nerve and a complete fearlessness. It was so easy to be a good sailor that he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an effort. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the babe is born it shows no sign of mind. For a brief space hunger and repletion, cold and warmth are its only sensations. Slowly the specialised senses begin to function; still more slowly muscular movements, at first aimless and reflex, become co-ordinated and consciously directed. There is no sign here of an intelligent spirit controlling a mechanism; there is every sign of a learning and developing intelligence, developing pari passu with the organism of which ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and bear, ploughs a field of adders with a plough of gold, and conquers the gigantic pike that swims in the Styx of Finnish mythology. After this point the story is interrupted by a long sequel of popular bridal songs, and, in the wandering course of the rather aimless epic, the flight and its incidents have been forgotten, or are neglected. These incidents recur, however, in the thread of somewhat different plots. We have seen that they are found in Japan, among the Eskimo, among the Bushmen, the Samoyeds, and ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march back and forth past the great music-stand and look very much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise. It seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence. A good many of these people are there for a real purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths. These invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... influence into action. No book written with an honest heart is lost; no poem or essay, however poor, fails to reach some mark. The printed page that to you or me looks so barren and poor, may carry to some soul a message of healing; may to some eyes have the light of heaven about it. And to how many aimless lives, writing has given a purpose which otherwise never might have entered it! John, I believe in writing, and this baby shall be taught to put his ideas into shape as soon as he is taught anything! I never wish him to settle down ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... he said finally with a revival of courage, pausing in his slow, aimless wandering through the rooms. "It's a little tough after so long, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Those nearest the castle were mostly peons. I noticed men and a few women armed with various implements of agriculture, and any sort of rude weapon they could obtain. They were standing about in little groups or rushing excitedly to and fro in aimless, uncommanded activity. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... and the Lieutenant ever since their first clash, for in this place they furnished the only objects upon which his mania could work—and it was a mania, the derangement of a diseased, distorted mind. His regard for Necia was a careless whim, a rather aimless, satisfying hobby, not at all serious, entirely extraneous to his every-day life, and interesting only from its aimlessness, being as near to an unselfish and decent motive as the man had ever come. But it was not of sufficient consequence to stand out against ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... sapped at all the roots of manliness and honourable ambition. Amongst the well-to-do classes the more spirited of the young men went abroad and enlisted under foreign banners. The rest stayed at home, and fell into an idle, aimless, often disreputable, fashion of existence. The sense of being of no account, mere valueless items in the social hive, is no doubt answerable for a good deal of all this. Swift assures us that in his time the Catholic manhood of Ireland were of no more importance ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... imperfectly), but unable to see the general aspect of things. The river, the forest, all the great land throbbing with life, were like a great emptiness. Even the brilliant sunshine disclosed nothing intelligible. Things appeared and disappeared before their eyes in an unconnected and aimless kind of way. The river seemed to come from nowhere and flow nowhither. It flowed through a void. Out of that void, at times, came canoes, and men with spears in their hands would suddenly crowd ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... to her future husband, for the father is as certain as Sir Anthony Absolute himself that daughters should accept what is offered them and ask no questions. Sybil is by no means unwilling to enter the holy state, if the right man can be found. Indeed, she is wearying of the aimless life she lives with her worldly aunt, and the gradual change in her thoughts and hopes is indicated in a passage ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... were going on a mission, as you are," Chester was saying. "My trip is somewhat aimless, I fear. For a year or more I have had a notion that I ought to see Europe. I have seen a good deal of America, both East and West. I lived for some time in Salt Lake City, though I became a Church member ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... immaculate white gaiters, pattered over to Miss Levering, but she unkindly presented her back, and sat down at the writing-table to make a note on the abhorred Shelter plan. He showed his disapproval by marching off with Mr. Freddy, and there was a general trickling back into the garden in that aimless, before-luncheon mood. ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... contributed to augment the discord prevailing, and to weaken the party of the Princes by dividing it. The Duchess de Longueville, when no longer guided by La Rochefoucauld, did not fail to lose herself in aimless projects, and to compromise herself in intrigues without result. On Nemours being wounded, his wife repaired to the army to tend him, and the Duchess de Chatillon, under pretext of visiting one of her chateaux, accompanied her as far as Montargis; thence she went ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the Acadians, in their aimless wanderings through the town, found themselves near a large brick edifice, which was fenced in from the street by an iron railing, wrought with fantastic figures. They saw a flight of red freestone steps ascending to a portal, above which was a balcony and balustrade. ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... given Mr. CONRAD, hitherto the well-loved favourite of the relatively few, a much wider constituency. To these late comers, rather than to the older (and of course superior) Conradists, who know it already, let me recommend this rambling, which is by no means to say aimless, account of the wanderings of the MS. of Almayer's Folly, some queer entertaining scraps of the author's family history, a description of the encounters with the original Almayer, and those vignettes of Marseilles which obviously were used as the background ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... looking about the room in an apparently aimless manner. On the side wall hung a cheap etching of a woodland scene. Kennedy seemed engrossed in it while the rest of us fidgeted ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... public funds. It is not uncommon for some classes of shiftless people to make a practice of seeking shelter in the almshouse during the winter, where they live in comparative comfort and idleness at the public expense, only to leave in the spring for a life of aimless indolence, imposing as ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... whether his money would last out nor whether he would pass his final examinations; and he could read to his heart's content. He had not been able to read much of late, since Mildred disturbed him: she would make an aimless remark when he was trying to concentrate his attention, and would not be satisfied unless he answered; whenever he was comfortably settled down with a book she would want something done and would come ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... For aimless oaf and wiser fool Work to one end by differing deeds;— The weeds rot in the standing pool; The water stagnates ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... activity, as when he tears paper into small bits, shakes a bunch of keys, opens and shuts a box, plays with sand, and empties bottles, and throws stones into the water. "The zeal with which these seemingly aimless movements are executed is remarkable. The sense of gratification must be very great, and is principally due to the feeling of his own power, and of being the cause ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... public baths exited in Geneva in pre-Reformation days, what was the colour of Mehemet Ali's whiskers, why the manuscript of Virgil's friend Gallius had not been handed down to posterity, and in what year, and what month, the decimal system was introduced into Finland. Such aimless incursions into knowledge were a puzzle to his friends, but not to himself. They helped him to build up a harmonious scheme ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... ashamed of it. His disposition was a peculiar one. He stood sorely in need of a guide, a teacher, and a friend, in whom he was disposed to confide. If I disappointed the hopes which he had centered in me, he would be discouraged, and he would relapse into the aimless and indolent existence of which he was now ashamed. Any terms for which I might stipulate were at my disposal if I would consent to receive him, for three months to begin with, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... these apparently aimless strolls with a stenographer he visited not only the classrooms and shops but every corner of the great institution. He would return to his office with a notebook full of memoranda of matters to be followed up or changed, and of people to be commended or censured ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... harmony with you—with the earth under me. I became horribly despondent—like an outcast who suddenly realizes the whole world is alien. And all the wandering about the world, and all the romance and excitement I'd enjoyed in it, appeared an aimless, futile business, chasing around in a circle in an effort to avoid touching reality. Forgive me, Curt. I meant myself, not you, of course. Oh, it was horrible, I tell you, to feel that way. I tried to laugh at myself, to fight it off, but it stayed ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... useless to lay out any definite line to follow, Fred made no attempt to do so, believing he was as likely to reach the ravine by aimless traveling as by acting upon any theory of his own as to the location of the place he desired to reach. This he continued to do until the afternoon was about half spent. He was still plodding along, with some hope of success, when he became aware of a sickness ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... mistake take her parasol for the kindly office? And so the talk went on, people coming and people going, and Mrs. Lane did up a whole basketful of work undisturbed, and Phebe inwardly chafed and fumed and longed for dinner-time, that at last the ceaseless, aimless chatter might come ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... of the passion that shook my youth, Of its aimless loves and its idle pains, And am thankful now for the certain truth That ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... steeply or gradually according to the demands of the roof outside. There May, Johnny and Martin curled up on the western window seat; Bobby and Carter Irvine sat on the floor; Caroline drew up a straight-back chair. Then while the twilight lasted they "talked," in children's aimless fashion, ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... another!), but never got far into them. ("Into their depths," my pen was on the point of making me say; but that would have been a false note. The flat-woods have no "depths.") Whether I followed the railway,—in many respects a pretty satisfactory method,—or some roundabout, aimless carriage road, a mile or two was generally enough. The country offers no temptation to pedestrian feats, nor does the imagination find its account in going farther and farther. For the reader is not to think of the flat-woods as ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... the same listless, aimless action, Mrs. Wilders presently turned to, and turned over ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... would in the course of nature have gone to the galleys.[23] Thus a new country, which invited the benign organization of law and religion, and held out to pure spirits an opportunity richer than all its crops and mines, was poisoned in its cradle. What wonder that its vigor became the aimless gestures of madness, that a bloated habit simulated health, and that decrepitude suddenly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... in pain, and perhaps he bore it ill; he feared that the nurses thought so too—that Corydon called too often for something, or cried out too much in mere aimless misery. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... calmer by dint of walking—aimless, fast walking, with a rapt expression of the eyes that on crowded pavements cleared the way for him more effectually than a shouting footman. And then he debouched unexpectedly on to the Embankment. Dusk was already falling on the noble curve of the Thames, and ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... unscrupulous, that the wish of the woman is the politely insincere wish of the Deity, and that she pursues her course with a serene sureness unknown to man. It is when a woman does not know what she wants that she baffles the philosopher just as the ant in her aimless discursiveness baffles the entomologist. Of course, if the philosopher has guessed her unformulated desire, then things are easy for him, and he can discourse with certitude on feminine vagaries, as Rattenden did on the journeyings ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... comes by night And sits beside his bed, Sobbing the midnight hours away With gaunt, up-lifted head. The lizard trails his aimless way Across the lonely mound, When the star-guards of the desert Their ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... to occupy my attention, I mingled more in society, at my sister-in-law's earnest solicitation, though I cared little for the strangers whom I met. More than a year passed in this aimless way. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... minutes I sat by the bright fire, lost in aimless, wandering thought, which began with Dame Alice and her cabinet, and which ended somehow with Alan's face, as I had last seen it looking up at me in front of the hall-door. When I had reached that point, I roused myself ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... on life's bleak ocean waste, Through starless nights and dreary sunless days; Wherever currents led o'er pathless maze, I plied the oars of aimless toil, and faced Defeat impatiently, nor ever traced One ray of hope along the murky haze Of life's horizon, till I caught the blaze Of one lone ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... aimless way for several minutes, then came to a puzzled stop. The aperture above my head was uncovered, and the cabman peered ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Otherwise, planning is aimless, except as a mental exercise. Such mental exercise, though it be with no thought of specific application in the realm of action, has nevertheless the same fundamental aim as if the planning were so intended. The aim of such mental exercise is the inculcation of habits ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... tenderly and longingly after little Suzanne, who was being led away from the pleasant TETE-A-TETE by her stern mother. Marguerite watched him across the room, as he finally turned away with a sigh, and seemed to stand, aimless and lonely, now that Suzanne's dainty little figure had disappeared in ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... nothing more, and Marjorie wandered about the tent in an apparently aimless manner. But after a time she came near to a small slit in the side of the tent that served as a sort of window, and here she paused and examined some beads that hung near by. Then choosing a moment ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... possessing a keener sense of status, and in working more consistently and farsightedly to a remoter end. The kinship of the two types of temperament is further shown in a proclivity to "sport" and gambling, and a relish of aimless emulation. The ideal pecuniary man also shows a curious kinship with the delinquent in one of the concomitant variations of the predatory human nature. The delinquent is very commonly of a superstitious ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... same duration; and what Mr Wilson proves in his cricket-ground, what London shewed in the time of the World's Fair, generations and countries would always exhibit in larger characters, more widely read—that the mind and body of man require amusement—simple pleasure—purposeless, aimless, unintellectual, physical pleasure—as much as his digestive organs require food and his hands work; not as the sole employment, but mixed in with, and forming the basis and the body of higher things—the strong practical woof through which the warp of golden stuff is woven ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... thing as that which we call nature. When we speak of nature, we imply a regular and definite flow of tendencies, this thing springing from that and leading to that other; nothing from nothing, and nothing leading nowhere; no random, aimless proceedings; but definite results led up to by a regular succession of steps, and surely ensuing unless something occurs on the way to thwart the process. How this is reconciled with Creation and Freewill, it is not our province ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... completely overcrowed by the impression of a bare and aimless existence, and could not even wonder. Christian Hopedale! "Leave all hope, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the Supreme. "Hear my iron word. When the buffoon-witted Ning rises from his congenial slough this shall be his lot: for sixty thousand ages he shall fail to find the path of his return, but shall, instead, thread an aimless flight among the frozen ambits of the outer stars, carrying a tormenting rain of fire at his tail. And Leou, the Whisperer," added the Divining One, with the inscrutable wisdom that marked even his most opaque moments, "Leou shall meanwhile perform ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... o'clock, and if there was a noticeable rise or decline in a stock or a group of stocks, you were apt to witness quite a spirited scene. Fifty to a hundred men would shout, gesticulate, shove here and there in an apparently aimless manner; endeavoring to take advantage of the stock offered ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... became acquainted with the past life of the young English lady—she assisted Madame Caraman in all her work to give to Clary's life, up to now aimless, a fixed object and satisfaction, and it stands to reason that the young girl also felt great interest for Mercedes. Mercedes was only too happy to find an opportunity to speak about Albert—during the ten years he sojourned in Algiers, his letters ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Nothing is more startling than the contrast between the heavy, formal, lifeless slang of the man-about-town and the light, living, and flexible slang of the coster. The talk of the upper strata of the educated classes is about the most shapeless, aimless, and hopeless literary product that the world has ever seen. Clearly in this, again, the upper classes have degenerated. We have ample evidence that the old leaders of feudal war could speak on occasion with a certain natural symbolism ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... suffice, as this part of my scheme will most probably be condemned as visionary. Yet even this is possible and real, though it now appears to be something vague and aimless. Organization will make of ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... a war footing, and no more. They've tinkered with fishermen, and merchant sailors, and yachting hands, but everyone of them ought to be got hold of; and the colonies, too. Is there the ghost of a doubt that if war broke out there'd be wild appeals for volunteers, aimless cadging, hurry, confusion, waste? My own idea is that we ought to go much further, and train every able-bodied man for a couple of years as a sailor. Army? Oh, I suppose you'd have to give them the choice. Not that I know or care much about the Army, though ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... at the same place where Gilbert had stood and mused one night when his happiness was almost too great to bear. To Egremont the darkening scene was in accord with the wearied misery which made his life one dull pain. London lay beneath the night like a city of hopeless toil, of aimless conflict, of frustration and barrenness. His philosophy was a sham, a spinning of cobwebs for idle hours when the heart is restful and the brain seeks to be amused. He had no more strength to bear the torture of an inassuageable desire than any ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon—(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the stillness) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... held in especial aversion, the Rural Hooligan type, and one at least of the two had evidently been present at a recent circulation of the festive bowl. He was wheeling the bicycle about the road in an aimless manner, and looked as if he wondered what was the matter with it that it would not stay in the same place for two consecutive seconds. The other youth was apparently of the 'Charles-his-friend' variety, content to look on and applaud, and ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... each spot, that it was like being transplanted when I moved myself to the north or the south. And I discovered a few things in each country in which I lived. For one thing, I observed that the little busy bee is not busy all the while; that he does a great amount of aimless, idle snuffing and tasting of all sorts of things besides flowers; especially he indulges in a running accompaniment of gymnastics among the grass-stalks, which cannot possibly have anything to do with honey. I watched one ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... forward tower was clinging to our window. On the deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for a moment, then shouted and ran, swaying, aimless. From the lower hull corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running steps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... raised questioning eyebrows as Strang resumed his seat. This girl glanced over his shoulder at the aimless child straying off ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... extent changed by the arrival of tents and by the systematic military care for the suffering. But the daily life of a Johnstown man who is a refugee in his own city is still aimless and wandering. His property, his home, in nine cases out of ten, his wife and children, are gone. The chances are that he has hard work to find the spot where he and his family once lived and were happy. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... while she rambles on in her aimless talking the children are bored, inexpressibly bored. It is axiomatic that the learning process does not flourish in a state of boredom. Under the ordeal of verbal inundation the children wriggle and squirm about ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... have the Palace of the Princess Orenburg, and make the acquaintance of Anna Ivanovna, a young lady who is the sister of the aimless murderer, and owner of untold riches. We are also introduced to the Head of Police, who, as everyone knows, is a cross between a suburban inspector, a low-class inquiry agent, and a flaneur moving in the best Society. We find, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... my brother hobbled over to the window. For several minutes he remained there, looking out upon the street with the aimless air of a man who scarcely knows what ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in her father's house; but oftenest the language of bitterness, violence, and execration was on her lips. With the never-ceasing complaints of want—want of position, want of friends, but, most of all, want of money—sounding in his ears, Andrew grew up a poet. The unsettled and aimless mind of his mother, shadowed as it was with perpetual blackness, prevented her from calmly and wisely striving to place her son in some position by which he could have aided in supporting himself and her. As a child, Andrew was shy and solitary, caring little for the society ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless, joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the sum of their conversation was simply this: "Oh, what a day! what a glorious day!" Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Devil who arranged the thing, but the fact of the case is that Losson had for a long time been worrying Simmons in an aimless way. It gave him occupation. The two had their cots side by side, and would sometimes spend a long afternoon swearing at each other; but Simmons was afraid of Losson and dared not challenge him to a fight. He thought over the words in the hot still ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... old man went up to the house, and it seemed to Dexter as if a cloud had passed from across the sun. The garden appeared to have grown suddenly brighter, and the boy began to whistle as he went about in an aimless way, looking here and there for ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... said, facing me again—still ominously, to my despair. Confound it all, she was such a slim, helpless little thing—and all alone against a mob of burly ruffians! I could have kicked myself, but even that would have been an aimless enterprise in view of the fact that Poopendyke or any of the others could have done it more accurately than I and perhaps with greater respect. "Will you be good enough to send your—your army away, or do you prefer to have it on hand in case I should take it ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... an aimless scrawl across the paper; for an instant he stared at his companion with blank eyes. Fortunately June Mason was too intent on the relighting of her cigarette to have any attention to spare for him; she went on talking as ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... according to your turn of mind. Take one by itself, explains Mr. Harrison, and you will be sure to rank it as ordinary road-metal. But take a series together, and then, he urges, the sight of the same forms over and over again will persuade you in the end that human design, not aimless chance, has been ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... he said between his teeth, "and I'll get her. I'll settle with her! I've got something here——" he felt in his pocket in a vague, aimless way. "I thought I had it, I've carried it about so long; but I've got it somewhere, I ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... thou hast made! Alas! alas! thou hast no eye to see, And blindly slew'st him in misguided shade. Would I had lent my doting sense to thee! But now I turn to thee, a willing mark, Thine arrows miss me in the aimless dark!" ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... compose a brilliant effect of colour and movement—beautiful women in wonderful attire fluttered to and fro like gaily-plumaged birds among the conventionally dark-clothed men who stood about in that aimless fashion they so often affect when disinclined to talk or to make themselves agreeable,—and there was a pleasantly subdued murmur of voices,—cultured voices, well-attuned, and incapable of breaking into the sheep-like ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Schopenhauer sets forth with no less of eloquence, proves the blindness and irrationality of the world-ground. To live is to suffer; the world contains incomparably more pain than pleasure; it is the worst possible world. In the world of sub-animal nature aimless striving; in the animal world an insatiable impulse after enjoyment—while the will, deceiving itself with fancied happiness to come, which always remains denied it, and continually tossed to and fro between necessity and ennui, never attains complete satisfaction. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... to within half a mile of the aimless traveller, and the small boat put out. Not one of his fellows but envied the young ensign as he left the ship, steered by Timmins, a veteran bo's'n's mate, wise in all the ins and outs of sea ways. They saw him board, neatly running the small boat under the schooner's counter; they saw the foresheet ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... no end to this aimless circling through a world of green smoke? He shambled ahead, moving his feet leadenly. How long had he been here? There was no division in time, just the unchanging light which was a part of the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... fairyland, and as little in the search after it. Good, strong, sensible, practical faces; women that evidently had their work to do, and did it; habitual energy and purpose spoke in every one of them, and purpose attained. Here was no aimless dreaming or fruitless wishing. The old lady's face was sorely weather-beaten, but calm as a ship in harbour. Charity was homely, but comfortable. Madge and Lois were blooming in strength and activity, ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... ghost's gaze must not fall on nothing; that would be too appalling (without doubt I was mad); its gaze must meet something, otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether: the notion of such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze; my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them, they would burst from my head and ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice,—the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt" voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the sad faces of the men and women on the pavements, combined to create an atmosphere of ineloquent misery. Eustace was sensitive to impressions, and in spite of a half-conscious effort to remain a dispassionate spectator of the world's melancholy, he felt the chill of the aimless day creeping over his spirit. Why was there no sun, no warmth, no laughter on the earth? What had become of all the children who keep laughter like a mask on the faces of disillusioned men? The wind blew down Southampton Street, and chilled Eustace to a shiver ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... deposited upon a leaf, they invariably made their first meal on the substance of the leaf, and then wandered about for a longer or shorter space of time, evidently seeking a boll or flower bud. It was always interesting to watch this seemingly aimless search of the young worm, crawling first down the leaf stem and then back, then dropping a few inches by a silken thread and then painfully working its way back again, until, at last, it found the object of its search, or fell to the ground where it was destroyed by ants. As the ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... its instincts and capacities, thus enabling him to realize his own personality. The great French educator, Rousseau, living in the eighteenth century, was responsible for this movement and it was a notable advance beyond the haphazard and aimless practise of the time. Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educational reformer, Froebel, the German apostle of childhood, and Herbart, the psychological genius of the Fatherland, were disciples of Rousseau and worked out from his point of view, trying ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... spoke of her husband as "he." You know the type of woman. That Senator Warfield was anything less than a godlike man who stood very high on the ladder of Fame, she would never believe. So she related garrulously certain incoherent, aimless utterances of Lorraine's, and cried a little, and thought it was perfectly awful that a sweet, pretty girl like that should be crazy. She would have made an ideal witness against Lorraine, her very ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... presently I remembered them, and grew very uneasy. I did not like carrying this woman's property about with me. I had engaged myself, an hour before, to Miss Van Arsdale, and was very anxious to rejoin her. The gloves worried me, and finally, after a little aimless wandering through the various rooms, I determined to go back and restore them to their owner. The doors of the supper-room had just been flung open, and the end of the hall near the alcove was comparatively ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... particulars of their trip in the launch from home to Wiscasset and return, omitting of course all reference to Stockham Calvert that would give a hint of his profession and his purpose in making what looked like an aimless ramble through this portion of Maine. The Captain was assured that his boat would not be disturbed where it lay moored under the bank, and he and Chester gave no further thought ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... have, we shall have, in all enterprises for God and man that are worth doing, 'need of patience,' just as the army of Israel had to parade for six weary days round Jericho blowing their useless trumpets, whilst the impregnable walls stood firm, and the defenders flouted and jeered their aimless procession. But the seventh day will come, and at the trumpet blast down will go the loftiest ramparts of the cities that are 'walled up to heaven' with a rush and a crash, and through the dust and over the ruined rubbish Christ's ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to Seraphina. With her head resting on her hand, and her eyes following the aimless tracings of her finger on the table, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and despair, Marcia felt herself all unfit to begin a new revel—one that was to be made possible by loathsome practices, as yet unknown at Rome, and which bade fair to end in aimless and hideous debauchery. The women were but warming to their part, when the summons of Stenius Ninius had proclaimed a truce with Bacchus and Venus—a truce with promise of more deadly battle to be joined. She had seen glances hot with ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... her body. Her aimless hands struck the spiked surface of a cactus-bush, but she never knew it. When the song finished, she crept to the grating and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... best only a fortunate serf. Governed by a being whose arbitrary will is law, chained to the chariot of power, his destiny rests in the pleasure of the unknown. Under these circumstances what wretched object can he have in lengthening out his aimless life? ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Yellow Dwarf was busily gathering pebbles from the edge of the pond, examining each carefully, and then throwing them down again in what appeared to be an aimless ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow
... going to eat our grandfathers like the merry cannibals that we are." The oyster is one of the primitive manifestations of life on the planet—one of the earlier forms of organic matter, still resting, uncertain and aimless in its evolution in the immensity of the waters. The sympathetic and slandered monkey only has the importance of a first cousin who has failed to make a career for himself, of an unfortunate and absurd relative whom one leaves outside the door, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice, the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright and perilous eye, some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt" voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... mingling with the falling dew. He struggled to his feet at last, limping a little, for the fall had been severe, and went on his way, still without conscious purpose. And when long after a silvery expanse shone ahead of him, he did not realize for the moment that his aimless wanderings had brought him to Snake River. He stumbled on till he reached the edge of the stream and saw in the black shadow of the trees a dugout half filled with water. For the first time in his night of wandering, a vague purpose took shape ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... something of great age until one grows familiar with it and almost to live in its time, is not merely to satisfy a curiosity or to establish aimless truths: it is rather to fulfil a function whose appetite has always rendered History a necessity. By the recovery of the Past, stuff and being are added to us; our lives which, lived in the present only, are a film or surface, take on body—are lifted into one dimension ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... glories of its King; Now my footfall sounds alone On the aisle's long path of stone, Save that yonder from the loft, With a solemn tone and soft, Beating on with muffled shock, Conscience-waking, speaks the clock. Holy scene, and dear as holy, Let me ponder thee this hour, Not in aimless melancholy, But in quest of Heaven-given power; Seeking here to win anew Contrite love and purpose true; Near the Font whose dew-drops cold Fell upon my brow of old, Near the well-remember'd seat Set beside ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... he had crumpled the picture in his hand and dropped it on the floor. He picked it up now and mechanically smoothed it out as he made his observation, through the window. The pack had returned to the stockade. By the aimless manner in which they had scattered he concluded that for the time at least their mysterious enemies had ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... construction of his machinery; the architect assured of his accuracy pushes on his builders without hesitancy or question, fear, or alarm; the engineer knowing his engine and his destination has no heart quiver as he handles the lever. It is the doubter, the unsure, the aimless, the dabbler, the frivolous, the dilettante, the uncertain that worry. How nobly Browning set this ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... exactly as he used to do when I was a boy. He said my course of life was sinful; and I rather fired up at that. Idle and useless it may be, but sinful it is not: and I said so. He explained that he meant that, and persisted in his assertion—that an idle, aimless, profitless life was a sinful one. Do you ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the principles of of our fathers, the Union of these States, to me the sacrifice of one unimportant life would be nothing; nothing, sir. But I infinitely prefer to see a peaceful separation of these States, than to see endless, aimless, devastating war, at the end of which I see the grave of public ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... had lost something in it. Once after Nicholas had sat looking very hard at him for a long time with the ragged Euclid ostentatiously open at a crux, he seemed to rouse up, and putting out a hand for the book, began an explanation. But it died away unfinished in an aimless muttering, which both shocked and saddened Nicholas, and the experiment was not repeated. Then towards Christmas time all the neighbours were saying that Mr. Polymathers was greatly failed to what he had been. And Bridget O'Beirne reported that you might as well be argufyin' wid a scutty ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... snatched from our caress, So suddenly withdrawn, Alone are we and comfortless; As in a dome of emptiness The old routine goes on, Aimless, since thou art gone. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... was drawn down to the waiting beak, among the bases of the tentacles, all the tentacles awoke to dreadful life, writhing in aimless excitement, although there was no work for them to do. In a few seconds the fish was torn asunder and engulfed—those inky eyes the while unwinking and unmoved. A darker, livid hue passed fleetingly over the pallid body of the octopus. Then it slipped back under the shelter of the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... atmosphere which was immensely pleasing; above all her youth and beauty appealed to him. It made him feel young, and if there was one thing Lester objected to, it was the thought of drying up into an aimless old age. "I want to keep young, or die young," was one of his pet remarks; and Jennie came to understand. She was glad that she was so much ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the pipe rather than the tobacco which marks him as belonging to this particular school. He pins his faith, not so much to its labour-saving devices as to the white spot outside, the white spot of an otherwise aimless life. This tells the world that it is one of THE pipes. Never was an announcement more superfluous. From the moment, shortly after breakfast, when he strikes his first match to the moment, just before bed-time, when he strikes his hundredth, ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... ships, however, took an equally singular view of England. Not only did it appear to them to be an island, and a very small island, but it was a shrinking island in which people were imprisoned. One figured them first swarming about like aimless ants, and almost pressing each other over the edge; and then, as the ship withdrew, one figured them making a vain clamour, which, being unheard, either ceased, or rose into a brawl. Finally, when the ship was out of sight of land, it became plain that ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... himself from the trammels of the publishing business, and was feeling his freedom in every word; there was Bret Harte, who had lately come East in his princely progress from California; and there was Clemens. Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly; and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you're right after all Mr. Dalton" I answered swinging one kid shoe in an aimless indifferent manner, and looking purposely away at the leg of the rustic table, "cause this Amey Hampden hasn't got any friends, or any one ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... man sat far into the night, examining a marked dollar and trying to unravel the secret of the scratches. From hand to hand the dollar passed and was examined now this way, now that; but the little group could see no meaning in the apparently aimless marks on the silver coin. Had some of them not seen this dollar marked and its message deciphered and sent vibrating through the air, they would have refused to believe that the coin before them carried a message at all. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss |
