"Unprofitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Department is asking us to invest billions in what are termed Liberty Bonds. It has the 'liberty' to lend these billions to irresponsible or bankrupt nations of Europe, who are fighting an unprofitable war. Some of our dollars will equip an army of Amer- ican boys to fight on Europe's battle- fields. This may be good business. Our excited politicians down at Washington may think they are acting for our best good. But what becomes of ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... to replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit before him than before God. When they had done all, they were still unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severe discipline ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... supposed that the cold and dark season had been an unprofitable one; far from it. Though Mabel had been an occasional sufferer, during all that time, she and Clara had diligently attended to their studies, and had, Aunt Mary said, made rapid advance; while the inward change which had been experienced by ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... unprofitable to dwell further upon the end of Francesco Troche. The matter is a complete mystery, and whilst theory is very well as theory, it is dangerous to cause it to fill the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... far to go. Reason accompanied with necessity persuaded the captain, who sent his lawful excuse and cause of this sudden departure unto Sir John Gilbert, by the boat of Dartmouth, and from thence the Golden Hind departed and took harbour at Weymouth. All the men tired with the tediousness of so unprofitable a voyage to their seeming, in which their long expense of time, much toil and labour, hard diet, and continual hazard of life was unrecompensed; their captain nevertheless by his great charges impaired ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... consequence of one's life and associations than this. Therefore I thank Heaven for a town removed from the track of progress, uninvaded by summer visitors and all business enterprises; land left sacred to its native inhabitants, a sluggish stream, unprofitable earth, huckleberry bushes and the imagination. Since this is so, and there is little fear of intrusion by the curious or the mercenary, I will confide to my readers the situation of the town with the understanding that they will never ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Despair is an unprofitable thing; it will make a man weary of waiting upon God; 2 Kings vi. 33; it will make a man forsake God, and seek his heaven in the good things of this world; Gen. iv. 13-18. It will make a man his own tormentor, and flounce and fling like a wild ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... "Such talk is unprofitable, and I will have no more of it," said Simon, sternly. "Take heed while there is time, and embrace the true faith; for the end of the world is at hand, and when it comes there will be no mercy for those who have shut their eyes to the light." So saying, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... English-Mercier form, no Scene in it like the above), in early boyhood,—and thank it for nothing, or nearly so. Zimmermann lived much alone, at Brugg and elsewhere; all his days "Hypochondria" was the main company he had:—and it was natural, but UNprofitable, that he should say, to himself and others, the best he could for that bad arrangement: poor soul! He wrote also on MEDICAL EXPERIENCE, a famed Book in its day;" also on NATIONAL PRIDE; and became famed through the Universe, and was Member ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... was moderate, the vegetation beautiful if unprofitable, and the sport excellent. Thus it came about that a danger spot on the map of the Indian Empire became a European paradise, and that to be ordered to Marut was to become an object of envious congratulations. Not, as Mr. Archibald Travers had with justice ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... calculation, of the possibility of gains for ever forfeited, of all the grandeur and ocean-like vastness of the bliss which it has lost. Last of all comes before it the immensity of God, to it so unconsoling and so unprofitable; it is not a picture, it is only a formless shadow, yet it knows instinctively that it is God. With a cry that should be heard creation through, it rushes upon Him, and it knocks itself, spirit as it is, against ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... instinct was very strong in him. Among the rubbish he bought somebody else's pedigree was often to be found. His wife's hung framed on the wall (ending with "Adelaide Louisa Aimee" in large letters for one branch, and "Cecily" in small for the other); his own was the constant subject of unprofitable searchings in county histories—one aspect of his remarkable genius for the unremunerative in all its respectable forms. He worked very hard and gave the impression of doing nothing—and the impression perhaps possessed the higher truth. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the oak timber was all that seemed of any value, as far as we could see. Yet we were now within a few miles of Washington, where articles of food brought fabulous prices, and wood could scarcely be procured. Why were these fine lands desolate? Was it because agriculture was unprofitable? Surely, with Washington and Alexandria so near, and Baltimore at a short distance farther, there should be a good market for produce. Was it because the war had put a stop to agricultural pursuits? The scrub ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... the morning bugle to an army, 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.' Now, I am not going to waste your time by talking about the old, well-worn, interminable, and unprofitable controversy as to God's part and man's in this awaking, but I do wish to insist upon this plain fact, that the command here presupposes upon our parts, whether we be Christian people or not, the ability to obey. God would ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... in Gautier, and Baudelaire and set it forth in English in music that he might have learned from the Sirens who sang to Ulysses. He revelled in blasphemous and licentious fancies that would have made Byron's hair stand on end. Nowadays, much of the blasphemy and licentiousness seems flat and unprofitable as Government beer. But in those days it seemed heady as wine and beautiful as a mediaeval tale. There was always in Swinburne more of pose than of passion. That is why we have to some extent grown tired of him. But in the atmosphere of Victorianism his pose was original and astonishing. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... keen sense of anticipated pleasure. A new and delightful interest had entered into his life. It is true that, at times, it needed all his strength of mind to keep his thoughts from wandering back into that unprofitable and most distasteful past—in the middle of the night even, he had woke up suddenly with an old man's cry in his ears—or was it the whispering of the night-wind in the tall elms? But he was not of an imaginative nature. He felt himself ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was not unprofitable, for we were able to collect a good bundle of pine-wood for torches, left behind by the Indians—brightly burning, resinous wood, which cast a powerful light when ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... flat, and unprofitable all this appeared to me at the time I will remember; but the obnoxious turns were shaken out, and the sail set again so as to please even the fastidious eye of the Lieutenant, who, seeing nothing more to find fault with, addressed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... contrary part, Nature, as a most tender and loving mother, hath placed the best and most necessary things open abroad; as the air, the water, and the earth itself; and hath removed and hid farthest from us vain and unprofitable things." ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and He expects every one to bear its part in solving the great problem of man's capacity for self-government, which is the problem of human destiny; and if any nation fails in this, He will treat it as an unprofitable servant, a barren fig-tree, whose own end is to be ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... case the like public desolation should happen here. And if there may be no such occasion, (which God of his infinite mercy grant us!) still the story may have its uses so many ways as that it will, I hope, never be said that the relating has been unprofitable. ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... time, thinking about her, but presently decided that this was an unprofitable occupation. He was a marked man, with a lonely road to travel, and, though he found some amusement by the way it led him apart from the society of women of the ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... volunteer charities. English manufacturers saw that the supply of the raw product from America could no longer be depended upon, and efforts were made to introduce the manufacture of the inferior staple from India, but the experiment proved in the main unsatisfactory and unprofitable. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... friends—towards that final haven of China—as what was hourly implored by the prayers of their wives and the tears of their children. But, though they fled unwillingly, too often they fled in vain—being unwillingly recalled. There lay the torment. Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them; every day the same unprofitable battle was renewed; as a matter of course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their 5 advanced guard to fight them; every day the battle raged for hours, and uniformly with the same result. For, no sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily pressed, and that ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... and vigorous country. In the correspondence of Henry Brevoort and Washington Irving and others one gets delightful little pictures—vignettes, as it were—of social life of that day. Mr. Emmet writes begging for some snuff "no matter how old. It may be stale and flat but cannot be unprofitable!" Brevoort asks a friend to dine "On Thursday next at half-past four o'clock." He paints us a quaint sketch of "a little, round old gentleman, returning heel taps into decanters," at a soiree, adding: "His heart smote him at beholding the waste & riot of his ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... kilns was declared many years ago, after a series of experiments made in poorly constructed furnaces, to be unprofitable, and the subject is dismissed by most writers with the remark, that in order to use the method economically the products of distillation, both liquid and gaseous, must be collected. T. Egleston, Ph.D., of the School of Mines, New York, has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... mentioned before of Mark Twain's investments and the generally unprofitable habit of them. He had a trusting nature, and was usually willing to invest money on any plausible recommendation. He was one of thousands such, and being a person of distinction he now and then received letters of inquiry, complaint, or condolence. A minister wrote him that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from spending money and time foolishly or in unprofitable ways; to take an interest in the care of our highways, in the paying of our taxes, and the education of our children; to plant shade trees, repair our yard fences, and in general, as far as possible, bring our home life up to the highest ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... that among these enemies to their faith he must do what was in his power to keep up that of the child, and not allow his prayers to be neglected; but not being able to repeat the Latin forms, and thinking them unprofitable to the boy himself, he prompted the saying of the Creed and Lord's Prayer in English, and caused them to be repeated after him, though ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a man. He lived in Sheepisles, that lie out in Broadfirth. He was called Sheepisles' Priest. He was rich, and a mighty man of his hand. Hall was the name of his brother. He was big, and had the makings of a man in him; he was, however, a man of small means, and looked upon by most people as an unprofitable sort of man. The brothers did not usually agree very well together. Ingjald thought Hall did not shape himself after the fashion of doughty men, and Hall thought Ingjald was but little minded to lend furtherance to his affairs. There is a fishing place in Broadfirth called Bjorn isles. ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... adventure had proved unprofitable except in works of charity. But he was not one to be easily put down, having in his nature an abundance of the perilous stuff of ambition. He was not the man to sit down and wait for fortune to come to him. Rather, he belonged to those who ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... following words show his attitude: "To the opinions which I have expressed in this House in favor of Protection I adhere. They sent to this House, and if I had relinquished them I should have relinquished my seat also." "It would be an unprofitable talk," writes Barnett Smith, "to unravel the many inconsistencies of Lord Beaconsfield's career; but with regard to this deliverance upon Protection, the curious in such matters may turn back to the records of 1842, when they will discover ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... romantic school quite another class of ideas appeals; to it much of the so-called realistic literature seems very bad, or merely "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." The profoundest utterances of realism do not impress it much in themselves. It insists that art has something to say to literature, that in this field as elsewhere holds good the law of natural selection of types and survival of ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... his honest opinion. It was not worthwhile trying to impress a man of that sort. If the world had been full of such men, life would have probably appeared to Jukes an unentertaining and unprofitable business. He was not alone in his opinion. The sea itself, as if sharing Mr. Jukes' good-natured forbearance, had never put itself out to startle the silent man, who seldom looked up, and wandered innocently over the waters with the only visible ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Suggestions not unprofitable for these later days lurk in these traits of Elia the student and critic. How worthy the imitation, for instance, of those disciples who band together to treat a fine poem (of Browning, say, or Shelley) as they might a chapter in the Revelation,—speculating sagely upon the import of the seven seals ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... poison, and Tibullus and Propertius. But these are gentlemen of means and revenues now. Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but they bare exhibition; which I protest shall be bare indeed, if thou forsake not these unprofitable by-courses, and that timely too. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, he whose worm-eaten ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... a strong desire to be revenged upon the hideous brutes; and, under other circumstances, would have remained to get a shot at them. But just then that would have been both imprudent and unprofitable work. It would be as much as their horses could accomplish, to get back to camp that night; so, without even entering the old house, they watered their animals, refilled their calabashes at the spring, and with heavy hearts once more rode ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... consecutive summers; then they gave up the unprofitable undertaking, returned to Concord, New Hampshire, their native city, and left the Cy Whittaker place to bear the ravages of Bayport winters and Bayport small boys as ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... she fulfilled in his own land. Suzette was one of many children. Her father was the cultivator of a few acres in Normandy. Her mother died as the infant was ushered into the world. To her father and brothers she was of an unprofitable sex, and her sisters disliked her because she was handsomer than they. Her childhood was cheerless enough, for she had quick instincts, and her education availed only to teach her how grand was the world, and how confined her life. She left her home by stealth, in the night, and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... can be rolled up and sat upon—in fact, ill-treated in any way you like—without fear of their breaking, tearing, or getting out of shape. For the yacht, however, where so many hats are lost overboard, they would, I fear, prove a rather unprofitable investment. ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... "prime fur" must be "thick" and "full," and as all our fur-bearing animals shed their heavy winter coats as warm weather approaches, it necessarily follows that the capture at this season would be unprofitable. As the autumn approaches the new growth appears, and the fur becomes thick and glossy. By the middle of October most furs are in their prime, but the heart of winter is the best time for general trapping. [Page 148] The furs of the mink, muskrat, fisher, marten and beaver are not ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... of employment for some months, but at length succeeded, by dint of great interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example:—very early in the morning I had to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious—signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... This is an unprofitable and unproductive mode of mashing, but there may be some times when the distiller is out of rye, on account of the mill being stopped, bad roads, bad weather, or some other cause; and to avoid the necessity of feeding raw grain to the hogs or cattle, (presuming every distillery to ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... whose minds revolted at the possibilities that swarmed about human slavery. Georgia was the only one of the Original Thirteen Colonies in which slavery was prohibited, and we have seen how this prohibition was repealed at the demand of the planters. Seven Northern States, finding slavery unprofitable, abolished the system, and a majority of the slaves were sold to the Southern States. But the emancipation movement went on in the South. There were more than fifty thousand free negroes in Virginia ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... "to do nothing but to what one is exhorted by the common rule of the monastery"; the sixth is "to believe and acknowledge oneself viler than all"; the seventh is "to think oneself worthless and unprofitable for all purposes"; the eighth is "to confess one's sin"; the ninth is "to embrace patience by obeying under difficult and contrary circumstances"; the tenth is "to subject oneself to a superior"; the eleventh ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... those designs are more frequently removed, its undertakings are often ill-conducted or left unfinished; in the former case the state spends sums out of all proportion to the end which it proposes to accomplish; in the second, the expense itself is unprofitable. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... once recalled his ambassadors from Rome, and drew up an appeal to a General Council.[892] The Pope feared he would lose England for ever. Even the Imperialists proved but Job's comforters, and told him that, after all, it was only "an unprofitable (p. 316) island,"[893] the loss of which was not to be compared with the renewed devotion of Spain and the Emperor's other dominions; possibly they assured him that there would never again be a sack of Rome. Clement delayed for a time ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... domicilii Vacicani, totius orbis celeberrimi, per 37 annos multa opportunaque didici; for thirty years I have continued (having the use of as good [32]libraries as ever he had) a scholar, and would be therefore loath, either by living as a drone, to be an unprofitable or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society, or to write that which should be any way dishonourable to such a royal and ample foundation. Something I have done, though by my profession a divine, yet turbine raptus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... view of the main steps in the early progress of the race, which it is thus possible to present, is all that is required for educational ends. Were it possible to present the subject in detail, it would be tedious and unprofitable to all save the specialist. To select from the monotony of the ages that which is most vital, to so present it as to enable the child to participate in the process by which the race has advanced, is a work more in keeping with the spirit of the age. To this end the presentation of the ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... Church, the path of doctrinal truth is narrow; but, in the judgment of the world in all ages, it is so broad as to be no path at all. This I have said above; also, that the maintenance of the faith is considered by the world to be a strife of words, perverse disputings, curious questionings, and unprofitable technicality, though by the Fathers it is considered necessary to salvation. What they call heresy, the man of the world thinks just as true as what they call orthodoxy, and only then wrong when pertinaciously insisted ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... one else among the four or five thousand inhabitants of the new county. He had arrived about a year before election-day, and established himself as repairer of clocks and watches—an occupation which was so unprofitable at Bunkerville, the county town, that Charley had an immense amount of leisure time at his disposal. He never hung about the stores or liquor-shop after dark; he never told doubtful stories, or displayed unusual ability with cards; neither did he, on the other hand, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... lady, and bowed to her; she passed on without deigning to notice him. I spoke to an insipid man who had always bored me with his unprofitable intimacy, and he looked another way! The next lady we noticed tossed her head, as if she longed to toss it at us; and the next man we met opened his eyes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... delay. His wife had more than once calmed his anger, and prevented any catastrophe. At length several weeks went by, in which the expeditions of the band were unfruitful. The provisions were running low, and Pietratesta saw in his captive one unprofitable mouth. Sivora, his wife, felt her influence to be growing weaker and weaker under the increasing destitution ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Strauss—then the popular and bewhistled music maker. And yet it is difficult for us, so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic immortality, to conjure up a day when the music of Chopin shall be stale and unprofitable to the hearing. For me the idea is inconceivable. Some of his music has lost interest for us, particularly the early works modeled after Hummel. Ehlert speaks of the twilight that is beginning to steal over certain of the nocturnes, valses, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... or judgment have, notwithstanding, escaped us, we shall be ready to acknowledge them, and repair them in sequent editions, when the proofs have been transmitted to us. We shall not reply one by one to such denials and contradictions as this book may give rise to; it might be a tedious and unprofitable paper-war in the newspapers. But we will make notes of every observation, and reply en masse, by our proofs and tests, after a certain lapse of time. We seek the truth only, and should blush to make our work ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... "Every Saturday night. Saturday is our day. I'll tell you what has happened all the week. I'll tell you specially what a darned unprofitable day Saturday is when you're three ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... soon ascertained that the fears of the bridegroom, who had got safely away, were only too well founded. In the affairs of Herr Brazovics there figured so many investments apparently sound but really unprofitable, such false calculations, unsecured debts, and imaginary securities, that when order was brought into this chaos, the whole property did not suffice to satisfy the creditors. Besides, it came to light that he had used moneys intrusted to his honor: orphans' capital, church ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... heard little of him; but on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in question—of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well assured that I had no ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... deem this task to be vain and unprofitable; for I am of opinion that the perusal of the Book by the Faithful may merit an abounding Grace from the Lord; whether that in contemplating the variety, beauty, and vastness of God's Creation, as herein displayed in His marvellous works, they may ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... we found ourselves enabled to say that we were not in want of any casual supplies; but by the end of the month he declared he had not made a bad voyage; his spirits and provisions were nearly all purchased by individuals; and what he at first thought an unprofitable circumstance to him (the sight of four ships at anchor in the cove) proved favourable, for the most of his provisions were disposed of among the shipping. The whole of the spirits were purchased by the officers of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... to pass quickly from them, as matters in which we have little concern, and which do not greatly affect the practical conduct of life. His extreme distaste for anything that appeared to him like idle speculation or unprofitable controversy, often blinded him in a very remarkable degree to the evident fact, that the very same mysterious truths which have given occasion to many futile speculations, many profitless disputes, are also, in every Christian communion, rich in their supply of Christian ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... existence, without home, hearth or possessions. But if you think you can persuade your Grandmother, we will be betrothed, and I will remain here until—for an indefinite time. A separation now would be like a bad comedy, in which the unprofitable role is yours, at which Raisky, when he hears of it, will be the first to laugh. I warn you again now, as I did before. Send your reply to the address of ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... eight—so long, so weary, seemed the way. There were hills in the background, hills right and left of her, orchards, glimpses of woodland—here and there a peep of sea—pretty enough road to be whirled along in a comfortable carriage with a fast horse, but passing flat, stale, and unprofitable to the heavy-hearted pedestrian. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... come in. The poor professor, after his unprofitable labours of the day, enters, and bows to the landlady, who is cordial or severe in her greeting according to the items on the little slate which records her accounts. He begins his meal. "He has soupe aux croutons, veau a la Marengo, pommes frites, a small ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... sorry realization of how one petulant or peevish member of a household can destroy the happiness of a breakfast or dinner hour? What would otherwise have been a pleasant coming together of kindly congenial spirits is made painful and unprofitable because some one lacked the patience and forbearance to withstand and to surmount some little trial or irritation that should have been promptly dismissed from the mind and the heart, or better still, ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... was an unprofitable employment, trying to help on Axel's cause. She could not but see what he thought of Anna; and after the touching manner of widows, was convinced of the superiority of marriage, as a means of real happiness for a woman, over any and every ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... as had borne an affection to him of old; and when he had taken Alexandrium in the first place, he attempted to build a wall about it; but as soon as Gabinius had sent an army against him under Siscuria, and Antonius, and Servilius, he was aware of it, and retreated to Macherus. And as for the unprofitable multitude, he dismissed them, and only marched on with those that were armed, being to the number of eight thousand, among whom was Pitholaus, who had been the lieutenant at Jerusalem, but deserted to Aristobulus with a thousand of his men; ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... could not understand the matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about the most unprofitable things ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have travelled far; and do we not know that we have friends among these chiefs, whom we are now going to visit? The Lord has led me into these distant and savage regions, to carry his word, and to proclaim his name; and a most unworthy and unprofitable servant should I prove, were I to hesitate about approaching them I am appointed to teach. No, no; fear nothing. I will not say that you carry Caesar and his fortunes, as I have heard was once said of old, but I will say you follow one who is led of God, and who marches with the certainty ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... the grafted trees. Those of our members skilled in the art have not been selfish in imparting their knowledge to others and are always ready and willing to instruct others in the art. Most owners of these trees would only be too glad to substitute profitable tops for their trees in lieu of their unprofitable ones. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... narrow room he knows no object; beyond the elucidation of a dead tongue he indulges no ambition; his life is one long school-day of lexicons and grammars—a fabric of ice, cautiously excluded from a single sunbeam—elaborately useless, ingeniously unprofitable; and leaving at the moment it melts away, not a single trace of the space it occupied, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought of following him to any considerable distance. A metaphysical discussion of this character would scarcely be appropriate to the pages of THE CONTINENTAL; and our readers would doubtless find the controversy uninteresting, if not altogether unprofitable. We, however, cheerfully insert the paper offered by Lieutenant Phelps, on account of the spirit of earnest piety and love of truth which seem to pervade it; and we shall confine ourselves here to the briefest possible comment which will enable us to make understood ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... these periods of unprofitable feeding was to retard hog production, as the grower was discouraged from breeding during those periods. Hoover therefore decided that the maintenance of a proper relation between the price of corn and ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Peter said, "tap the table with your forefinger. Personally, I will admit that I have had my doubts of the Baroness, but on the whole I have come to the conclusion that they were groundless. She is not the sort of woman to take up a vendetta, especially an unprofitable one." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... purpose, and for those unprofitable truths of thy teaching,—thine heart hath already put them away, and it needs not that I lay my bidding upon thee. How is it that thou, a man, wouldst say coldly to the mind what God hath said to the heart ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... overplus is unthinkable, since no man can do more than his duty. A Christian can only do what he recognises as his obligation, and this he ought to fulfil at every moment and with all his might. Love, which is the Christian's only law, knows no limit. Even when we have done our utmost we are still unprofitable servants. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... confess that having received what I am compelled to regard as a Providential intimation, accompanied with the secular means of obedience, I did put up a small margin and purchase largely of the stock you mention. The venture, I am constrained to state, was not wholly unprofitable." ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Madam, I would give you if I could, but I know how little the forms of consolation can avail. Let me, however, counsel you not to waste your health in unprofitable sorrow, but go to Bath, and endeavour to prolong your own life; but when we have all done all that we can, one friend must in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... was it possible that the powerful impetus given by Feuerbach turned out so unprofitable to Feuerbach himself. Simply in this way, because Feuerbach could not find his way out of the abstraction, which he hated with a deadly hatred, to living reality. He clutches hard at Nature and Humanity, ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... have a care, manual training, when we have succeeded in getting it into the school, may become as mechanical and unprofitable as much of our mind training has been, and its moral value thus largely missed. The only way to prevent it is to borrow a suggestion from Froebel. Then, and only then, shall we have insight with power of ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of fruit, flower, grain or garden vegetables was anything but wild and unproductive, or bitter, tasteless or unprofitable. Chemical changes are made in the plant by the soil in which it grows, because it is from the soil that it gets its food. The large and juicy carrot found at home is nothing but the woody spindle of the wild carrot, and I have found ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the parentage, education, and early life of Agricola, but draws out more at length the history of his consulship and command in Britain, of which the following summary, from Hume's History of England, may not be unprofitable to the student in anticipation: "Agricola was the general, who finally established the dominion of the Romans in this island. He governed it in the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. He carried his victorious arms northward; defeated the Britons in every encounter, pierced ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the swearing party, who is struck by lightning-a very shallow and unprofitable device. He should open his face to swear, dislocate his jaw, be unable to get closed up, and the rats should get in at night, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... useless nor unprofitable, for then shone forth the boundless compassion of Christ. Those of the brethren who had been but dead members of the Church, were recalled to life by the pains and help of the living; the martyrs obtained grace for those who had fallen away; and great was the joy in the Church, at ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... character, and against the feelings which he had originally entertained and expressed towards this gentle hospitable people; but he was goaded on by the mercenary impatience of the crown, and by the sneers of his enemies at the unprofitable result of his enterprises. It is but justice to his character to observe, that the enslavement of the Indians thus taken in battle was at first openly countenanced by the crown, and that, when the question of right came ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... a great deal about you, my lad. You are a fine gallant young fellow, and it seems to me it would be a very great pity for you to waste your life in pursuit of the arduous and unprofitable occupation of fishing. What say you? Would you like to take to the sea as a profession? If so, let me know. I owe you a very heavy debt, as I have already said, and nothing would afford me greater pleasure than to repay ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... other rural concerns, when they were pleased to elect me to be of their body: and I beg leave, through you, Sir, to convey to them my grateful thanks for this favor. They will find in me, indeed, but a very unprofitable servant. At present, particularly, my situation is unfavorable to the desire I feel, of promoting their views. However, I shall certainly avail myself of every occasion, which shall occur of doing ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... good many years, without giving much in the way of a quid pro quo, beyond the vague hopes and airy promises which pledged the Maasaun government to little or nothing. But now, he explained, the Powers were growing weary of so unprofitable a speculation, and were inclined to expect some definite return for ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... revealed to me the glory of human love, I had dedicated my life, and all my powers—poor enough, I fear—of mind and body to the service of the Church. I was ambitious in those days. Ambition is dead, killed by the knowledge of my own shortcomings. I have proved an unprofitable servant—for which may God in His great mercy forgive me. But, while my faith in myself has withered, my faith in Him has come to maturity. I have learned to think very differently on many subjects, and to perceive that our Heavenly Father's ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... object which could not be inferred from no matter what combinations. In hearing, on the contrary, if once it is determined that there has been a false audition, the work of placing it, though difficult, need not be unprofitable. This work is often compulsory upon the criminalist who receives protocols which have not been read aloud, and in which mistakes of hearing and dictation have been made. Such mistakes are considerably ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Andros. When that detested viceroy was expelled from the country, in 1689, the Jerseys were left without a regular civil government, and so they remained for several years. Wearied with contentions, with the people of the provinces and with the government at home, and annoyed by losses in unprofitable speculations, the proprietors of the Jerseys surrendered them to the crown, in 1702, when Queen Anne was the reigning British monarch. The government of that domain was then confided to Sir Edward Hyde (Lord Cornbury), whose instructions constituted the supreme law of the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... modest start in a legal way, her parents died and left her with that most unprofitable of legacies, an encumbered estate. Then I dared to renew our acquaintance begun on the sandpile. She went to live with a poor but practical relation and was initiated into the science of stretching an inadequate ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Colonel, testily, and when the boys had gone he read the Bazar-Sergeant's son a lecture on the sin of unprofitable meddling, and gave orders that the Bandmaster should keep ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... an eccentric summing-up of the results of the campaign of Chancellorsville, is too unprofitable a task to reward the attempt. But assuredly the commander of the gallant Army of the Potomac stands alone in his measure of the importance of the movement, or of the disastrous nature ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... political interests of France in that country[532]." But, as trade depended on the maintenance of order, this vague compact involved difficulties. Clearly, if disorders continued, the task of France would be onerous and relatively unprofitable, for she would be working largely for the benefit of British and German traders. Indeed, the new Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, admitted to the French ambassador, Jules Cambon, that thenceforth Morocco was a fruit destined to fall into the lap of France; only she ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... me with unprofitable questions? What concern is it of ours how Messer del' Orca shall vent his wrath when he is disillusioned. Your duty now is to rejoin your mistress. Ride hard for Cagli. Seek her at the sign of 'The Full Moon,' and then away for Pesaro. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... stakes. He used an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an excuse for bringing about the Crimean war in which England and France combined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very costly and exceedingly unprofitable enterprise. Neither France nor England nor Russia ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... not careful to answer such inquiries, seeing that I am but unskilled and unlearned in scholastic disputes. Why do ye ask me these hard and unprofitable questions, to bring my body in danger of death, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... day. Suppose that we had to choose, with all these friends of yours, with our position, yes, even the place I have won in my profession, my place as editor—all that we now have on the one side; and on the other side a thankless, unprofitable, apparently useless standing up for the right. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... with Massinger (we know this for certain from Sir Aston Cokain), and with Rowley and others, while Shirley seems to have finished some of his plays. Some modern criticism has manifested a desire to apply the always uncertain and usually unprofitable tests of separation to the great mass of his work. With this we need not busy ourselves. The received collection has quite sufficient idiosyncrasy of its own as a whole to make it superfluous for any one, except as a matter ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... like a congress of kings; each of whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable. What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! One apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another that no man should buy or sell; that the use of money was the cardinal evil; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... said in a honeyed voice, 'priestess of Isis of the Egyptians, sworn to the barren worship of Isis and fed on the ashes of her unprofitable wisdom, know that I am Aphrodite of the Greeks whom many times thou hast mocked and defied, and Queen of the breathing world, as Isis is Queen of the world that is dead. Now because thou didst despise me and pour contempt ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Edinburgh as to the character or extent of Goldsmith's studies there, but it may be supposed that his eighteen months' residence was, on the whole, not unprofitable. A curious document that has been discovered is a torn leaf of a tailor's ledger radiant with "rich sky-blue satin, fine sky-blue shalloon, a superfine silver-laced small hat, rich black Genoa velvet, and superfine high ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... pleaseth Thee this day so far to exhibit Thy favor to Thy poor and unprofitable servants, as to enable them with freedom, and in the presence of the king whom Thou hast set over them, and of the most noble and illustrious company on earth, to declare that which Thou hast given them to know of Thy holy Truth, may it please Thee to continue the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... used to rush off impatiently to the card-room, and sit there placidly from five o'clock in the afternoon till one or two o'clock in the morning! When I asked my friends why they devoted so much time to this unprofitable occupation, they always gave me pretty much the same answer: "What are we to do? We have been reading or writing official papers all day, and in the evening we like to have a little relaxation. When we come together we have very little to talk about, for we have ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... acted with characteristic good sense. The price of bread was kept down, the mob was being systematized and taught to respect authority, and enough thieves had summarily been shot in San Francisco to render looting a dangerous and an unprofitable avocation. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... deportment of men neither paralyzed by, nor profanely insensible to, the accumulating dangers that encompassed them, they progressively departed in the different boats with their soldiers; those who happened to proceed first leaving behind them an example of coolness that could not be unprofitable to those who followed. ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... a strange and not unprofitable reverie, painfully striving to separate my thoughts, the sheep from the goats, and to reconcile them the one to the other. I knew well enough the human frame to be persuaded that ambition could not altogether be cast out from the spirit of a man, which led me to reflect upon its possible ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... because here you are, the pair of you, after one lone pigeon. (aside) Damnation! The limed twigs are brushing my wings! (aloud, stiffly) Madam, I consider this an unprofitable business for me ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... du Barry and her clique looked on as Piccini's enemy, astonished both cabals by appointing Piccini her singing-master, an unprofitable honor, for he received no pay, and was obliged to give costly copies of his compositions to the royal family. He might have quoted from the Latin poet in regard to this favor from Marie Antoinette, whose faction in music, among other names, was ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... infirmities, I should be both a burden to myself and to you. I am, as I said, a man of a weak and feeble mind, and shall be offended and made weak at that which others can bear. I shall like no laughing; I shall like no gay attire; I shall like no unprofitable questions. Nay, I am so weak a man as to be offended with what others have a liberty to do. I do not yet know all the truth. I am a very ignorant Christian man. Sometimes, if I hear some rejoice in the Lord, it troubles me because I cannot do so too. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... was a mild man, and he knew by much experience how unprofitable controversy with Mrs. Cobb was. He could not forget Mrs. Fairfax's stooping figure when she was about to pick up the bill. She caused in all the Langborough males an unaccustomed quivering and warmth, the same in ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... man be married who is a soldier? I have no friends; they are unprofitable," declared ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... convent had already taught her many pretty devices in this art; and when she found that at the school they were admired—that she was praised instead of blamed—her vanity was pleased, and she learned so readily all that they could teach in this not unprofitable accomplishment, that Mrs. Boxer slyly and secretly turned her tasks to account and made a weekly perquisite of the poor pupil's industry. Another faculty she possessed, in common with persons usually deficient, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... changes of one's own self is a fascinating pursuit for idle hours. The field is so wide, the surprises so varied, the subject so full of unprofitable but curious hints as to the work of unseen forces, that one does not weary easily of it. I am not speaking here of megalomaniacs who rest uneasy under the crown of their unbounded conceit—who really never rest in this world, and when out of it go on fretting and fuming on the straitened circumstances ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... exclaimed Miss Prowley, when we returned to the drawing-room. She had been sitting in silence in an obscure corner, and I had scarcely realized her presence. "Over at last! and of all fatiguing and unprofitable employments that the folly of man ever devised, this trifling with spirits ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... drove those whom he did not put in jail over the sea to ply their trade in Europe. The Stewart grave robbery ended the career of the ghouls, and the Charley Ross case put a stop to child-stealing for a generation, by making those crimes unprofitable. The public excitement was so great that it proved impossible for the thieves to deliver the goods and effect the change for ransom. At intervals for years these cases kept turning up in one new phase or another. You could never tell where to look for them. Indeed, I have to ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... remembrance of my past sins; you remind me that I have done no good. But this does not bother me, because if I were to trust in my own good deeds, or despair because I have done no good deeds, Christ would profit me neither way. I am not going to make him unprofitable to me. This I would do, if I should presume to purchase for myself the favor of God and everlasting life by my good deeds, or if I should despair of my salvation because ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... their ministers, while they have abundant means to make them comfortable. If they prize their wealth higher than they do spiritual riches, it is but casting pearls before swine to scatter even the most brilliant gems of wisdom before them; and in this unprofitable task I am the last man to engage. I gave up all hope of worldly good, in order to preach the everlasting gospel for the salvation of men. In order to do this successfully, my mind must be kept free from the depressing ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... discussions, another at one corner of the dinner table airing its views on the origin of matter and the probability of its ultimate discovery, and yet another debating military problems.... Perhaps these arguments are practically unprofitable, but they give a great deal of pleasure to the participants.... They are boys, all of them, but such excellent good-natured ones; there has been no sign of sharpness or anger, no jarring note, in all these ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... upwards of fifty thousand dollars, I should not be able to support the former without involving myself in debt and difficulties," This must be taken, however, to apply to a single period of heavy expense when foreign complications and other causes rendered farming unprofitable, rather than to his whole career. Furthermore, his landed investments from which he could draw no returns were so heavy that he had approached the condition of being land poor and it was only proper that he should cut loose from some ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... transformation will last through the hopeful period. But as soon as the remodelled pretender shall have a presentiment that his metamorphosis is unprofitable; as soon as the implacable voice of discouragement shall have pronounced those two magic words, by which flights are stayed, thoughts paralyzed, and hopeful hearts deadened, "Never! Impossible!" the probation is over and the candidate ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Tully-Veolan, were intersected by a narrow lane leading to the common field, where the joint labour of the villagers cultivated alternate ridges and patches of rye, oats, barley, and peas, each of such minute extent, that at a little distance the unprofitable variety of the surface resembled a tailor's book of patterns. In a few favoured instances, there appeared behind the cottages a miserable wigwam, compiled of earth, loose stones, and turf, where the wealthy might perhaps shelter a starved cow or sorely ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and L100,000 a year for two years: he will keep the Soudan for a time (in both cases slave trade will flourish), thus you will be quiet in Egypt, and will be able to retreat in January 1885. If you do not do this, then be prepared for a deal of worry and danger, and your campaign will be entirely unprofitable and devoid of prestige, for the day after you leave Khartoum the Mahdi will walk in and say ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... protested against Annexation; but they were denounced as {135} 'known monopolists and protectionists.' One speaker said: 'Were it necessary I might multiply citation on citation to prove that England considers, and has for years considered, our present relations to her both burdensome and unprofitable.' Another said: 'It is admitted, I may almost say, on all hands, that Canada must eventually form a portion of the Great American Republic—that it is a mere question of time.' There follows a list of some nine hundred names, beginning with John Torrance and ending with Andrew Stevenson. There ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... Nature is a Phantasm, where cunning beggary or thievery may sometimes find good victual. That God is a lie; and that Man and his Life are a lie.—Alas, alas, who of us is there that can say, I have worked? The faithfulest of us are unprofitable servants; the faithfulest of us know that best. The faithfulest of us may say, with sad and true old Samuel, "Much of my life has been trifled away!" But he that has, and except 'on public occasions' professes to have, no function but that of going idle in a graceful or graceless ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... hitherto preserved chiefly in the shape of oral tradition. The antiquary, in most instances, rejects the information that does not present itself in the form of an authentic and well-attested fact; and legendary lore, in particular, he throws aside as worthless and unprofitable. The author of the "TRADITIONS OF LANCASHIRE," in leaving the dry and heraldic pedigrees which unfortunately constitute the great bulk of those works that bear the name of county histories, enters on the more entertaining, though sometimes apocryphal narratives, which ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... an unprofitable task, and one by no means interesting to the general reader, to give a detailed history of the various astronomical observations and discoveries which were made by Tycho during the twenty years that he spent at Uraniburg. Every phenomenon that appeared in the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... be such that it would be neither too cheap nor too dear. If too dear, it would be unprofitable; if too cheap, people would begin to deal in land. This is the arrangement I would ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... complete his legal training at the Inner Temple. At the age of twenty-one he married a daughter of John Ebers the publisher, and started in his father-in-law's line of business. This, however, soon proved unprofitable and he decided to attempt literary work. A novel called Sir John Chiverton, in which he appears to have had a share, had attracted the praise of Sir Walter Scott, and this encouragement decided him to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... thinks are mysteries even to her own understanding. The influence most potent in shaping the rudimentary character of Alice Tarleton (called Roussillon) had been only such as a lonely frontier post could generate. Her associations with men and women had, with few exceptions, been unprofitable in an educational way, while her reading in M. Roussillon's little library could not have given her any practical knowledge of ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... about all day, without any particular object in view, but only to lose myself for the sake of finding myself unexpectedly among things that I had always read and dreamed about. The plan was perfectly successful, for, besides vague and unprofitable wanderings, I saw, in the course of the day, Hyde Park, Regent's Park, Whitehall, the two new Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross, St. Paul's, the, Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside, Whitechapel, Leadenhall Street, the Haymarket, and a great many other ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... routine. It's to be a gay season, too, and it's only her second. The idea of a child of that age informing me that she's had enough of the purely social phases of this planet! Did you ever hear anything like it? One season, if you please—and she finds it futile, stale, and unprofitable to fulfil the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... at the same time concluded with the duke of Brittany, seemed both to increase his security, and to open to him the prospect of rivalling his predecessors in those foreign conquests, which, however short-lived and unprofitable, had rendered their reigns ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... to give up one's time to writing and reading elaborate theories of a past and future which we may conceive to exist, but of the existence of which it is impossible we should achieve any proof, much less any detailed knowledge, appears to me an unprofitable and unsatisfactory misuse of time ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of many things, hastily packed, which might take harm in crossing the ferry. Mr. Toy (a neighbourly fellow with all his failings, and one of that not innumerous class of men who delight in any labour, so it be unprofitable) had undertaken to load the ferry-boat; but having in mere exuberance of good-nature imbibed more beer than was good for him, he could not be trusted ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... exaggerated an expression, of having used a word out of place, while all the time I ought to have been thinking of essentials and aiming at breadth of treatment. I do not know how to sacrifice anything, how to give up anything whatever. Hurtful timidity, unprofitable ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... narrow, wild ravines and woody crevices. The soil of the park was not rich, and could give but little assistance to the chemists in supplying the plentiful food expected by Mr. Mason for the coming multitudes of the world; it produced in some parts heather instead of grass, and was as wild and unprofitable as Cleeve Common, which stretched for miles outside the park palings; but it seemed admirably adapted for deer and for the maintenance of half-decayed venerable oaks. Young timber also throve well about the place, and in ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... do, although he is not allowed to do others?' 'Yes, because he knows them, and does not know the others.' This leads to the conclusion that all men everywhere will trust him in what he knows, but not in what he does not know; for in such matters he will be unprofitable to them, and do them no good. And no one will love him, if he does them no good; and he can only do them good by knowledge; and as he is still without knowledge, he can have as yet no conceit of knowledge. ...
— Lysis • Plato
... the gladiatorial spectacles; he controlled also the rates of allowance to the stage performers. In these latter reforms, which simply restrained the exorbitant salaries of a class dedicated to the public pleasures, and unprofitable to the state, Marcus may have had no farther view than that which is usually connected with sumptuary laws. But in the restraints upon the gladiators, it is impossible to believe that his highest purpose was not that of elevating human ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... victory to overcome your desire for truth. Do not argue for the sake of winning, nor develop the habit of arguing in season and out. In the school and outside there are persons who, like Will Carleton's Uncle Sammy, "were born for arguing." They use their own time in an unprofitable way, and what is worse, they waste the time of others. They are not seeking for truth, but for controversy. It is quite as bad to doubt everything you hear as it ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks |
