"Profitless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commotion produced by his pursuit of her; inter penetrated, moreover, through and through with the memory of his one true feeling, and of the woman who had died, alienated from and despising him. He and Mary passed a profitless half-hour. He would have liked to propitiate her, but he had no notion what he should do with the propitiation, if it were reached. He wanted her money, but he was beginning to feel with restlessness that he could not pay the cost. The poet in him was still strong, crossed ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... endure but a single day, or be deep and prolonged, Man's sorrow is always barren and profitless. It cannot restore to a disconsolate mother, bemoaning her untimely loss, the son for whom she weeps, or give him back to his friends.... Let the words written by Dujarier: 'I am about to fight a duel ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... straining after novelty and "an affectation of quaintness so marked as to be often unpleasant." He objects to long abstract disquisitions on metaphysics and music. He commends it, however, for being "unmarred by the bad taste of its contemporaries in fanning a senseless and profitless sectional rancor." ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... six or seven wounded. The Boers were broken, however, and fled, leaving twenty-five prisoners to the victors. Baden-Powell and Paget pushed forwards as far as Nylstroom, but finding themselves in wild and profitless country they returned towards Pretoria, and established the British northern posts at a place called Warm Baths. Here Paget commanded, while Baden-Powell shortly afterwards went down to Cape Town to make arrangements ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... myself that they were correct. For this reason I am not at the present moment telling you all that is in my mind. On the other hand, I said that I would play the game fairly by you, and I do not think it is a fair game to allow you for one unnecessary moment to waste your energies upon a profitless task. Therefore I am here to advise you this morning, and my advice to you is summed up ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... laymen do not so interpret their work in life that in so many cases they are discovered to be in effect living for the sake of their leisure and regarding their daily work as uninteresting drudgery, with the result that life as a whole comes to be for them dreary and profitless and stale. A Christian man's life-work ought not to have the character of drudgery, but of sheer delight ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... unrepaid loans which Elaine would not have grudged in themselves, though the application for them brought a certain qualm of distaste; with the perversity which seemed inseparable from his doings, Comus had always flung away a portion of his borrowings in some ostentatious piece of glaring and utterly profitless extravagance, which outraged all the canons of her upbringing without bringing him an atom of understandable satisfaction. Under these repeated discouragements it was not surprising that some small part of her affection should have slipped away, but she had ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... achievement, attainable only by incessant halting to take breath—for ten or fifteen minutes—at embryo stations: a platform, a shelter, and a few unhappy-looking out-buildings set down in a land of death and silence—a profitless desert, hard as the nether millstone and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... at me through a flood of moonlight. The effect was ghastly, and for hours I could not sleep, imagining that face still staring down upon me, illuminated with the unnatural light and worn with a profitless and unmeaning vigil. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... old man," he replied; "and because it may serve to keep your mind busy during hours when otherwise it would be engaged with profitless sorrows, I invite you to puzzle out this business for yourself. You have nothing else to do until late to-night, and you can work undisturbed, ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... whom you will read it. If you conclude that my letter will obstruct, and not facilitate the advancement of the cause you have so faithfully labored for these many years, you have my most cheerful consent to deliver it over to that general asylum of profitless ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... revenue the result was highly successful. The mansion with the first-class shooting, hunting, and lovely woodlands—every modern convenience and comfort in the midst of the most rural scenery—let at a high price to good tenants. There was an income from what had previously been profitless. Under this shrewd management the estate ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... accustomed to the sight of an almost universal forest of dark-green trees. I took much delight in examining the structure of these mountains. The complicated and lofty ranges bore a noble aspect of durability—equally profitless, however, to man and to all other animals. Granite to the geologist is classic ground: from its widespread limits, and its beautiful and compact texture, few rocks have been more anciently recognised. Granite has given rise, perhaps, to more discussion ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the invitation, tossed it, together with a note from Dick, across to Barney without comment, the color of his entire world changed for that favorite son of Broadway. The surly gloom of the end of a profitless enterprise became magically an aurora borealis of superior hopes:—no, something infinitely more substantial than any ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... vessels to profitless danger, the Vice-Admiral ordered the torpedo-boats to retire from the front, and the whole line of them proceeded to a point north of the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... to come over Jim. He left his younger brothers in unhectored peace. He had not much to say, but ever he watched Andy from the corner of a jealous eye, and listened for him to speak. All his pugnacity was engaged in what seemed to be a profitless struggle with the speech of the grammar. "I will larn it yet," he repeated over and over. And even while the words were in his mouth, if he had had less obstinacy in his make-up, he would have yielded himself to despair. But a good thing happened to him. Miss Slocum, not knowing his ignoble ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... yet am in command, that we should strike the blow. If the king consent, through Gongylus thou wilt have means to advise me. A Persian army must march at once to the Phrygian confines, instructed to yield command to me when the hour comes to assume it. Delay not that aid by such vast and profitless recruits as swelled the pomp, but embarrassed the arms, of Xerxes. Armies too large rot by their own unwieldiness into decay. A band of 50,000, composed solely of the Medes and Persians, will more than suffice. With such an army, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... unasked, and huddling them in uncouth fashion past the gaze of the spectator, because, forsooth, he would not seem to make a rarity of them. The subject to be treated, the groundwork to be adorned, becomes the barest excuse for a profitless haphazard ostentation. This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a futile air ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... that in Tristan would be profitless but for one reason. Wagner had not yet reached that perfect mastery of his art which enabled him, so to speak, to fuse the dramatic and the musical inspiration. We saw how in the Dutchman the music rose to its ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... abrogation of all Law but Cannon Law, there should be such Unlawfulness? Intrepid Veto-of-Scoundrels, narrow-faithful, respectable, methodic man, work thou in that manner, since happily it is thy manner, and wear thyself away; though ineffectual, not profitless in it—then nor now!—The brave Dame Roland, bravest of all French women, begins to have misgivings: the figure of Danton has too much of the 'Sardanapalus character,' at a Republican Rolandin Dinner-table: Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, proses sad ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is the more necessary to give precedence to this part of the inquiry, because it is notorious that there is a wide difference between the philosophical and the popular sense of Certitude,—a difference which has often occasioned mutual misunderstanding between disputants, and a profitless warfare of words. In the philosophical sense of the term, that only is said to be certain which is either an axiomatic truth, intuitively discerned, or a demonstrated truth, derived from the former by rigorous deduction; while all that part of our knowledge which is gathered from experience ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... blessings which may not be perverted into evils, so there are no trials which may not be converted into blessings. All depends on the manner in which we profit by them or otherwise. Perfect happiness is not to be looked for in this world. If it could be secured, it would be found profitless. The hollowest of all gospels is the gospel of ease and comfort. Difficulty, and even failure, are far better teachers. Sir Humphry Davy said: "Even in private life, too much prosperity either injures the moral man, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... front and pick up distances smarly, is quite to trot into action, unlimber and form action another, and this is where many phophets anticipated our new Army would be found wanting, but prophecy is becoming a profitless business in this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various
... years, her beauty, and the wholesome ignorance so confidently acknowledged, what man could remain unconcerned, uninterested in the development of such possibilities? Not Siward, amused by her sagacious and impulsive prudence, worldliness, and innocence in accepting Quarrier; and touched by her profitless, frank, and unworldly friendliness ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... and those thousands of profitless acres," Lady Merrenden went on; "but, unfortunately, all the London property is at his disposition. Oh, I must go and ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... him to drink therein Full measure and set her to take her wreak of the favours she did show. For know that her blows fall sudden and swift and unawares, though long The time of forbearance be and halt the coming of fate and slow. So look to thyself, lest life in the world pass idle and profitless by, And see that thou fail not of taking thought to the end of all below. Cast loose from the chains of the love and the wish of the world and thou shalt find Guidance and help unto righteousness and peace of heart, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... their proper order. No doubt it was the changeless monotony of that return journey which made the record appear to me novel, unusual, and at times exciting. But now, six little months again on Earth have made the more than three Martian years (equalling six years of Earth) seem slow, tame, and profitless. If they were pregnant with adventure, they lacked the real experiences of life which have been crowded into the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... Point" was, like most cubs, irritable when thwarted. And having been balked of his prey, the deserter, and possibly chaffed by his comrades for his profitless invasion of Wynyard's Bar, he had persuaded his commanding officer to give him permission to effect a recapture. Thus it came about that at dawn, filing along the ridge, on the outskirts of the fire, his heart was gladdened by the sight of the half-breed—with ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... some points of view, unluckily—she was the recipient of an allowance of three hundred a year from a wealthy and benevolent uncle. Without this, the two girls might have found it difficult to weather the profitless intervals which punctuated their professional engagements. But with this addition to their income they rubbed along pretty well, and contrived to find a fair amount of amusement in life through the medium of their many ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... face with curiosity. Its natural impassivity was so greatly increased by the presence of the coloured spectacles that my study was as profitless as if I had scrutinized the face of a carven Buddha. The mulatto had withdrawn, and in an atmosphere of gloom and tobacco smoke Smith and I sat staring, perhaps rather rudely, at the object of our visit to ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the constant Needle changed,{C} And fierce amid his murmuring crew Prone terror into treason grew; While on his tortured spirit rose, More dire than portents, toils, or foes, The awaiting World's loud jeers and scorn Yell'd o'er his profitless Return; No—none through that dark watch may trace The feelings wild beneath whose swell, As heaves the bark the billows' race, His Being rose and fell! Yet over doubt, and pride, and pain, O'er all that flash'd through breast and brain, As with those grand, immortal eyes He stood—his heart on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... as Ethel's," said the doctor, yielding with a half-reluctant smile. "My story is of a humming-bird, a little creature that loved its master with all its strength, and longed to do somewhat for him. It was not satisfied with its lot, because it seemed merely a vain and profitless creature. The nightingale sang praise, and the woods sounded with the glory of its strains; the fowl was valued for its flesh, the ostrich for its plume, but what could the little humming-bird do, save rejoice in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... purity of Latin style'; to them he was insensibly attracted, and spent with them over Cicero and Quintilian hours filched from the study of Aristotle. Later in life he openly regretted having spent as much as seven years over the scholastic philosophy, which he had learnt to regard as profitless. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... the Khu of the high priest Hortotef entered into the body of this infant who was his son, and whose mother was the Witch-Queen; and to-day in this modern London, a wizard of Ancient Egypt, armed with the lost lore of that magical land, walks amongst us! What that lore is worth, it would be profitless for us to discuss, but that he possesses it—all of it—I know, beyond doubt. The most ancient and most powerful magical book which has ever existed was ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... object of remaining hidden from him. If only she could be safely married before he heard of her again—all, she thought, might yet be well with her. Of what use, then, would be his vengeance? for she did not think it likely he could be so cruel as to wreak an idle and profitless revenge upon her after she herself and her fortune ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... All else I bore with set soul patiently; But now—alack, alack!—Orestes dear, The day and night-long travail of my soul! Whom from his mother's womb, a new-born child, I clasped and cherished! Many a time and oft Toilsome and profitless my service was, When his shrill outcry called me from my couch! For the young child, before the sense is born, Hath but a dumb thing's life, must needs be nursed As its own nature bids. The swaddled thing Hath nought of speech, whate'er discomfort come— Hunger or thirst or lower weakling need,— ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... No. 1 Royal Street close packed with the stuff of human life, homespun and drab enough, but not altogether profitless, may be, to turn over and examine. So close packed was it that there was scarce breathing space. It was only at immemorial intervals that our pauper alien made a pun, but one day he flashed upon the world the pregnant remark that England was well named, for to the Jew ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... cease thy counsel. Which falls into mine ears as profitless As water in a sieve. Much Ado About Nothing, Act v. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... answered, "yet I cannot see what we gain by raking up this miserable history. It is both painful and profitless." ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... follow the vicissitudes of this aimless struggle. Philip, although he was superior to each one of his opponents and repelled their attacks on all sides with energy and personal valour, yet consumed his time and strength in that profitless defensive. Now he had to turn against the Aetolians, who in concert with the Roman fleet annihilated the unfortunate Acarnanians and threatened Locris and Thessaly; now an invasion of barbarians summoned him to the northern provinces; now the Achaeans solicited ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that contempt for the weak and unsuccessful which lightly took the form of mercy. He held Angers safe, curbed by his gibbets. With M. de Montsoreau he might have trouble; but the trouble would be slight, for he knew Montsoreau, and what it was the Lieutenant- Governor valued above profitless bloodshed. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... if my life was devoid of stirring interest or adventure, it was not profitless. Constantly employed at the outposts, I became thoroughly inured to all the roughing of a soldier's life, and learned in the best of schools that tacit obedience which alone can form the subordinate or ultimately fit ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... men, mostly expert ski-runners. They were contemplating an early summer journey to the Pole and not proposing to attempt serious scientific work of any sort. Further, to our chagrin, the eastern party had not effected a landing, for Campbell realised that it would be profitless to set up his base alongside ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... straight path, I the crooked. You, my superior in fortune; you, infinitely above me in genius; you, born to command and never to crouch: how do we stand now, each in the prime of life? You, with a barren and profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the hope of power. I—but you know not my new dignity—I, in the Cabinet of England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the proudest station not too high ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain, 100 And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. 105 ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... chronicler, who wrote as the mailed knight combated—roughly or gracefully, as suited the tilt or the field. She vailed to Lord Berners; while she felt it was here necessary to understand old French, and then to write it in old English.[76] During these profitless labours hope seemed to be whispering in her lonely study. Her comedies had been in possession of the managers of the theatres during several years. They had too much merit to be rejected, perhaps too little to be acted. Year passed ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the United States is like those exquisite productions of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their inventors, but which are profitless in any other hands. This truth is exemplified by the condition of Mexico at the present time. The Mexicans were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the federal constitution of their neighbors the Anglo-Americans as their model, and copied it with considerable accuracy.[157] ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... o'er Yarrow Vale, Save where that pearly whiteness Is round the rising sun diffused, A tender hazy brightness; Mild dawn of promise! that excludes All profitless dejection; Though not unwilling here to admit A ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... him i' the leebrary as I hae said, and whan he didna come, I took my hat—that was about a half-hoor efter the laird left me—and gaed oot to luik for him. I gaed ower the links; for my man had the profitless habit at that time, whilk he's gien up for a mair profitless still, o' stravaguin' aboot upo' the seashore, wi' 's han's in 's pooches, and his chin reposin' upo' the third button o' 's waistcoat—all which bears hard upo' ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... called him and some of them entertained serious doubts as to whether they had done wisely in choosing the less glorious paths of peace. And Arthur Agar settled down into the old profitless life, with this difference—that he could not dine out, that he used blackedged notepaper, and that his delicate heliotrope neckties were folded away in a drawer until such time as his grief should be assuaged into that state of ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... to beget are no children of flesh and blood, but more immortal children of undying fame. The whole cycle of the early sonnets is simply Shakespeare's invitation to Willie Hughes to go upon the stage and become a player. How barren and profitless a thing, he says, is this beauty of yours if it be ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... visible a still profounder and blacker abyss of crime than that disclosed by the evidence for the crown. Young as I then was in the profession, no marvel that I felt oppressed by the weight of the responsibility cast upon me; or that, when wearied with thinking, and dizzy with profitless conjecture, I threw myself into bed, perplexing images and shapes of guilt and terror pursued me through my troubled sleep! Happily the next day was not that of trial; for I awoke with a throbbing pulse and burning brain, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... up, plainly hesitating between dignified retreat and another profitless argument with Mary V. Another, because his acquaintance with her had been one long series of arguments, it seemed to him; and profitless, because Mary V simply would not be logical, or ever stick to one contention, ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... indolent impatience of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not the least talent for explaining this or anything unknown to them; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide unintelligible deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner. ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.'[32] The Radical version of the history is different. The great men, it said, who had left the cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming, shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... he curbed his tendency to profitless and hurtful "skylarking," he had far too much of the Berserker blood of his ancestors—those rough old vikings who "despised mail and helmet and went into battle unharnessed"—to become altogether gentle in manners or occupation. He hated his fair ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell's factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... known, and who, when this comes into your hands, will be beyond the reach of your knowledge. Perhaps I am the loser by this life-long mutual ignorance. Perhaps I am much to blame for it; perhaps not. But such reflections are profitless at this date: I have written with quite other views than to work up a sentimental regret on such an amazingly remote hypothesis as that the fact of a particular pair of people not meeting, among the millions of other pairs of people who have never met, is a great calamity ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the policy of Roman warfare was that the first step in subduing a rebellious province was to starve it. The vineyards had suffered the same end. The enriched soil of these inclosures, made one now with the wild at the leveling of their hedges, produced acres of profitless weeds, green against the rising brown bosom of the hill-fronts. Here and there were the fallen walls of isolated homes—wastes of masonry already losing all domestic signs. There were no gardens; it ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... latterly been constrained to make considerable concessions in name and semblance. But their great and various power will be strenuously exerted, for probably a long while yet, to render the acquisitions made by the people as nearly as possible profitless in their hands. And unhappily these predominant classes have to allege the mental and moral rudeness of the lower, in vindication of this determined policy of repression and frustration; thus turning the consequences of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity. But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Lance-Corporal Wilcox, followed by his section, successively captured or put out of action. Wilcox was shortly afterwards wounded and was in hospital in England when news of the award arrived. His deed lent lustre to a profitless attack. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... thoroughly stained with tar and grease that it was difficult to say what that original colour had been, but was therefore so much the better suited to the purpose of a disguise—a pair of equally faded dungaree trousers, and a knitted worsted cap. But his delay had not been profitless, for happening to find in the forecastle two of the crew of the Bangalore, who had been compelled to join the Francesca, and who, from their dejected appearance, he conjectured were not altogether ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... and moving the furniture about he made a careful survey of the flooring, seeking to find some panel that might conceal a hiding place. Once or twice in corners he went so far as to make soundings but apparently the whole floor was intact. His search in the bath room was equally profitless, and at last he turned to the clothes press. As he opened the door an exclamation of amazement burst ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... of mind and body. His wretchedness grew and increased daily till it burst all bounds and overwhelmed him utterly. Despair lay in wait for him at every turn. The mere flight of time became an intolerable burden. His regrets were less for the happy days gone by than for those that were passing all profitless for love. Those, at least, had left him a memory, these nothing but profoundest regret—nay, almost remorse. His life was preying upon itself, consumed in secret by the inextinguishable flame of one desire, by the unconquerable distaste to any other form of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... surface from the bottom of the holes they had been digging for months, and drawing them out of the drives and cross-cuts they had been developing for years, and making them stand with wide-open eyes gleaming in the sunlight, as they tried to reach back through the profitless years for the mislaid energy of youth. It travelled far and wide, wherever a man lived and toiled; and wherever it sounded, men's eyes grew bright, and hope came again to faces that had long since lost it, and to hearts that had long ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... not so much through his own or the exhaustion of the subject, as that his hearers should in turn be heard. But with this latter object his forbearance was profitless. There were those among them, indeed, who had their answers to his exhortations, but these were not of a character to promise boldly for their patriotism or courage. Their professions, indeed, were ample, but were confined ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... were unworthy The name of man, if an apology So gracious came off profitless, and from A lady! Will you take me, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... the air of one who was wearied by profitless discussion. "Fog or no fog, I only hope they come ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... despondency of intellect, frustrated in its highest aims, has seized him, and all he has before done is involved in failure by the defeat of the crowning effort. Failure, and irrecoverable, seems his whole ambition as writer; his whole existence in the fair Ideal seems to have been a profitless dream, and the face of the Ideal itself is obscured. And even Norreys frankly, though kindly, intimates that the life of a metropolis is essential to the healthful intuition of a writer in the intellectual wants of his age, since every great writer ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... profitless task to draw out a parallel of the crimes committed on both sides. Two facts only need be recorded: that although from 1798 to 1800, not less than sixty-five places of Catholic worship were demolished or burned in Leinster, (twenty-two of which ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Africa for some time to come: and even when the long task is finished, the conquered regions are not likely to be of great value. They include the desert of the Great Sahara and wide expanses of equally profitless scrub or marsh. Only one important river, the Shari, flows through them, and never reaches the sea: and even Lake Chad, into which the Shari flows, appears to be leaking through some subterranean exit, and is rapidly changing from a lake ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... daily avocations with no shadow of dread or sense of danger; the strings of pack-bullocks laden with all kinds of merchandise wended their dusty way to and from the several seaports as if no sword of Damocles was hanging over the doomed city; Sadasiva, the king, lived his profitless life in inglorious seclusion, and Rama Raya, king de facto, never for a moment relaxed his attitude of haughty indifference to the movements of his enemies. "He treated their ambassadors," says Firishtah, "with scornful language, and regarded their ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... at her own sweet will. We will not go to big folios to find out the big Latin names of the butterflies; but be sure, pet, they and you shall be better acquainted. And long before you have acquired that most profitless of all arts, the art of reading, we will go very deeply into ancient English literature. There is the story of the enterprising mouse, who, at one o'clock precisely, ran down the clock to the cabalistic tune of "Dickory, dickory, dock." There are the bold bowl-mariners of Gotham. There is "the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... bearing, these pleaded against the evidence for him. And yet was it conceivable that a man of spirit, a gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odium of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought this profitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind. Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in some snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... saw a bamboo pole, floating on the surface several hundred feet away, suddenly up-end and start a very devil's dance. This was a diversion from the profitless discussion, and Kohokumu and I dipped our paddles and raced the little outrigger canoe to the dancing pole. Kohokumu caught the line that was fast to the butt of the pole and under-handed it in until a two-foot ukikiki, battling fiercely to the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... as my ship comes in, Donna. Just at present it seems quite a long way off, although if nothing happens to upset a little scheme of mine, it will not be more than a year. Things are very uncertain right now." He smiled sheepishly as he thought of his profitless wanderings. "You know, Donna, I've been a rolling stone, and I ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "Profitless?" he repeated. "As to that I am not so certain, for if you have a mind to see the rarest animals in the world, you could there sate your curiosity. On the shore, between the foot-hills and the grove of upas, is ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... to compose the Conclave, made it a constant school of negotiation and intrigue for the best diplomacy in the world. By favour of the Habsburgs, the papacy obtained a fixed dominion, secure against all comers, requiring no military defence, no wasting and profitless expenditure, nothing to dissolve the mirage of an ideal government, under spiritual and converted men. The pontificates became steadily longer, averaging six years in the sixteenth century, eight in the seventeenth, twelve in the eighteenth, sixteen in the nineteenth, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... save others from the trouble of seeking an answer, and being disappointed at their profitless labours. If I may venture a guess at its author, I should be inclined to ascribe it to some idle schoolboy, or perhaps schoolmaster, who deserved to be whipped for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... borrowed unconsciously from his mother. She was never bitter nor resentful at their profitless tilt with fortune except as it ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is easily blown out, and then come smouldering and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round it. The one Reader's hand may shelter the flame; the one blessed ministering spirit with the vessel of oil may keep it bright in spite of the stream of cold water on ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray, Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain; And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis copied, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned the rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a profitless conversation. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... corner of the ample fire-place, and in a half dreamy state was reviewing the incidents of my early life, and like most men who, however young, have still to lament talents misapplied, opportunities neglected, profitless labour, and disastrous idleness. The dreary aspect of the large and ill-lighted room—the close-curtained boxes—the unsocial look of every thing and body about suited the habit of my soul, and I was on the verge of becoming excessively ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... smother the world in the end if we don't look out. Anything that can be argued, for and against, from half a dozen different points of view—and most things that men argue over can be—and anything that has been argued about for thousands of years (as most things have) is worse than profitless; it wastes the world's time and ours, and often wrecks old mateships. Seems to me the deeper you read, think, talk, or write about things that end in ism, the less satisfactory the result; the more likely you are to get bushed and dissatisfied with the world. And the more you keep on ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... of the precious metals by one half; and those imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the mines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the general value, the operation became more profitless still; and at length both Spain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money, which they had no means to pay—in other words, were bankrupt. And this is the true solution of the problem—why have the gold and silver mines of the Peninsula ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... it!" suggested Rufus Craig when he had set himself in the path of Ward Latisan, who was coming away from a last, and profitless, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... transportation—agriculture—commerce. And if that isn't better, nobler work than washing, ironing, getting your own meals, washing your own dishes, and doing the same old round of profitless chores day after day, and year after year, from the hour you are old enough to work, till the hour you are old enough to die—well, then, I'm wrong and Helen's right; and I ought to have married Wally—and not one of you women ought to ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... conception of sex as applied to plants, had not long emerged from the mists of profitless discussion and feeble experiment, at the time when my father began botany by attending Henslow's lectures ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... secretly admired—obtain release from the Tower, and ere three more years were past his head fell as a forfeit to the stern demands of Spain. And Prince Charles often declared that naught indeed could come from meddling with luck saving burnt fingers, "even," he said, "as came to me that profitless night when I sought a boon for snatching the lucky raisin from good Master Sandy's ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... concern him particularly was the absence of the Malay when the barkentine was weighing anchor and giving a line for a tow out to sea. The Malay was a valuable sailor; to replace him adequately was clearly so impossible a task that Freeman decided, after a profitless and delaying search of hours, to leave port without him or another in his place. It was with a heavy heart, somewhat lightened by a confident assumption that the amulet was safe in his possession, that Freeman headed down the ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... capable of design in the arts, only of imitation, and of exquisite manual execution, such as is unsurpassable by the work of any time or any country; manual execution, which, however, being wholly mechanical, is always profitless to the man himself, and profitless ultimately to those ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sickness. It is all, from first to last, a mere miserable groping and working in the dark. In the mean time her constitution and character are forming for life. It is enough to make one's heart ache to look at the poor baby, and think what an unsatisfactory, profitless, miserable life that may be. I need not remind you, Katy, that all this is a little piece of Freemasonry between ourselves. You are one of the exceptional and abnormal human people before whom one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... consequent upon his success. He came to California upon this pilgrimage two years ago. He had no recollection, so they tell me, by which he could recognize this erring son; and at first his search was wild, profitless, and almost hopeless. But by degrees, and with a persistency that seemed to increase with his hopelessness, he was rewarded by finding some ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... mother or by her virtuous, bigoted, amiable or cross-grained old aunt; a young girl, whose steps have never crossed the home threshold without being surrounded by chaperons, whose laborious childhood has been wearied by tasks, albeit they were profitless, to whom in short everything is a mystery, even the Seraphin puppet show, is one of those treasures which are met with, here and there in the world, like woodland flowers surrounded by brambles so thick that mortal eye cannot discern them. The man who owns a flower so sweet and pure ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... strange fascination enveloped the world in which Gerty lived, and the old familiar atmosphere through which she herself had moved so tranquilly was troubled suddenly as if by an approaching storm. The things which she had once loved now showed stale and profitless to her eyes, while those external objects of fortune, to which she had always believed herself to be indifferent, were endowed at the moment with an extraordinary and unreal value. It was as if her whole nature had undergone some powerful ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... D'Oro, and make all endeavors to convert the natives to the faith, and even, if they should not receive baptism, to make peace and alliance with them. This did not succeed. It is probable that the captains found negotiation of any kind exceedingly tame and apparently profitless in comparison with the pleasant forays made by their predecessors. The attempt, however, shows much intelligence and humanity on the part of those in power in Portugal. That the instructions were sincere is proved by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to the dismal disaster that overtook us at the very opening of the campaign I cannot say. Some ascribe it to the rashness of the Prince, who was certainly a very impetuous leader; but it is ill work buffeting the dead, and profitless also. And if his fiery temper did, indeed, bring about the mischance, he exerted himself as a gallant gentleman to ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... they attained to considerable power; but the custom of the sovereigns to divide their dominions among their sons, broke up their territory into a multitude of petty principalities. The result was a monotonous series of fierce contests, without any substantial result. In the midst of the bloody and profitless civil wars occurred the great invasion of the Mongols, who destroyed the principality of Kiev, and made that of Vladimir tributary. For two centuries the Russians continued under the yoke of the "Golden Horde," which the Mongols established on the Volga. They were obliged ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... stage was profitless and the day was perfect. Kendric told himself critically that he was growing fanciful; he had been cooped up too much. First on board the schooner New Moon, then in four walls of a house. What he needed was ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... in 1797, while the hangings, burnings and torturings which brought about the insurrection of the following year were in an early stage, the national debt of Ireland was under $20,000,000; three years later that debt amounted to over $130,000,000. It is profitless to pursue the subject further. We may close it by saying that hardly can we find in history a story more discreditable to our common humanity than the conduct of England towards Ireland during the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... himself sent over to this colony in order that he might stir up dissatisfaction among the people. To go over all the interminable squabbles which took place between Judge Willis, on the one hand, and the various judicial and official dignitaries on the other, would be alike wearisome and profitless. Judge Willis availed himself of every opportunity which presented itself for officially and publicly animadverting upon the conduct of those who were opposed to him. He added to his enormities by announcing, through the newspapers, that he was preparing for publication a work on Upper ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... lost in stormy visions, &c. We, the so-called living, are in fact merely beset by a series of stormy visions which constitute life; all our efforts are expended upon mere phantoms, and are therefore profitless; our mental conflict is an act of trance, exercised upon mere nothings. The very energetic expression, 'strike with our spirit's knife invulnerable nothings,' is worthy of remark. It will be remembered that, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... webs, elaborate toil and creeping contrivance, and what comes of it all! The flimsy foul thing is swept away by God's besom sooner or later. A web indeed! but they will never make a garment out of it. It looks like cloth, but it is useless.' That is the old lesson that all sin is profitless and comes to nothing. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren |
