"Bootless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... understand, the significancy. When the daughter of Isaac of York brought her diamonds and rubies—the poor gentle victim!—and, meekly laying them at the feet of the conquering Rowena, departed into foreign lands to tend the sick of her people, and to brood over the bootless passion which consumed her own pure heart, one would have thought that the heart of the royal lady would have melted before such beauty and humility, and that she would have been generous in the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bootless gold we stand Upon the desert verge of death, and say: "What shall avail the woes of yesterday To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land Whose currency is strange unto our hand? In life's small market they had served to pay Some late-found rapture, could we but delay Till Time hath ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... and words of kindness are bootless. Between you and me, such words should be full of love, or they would have no meaning. What can I say to you that shall be both kind ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... at that crisis—they all got well in spite of the doctor, and gave their own special cases and his anxiety all the credit for his grave looks; and all these half-finished streets and rough new roads in the east end of Carlingford were sown thick with the bootless suggestions of Dr Rider's love and fears. The crop did not show upon the vulgar soil, but gave lurking associations to every half-built street corner which he passed in his rounds many a day after, and served at this present momentous ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... us, of course, prowling about stealthily, or making frantic, bootless leaps at the swallows. A cat in a hayloft is a beautiful example of the eternal fitness of things. We had not heard of this fitness then, but we all felt that Paddy was in his own place ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of hours of this bootless sort of thing we had made no headway toward getting a guide, nor could we get definite information about the Buffaloes or the Wolves. Finally the meeting suffered a sort of ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... a long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for reflection—indeed they did force de Spain to realize that ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... thing was a dead plant on us. Luck turned against him at last!" growled Blunt, as they counted up the cost of the bootless cruise of the Hirondelle. And only Justine Delande's bitter tears flowed in silence to lament the bold adventurer who had lost the ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... began Hamilton in a lifeless manner, which told me his search had been bootless, and he turned languidly towards a puffy, crusty, military gentleman, whom, from the respect shown him, I judged to be Governor McDonell. "Duncan Cameron's warrant for the arrest is perfectly legal. If Your Honor should surrender yourself, you will save Fort Douglas for ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... viewless foe now laugh'd outright, When on his battle-ground he saw, That every savage tooth and claw Had got its proper beauty By doing bloody duty; Himself, the hapless Lion tore his hide, And lash'd with sounding tail from side to side. Ah! bootless blow, and bite, and curse! He beat the harmless air, and worse; For, though so fierce and stout, By effort wearied out, He fainted, fell, gave up the quarrel; The Gnat retires with ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... have now reached the close of my argument. It were bootless to ask whether this charge could possibly have any weight with you, Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Court. But there was probably another design at the root of the prosecution. The political struggle between the bourgeoisie and the government has lately shown some slight signs of life. It ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... prince himself contracted the beginnings of a mortal disorder. Thus the crowning victory of his career was the last of his triumphs. Like many other leaders of chivalry, he had not understood the limitations of his resources, and had dissipated on this bootless Spanish campaign means scarcely sufficient to grapple with the spirit of disaffection already undermining his power in Aquitaine. With shattered health and the mere skeleton of his gallant army, he made his way back over the Pyrenees. Henceforth ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... arose and went his ways. After this the Governor took horse, he and his escort; and all rode off to search for Attaf during a term of four days and some of them dug and dug deep down while the others returned after a bootless errand, and reported that they had failed to find him. Such was the case with the Governor of Syria; and now give ear to the adventure of Attaf. He left not wayfaring until but a single stage remained between him and Baghdad when robbers came upon him and stripped him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the quagmires of impracticable and visionary theories. To abolish abuses, to set in motion the car of state on the track of justice and economy, and to distinguish between that which is really essential to human happiness and human rights, and that which is merely the result of some wild and bootless proposition in political economy, are the great self-imposed tasks that the European people seem now to have assumed; and God grant that they may complete their labors with the moderation and success with which they would appear to have ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... outlawry, and colored by the risks of their atrocious employment. They called themselves "Brothers of the Coast," and took a solemn oath not to secrete from each other any portion of the common spoil, nor uncharitably to disregard each other's wants. Violence and lust would have gone upon bootless ventures, if justice and generosity had not been crimped to strengthen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... is good for a bootless bene?" With these dark words begins my tale; And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring When Prayer is of no avail? Force ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... from private pique her anger grew, And bade her blast a heart she never knew? What though, she said, for one light heedless line, That Wilmot's [2] verse was far more pure than mine! In wars like these, I neither fight nor fly, When 'dames' accuse 'tis bootless to deny; Her's be the harvest of the martial field, I can't attack, where Beauty forms the shield. But when a pert Physician loudly cries, Who hunts for scandal, and who lives by lies, A walking register of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Tunis—a barren conquest his too imaginative mind dreamed of converting into a great African empire. Nor need we follow him when he goes, disguised as a Moorish page, accompanied by a single cavalier, to undertake the bootless task of pacifying the revolted Netherlands. The incidents and intrigues of this task rather belong to the history of the Low Countries than to the story of our hero. In the midst of them, worn out by too ardent a spirit, or stricken by an epidemic, Don ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... tawny tiny owl that had sat like a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's bootless return, when he ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Glendinning, boldly, "it is bootless to threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... his own soul—a Pythia which prophesies that he shall be great—and so renders the life one effort to fulfil the warning! Is this folly?—it were so, if all things stopped at the grave! But perhaps the very sharpening, and exercising, and elevating the faculties here—though but for a bootless end on earth—may be designed to fit the soul, thus quickened and ennobled, to some high destiny beyond the earth! Who can tell? not I!—Let ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hath bribed her to this deed, The glancing of his eyes did so bewitch her. O bootless theft! unprofitable meed! Love's treasury is sack'd, but she no richer; The sparkles of his eyes are cold and dead, And all his golden looks are turn'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... transports, forbidden to land lest they should provoke the jealousy of the people; and when, on Sunday (July 22), his highness had to undergo a public dinner, in which English servants only were allowed to attend upon him, the Castilian lords, many of whom believed that they had come to England on a bootless errand, broke ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... "Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence... This is usually the case. Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was for having her son accounted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... and bootless boast, For which he paid full dear; For while he spake, a braying ass Did ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... the restless Sherman has been only wasted valor, a bootless sacrifice. Her terrific sallies, lightning counter-thrusts, and final struggles with the after-occupation, can be traced in the general desolation, by every step of the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... of her six daughters; not dainty, like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily, treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin, eyes, and hair—the last a rich, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... with the breath of the past. As the Indian is at present circumstanced and environed, he can beat up little or no game, and his poverty frequently putting out of his reach the procuring of the needful sporting gear, where he does follow hunting, it is pursued with much-weakened ardor, and often bootless issue. He is moved now to its pursuit, solely with the hope of realizing a paltry gain from the sale of the few ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... knotted the remnant of what had once been a silk bandanna. His legs and feet were bare, blue, scratched, and very dirty, and this toes had the prehensile look common to monkeys and small boys who summer and winter go bootless. In his hand was a long ash-pole, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... plan, to redeem the past and enjoy blessings in the future, is to cease this bootless warfare and be the first to recognize our independence. We are exasperated with Europe, and like the old colonel in Bulwer's play, we can like a brave foe after fighting him. Let the North do this, and we will trade with its people, I have no doubt, and a mutual ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Feemy too was very happy; she had contrived to forget her brother's croaking and Father John's warning, or at least the misery which they had occasioned her, and was very happy in Ussher's good-humour. It were bootless to repeat their conversation, or to tell how often it was interrupted by some unchided caress on the part of Ussher. Feemy, however, had not forgotten her resolution, and was bringing up all her courage to make some gentle hint to Myles on the subject on which ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... weight of sorrow? No longer will you clothe her form, to fold her Around, and wrap her, hold her. A hard, unwaking sleep has overpowered Her limbs, and now the flowered Cool muslin and the ribbon snoods are bootless, The gilded girdles fruitless. My little girl, 'twas to a bed far other That one day thy poor mother Had thought to lead thee, and this simple dower Suits not the bridal hour; A tiny shroud and gown of her own sewing She gives thee at thy going. Thy rather brings a clod of earth, a ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... me a'e thing, as I a promised ye a many. I a said I'll never gie wife, nor barn, nor folk o' no sort, skelp nor sizzup more, and ye'll know o' me no more among the sipers. Nor never will Tom draw trigger, nor set a snare again, but in an honest way, and after that ye'll no make it a bootless bene for me, but bein', as I say, vicar o' Shackleton, and able to do as ye list, ye'll no let them bury me within twenty good yerd-wands measure o' the a'd beech trees that's round ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... a half-dozen ships in a possible fleet action; to the other, Egypt was more important than the presence of sixteen thousand veterans, more or less, on a European battle-field. It is impossible and bootless, to weigh the comparative degree of culpability involved in breaches of orders which cannot be justified. It is perhaps safe to say that while a subordinate has necessarily a large amount of discretion in the particular matter intrusted to him, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... had risen when I waded ashore. I was swordless, coatless, hatless, and bootless; but I carried a well-filled purse in my belt. Up to that time I had given no thought to my ultimate destination; but being for the moment safe, I pondered the question and determined to make my way to Haddon ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... trainmen parted company, the former to undertake a bootless quest for the red marauders, the latter to return to Leavenworth, their occupation gone. The government held itself responsible for the depredations of its wards, and the loss of the wagons and ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Ah me! 'tis a bootless endeavour. As the flight of a bird of the air Is the flight of a joke—you will never See the same one again, you may swear. 'Twas my firstborn, and O how I prized it! My darling, my treasure, my own! This brain and none other devised it - And now ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... Velasquez, was affected by the study of El Greco's colouring. Canaille Saint-Saens, when Liszt and Rubinstein were compared, exclaimed: "Two great artists who have nothing in common except their superiority." It is bootless to bracket Velasquez with his elder. And Gautier was off the track when he spoke of Greco's resemblance to the bizarre romances of Mrs. Radcliffe; bizarre Greco was, but not trivial nor a charlatan. As to his decadent tendencies we side with the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... and hurt the watching man almost as if the torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in passionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the dirty jacket, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... soil had once been trodden by Moslem horse hoofs, was the predestined inheritance of the Faithful: and the flame was fanned by the capitan-pasha Yusuf, a Dalmatian renegade, who, independent of the hatred which from early associations he bore Venice, dreaded being sent on a bootless expedition against the impregnable defences of Malta—an enterprise which, since the memorable failure in the last years of Soliman, had never been attempted by the Osmanlis. Preparations for war, meanwhile, were carried on with unexampled activity, though the destination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... had not heard his doom, so filled her with concern and indignation, that—her eyes and thoughts fixed upon him, at the other end of the class—she did not know when her turn came, but allowed the master to stand before her in bootless expectation. He did not interrupt her, but with a refinement of cruelty that ought to have done him credit in his own eyes, waited till the universal silence had at length aroused Annie to self-consciousness ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... most sanguinary battle of modern times, yet utterly bootless so far as immediate results were concerned. One hundred and thirty thousand men were engaged with a loss of nearly fifty thousand, or a little less than forty per cent. This battle should never have been fought. Rosecranz ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... pedant's wand To lash offence, and with long arms and hands Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass For judgment. Now it chanced that I had been, While life was yet in bud and blade, bethrothed To one, a neighbouring Princess: she to me Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf At eight years old; and still from time to time Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, And of her brethren, youths of puissance; And still I wore her picture by my heart, And one dark tress; and all around ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Custer had in his full column about seven hundred men. The number of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhaps five thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this, the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would be bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... contradictory or dilatory orders produced doubt and confusion, and the damage and loss were distributed equally amongst the attackers and the attacked. De Ruyter drew off with his convoy, and Sandwich returned from a bootless errand. France managed to detach Denmark from England, and to bring about a treaty with the Dutch which bound Denmark to assist Holland against England. Sweden remained ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... back, and drew his unfortunate master into the torrent. The Forester, who accompanied Romille and beheld his fate, returned to the Lady Aaliza, and with despair in his countenance, enquired, "what is good for bootless Bene," to which the mother, apprehending some great misfortune, had befallen her son, instantly replied, ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... he had resolved to fly, and had resolved also that before he did so he would call in the ordinary way and say one last farewell. John, the servant, admitted him at once; though he had on that same morning sent bootless away a score of other suppliants for the honour of being admitted ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... from this bootless errand the day previous to the drawing of the conscription that I had fallen in with the two peasants. They had cast their last die but one, and unsuccessfully: a single chance yet remained—that of drawing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... enigmatical gods have had their jest with, leaving only its gallant memory behind. The whole Conradean system sums itself up in the title of "Victory," an incomparable piece of irony. Imagine a better label for that tragic record of heroic and yet bootless effort, that matchless picture, in microcosm, of the relentlessly cruel revolutions ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... competent to understand the speech Of my instructors, feeling, too, a mind Within me conscious of augmented pow'rs, I will attempt your ruin, be assured, Whether at Pylus, or continuing here. I go, indeed, (nor shall my voyage prove Of which I speak, bootless or vain) I go An humble passenger, who neither bark Nor rowers have to boast my own, denied 420 That honour (so ye judg'd it best) by you. He said, and from Antinoues' hand his own Drew sudden. Then their delicate repast The busy suitors on all sides prepar'd, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... more than replaced it. In a twinkling the virago's hard teeth closed over his fingers. Two ran from the oars to him. But the woman, conscious that she fought for life or death, held fast. Curses, blows, even a dagger pried betwixt her lips—all bootless. She seemed as a thing possessed. And all the time the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... stumbled upon us a while back, has reached his post on the Saskatchewan and has taken hold with a high hand, doing his utmost to intercept our Indians and turn the tide of the Company's furs into the trading-rooms of the Nor'westers. I think it will be a bootless process, for we hold our people with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... attempts," Glazier continues, "to assert what I considered my rights, but as I had not, at that time, much muscle to back my claims, they were not recognized, and thus I spent the whole night in a bootless struggle for freedom. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... the sun gone most suddenly into a cloud. Sir Francis would be loath to advise the commissioners to stay at home, but he obviously thought them coming on as bootless an errand as that which had taken their colleagues so recently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... suffer, but you will always be growing stronger, and with every trial nobly met, you will feel a growing assurance that nobleness is not a mere sentiment with you. I sympathize deeply in your anxiety about your mother; yet I cannot but remember the bootless fear and agitation about my mother, and how strangely our destinies were guided. Take refuge in prayer when you are most troubled; the door of the sanctuary will never be shut against you. I send you a paper which is very sacred to me. Bless Heaven that your heart ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... several miles in width, and Spike, at first, proposed to his mate, to keep off dead before the wind, and by crossing over to the north shore, let the steamer pass ahead, and continue a bootless chase to the eastward. Several vessels, however, were visible in the middle of the passage, at distances varying from one to three miles, and Mulford pointed out the hopelessness of attempting to cross the sheet of open water, and expect to ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper |
