"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were not entirely unproductive. There began to prevail amongst the islanders, a disposition to hear the wondrous discourses of this stranger, and he was employed, day after day, in explaining to large and attentive audiences, the history of the Christian world, and the observances and doctrine of that faith which ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... problem; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the circle. Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily filled up; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of clamour and discontent. As little could Controller d'Ormesson do, or even less; for if Joly maintained himself beyond year and day, d'Ormesson reckons only by months: till 'the King purchased Rambouillet ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Consultation (From English, French, And German Authors). Preliminary Remarks. Book I. Production. Chapter I. Of The Requisites Of Production. 1. The requisites of production. 2. The Second Requisite of Production, Labor. 3. Of Capital as a Requisite of Production. Chapter II. Of Unproductive Labor. 1. Definition of Productive and Unproductive Labor. 2. Productive and Unproductive Consumption. 3. Distinction Between Labor for the Supply of Productive Consumption and Labor for the Supply of Unproductive Consumption. Chapter III. Of Capital. 1. Capital is Wealth ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... made wonderful growth this season, and are quite capable of bearing large quantities of nuts next season. My crew of walnut grafters are becoming well known over a radius of 100 miles, and the work they are doing is a road to profit for many an owner of unproductive nut trees. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... cows grazing, and we are reminded of the fine dairy farms for which Holland is noted, the rich butter and cheese, which are the product of these vast flat lands, apparently so useless and unproductive. Directly in front of us, at the left, is a still pool, and on the farther bank stands a fisherman holding a rod over the water. A woman seated on the bank watches the process with intense interest. There are two other figures near by which can ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the year, those of Wroxeter and Corbridge, yielded little; they were both concerned with remains which had to be explored in the course of a complete uncovering of those sites but which were not in themselves very interesting. The lesser sites, too, were somewhat unproductive, though at least one, Traprain Law, is full of promise for the future, and good work has been done in the systematic examination of the fort at Ambleside and of certain rubbish-pits in London. In one case, that of Holt (pp. 15-21), where excavations ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... himself with meeting the requirements of the college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Although the meadows were unproductive ground to a naturalist, the woods on their borders teemed with life; the number and variety of curious insects of all orders which occurred here was quite wonderful. The belt of forest was intersected by numerous pathways leading from one settler's ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... But certainly I may claim my four years in this country have not been unproductive. I've never shown you my little store. Would you mind stepping in ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stopping one instant to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... wide-thinking Greek, but the voice is the voice of a humane, public-spirited, but limited and very practical English gentleman who takes the inferiority of his inferiors for granted, dislikes friars and tramps and loafers and all undisciplined and unproductive people, and is ruler in his own household. He abounds in sound practical ideas, for the migration of harvesters, for the universality of gardens and the artificial incubation of eggs, and he sweeps aside all Plato's suggestion of the citizen woman as though it had never entered ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... in committee, but I know their individual opinions in an informal way. Messrs. Meech and Barradale don't say much; Mr. Owen thinks we will never do much in Mongolia working upon so distant a base as Peking; Mr. Lees thinks it a pity to take up such a seemingly unproductive field while so many more promising fields call for attention; he moreover thinks that the only way to do much for Mongolia is through China; Dr. Edkins thinks I spend too much time and labour over the Mongols, his ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... culture, it is an instructive fact that their city continued for several centuries afterwards to be one of the strongholds of Gentile superstition. But the labours of Paul at this time were not entirely unproductive. "Certain men clave unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman, named Damaris, and others with them." [107:1] The court of Areopagus, long the highest judicial tribunal in the place, had not ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... in the Lake Superior region, where the most valuable mines have since been worked. While he has been interested in bank and manufacturing stocks, his larger investments have been in land. Much of his pleasure has been in reclaiming waste territory and unproductive investments, which have been abandoned by others as hopeless. The satisfying aim of his ambition incites him to difficult undertakings, that add to the wealth and happiness of the community, from which others ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... vigorous and yielding immense crops of fruit, although they are only twenty feet apart." Seedlings are said to begin to bear remunerative crops in their tenth year, but by superior cultivation this long unproductive period my be somewhat lessened, while trees from three to five years old may be purchased from the nurserymen, so that the newcomer who sets out an orchard may begin to gather fruit by the fifth or sixth year. When first set out, and for some years afterward, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... plant for their own use solely to select the pistillate varieties; for these, although the most profusely productive when well fertilized, are liable to overrun their staminate neighbors, and soon render the "strawberry patch" unproductive, or productive only of small or imperfect fruit. The leading pistillates offered in the catalogues now are Crescent, Col. Cheney, Windsor Chief, Jersey Queen, Big Bob, Manchester, Green Prolific, Golden Defiance, Champion, Park ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... kind of unforeseen ruin, which suddenly attacked the landed proprietors and utterly deprived them of the hope of subsistence; for, in the case of estates that were deserted and unproductive, the owners or tenants of which had either died or abandoned their country and hidden themselves after the misfortunes they had undergone, Justinian did not hesitate to impose a tax. Such were these "impositions," which were of ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. To probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There was nothing else ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... generations of Hopes had spent life and toil unspeakable upon this unproductive tract, without making the least profit by it; being just able to pay their rent, and keep their heads above water. They subsisted, reared families, and died, worn out with hard work, leaving to their ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... annoyance and importunity of "What d'ye buy? what d'ye buy, buy, buy?" from" barking butchers, who instinctively reiterated the phrase as the casual passenger approached, like so many parrots, unconscious of its import being unproductive in effect; for who would be induced to purchase by the clamorous invitation universally in use by these vociferous butchers of the metropolis?—"My fine fellow," observed Tallyho to one who annoyed him, "good wine, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Father of Rivers, and over the rich and fertile plains stretching southward from the lake shores? Let the teeming populations—let the hundreds of millions of annual products that have succeeded to the but recent dreary and unproductive haunts of the red man—answer that question. That very preponderance of free States which the Senator from New York contemplates with such satisfaction, and which has moved him exultingly to exclaim that there is at last a North side of this Chamber, has been hastened ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... needs to have some splendid mania or other. Even the most selfish of young people are endowed with a superfluity of life, a capital sum of energy which has been advanced to them and cannot be left idle and unproductive: they are for ever seeking to expend it on a course of action, or—(more prudently)—on a theory. Aviation or Revolution, a muscular or intellectual exercise. When a man is young he needs to be under the illusion ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... up with tithes and taxes, that he cannot thence derive subsistence unless he converts its products into money at the expense of others' comfort, reputation, and life? Is every honest calling so crowded, or so unproductive, that every avenue is closed? Have the men who make this plea tried, even for a single year, to live without the manufacture of spirits? It may be, indeed, that for a time they will find other pursuits less productive than this. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... by a geographical accident, to have cut the communication of the island with its sister provinces of the Empire. He was numerically as insignificant, racially as unproductive and as ill provided with fruitful or permanent institutions as his brethren on the Rhine or the Danube. But on the Rhine and the Danube the Empire was broad. If a narrow fringe of it was ruined it was no great matter: only a retreat of a few miles. ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... its real estate. This objection is utterly fallacious. The government lands of our country were remote from the centers of capital and difficult to examine; the French national real estate was near these centers—even in them—and easy to examine. Our national real estate was unimproved and unproductive; theirs was improved and productive—its average productiveness in market in ordinary times being from four ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... artistic enthusiasms, into games and amateur employments, and an enormous proportion of the whole world's fund of effort wastes itself in religious and political misunderstandings and conflicts, and in unsatisfying amusements and unproductive occupations. In a modern Utopia there will, indeed, be no perfection; in Utopia there must also be friction, conflicts and waste, but the waste will be enormously less than in our world. And the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... morn, or the spiritual essences of the cerulean regions, but, like other human beings, he cannot live on the zephyr breeze, or on the moonbeams flitting o'er the rippling stream. Such ethereal food is highly unproductive of adipose tissue, and the poet needs adipose like any other man. And our poet is no exception to the rule, for he well knew that good digestible poetry can't be written on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... months passed over the heads of Ellen Langton and her admirers, unproductive of events, that, separately, were of sufficient importance to be related. The summer was now drawing to a close; and Dr. Melmoth had received information that his friend's arrangements were nearly completed, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... population, and wide expanses of unproductive land have constrained economic development. Economic activity traditionally has been based on agriculture and the breeding of livestock - Mongolia has the highest number of livestock per person in the world. In recent years extensive mineral resources ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... streams in an equal extent of coast frontage, or which has such elevated land so near the sea; and I have seen no other which has so large an extent of good country. It is however bounded both to the north and south by comparatively-speaking unproductive districts; but what the character of the country to the north-east and south-east may be still remains to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... the Mediterranean race of N. Africa, was settled in the Aegean area from a remote Neolithic antiquity, but, except in Crete, where insular security was combined with great natural fertility, remained in a savage and unproductive condition until far into the 4th millennium B.C. In Crete, however, it had long been developing a certain civilization, and at a period more or less contemporary with Dynasties XI. and XII. (2500 B.C.?) the scattered communities of the centre of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of itself? It is said, to be sure, that our present acquisitions will prove so lean and unsatisfactory, that we shall seek no further. In my judgment, we may as well say of a rapacious animal, that, if he has made one unproductive hunt, he will not try for a ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... having a higher opinion of the value of science, promised Tycho the first canonry that should fall vacant in the cathedral chapter of Roskilde, so that he might be assured of an income while devoting himself to financially unproductive work. In 1568 Tycho left Rostock, and matriculated at Basle, but soon moved on to Augsburg, where he found more enthusiasm for astronomy, and induced one of his new friends to order the construction of a large 19-foot quadrant of heavy oak beams. This was the first of the series ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... stationery thereby wasted, and its probable cost to the Government. It would perhaps, be very interesting to you, but to any one who is at all connected with it, the subject is only one of weariness and disgust—weariness at the unproductive labour entailed—disgust at the utter folly of the proceedings. So I pass it by, leaving some one who is willing to sacrifice his feelings, or more probably some one who knows nothing whatever about it to furnish the much needed expose; ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... loss of space in the rooms is more than made up by the cheeriness of the approach. For the same reason, unless you are sailing very close to the wind, let your entrance-hall be roomy. It is in no sense an unproductive outlay, for it avails above in chambers, and below in the refuge it affords to the children from the severer rules of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... began to penetrate me, or rather to rise in my being from its own hidden sun. First I began to wash and dress my baby myself. One who has not tried that kind of amusement cannot know what endless pleasure it affords. I do not doubt that to the paternal spectator it appears monotonous, unproductive, unprogressive; but then he, looking upon it from the outside, and regarding the process with a speculative compassion, and not with sympathy, so cannot know the communion into which it brings you with the baby. I remember well enough what my father has written about it in "The Seaboard ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... came to the first nor to the second summons—after a third, equally unproductive, Spurge looked at his companions with ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... ridiculous economy and we'll lose the battle for men's minds. You can't have an economic system that allows such nonsense as large scale unemployment of trained employees, planned obsolescence, union featherbedding, and an overwhelming majority of those who are employed wasting their labor on unproductive employment." ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... be so removed, and who yet stand in need of relief. It would be mischievous and wasteful to relieve such persons without exacting labour from them, and just as reprehensible to employ them in digging holes and filling them up again, or in any other occupation equally useless and unproductive. If their work is to be obtained, it should be directed into some channel that will benefit themselves and the community. Public roads, harbours, piers, breakwaters, and the like, appear an obvious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... means,' replied the banker. 'But pardon me for suggesting that it is too large a sum to remain unproductive. Would you not like to ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... with heat from the cracked, baked, clay-plains in the interior; and thus it is, that at different seasons the same country produces such opposite effects. But although the general state of the interior is barren and unproductive, as I imagine, I do not suppose that it is entirely so. I believe there are many cases of good pasture land in the midst of this sterile country; fertile spots, small when compared with the vast area of ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... death; but what a number of ideas must have been in circulation before such an author could arise! Many branches of human knowledge have, since that time, been more extensively cultivated, but such branches as are totally unproductive to poetry: chemistry, mechanics, manufactures, and rural and political economy, will never enable a man to become a poet. I have elsewhere [Footnote: In my Lectures on the Spirit of the Age.] examined into the pretensions of modern enlightenment, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... realm—the amount limited, from the nature of his necessities, which he very freely states, to seven shillings and sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers, signs that his eloquence is likely to be unproductive, he is fortunately reminded that, should there be any difficulty in connection with security for the repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in possession of a document, which he is prepared to deposit with the lender—a document calculated, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... minerals abound, there is not one collection; and, in all probability, I venture a conjecture, the want of mechanical and chemical knowledge renders the silver mines unproductive, for the quantity of silver obtained every year is not sufficient to defray the expenses. It has been urged that the employment of such a number of hands is very beneficial. But a positive loss is never to be done away; and ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... it soon became evident to the committee, that their mission was to be unproductive of results. The government did not take kindly to them, nor would the Bishop of Quebec and his clergy trust the vague expressions of the United Colonies, whose statute books, they pointed out, still bore the most bitter and unchristian sentiments against all priests and adherents ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... to say that the calling of an officer was an altogether unproductive vocation. The yearly training of a large number of soldiers, who supported the credit of the kingdom, and thereby insured peace, was, no doubt, a positive factor in both ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... "treating all men alike," though they might respond better to different handling, or else the individual is undirected and his personality manifests itself in all sorts of unguided directions, many of which must necessarily be wasteful, unproductive, or incomplete in development. Under Scientific Management, functionalization, as will be shown, provides for the utilization of all idiosyncrasies and efficient deviations from class, and promotion is so planned that ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... was the shibboleth; that was the overmastering truth. The game did go ten innings—eleven—twelve, every one marked by masterly pitching, full of magnificent catches, stops and throws, replete with reckless base-running and slides like flashes in the dust. But they were unproductive of runs. Three to three! ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... stood side by side at the foot of a hill near a little seaside resort. The two peasants labored hard on the unproductive soil to rear their little ones, of which each ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... business of fiction is to exhibit human life, can deny that scenes of misery and crime must of necessity, while human nature remains what it is, form part of that exhibition. Nobody can assert that such scenes are unproductive of useful results, when they are turned to a plainly and purely moral purpose. If I am asked why I have written certain scenes in this book, my answer is to be found in the universally-accepted truth which the preceding words express. I have ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... its way to the Saone just above Challe. Tall bushy trees followed the course of the little stream, and described a half-circle, inclosing the house on three sides. The house itself was formerly an inn which proved unproductive to the innkeeper. It had been closed for seven or eight years, and was beginning to fall into decay. Before reaching it, the main road coming from Macon made ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... which they first came into vogue, may have been something quite different from the wish to show that one's time had not been spent in industrial employment; but unless these accomplishments had approved themselves as serviceable evidence of an unproductive expenditure of time, they would not have survived and held their place as conventional accomplishments ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... you have been unfaithful as stewards, and have made your household unproductive for God, then you shall hear from his lips the dreadful denunciation, "Thou wicked and slothful servant!" "Take the talent from him, and cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth; for unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... any regard for the happiness of his subjects could have consented to it. Khufu must have forced his subjects to labour for a long term of years—twenty, according to Herodotus—at a servile work which was wholly unproductive, and was carried on amid their sighs and groans for no object but his own glorification, and the supposed safe custody of his remains. Shafra must have done nearly the same. Hence an evil repute attached to the pyramid builders, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... the theatre of the labor of this people. Switzerland, with about 16,000 square miles, equals in area one-third of New York. Of its territory, 30 per cent—waterbeds, glaciers, and sterile mountains—is unproductive. Forests cover 18 per cent. Thus but half the country is good for crops or pasture. The various altitudes, in which the climate ranges from that of Virginia to that of Labrador, are divided by agriculturists into three zones. The lower zone, including all lands below a level ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... ten shillings. But David Trevarrow had neither wife, child, nor mother to support, so he could afford to toil for poor pay, and, being of a remarkably hopeful and cheery disposition, he returned home that afternoon resolved to persevere in his unproductive toil, in the hope that at last he should discover a good "bunch of copper," or a "keenly ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gold Coast are thinly covered with humus, and are not buried, as in Australia, by ten to thirty feet of unproductive top-drift. The whole, therefore, can be run through the sluices before we begin mining the underlying strata. Washing will be easier during the Rains, when the dirt is looser; in the Dries hard and compact stuff must be loosened by the pick and spade or by blasting. There will ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... them away from a world which she had found unkind. It was for their interests that she had worked harder than any man of her acquaintance, experimenting, studying, managing, until she was recognized as one of the greatest agriculturists of the State, and the unproductive property left by Basil Kildare had become a stock and dairy farm which netted her an income that ran well into five figures. More than wealth, she had given them education, bringing to Storm the best tutors and governesses to be had in the country. She had shared with them, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... facts and figures vividly exemplifying some aspect of the matter. For while only a handful of persons in any country are sincerely anxious under present conditions to reduce the colossal sums every year wasted on the unproductive work of armament; an increasing interest in the matter testifies to a vague alarm and anxiety concerning the ultimate issue. For it is felt that an inevitable crisis lies at the end of the path down which the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... enter upon what, in contrast with the probationary stage, is regarded as the serious business of life. It is impossible to overestimate the loss which results from the deflection of attention from the strategic point to a comparatively unproductive point. It fails most just where it thinks it is succeeding—in getting ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... head. "We're rather foolish about Belfast in Dublin," he said. "After all, real work is done here, isn't it? And the chief industry of Dublin ... what is it? Absolutely unproductive! Porter! Barrels and barrels of it, floating down the Liffey and nothing, nothing real, floating back! I like that man Arthurs. I wish to heaven we had him on ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... his living down his working-class origin. There was stigma enough in the fact of it, but shamelessly to flaunt it in the face of the world—her world—was going too far. Though her engagement to Martin had been kept secret, their long intimacy had not been unproductive of gossip; and in the shop, glancing covertly at her lover and his following, had been several of her acquaintances. She lacked the easy largeness of Martin and could not rise superior to her environment. She had been hurt to the quick, and her sensitive nature was quivering ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... one sort of labour which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed; there is another which has no such effect. The former as it produces a value, may be called productive, the latter, unproductive labour. {Some French authors of great learning and ingenuity have used those words in a different sense. In the last chapter of the fourth book, I shall endeavour to shew that their sense is an improper one.} Thus the labour of a manufacturer adds generally to the value ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... having been the conversion of bar-iron into steel in the crucible by contact with regulated proportions of charcoal. The experiments which he made in connection with this controversy, though in themselves unproductive of results, led to the important discovery by Mr. Mushet of the certain fusibility of malleable iron at a ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... productions, "Knickerbocker" manifests the most original power and is the most genuinely national in its quaintness and drollery. The very tardiness and prolixity of the story are skilfully made to heighten the humorous effect. The next few years were unproductive. Upon the death of his father, Irving had become a sleeping partner in his brother's commercial house, a branch of which was established at Liverpool. This, combined with the restoration of peace, induced him to visit England in 1815, when ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... men and horses; but how does this act? It throws a certain quantity of labourers out of employ, who are supported in idleness. Is the sum gained by farmers by employing fewer men on large farms more than their proportion of the poor's rates paid for unproductive industry? That it may be more to the farmers is possible, as they shift a great part of the onus upon others; but to the nation it certainly is not—for the man who does not work must still be fed. May we not then consider the following ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... for eight years, then she was removed, and there were black years of poverty and loneliness for her, as she had not laid by a dollar for a day of want, but had given lavishly to all in need, especially to the negroes. She was not able to sell her valuable but unproductive real estate, and was reduced to actual need. "I tell you really and solemnly," she confesses to her diary, "I have suffered for necessary food. I have not one cent in the world. I have stood the brunt alone of a persecution that I believe no other person ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... expected personally to take care of so large a consumption of superfluities as this posture of affairs requires at their hands. They would, as the Victorian peace teaches, necessarily have the assistance of a trained corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first and most immediate of whom would be those whom the genial phrasing of Adam Smith designates "menial servants." Beyond these would come the purveyors of superfluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeed redundant, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... devotion,—all this is seldom united in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity. Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a vengeance. The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... after this, to say that the search in the wood for Sir Francis Varney was an unproductive one, and that the morning dawned upon the labours of the brother and of Mr. Marchdale, without their having discovered the least indication of the presence of Varney. Again puzzled and confounded, they stood on the margin of the wood, and looked sadly towards the brightening windows ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... an unproductive hour, at the end of which there were two ineffectual pulls, one at the Nicholson fly, the other a second or two later at the bait. The former was not enough to rattle off the stone from the loop of line; the latter ran out a yard and merely ticked the winch. ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... post-offices have been established. It hence appears that under judicious management the income from this establishment may be relied on as fully adequate to defray its expenses, and that by the discontinuance of post-roads altogether unproductive others of more useful character may be opened, till the circulation of the mail shall keep pace with the spread of our population, and the comforts of friendly correspondence, the exchanges of internal traffic, and the lights of the ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... possible waste, must blend. But as long as man's mind is not greatly changed, both will be the natural tendency of the capitalist, and both are abhorred by the governmental worker. He has no right to run risks, but does not feel it his duty to avoid an unproductive luxuriousness. He wastes in the routine where he ought to economize, and is pedantic in the great schemes in which his imagination ought to be unbridled. The opponents of socialism have often likened the future state to a gigantic prison, where every one will be forced to do the work without ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... quitting his Imperial Friend, asked me if my LETTER TO JEAN JACQUES [now an entirely forgotten Piece], which had been printed in the Papers, was really by me? I answered, 'Sire, I am not famous enough to have my name forged' [as a certain Other name has been, on this same unproductive topic]. He felt what I meant. It is known that Horace Walpole took the King's name to write his famous LETTRE A JEAN JACQUES [impossible to attend to the like of it at present], which contributed the most to drive mad that eloquent and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... had become clear that to a continuation of efforts it was essential that a new supply of salmon ova should be discovered. Attention was now directed to the Penobscot River in the state of Maine, which, though very unproductive compared with Canadian rivers, might yet, perhaps, be made to yield the requisite ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... were conquered in this process which were of no economic value, and most of which actually cost a great deal of money and brought nothing in. They were conquered simply for security. That advantage had been gained: an aggressor would have to cross great areas of unproductive territory, with difficult conditions for reinforcements, before he could actually reach China. In the second place, the Chinese may actually have noticed the efforts that were being made by the European ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... the family honours, who failed not to squander away property which he had no means of replacing. Estate after estate was sold for several generations, till, at last, my father found himself the heir to a half-ruined castle on the borders of the ocean, and a few thousand acres of unproductive land in the same neighbourhood. My mother, who is now a saint in heaven, was as much so as a mortal can be when on earth; and although my noble father inherited much of the true pride of ancient ancestry, he was free from ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of neutrality was taken and he was availing himself of our hospitality. On one occasion Captain G. S. Higginson spent the night in an empty house in the town in an attempt to mark this fox to ground, but unfortunately his vigil was unproductive of result. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... necessaries of life not raised by them must be purchased extravagantly dear. It is, indeed, surprizing how this immense city, said to contain three millions of inhabitants, is contrived to be supplied at any rate, considering the very sterile and unproductive state of the country for many miles around it. It might not, however, be a matter of less astonishment to a Chinese, nor less difficult for him to conceive, in what manner our own capital receives its daily ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... themselves, hard-working men will cheerfully assume heavy burdens of taxation to aid the new enterprise. So blind and unreasoning indeed, is this popular abiding faith in the merits of competition, that it has been responsible for some of the greatest wastes of wealth in unproductive enterprises that ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... on which a subscription of this nature can proceed: either when the, object is disabled from exerting himself; or when his exertions are unproductive. Coleridge is in neither of these predicaments. Proposals after proposals have been made to him by the booksellers, and he repeatedly closed with them. He is at this moment as capable of exertion as I am, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... awed by his presence, associated to reform the State, under the guidance of the Earl of Leicester, high steward, the Earl of Hereford, high constable, the Earl Marshal, and the Earl of Gloucester. The circumstances of the times were favorable to their views. An unproductive harvest had been followed by a general scarcity, and the people were willing to attribute their misery, not to the inclemency of the seasons, but to the incapacity of their governors. Henry called a great council at Westminster, and on the third day the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... pleasure and living the life of a galley-slave in order that the next generation might have leisure to paint the poppy a more glorious scarlet. But no. The next generation is going at it just as hard for the same unproductive end; it has no wish to leave anything behind it—a new colour, a new scent, a new idea. It has one object only in this world—more bees. Could any scheme of ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... pleasant delusion that he employed the French language, while Pere Baudry contributed his share of the conversation in a slow patois. As both men spoke at the same time and neither understood two consecutive words the other said, it struck me that the dialogue might prove unproductive of any highly important results this side of Michaelmas; therefore, discovering that the very pedestrian gentleman was making some sort of inquiry concerning Les Trois Pigeons, I came to a halt and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... death Judith trapped rabbits and caught fish. She did many things besides, however, as by that time family funds were so low and the farm so unproductive it was necessary for some member of the family to begin to make money. She was fourteen at the time her grandfather died—a slim long-legged girl giving promise of the beauty that the old soldiers and the drummer on the Rye House porch acknowledged later on. Even then the wire-spring ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... less suited for the abode of men could scarce have been found, or even imagined. The soil was sterile, unproductive, and rarely visited by game worthy of being hunted. The few roots and other articles of food they were enabled to raise, furnished but a ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Queen Elizabeth in all her glory. Sumptuary laws were an unwholesome part of feudal tyranny, and, as such, were naturally dropping into oblivion on the free soil of the Netherlands. It was the complaint therefore of moralists that unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing. Formerly starch had been made of the refuse parts of corn, but now the manufacturers of that article made use of the bloom of the wheat and consumed as much of it as would have fed great cities. In the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the colony been observed to be so severe. The settlement had indeed, between the fires of the summer, and the floods and gales of the winter, suffered very considerably. Added to these, at this time, were the inconveniences arising from an unproductive harvest, from an exhausted store in the very essential articles of clothing and bedding, from the hostile disposition of many of the natives, and from the annihilation of morality, honesty, and industry in the major ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in making enquiries for the Marechale, in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde's approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the "young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse," "her dearest of friends," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... follow from that unification they seemed indisposed to discuss. This diffidence struck the king as remarkable. He plunged upon the possibilities of science. All the huge expenditure that had hitherto gone into unproductive naval and military preparations, must now, he declared, place research upon a new footing. 'Where one man worked we will have a thousand.' He appealed to Holsten. 'We have only begun to peep into these possibilities,' he said. 'You at any ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... truth; but there are Brahmanas (about his persons) who are jealous of me; and as Gautama hath told me this, I do not venture to go there, for (while) there, if I were to advise what is good and calculated to secure piety and the fulfilment of one's desires, they would contradict me with words unproductive of any good. But I approve of any counsel and will go there; Vainya will give me kine and hoards ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Continental kingdom, for him to be able to spare time for the consideration of measures of domestic policy, except such as were of a financial character. But, though his premature death rendered his second administration shorter than even Addington's, it was not wholly unproductive of questions of constitutional interest. It witnessed a recurrence to that which cannot but be regarded as among the most important privileges of the House of Commons, the right of impeaching a minister for maladministration. A report of a commission ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... commodity imported into England, and as the quantity of money coined at the Tower of London is still more positively known, the leading facts do not admit of controversy. Either, therefore, the commerce of England is unproductive of profit, or the gold and silver which it brings in leak continually away by unseen means at the average rate of about three-quarters of a million a year, which, in the course of seventy-two years, accounts for the deficiency; and its absence is ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... single bell which might be heard tinkling for a mile or two over the fells, stood all alone about half a mile from the Squire's gate. Vavasor was a parish situated on the intermediate ground between the mountains of the lake country and the plains. Its land was unproductive, ill-drained, and poor, and yet it possessed little or none of the beauty which tourists go to see. It was all amidst the fells, and very dreary. There were long skirtings of dark pines around a portion of the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down throughout this long, leaden-footed day—the past twenty-four hours unproductive of ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... payable in cash on a three, or as some say a five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square feet or a quarter of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the island of Ste. Croix, which is about half a league in circumference. The rays of the sun parched the sand so that the gardens were entirely unproductive, and there was a complete dearth of water. At the commencement there was a fair quantity of wood, but when the buildings were finished there was scarcely any left; the inhabitants, consequently, nearly perished from cold in the winter. All the liquor, wine and ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... set about proving a fact that is to the writer's perception so universally obvious. One can only appeal to the intelligent reader to use his own personal observation upon the people about him. Everywhere he will see the property-owner doing nothing, the profit-seeker busy with unproductive efforts, with the writing of advertisements, the misrepresentation of goods, the concoction of a plausible prospectus and the extraction of profits from the toil of others, while the real necessary work of the world—I don't mean the labour and toil only, but the intelligent ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... for the semen to be ejected at certain times from the body; that its retention is incompatible with sound health and vigor of body and mind. This is a very fallacious idea. The seminal fluid is too precious—nature bestows too much care in its elaboration for it to be wasted in this unproductive manner. It is intended, when not used for the purpose of procreation, to be reabsorbed again into the system, giving vigor of body, elasticity and strength to the mind, making the individual strong, active, and self-reliant. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... indebtedness of the Government in the manner suggested, our nation will rapidly recover its wonted prosperity. Its interests require that some measure should be taken to release the large amount of capital invested in the securities of the Government. It is not now merely unproductive, but in taxation annually consumes $150,000,000, which would otherwise be used by our enterprising people in adding to the wealth of the nation. Our commerce, which at one time successfully rivaled that of the great maritime powers, has, rapidly diminished, and our industrial ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... we neared the Berry Islands, unproductive and rocky, as the geography books would say. One of these islands belongs to a coloured man, who bought it for fifty dollars—a cheaply-purchased sovereignty. He, his wife and children, with their negro slaves! live there, and cultivate ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... world; oddly and confusedly jumbled together; the very olla-podrida of moral and mental combination. They were chiefly those to whom the ordinary operations of human trade or labor had proved tedious or unproductive—with whom the toils, aims, and impulses of society were deficient of interest; or, upon whom, an inordinate desire of a sudden to acquire wealth had exercised a sufficiently active influence to impel to the novel employment ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... fertility. Her vast forests have been cut down, giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and shores formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative. To call Italy the 'Garden of Europe' under these ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... about twelve miles over an execrable road running over a flat but rugged surface of unproductive soil.[3] India is, perhaps, the only civilized country in the world where a great city could be approached by such a road from the largest military Station in the empire,[4] not more than three stages distant. After breakfast the head native police officer of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... scholars of this country have not fulfilled the reasonable expectation of mankind. "Men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought." For all this he offers those correctives which in various forms underlie all his teachings. "The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Academique," and both were mentioned with praise by the Sous-Prefet at the public distribution of prizes. Besides, what was still more important, Stephen had successfully passed his examination for the "Baccalaureat." Lastly, there had been an expensive and unproductive journey, and there was the prospect of another. All this in the same year somewhat alarmed me. The gig was not an important concern, being made, like the four-wheeled carriage, from designs of my husband's, by ordinary wheelwrights and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... that's all." Jarvis paused. "Queer, isn't it—as if Mother Nature were carrying on two experiments, one at home and one on Mars. On earth it's trial of an emotional, highly competitive race in a world of plenty; here it's the trial of a quiet, friendly race on a desert, unproductive, and inhospitable world. Everything here makes for cooperation. Why, there isn't even the factor that causes so ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... 4. In thinly-settled and unproductive regions the army will lack its most necessary supplies: it will be prudent, in this case, not to advance too far from its depots, and to carry with it sufficient provisions to enable it, if compelled to do so, to fall back upon its ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... answer it, either in general or for your particular case; and all the more, for the very good reason that your life is only really beginning now. You are not yet thirty-four, you may yet do something great, something pre-eminent, and who knows if those very qualities which have made your life unproductive hitherto, may not enable you later on to do things beside which the achievements of a Paul Haber shrink into insignificance? On the other hand, I am persuaded—quite apart from your respective ways of life—that you have chosen the better ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... question of transportation is just as important to a community as the industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town—called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"—was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... therefore, will be to search for some possible elements, and to endeavour to establish some probabilities on a subject which must always be somewhat surrounded with uncertainty. The constant tillage of the soil, the investigations made, and definitions attempted, have not been unproductive of fruit, and we may feel a tolerable degree of assurance on some points in question, while admitting that, however assiduously we labour, there will always be something beyond our reach. We will proceed then to examine and compare the stores of our predecessors, and if possible add a grain to the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... this route, after passing Sinclair's Monument, is rudely fenced in, so as to render available every foot of the narrow valley. The road passes directly through the little farms, which at this stage of the journey are poor and unproductive. The climate is said to be very severe in this district, in consequence of its altitude, and the sharp winds which sweep down from the mountain gorges. At every gateway a gang of ragged little children always stood ready to open the gate, for which, of course, they expected a few shillings; ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the poop of the Runnymede, in order to keep the natives off if they should prove aggressive. There appeared to be no chance of receiving any assistance from them. The island appeared to be wholly unproductive, neither fruit nor vegetables having been discovered, but several wild hogs ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... active patronage of Mrs. Mac-Candlish, Sampson picked up some other scholars—very different indeed from Charles Hazlewood in rank, and whose lessons were proportionally unproductive. Still, however, he gained something, and it was the glory of his heart to carry it to Mr. Mac-Morlan weekly, a slight peculium only subtracted to supply his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the lowness of the Bank dividend, and of the consequent small value of Bank stock, is undoubtedly caused by the magnitude of the Bank capital; but much of it is also due to the great amount of unproductive cashof cash which yields no interestthat the Banking Department of the Bank of England keeps lying idle. If we compare the London and Westminster Bankwhich is the first of the joint-stock banks in the public estimation and known to be very cautiously ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... statement, "Man as he sprang from nature originally was only a mere creature, not a man." "Man is a product of human society, of education, and of history." Even this statement remains from his standpoint absolutely unproductive. ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... duck-shooting in winter. And there was yet a third part of the estate, acres upon acres of equally sterile soil, all sand and gravel, descending in a gentle slope to the embankment of the railway line. It was indeed a stretch of country lost to culture, where the few good patches of loam remained unproductive, inclosed within the waste land. But the spot had all the beauty and exquisite wildness of solitude, and was one that appealed to healthy minds fond of seeing nature in freedom. And on that lovely night one could nowhere have found more perfect and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said triumphantly that "his marriage with experience had not been so unproductive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good things of this life." He had been to see the Castle Spectre by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said "it fitted the taste of the audience ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Governments of the United States and France, out of which the claims arose, in his annual message in 1808 adverted to the large surplus then in the Treasury and its "probable accumulation," and inquired whether it should "lie unproductive in the public vaults;" and yet these claims, though then before Congress, were not recognized or paid. Since that time the public debt of the Revolution and of the War of 1812 has been extinguished, and at several periods since the Treasury has been in possession of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of Charley Norton's murder spread quickly over the county. For two or three days bands of armed men scoured the woods and roads, and then this activity quite unproductive of any tangible results ceased, matters were allowed to rest with the constituted authorities, namely Mr. Betts the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... benevolence as the most determined miser, and, what is more deplorable, as offensive to Infinite Love. Property is God's gift, and he does not require us to undervalue his gifts, but to use them with his own good-will to men. To be willing that our labor or capital should be unproductive is no indication of a faithful steward. 2. There is a difference between the design of becoming rich, and that of acquiring property. The latter, under certain restrictions, is a duty incumbent on all. One may have a peculiar ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... restless, and could neither enjoy Mr. Ruskin's criticism of his sketches nor the kindly hospitality of his Genevan hosts. Early in 1863 he made another fruitless visit to London, where he remained four or five months, but found no opening. Though unproductive of work, this year brought Yule official recognition of his services in the shape of the C.B., for which Lord Canning had ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... as simple as they are beautiful, seeks its sap in narrow formulas dictated solely by ecclesiastical interests. In order that religious fanaticism should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure. It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and sacristies, unless they have first ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... replied Cairn, "but this wave of superstition cannot be entirely unproductive; all that thought energy directed ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... services to the psychological problems of the special industrial plant. There are many factories that have scores of scientifically trained chemists or physicists at work, but who would consider it an unproductive luxury to appoint a scientifically schooled experimental psychologist to their staff. And yet his observations and researches might become economically the most important factor. Similar expectations might be justified ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... blossoms as in our villages. You never see the cottager at work among his roses; once his necessary labours are over, he smokes and talks to his neighbours: to grow flowers for aesthetic reasons were too ornamental, too unproductive a hobby. AEsthetically the Dutch are dead, or are alive only in the matter of green paint, which they use with such charming effect on their houses, their mills and their boats. What is pretty is old—as indeed is the case in our own country, if we except gardens. Modern ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... magnificent as the loneliness of kings, and about as unproductive of a sympathetic view of life, always constituted a barrier in the way of Borrow's success. There were innumerable other obstacles: his choice of friends, his fierce denunciatory hatred of gentility, together with humbug, which he always seemed to confuse with ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with which to deal with their miseries—perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... necessary conditions of their existence, suppressing all accidental limits. No doubt this transcendental procedure will remove us for some time from the familiar circle of phaenomena and the living presence of objects, to keep us on the unproductive ground of abstract ideas; but we are engaged in the search after a principle of knowledge solid enough not to be shaken by anything, and the man who does not dare to rise above reality will never conquer ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... would thou wert cold or hot! So because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot I will spew thee out of my mouth!'" quoted Leigh, his eyes flashing and his voice trembling with repressed earnestness, "That is the trouble all through! Apathy,—dead, unproductive apathy and laissez-faire!—Ah, I believe there are some of us living now who are destined to see strange and terrible things in ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... slept in and used as work-place over at the carpenter's house among the vineyards. He kept his books there, his rows of pipes and towering little heap of half- filled match-boxes, and there he wrote his clever studies that yet were unproductive of much gold and brought him little more than pleasant notices and occasional letters from enthusiastic strangers. It seemed very unremunerative labour indeed, and the family had done well to migrate from Essex into Switzerland, where, besides the excellent ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the American continent, has heretofore lain far outside of the common interest, and therefore of the accurate knowledge, of mankind at large. The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, in themselves remote, tempestuous, and comparatively unproductive regions, for centuries derived importance merely {p.002} from the fact that by those ways alone the European world found access to the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The application of steam to ocean navigation, and the opening of the Suez Canal, have greatly modified ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... wrong view of things, and if it was not the idle and good-for-nothing fellows who were more prudent than he. To waste his life in superhuman works, to tire his mind in seeking to solve great problems, and to attain old age without other satisfaction than unproductive honors and mercenary rewards. Those who only sought happiness and joy—epicureans who drive away all care, all pain, and only seek to soften their existence, and brighten their horizon—were they not true sages? Death comes so quickly! And it is with astonishment that one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the soils by the methods of cultivation prior to the war was worse than the ravages of the war. The post bellum farmer received as an inheritance large areas of wornout and generally unproductive soils." ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... the Spirit has been done can the Logos, the kosmic Mystic Christ, take on Himself the clothing of matter, entering in very truth the Virgin's womb, the womb of Matter as yet virgin, unproductive. This matter had been vivified by the Holy Spirit, who, overshadowing the Virgin, poured into it His life, thus preparing it to receive the life of the Second Logos, who took this matter as the vehicle for His energies. This is the becoming incarnate of the Christ, the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... causes of discontent the vastness in number of the regular clergy, the "friars" and "monks" already referred to, who consumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will be sufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something very much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but their preachings had taken ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Woody, or green, Country. By this is to be understood the mixture of park, pasture, and variegated forest, which is only to be seen in temperate climates, and in those parts of a kingdom which have not often changed proprietors, but have remained in unproductive beauty (or at least, furnishing timber only), the garden of the wealthier population. It is to be seen in no other country, perhaps, so well as in England. In other districts, we find extensive ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... classes knew the local invitations to murderous aggressions. Under so many contingencies operative through so many centuries, and revolutions so vast upon nations so multiplied, we believe that even a poor unproductive soil is no absolute pledge for non-molestation to the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... there is another inconvenience: the country there being perfectly flat, the waters accumulate and stagnate, forming vast pestilential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields should be—and have been in ancient times. In short, if left to itself, Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient Assyria), is unproductive from the barrenness of its soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its extraordinary fertility, from ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... in deep meditation. Although a fanatical admirer of illustrious generals, the common sense of that peasant woman made him think of the opulence that would bring to a country so many hands now idle and necessarily ruinous, so many forces kept unproductive, if they were employed for the great industrial enterprises which, at the present pace, it would take centuries ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... is in every respect to the advantage of the United States. The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... those fearless pioneers of the movement, Mr. and Mrs. Hewat Mackenzie, I am allowed to publish another example of spirit photography. The circumstances were very remarkable. The visit of the parents to Crewe was unproductive and their plate a blank save for their own presentment. Returning disappointed, to London they managed, through the mediumship of Mrs. Leonard, to get into touch with their boy, and asked him why they had failed. He ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... things which cannot be helped, or requests about those which are trivial; because to be thus disposed with respect to these things is consequent only upon real anxiety about them. Again, he is the kind of man to acquire what is beautiful and unproductive rather than what is productive and profitable: this being rather the part of an independent man. Also slow motion, deep-toned voice, and deliberate style of speech, are thought to be characteristic of the Great-minded man: for he who is earnest about few things is ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... in anticipation of the future development of the country rather then in response to any demand then existing, having been substantially completed, or suspended for an indefinite time, a large amount of capital so invested was found for the time unproductive, and a great number of laborers were left in the Pacific States without any possible employment. The great majority of these laborers were, as usual, without any accumulated means to pay their transportation to any other part of the country, and hence were left to drift as they might toward the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... royal Friend; "six days with him at Reinsberg;" perhaps near a fortnight in all (20 November-2 December or so), hanging about those Berlin regions, on the survey. Here is an unexpected pleasure to the parties;—but in regard to penetrating of secrets, an unproductive one! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... north of Gijiga on the one hand, and Verkhoyansk on the other, we enter a land of desolation, thousands of miles in extent, chiefly composed of tundra, as yet unprospected, it is true; but probably as unproductive, minerally and agriculturally, as an Irish bog. The reader is already aware that tundra is impassable in summer, for its consistency is then that of a wet bath sponge. The foot sinks in over the knee at every step, and a good walker can scarcely cover a mile within the hour. In winter the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... when crossed with agouti. But Cuenot and others have shown that all of the yellows are heterozygous, and when crossed with agoutis give both yellows and agoutis. We are led, therefore, to suppose that an ovum carrying the yellow factor is unproductive if fertilised by a spermatozoon which also bears this factor. In this way alone does it seem possible to explain the deficiency of yellows and the absence of homozygous ones in the families arising from the mating of yellows together. At present, however, it remains the only ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... surprise. The red soil of Cuba, which is impregnated with the oxide of iron, is less rich, and is better adapted to the coffee plantation. The mulatto-colored earth is considered to be inferior to either of the others named, but is by no means unproductive, being preferred by the tobacco growers, who, however, often mingle a percentage of other soils with it, as we mingle barnyard refuse with our natural soil. Some tobacco planters have resorted by way of experiment to the use of guano, hoping to stimulate the native properties of the soil, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... of such soil as that which now composed his garden, would more than furnish all the vegetables he could consume. The soil, it is true, was of a very superior quality. Although it had lain so long unproductive and seemingly barren, now that it had been stirred, and air and water were admitted, and guano, and sea-weed, and loam, and dead fish had been applied, and all in quantities that would have been deemed very ample in the best wrought gardens of christendom, the acre he had under tillage ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... old tidewater families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... altered, in a mental view, the physiognomy of his model. Robinson is not a man suffering entire isolation; he has a companion, and the savages are incessantly making inroads around him. It is the European developing the resources of his industry, to contend at once with an unproductive land and the ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... in the neighbourhood of these natural reservoirs, but everywhere else the movements of the river were rather injurious than advantageous to man. The inundation scarcely ever covered the higher ground in the valley, which therefore remained unproductive; it flowed rapidly over the lands of medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in the hollows that they became ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... free-market economics, freezing spending, easing price controls, liberalizing domestic and international trade. Mongolia's severe climate, scattered population, and wide expanses of unproductive land, however, have constrained economic development. Economic activity traditionally has been based on agriculture and the breeding of livestock. In past years, extensive mineral resources had been developed with Soviet support; total ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... then she stepped to the baronet's side and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him sharply. The sleeper might have been dead for all the consciousness which he exhibited at her rude touch. Another and more violent shake proved equally unproductive of results. Then she passed on to the colonel, to Mildmay, and to the professor, experimenting in like manner with each. If she wished to arouse them, her efforts were useless; they were, one and all, locked fast in the embrace of sleep—profound, unnatural, death-like sleep. A scornful laugh ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands of inhabitants live ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry the entire line forward from position to position with such success that the people ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick |
