"Uselessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If you do not like danger, go! It may be that I am mistaken, and that this nation, convinced of the uselessness of defense, may give itself up voluntarily. . . . At any rate, we shall soon see. I shall take great pleasure in returning to Paris when the flag of the Empire is floating over the Eiffel Tower, a mere matter of three or four weeks, certainly by the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... natural conviction of the uselessness of 'gells' was never more disagreeably expressed than on this occasion. But he could not shake Louie off. She pinched him when he enraged her beyond bounds, but she never wavered in her determination to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... kick the box would wound her feelings, and it were best to apparently unintentionally seat yourself on it; then beg a thousand pardons, and, as you, in your efforts to make it better, only make it worse, give it up in despair, and console the owner by a reference to spilt milk and the uselessness of crying. As to the contents of the boxes, they must look out for themselves. If they get injured, hint that they should keep ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... squarely upon him. A realization of the uselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money to his pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmed lamp of his temper. "What's this," he demanded, "I hear about driving stage? about Buck boasting around that he ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... arrived when the reluctant Japanese were to be taught the uselessness of further efforts to resist the advances of other nations. In November, 1852, an expedition, long contemplated and carefully prearranged, set sail from the United States under the command of Commodore M.C. Perry. Although this mission was the subject of much discussion abroad, no very general ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... they had been more to each other! Did he go about with a lonely spirit, Fred wondered, feeling the uselessness and insufficiency of the life he was leading? Had he been glad to lay ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... was a large and somewhat pompous man. He knew his place, as a Western father, and never interfered with his daughter's love affairs. He knew Bradley as a likely and creditable young fellow, and besides, his experience with his two older daughters had taught him the perfect uselessness of trying to marry them to suit ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... leaving the door unlocked for him; but she lay listening until he came, often long after. It was a great bitterness to her that he had gone back to Miriam. She recognised, however, the uselessness of any further interference. He went to Willey Farm as a man now, not as a youth. She had no right over him. There was a coldness between him and her. He hardly told her anything. Discarded, she waited on him, cooked for him still, and loved to slave for him; but her face closed again ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... cursed with grafters and parasites—men who live off the body economic and give nothing substantial in return. But an appearance of uselessness is not always proof of such. We should not condemn men in ignorance. As old as Aesop is the fable of the rebellion of the other members of the body against the idle unproductiveness of the belly. In this passage the fable is used as an answer ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... tip of my tongue to ask Monsieur Auguste why he left France, but the uselessness of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... another toiling swarm, building anew each time out of ruin, undaunted by the certainty of destruction, taught nothing by the fate of their precursors. From the profound sense of despair which the contemplation of the uselessness of human effort, and the waste of human life, produces on the scholar's mind, it was a relief to him to watch the gladness of its river, the buoyancy of its currents, the foam of white blossom on its acacia and syringa thickets, the gold sceptres and green lances of ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... construction of their weapons, pirogues, and domestic implements, the natives of Santa Cristina pass their time in singing, dancing, and amusing themselves. The common expression of "killing the time" seems to have been invented to mark the uselessness of the actions which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... as well as anyone the uselessness of appealing from such an order, but he was frantic. Realizing the importance of the news he carried, and beginning to glimpse vaguely the meaning of Graves and his activity, ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... death of Henry VII., had been rightly transferred by his successor;—transferred, I mean, from reservoirs, which had by degeneracy on the one hand, and progressive improvement on the other, fallen into ruin, and in which those revenues had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,—transferred from what had become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true; but no less true is it philosophically, that this ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is here who for years has lived selfishly within his own little round of pleasure. He looks back on a life of uselessness, of neglect of all that Christ did for him. He this day hears the voice of God. He listens; he repents; he cries out, smiting on his breast, 'God be merciful to me a sinner!' What then will God do? Will He reject him because he is old in sin? because ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... learned the uselessness of protesting. She kept on until the way danced in reeling colors before her eyes. Then without a sound she dropped in the scant shadow of a rock. At the cry from Molly, Kut-le turned, and after one glance at Rhoda's white face and limp figure he knelt in the sand and lifted the drooping, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... brings enjoyment on earth and they have done an immense amount of good by teaching people to cease thinking and talking so much about themselves and their ills. Among other demonstrations, they have shown the uselessness of drugs. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... rapid progress in training and good service in the field. Interest in the actual technical work that was being done, and seeing that one's immediate group was accomplishing something towards the winning of the war was a powerful spur, while a sense of the uselessness of the work in hand strongly depressed the morale of a group. "Nothing succeeds like success"; morale was at its best when the army was advancing and seemingly nearing the goal. Morale was also wonderfully good when the enemy was advancing, provided your side ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... mere action or articulation of the organs of speech could create a world, they undertook to make of this articulation a second pre-existing being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is, that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... met with an accident, asked him to say nothing, and explained where to bring the machine. In ten minutes he had maneuvered the heavy sedan across the rough wet fields. And then we had another problem on our hands: to let Jack into what had happened without shocking him into uselessness. It was not until we got him to test Tristan's eery buoyancy with his own hands that we were able to make him understand the real nature of our problem. And after that, his comments remained largely gibberish for some time. However, he was even quicker than we were to see the need ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... that too long."—"Every sleepless night undoes the good that the sunshine during the daytime has wrought, and after many sleepless nights the days become simply horrible preludes to more terrors."—"I can't drug a child like that to a long life of uselessness—make her as happy as you can, but let her have it over with as quickly as Nature will allow it—or take her to some other man—I can't in charity to ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... went on speaking of his late confinement, and its comfortless circumstances, in very strong terms, dwelling on its solitude and its uselessness, as if those only formed its disagreeability, and the pain went for nothing. Social and kind is his heart, and finely touched to the most exquisite sensations of sympathy; and, as I told Colonel Gwynn, I must needs wish he may yet find some second gentle partner fitted to alleviate his sorrows, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... then; I have put into practice your old theories of the uselessness of life. No; I am wrong. It is better to die than ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... herself, in real, actual life, unskilled and unfit to minister to the wants and sorrows of those dearest to her, without a secret sense of degradation. The feeling of uselessness is an extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in a very humorous paper, describes a most accomplished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and crafts which are supposed to make up fine gentlewomen, who ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... southern limits of Egypt he was able to judge of the difficulty, and indeed the uselessness, of trying to hold any part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there was less than the cost of the troops required to collect it. He therefore made a new treaty with the Nobatae, as the people between the first and second cataracts were now called. He gave up to them the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... conceive, and in answer to my prayer my own doctor was permitted to visit me in prison. He announced that he found my case extremely grave, and that I must perish unless I were relieved. As a consequence, and considering my weakness and the uselessness just then of both my arms, one of which was broken, first a page of my own, then other servants, and lastly my wife were allowed to ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Then he saw the uselessness of striving to keep up a master's pose with this servant of the ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sunshine of the world; she was of the type of woman that must have men about her; she would get her "rights", as she called them, somehow, by fair means or foul. Deb was sufficiently a woman of the world herself to recognise this, and the uselessness of thinking she could alter it. Well, money is a consolatory thing—she knew its value now; and there was that additional comfort, which, of course, she did not own to—the thought of where Mr Ewing would be when Mrs Ewing was in ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the absolute power the law of the land gave Uncle over her. She knew the uselessness of a Japanese girl struggling against the rigid rules laid down by her elders. She knew resistance might bring punishment. Well, Mate, I do not care ever to see again such a look as was in Sada's eyes as she turned ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Greek officers and counselors in the family and court of Darius. One of them, named Charidemus, offended the king very much by the free opinion which he expressed of the uselessness of all his pomp and parade in preparing for an encounter with such an enemy as Alexander. "Perhaps," said Charidemus, "you may not be pleased with my speaking to you plainly, but if I do not do it now, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... friendship; it is indeed a cordial to my heart; it imparts to me an earnest of happiness which I thought had fled forever. But it shall not allure me from my principles. I am resolved not to live a life of indolent uselessness; and I cannot, at this period, enter the British army. No," added he, emotion elevating his tone and manner; "rather would I toil for subsistence by the sweat of my brow than be subjected to the necessity of acting in concert ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Consulship, he caused a law to be enacted, in virtue of which no one could have a province till five years had elapsed from the time of his holding a public office. Such were the precautions adopted against Caesar, the uselessness of which time ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... he was tired. He paused at the library door, for a moment watching the bent head of the indomitable student, now oblivious to everything except the page before him, hesitated, and then passed on in search of Brent. He seemed to appreciate the uselessness of calling the mountaineer who was in a realm too remote for human interference. The Colonel was not the first that day to look in, pause, ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... shewed the uselessness of this question, since the reason of her refusing the honour he intended her would have made her reject the addresses of every other man in the world. Lord Robert could not believe this possible and therefore desisted not from urging a question ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... fatigue and fighting, the weary army emerged from the hills into the wide valleys, where their cavalry were able to act, and the ground no longer offered favorable positions of defense to the peasantry. Seeing the uselessness of further attacks, the Count of Cifuentes drew off his peasants; and Tesse marched on to Barcelona and effected a junction with the troops from Roussillon under the Duke de Noailles, who had come down by the way of Gerona. The town was at once ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... age of the patient, the enormous size of the tumor, and the advice given by the surgeon who first attended the patient (insisting that no operation should be performed). This case shows anew the uselessness of tapping ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... in the words that man "may burst the shell that holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides him from the eternal, at any moment where it is easiest for him to do so; and most often this point will be where he least expects to find it." By this we may see the uselessness of laying down arbitrary laws in ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one's eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher, and "Shady Hollow," as Andrew called it, had surely ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... mixture of feelings. His own sudden and foolish hope was over, and what did it matter to him whether the detestable father or the coarse son should win? He turned away from them with contempt, which was made sharp by their utter uselessness to himself. Had it been possible that he might have what he wanted from Mr. Copperhead, his patience would have held out against any trial; but the moment that hope was over, what further interest had he ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... has written: "At times I have had a feeling of the uselessness of all voluntary effort, and also that the matter was working itself clear in my mind. It has many times seemed to me that I was really a passive instrument in the hands of a person not myself. In view of having to wait for the results of these unconscious processes, I have proved the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the torrent of the woman's anger. She screeched in dismay, raising thick hands to heaven. The coloured man's stolid silence was suddenly swept away in a spate of oaths and protestations. Suddenly, looking in the officer's unmoved face, they realised the uselessness of words, turned and ran between the gateless posts, out upon, away over, the dusty, hoof-tracked, wheel-scored veld. And their ungainly hurry and awkward gestures of terror somehow reminded the peering Bough Van Busch of an engraving he had seen by chance in a Dopper Bible, in which Lot ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... paid—and Ralph should return to college with a clean sheet so far as money was concerned, and with his handsome allowance undiminished—for the present. He himself must decide what would happen in the future. The Squire asked for no promises; he had had experience of the uselessness of promises (the listener winced again at the significance of those words); but Ralph must understand that any debts would be subtracted from his own future allowance. He must also understand that he was expected to take his pass the following May. ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... defended herself, for a long time, against the attacks of three of the Genoese galleys, and had repeatedly endeavoured to force her way out of the throng, but the Genoese held her fast with their grapnels, and at last the greater part of her crew were driven down below, and Francis, seeing the uselessness of further resistance, ordered the little group, who were now completely pent in by the Genoese, to lower their weapons. All were more or less severely wounded, and were bleeding from sword cuts ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... position, Italy joining the Allies, the debacle of Russia, the awful casualty lists, the return of disabled soldiers, the ceaseless war work of our women, the United States at last declaring war on Germany, the final line up and defeat of the Hun, and the horror and apparent uselessness of it all; some reflection of all these may be found by the ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... Hawkridge's reassuring reply; "he must see the uselessness of resistance, and we are not fighting Indians who learned warfare from the ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... fell limp; he perceived the uselessness of this attempt to forget in Sloane Street, and he decided to try the banks of a certain trout-stream on Dartmoor. He knew that with all the sun-glare of that season, and the water doubtless running a great deal too fine, he would be as likely to catch trout ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world and the uselessness of high endeavor ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... never recurred. It was as though this outburst of action and liberty had disappointed him, as if some deep-rooted instinct—cold, critical, reflective—had reasserted itself, condemning him and his censors equally. The uselessness of utterance, the futility of enthusiasm, the inaccessibility of the ideal, the practical absurdity of trying to realise any of the mind's inward dreams: these were the kind of considerations which descended upon him, slowly and fatally, crushing down the newly springing ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on this point of completeness. What was once undertaken had to be finished, even if the inconvenience, tedium, vexation, nay, uselessness, of the thing begun were plainly manifested in the mean time. It seemed as if he regarded completeness as the only end, and perseverance as the only virtue. If in our family circle, in the long winter evenings, we had begun to read a book aloud, we were compelled to finish, though we were ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... scene of beauty; but the only hope, for the only possibility, is for the field visited by much of that sweet influence. And it were an absurdity no less gross in the opposite extreme to the one just mentioned, to assert the uselessness, for rectifying the moral world, of a diffusion of the knowledge which shall compel men to see what is wrong; to deny that the impulses of the corrupt passions and will must suffer some abatement of their force and daring when encountered, like Balaam meeting the angel, by a clear manifestation ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... others draw the sword." Applause rang out from a hundred thousand throats. Crassus followed to the same purpose, and was received with the same wild delight. A few senators, who retained their senses, saw the uselessness of the opposition, and retired. Bibulus was of duller and tougher metal. As the vote was about to be taken, he and his tribunes rushed to the rostra. The tribunes pronounced their veto. Bibulus said that he had consulted the sky; the gods forbade further action being ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... easily by sending a force on their flank and rear. But General Gage thought that would be ridiculous and unnecessary. A force of three thousand regulars could easily by a front attack sweep off these farmers, show them the uselessness of their methods, and possibly end ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... "church," Bob's head slowly rose from her shoulder. I saw his decision the instant I caught his eye; I realised the uselessness of opposing it, and, sick at heart and horrified, I listened as he said in a voice now calm and soothing as that of a father to his child, "Yes, Beulah, my darling, I have slept too long. Bob has been naughty, but we will make up for lost time. Get your hat and cloak and we'll ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... pains that go all over me, an invincible melancholy, the feeling of "universal uselessness" and grave doubts about the book that I am writing, that is what is the matter with me, dear and valiant master. Add to that worries about money with melancholic recollections of the past, that is my condition, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... strictly true, perhaps, but it answered the purpose of deeply impressing the Chippewa with the uselessness of Peter's plans, and sustained as it was by his early predilections, it served to keep him on the right side, in the crisis which was approaching. The discourse continued, much in the same strain, until the men got in with their bear's meat, having been preceded some time by ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... say some strong, sincere things about the uselessness of rich men who would sooner use their money on the gratification of vanity than upon public service. He meant that. He repeated such things at various interviews. In doing so he proved that he ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... out very nearly as much as that on his own account; but he had long since learned the uselessness of trying to teach his father any thing, however well he might succeed with ordinary people, ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... indignantly for a few moments, swimming slowly to and fro and transfixing them with first one eye and then the other, he ducked his head and began biting savagely at the leathern wrapping on his leg. But the uselessness of this soon appearing to him, he gave it up, and sought to ease his despair by diving and guttering with his bill among the roots of the oozy bottom. In this absorbing occupation he so far forgot his miseries that all at once he tried to lift himself on the water, flap his wings, and ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he threatened, "when some younger man will want my professorship—and will deserve it. I shall either be put out or I shall go out; and then—decrepitude, uselessness, penury, unless something has been hoarded. So, Anna, out of the frail uncertain little basketful of the apples of life which the college authorities present to me once a year, we must save a few for what may prove a ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... over, a man awakened as you said and found himself—the self he knew, but light, free, splendid—remembering all the ages of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some black, aimless plunge, and suddenly seeing all the childish uselessness of it—how he would stand and smile! How he ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... I might have been of some service in the world. Instead, my life has been a failure, and that which I am leaving to you was the fruit of the service of my forebears. May you never feel the humiliation of uselessness, of having contributed nothing to the world ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... unencumbered, had made a fool of the huge floating forts upon the other side; and here they were toiling, not to produce another boat on their own pattern in which they had always enjoyed the advantage, but to make a new one the type of their enemies', of which they had now proved the uselessness for months. It came on to rain as the Americans landed; and though none offered to oppose their coming ashore, none invited them to take shelter. They were nowise abashed, entered a house unbidden, and were made welcome ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for others to say how such a charge, in the present case, is helped by laches or incompetence on the part of the surveyor. But enough has, I hope, been said to clear the scheme itself from the objection of uselessness or of impracticability. In one sense, no doubt, far more room than this volume, or a much larger, could provide, may seem to be required for the discussion and arrangement of so great and interesting a matter as the Literature of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. But to say this, is ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... tell her the whole truth. He longed, with morbid longing, to share his knowledge. She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the uselessness, of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... with gay banter to the Inspector's chatter, or answering at random, but always falling silent again, and altogether was so unlike himself that Mandy fell to wondering, then became watchful, then anxious. At length the Inspector himself fell silent, as if perceiving the uselessness ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... days of hostilities there were no elaborate hydrophones for detecting the approach of submarines under the water, and the only hope of a warning came from the possibility of the under-water vessel breaking surface momentarily. The uselessness of the periscope for navigation during darkness, which at present forms the principal limitation of submarines, made it distinctly likely that she would cruise on the surface at night, and if forced to dive would be more or less compelled to quickly rise again in order to ascertain the position ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... opposite to that on which the fleets had been during the night, must have gone about at this time, and probably for this reason. She was able thus to fetch into the wake of the crippled vessel, which a frigate had already gallantly attacked, taking advantage of the uselessness of the Frenchman's lee batteries, encumbered with the wreckage of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... able to upset any man's reason, and make fools of us all to your own purposes." Bigot saw the uselessness of argument; but she ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... passages in the sciences which you will perhaps have found fatiguing, at which the mind strives to raise itself, by an effort, beyond itself, and which repel us quite as much by their, at any rate apparent, uselessness as by their difficulty. The function of kings consists principally in leaving good sense to act, which always acts naturally without any trouble. All that is most necessary in this kind of work is at the same time agreeable; for it is, in a word, my son, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... inspiration. In earlier, and it may be happier, times the duty of the good man was to strive against all evil, disorder, uselessness, incompetence in their more simple forms. "He therefore is a holy man," says Ormuzd in the Zend-avesta, "who has built a dwelling on the earth, in which he maintains fire, cattle, his wife, his children, and flocks and herds; he who makes the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... which the Austro-Hungarian representative refers, nullified even the right of general suffrage by an artificial creation of an over-representation of the German minority in the Reichsrat, and its utter uselessness for the liberty of nations was clearly demonstrated during the three years of unscrupulous military absolutism during this war. Every reference to this constitution, therefore, means in reality only a repudiation of the right of self-determination ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... affairs as they attended theirs. Sometimes the great striped tiger prowled about the base of the tree, sharpened his claws on the bark, but he never attempted to ascend to the platform. Perhaps he realized the uselessness of investigation, since the platform made it impossible for him to see what was up there. But always now, to and from the truce water, he paused, looked up, circled the tree, and ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... to assist Julianillo, he was well aware of the uselessness of making the attempt; the words he had just heard making him more anxious than ever to escape from the country. He therefore rode forward with the same unconcerned air which he had assumed on approaching the emissaries of the Inquisition. Following the advice of the innkeeper, as soon ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... still colorless, otherwise there was little to show what the last month and a half had meant to Allan Gerard. Except when he rose or moved, the inert uselessness of his right arm was not obvious. And however hard the battles and rebellion he inwardly had passed through, tone or expression carried no outward intelligence of past conflict as he smiled across at his ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... now I come to the most important sign of the plague-wind and the plague-cloud: that in bringing on their peculiar darkness, they blanch the sun instead of reddening it. And here I must note briefly to you the uselessness of observation by instruments, or machines, instead of eyes. In the first year when I had begun to notice the specialty of the plague-wind, I went of course to the Oxford observatory to consult its registrars. They have their anemometer always on the twirl, and can tell you the force, or at least ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the uselessness of their fusillade against the cliff they had allowed their matches to go out, so that I was for the moment safe from musket shot. When I fired and brought down the first man, the rest hesitated, and seeing my companions clambering ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... got off together. It occurred to Leigh that possibly he had been a little short with Emmet, somewhat unsympathetic with his practical and industrial interests. If this were so, it was merely because he realised the uselessness of explaining the peculiar intoxication of his mood, for he suspected that the other would regard such emotions as fit only for women and poets. "You might come for a walk with me," he suggested. "The exercise would ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... startled. "Well, I'll be——" he began, speaking to Potter. But the printer was following his chief and was already out of hearing. "Now what do you suppose——" again began the Circle Y man, and then fell silent, suddenly smitten with the uselessness of speech. He yelled at his gaunt steers and shifted the calf in front of him to a more comfortable position. Then he proceeded on his way. But as he rode his lips curled, his eyes narrowed, and speech again returned to him. "Now why in hell would a man get so damned excited over hearin' that ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of production—in a word, of all social capital—they would not need to bother themselves with the State. If, in possessing themselves thus of all economic power, they were also to neglect the State, its machinery would, of course, tumble into uselessness and eventually disappear. As the great capitalists to-day make laws through the stock exchange, through their chambers of commerce, through their pools and combinations, so the working class could do likewise if they were in possession of industry. But the working class to-day ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... was inclined to sanction the idea that the bees had this view of the uselessness of his chimney. The subject of his girllessness leading on to another case of "why," he fell back promptly upon the hollow tree theory pure and simple; the which he took pains to establish by stories of trees filled with honey and of terrible big bears ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... conscious that she could not go on living at home as she was doing, without place or meaning or worth. The very children that went to school held her uselessness in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the study of words, Max Muller endeavours to introduce one of the most useful canons of philology into a department of inquiry where its introduction could only work the most hopeless confusion. One of the earliest lessons to be learned by the scientific student of linguistics is the uselessness of comparing together directly the words contained in derivative languages. For example, you might set the English twelve side by side with the Latin duodecim, and then stare at the two words to all eternity without any hope of reaching a conclusion, good or bad, about either of them: least ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... [probably "Le Livre du Peuple": Paris, 1837], which I shall read with my whole heart and soul, as I have read all that you have written for four years. I shall owe you just so many more good and noble emotions. Will they remain for ever sterile? Will my life be for ever tainted with this idle uselessness which weighs upon me? Will the hour of devotion and of manly action never come? Am I condemned without respite to this trade of a Merry Andrew and to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... are good and true. You have saved me from a life of uselessness, and your example and high noble character have given me new inspiration. It seems a poor gratitude that would turn and stab you to the heart. Ah! I cannot do it, and yet ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... she will continue to try to impose her will upon mine. I wonder why she has not found out by this time the uselessness of her effort. But no; she still keeps on hoping at last to wear me down. She wants me to live the life she has marked out for me to live—to take up my position in the county, and, above all, to marry and give an heir to the property. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... they sat on the cliffs, which skirted the property, potting rabbits. Jim expected Beth to act as a keeper for him, and also to retrieve like a well-trained dog; and when on one occasion she disappointed him, he had a good deal to say about the uselessness of sisters and the inferiority of the sex generally. Women, he always maintained, were only fit to sew on buttons and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... was never uttered, for Mr. Kemble, folding his arms majestically, added, in his deep tragic voice, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I wait here to know what you want!" Immediately the uproar was renewed, and became so tremendous and so deafening, that the manager, seeing the uselessness of further parley, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... man!" cried Andrews. "Journegan, my boy, this shows the uselessness of prayer. Here's a man praying one minute, and before the Lord has time to answer him he's ready to commit murder. Sink me, if ever I did see any use of praying one minute and doing things the next. It's wrorse than my pore old father used to be. ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... him a shawl, and two bunches of beads, and he seemed pleased. During these exciting scenes he felt no fever; but when they were over the constant wettings made him experience a sore sense of sinking, and this Sunday was a day "of perfect uselessness." Monday came, and while Livingstone was as low as possible, the inexorable chief renewed his demands. "It was," he says, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... not to be appeased. She stamped her flat foot and repeated her command in so savage a tone that Kirk perceived the uselessness of trying to explain. He looked appealingly at the girl, but she merely nodded her head and motioned ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... she wants air—all the air she can git. If you please, gents— [Malone and Ramsden allow him to drive them gently past Ann and up the lawn towards the garden, where Octavius, who has already become conscious of his uselessness, joins them. Straker, following them up, pauses for a moment to instruct Tanner]. Don't lift er ed, Mr Tanner: let it go flat so's the blood can run ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... increased on the 19th, with a heavy fall of snow, which, together with the uselessness of the compasses, and the narrow space in which we were working between the ice and the land, combined to make our situation for several hours ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... from woman's best profession—wifehood and motherhood—must find some other work to do; idleness, uselessness—above all, idleness—are the hotbed of all manner of follies. The stupidest man in existence, working day by day at the worldliest work, has the better of us in this, that he is weighted, so to speak, and cannot flutter to and fro with ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... a wretchedly constructed, long-neglected building of a type common to those old river towns that in their many years of uselessness have lost all civic pride, and in their own resultant squalor and filth have buried their self-respect. A dingy, scarcely legible sign over the treacherous board walk, in front, by the sickly light of a smoke-grimed kerosene lantern, announced that the place ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... was no earthly good. And since he could not sing, and would not whine, silence alone was left him. He would work as best he could till the year was out. He had no intention of going back on his bargain, despite the uselessness of it. At the end of the year, the Hall being his own property, he would sell the place, and travel. Perhaps he would go off shooting big game, or perhaps he would go round the world. It did not much matter which, so long as it prevented him ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living bodies ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "I am not inordinately vain; but I confess that, when people speak of my extraordinary talents, and regret that I make not a better use of them, it flatters me; and though I feel more than ever my uselessness, it gives me pleasure; humankind is ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a shadow by the utter uselessness of the Bashi-Bazouks. The very sight of them excites my ire. I never saw such a useless, expensive set. I hate (there is no other word for it) these Arabs; and I like the Blacks—patient, enduring, and friendly, as much as the Arab is cowardly, cruel, and effeminate. All the misery ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... One or two people came to confession, and then the church seemed to be empty. He knelt down to his prayers and soon became absorbed. To-night he was oppressed in a new way by the sins, the temptations, and the unutterable weakness of man; his failures; his uselessness. Nothing else in Art had ever impressed him so much as the figure of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That beautiful figure, with all the freshness of its primal grace, stretching out its arms from ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... page in the book, or one in which the author's meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike, men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... governor no injustice to say that he now had his eye on the Mormon vote. The non-Mormons in Hancock and the surrounding counties held meetings and appointed committees to obtain accurate information about the thefts, and the old complaints of the uselessness of tracing stolen goods to Nauvoo were revived. The Mormons vigorously denied these charges through formal action taken by the Nauvoo City Council and a citizens' meeting, alleging that in many cases "outlandish men" had visited the city at night to scatter counterfeit money ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... that a considerable party of the enemy had crept quietly up, and were now prowling round our wire and trying to pick a way through. A hot fire from rifles, Lewis guns and machine guns, soon convinced the enemy of the uselessness of attempting, without artillery preparation, a raid against an alert enemy well entrenched with wire intact. They were beaten off, and withdrew to a fold in the ground a couple of hundred yards out in No Man's Land, where they were fired upon by our ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... who brought O'Neil the first tidings of this encounter, for, seeing the uselessness of an immediate attempt to overcome Dan's party by force, he determined to make formal protest. He secured a boat, and a few hours later the swift current swept him down to the lower crossing, where McKay put a locomotive at his disposal for the trip to Omar. By the time he arrived there he was quite ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... was slack many a man has come to the pay-place on Saturday, who had done nothing all the week but dig a hole and fill it up again. Once, on being remonstrated with by a man he had thus employed, on the uselessness of the work, Williamson said, "You do as you are told—you honestly earn the money by the sweat of your brow, and the mistress can go to market on Saturday night—I don't want you to think." He often regaled his work-people with a barrel of ale or porter, saying they "worked all the better ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... be compared with it. No mortal man has ever since preached a discourse of its kind. The spirit of the address is throughout that of sincerity and action, as opposed to empty profession and neglect. In the closing sentences the Lord showed the uselessness of hearing alone, as contrasted with the efficacy of doing. The man who hears and acts is likened unto the wise builder who set the foundation of his house upon a rock; and in spite of rain and hurricane and flood, the house stood. He that hears and obeys not is likened unto the foolish man who built ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... sufficient she would long since have been obliged to leave the little village for larger fields. She had ministered to the starved mind as to the stunted body; the idle and dissolute quaked before her. And yet here in her own household, across her hall, lived the epitome of uselessness, indolence, selfishness, and—she was forced to admit it—charm. What corresponded to a sense of humor in her caught at the discrepancy and worried ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... marked with all his peculiar sense of material things, all that power of writing of stone or metal or the fabric of drapery, so that we seem to be handling and smelling them, he has described a stall for the selling of odds and ends of every variety of utility and uselessness:— ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... and Haney and Mike the midget labored mightily to accomplish the preposterous. They grew lean and red-eyed from fatigue, and short of temper and ever more fanatical—and security men moved about in seeming uselessness but never-ceasing vigilance. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... rapidly from the wall beyond, and Madocks, a few moments later, charged again. Accompanied this time by but three men, he closed to within a few feet of the more distant sangar. Two of the men with him were here killed, and Madocks, seeing the uselessness of remaining, made his way back again to the sangar in rear with his sole companion, called together the rest of the Yorkshire detachment, and began hurriedly to strengthen the wall under a searching fire. At this moment ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... Seeing the uselessness of further dealings with the preachers, Las Casas dropped that learned body, of which nothing further was ever heard ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... at its worst, the Government antagonized the peasants by forced requisitions, carried out with great harshness by the Red Army. This method has been modified, but the peasants still part unwillingly with their food, as is natural in view of the uselessness of paper and the enormously higher ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... punishing him cruelly for his bullying attack, yet strangely refusing to kill, as he might have done, or to close on the hamstring with one swift snap that would have put the big brute out of the fight forever. At last, knowing perhaps from past experience the uselessness of punishing or of disputing with this madman that felt no wounds in his rage, the wolf would lope away to cover, followed by a victorious bugle-cry that rang over the wide barren and echoed back ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... notary, realizing the uselessness of his observations; "the pension shall be paid to the ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... a siding and leave them to the destructive influence of rain and dust? And how shall we characterise the stupidity that shall shunt millions of serviceable human beings into circumstances of misery so appalling as well as of uselessness so entire, as those which we have endeavoured to picture? Why, here we have not even the decency of a siding! These wonderfully made semi-Divine human engines are suffered to obstruct the very main lines on which our expresses run, not only wrecked themselves, but the fruitful cause of wreckage ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... assume its form to be necessary and only examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer form itself attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode of life for which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by any awkwardness or apparent uselessness in its parts. After sketching one day several heads of birds it became a vital matter of interest to me to know the use of the bony process on the head of the hornbill; but on asking a great physiologist, I found that ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... become of the country if everyone wronged were to take the law into his own hands? Thousands more would be wronged by the lawless in a week than by unjust powers in a year. But the young men were determined to pursue their plan of resistance, and those of the older and soberer who saw the uselessness of it, gave themselves little trouble to change the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... away, she fell into a slow decline. Her sufferings were greatly aggravated by Richard's harsh and cruel treatment of her. He was continually uttering expressions of impatience against her on account of her sickness and uselessness, and making fretful complaints of her various disagreeable qualities. Some of these sayings were reported to Anne, and also a rumor came to her ears one day, while she was at her toilet, that Richard was intending to put her to death. She was dreadfully ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Chamber. Instead of throwing all his influence on to the side of Martignac, and rallying all doubtful forces by the pronounced support of the Crown, he welcomed Martignac's defeat as a proof of the uselessness of all concessions, and dismissed the Minister from office, declaring that the course of events had fulfilled his own belief in the impossibility of governing in accord with a Parliament. The names of the Ministers who were now ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of a particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud- flats, or perhaps barren sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness. Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask. A river whose estuary resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through a most fertile country. But all the estuaries of great rivers have ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... plentiful south of the Save than even in Austria-Hungary, but since leaving Slavonia I have never been importuned by them for alms. Travellers from other countries are seldom met with along the roads here, and I suppose that the wandering Romanies have long since learned the uselessness of asking alms of the natives; but, since they religiously abstain from anything like work, how they manage to live is something of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... stale. We waited, and waited. Every day I lost a little interest. Every day the routine dragged a little harder. I had time to see what opportunities I had left back here in Chicago. I wasn't afraid of the fighting. But the sheer hatred of what I came to call the uselessness of war gnawed at my soul. I kept thinking of the ways in which I might shape my destiny if only I were free. I kept thinking of the thousand roads to wealth, to personal success, that Chicago held for me. One night I took my chance. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... books on the war with a morbid curiosity and hope that she would find some illuminating truth as to the uselessness of sacrificing young men in the glory and prime of their lives. To her war appeared a matter of human nature rather than politics. Hate really was an effect of war. In her judgment future wars could be avoided only in two ways—by men becoming honest and just or by women refusing ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... on a loathsome visit to an aunt; and my account is therefore feebly compounded from hearsay. It was an absence I never ceased to regret—scoring it up, with a sense of injury, against the aunt. There was a splendid uselessness about the whole performance that specially appealed to my artistic sense. That it should have been Selina, too, who should break out this way—Selina, who had just become a regular subscriber to the "Young ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... indignant glance at the novelist and rushed after his friends; but when he arrived at the stage-door he saw the uselessness of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... from the evils to which it was committed by its own vices and to break its fall. When they were thoughtful and modest as Marcus Aurelius was, they were gloomy and disposed to discouragement, for they had a secret foreboding of the uselessness ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... I'd have reached it ere this, if you had not required such a positive demonstration of your utter uselessness. You have delayed me by what Guizot used to call 'an obstructive indisposition ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... around Spontini, in order to have a look at that remarkable man, as he held forth with wonderful effect on the requirements of true theatrical art. Turning towards the dismal scene, I gently and respectfully pointed out to Spontini the uselessness of his declamation, and promised that everything should eventually be done precisely ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... she was less panic-stricken; she gained control of faculties shocked for a time into uselessness. Method marked her acts—deliberation mechanical but sure. She was horribly afraid of Big Louie, but she finally disentangled the handle of the pail from those loose fingers, and ran to the brook which babbled near at hand. Returning, she drenched Steve's face with icy water; ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the gout, which had reduced the Hon. Melville Jocelyn's right hand to a state of uselessness, served her with her brother equally: for, having volunteered his services to the invalided diplomatist, it excused his stay at Beckley Court to himself, and was a mask to his intimacy with Rose, besides earning him the thanks of the family. Harry Jocelyn, released ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... together by the common condition of contemporaneity, or (what I deem a more appropriate and philosophical term) of continuity. But the will itself by confining and intensifying [25] the attention may arbitrarily give vividness or distinctness to any object whatsoever; and from hence we may deduce the uselessness, if not the absurdity, of certain recent schemes which promise an artificial memory, but which in reality can only produce a confusion and debasement of the fancy. Sound logic, as the habitual subordination ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... unaware. They tumbled and jostled down the companionways only to find the wise and forethoughtful had preempted every chair. Whereupon, with most ludicrous expressions of chagrin or of assumed nonchalance, they trooped back to meet the laughter of the wise, if not forethoughtful, who had realized the uselessness of the rush. After a moment's grumbling, however, the discussions ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... limitations of your character until she has studied it; she will sacrifice herself without love, because she believed in the show of passion you made at the first moment of possession; she will no longer be silent when once she has learned the uselessness of her sacrifices. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac |
