"Briefless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... You must have principles forsooth! and you must marry Miss Gorgon, of course: and by the time you have gone ten circuits, and had six children, you will have eaten up every shilling of your wife's fortune, and be as briefless as you are now. Who the deuce has put all this nonsense into your head? I think ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mentioned also by Priestley (Auto. ed. 1810, p.66) as one of his chief benefactors. Lord Eldon, when almost a briefless barrister, consulted him. 'I put my hand into my pocket, meaning to give him his fee; but he stopped me, saying, "Are you the young gentleman who gained the prize for the essay at Oxford?" I said I was. "I will take no fee from you." I often consulted him; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... a barrister, almost a briefless one at present, for his habits were desultory, not to say idle, and he had not taken very kindly to the slow drudgery of the Bar. He had some money of his own, and added to his income by writing for the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... altogether hopeless. No man is idle here longer than he can help it, unless he have the wherewithal to look to; and there are fifty modes of gaining bread here, if a man will turn to them? What could a briefless barrister do better than throw himself upon the law? I smelled out the attorneys to begin with. The first with whom I came in contact was one Mr ——, from a northern county in England. He had been here only three years, and was already rattling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... must be paid for Punch The Musquito Bryant To the Lady in the Chemisette with Black Buttons Willis Come out, Love Willis The White Chip Hat Willis You know if it was you Willis The Declaration Willis Love in a Cottage Willis To Helen in a Huff Willis The Height of the Ridiculous O. W. Holmes The Briefless Barrister J. G. Saxe Sonnet to a Clam J. G. Saxe Venus of the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... pony halts? that's what's the matter? You are afraid of encountering some of the great guns of the law, are you? Don't be alarmed. The schoolmistress is too poor to pay for distinguished legal talent. She may get some briefless pettifogger to appear for her; a man set up for you to knock down. Your case is just what the first case of a young lawyer should be—plain sailing, law distinctly on your side, dash of sentiment, domestic affections, and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... acquaintance. His talk was clever. He turned out to be the son of a politician high in office in the Canadian Government, and he had been educated at Oxford. The father, I gathered, was rich, but he himself was making an income of nothing a year just then as a briefless barrister, and he was hesitating whether to accept a post of secretary that had been offered him in the colony, or to continue his negative career at the Inner Temple, for the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fanatical than your Borrovian. Charles Lamb is almost the only author we can think of (out of Scotland) who is worshipped by his admirers with quite the same canine sort of affection. But the cult of Lamb is restricted largely to briefless Templars, to University men and "Oxford M.A.'s"; the Borrovian is drawn from a lower social stratum, from printers, librarians, booksellers, and others who seldom read books, from indexers, dictionary makers, and such harmless drudges of literature. To men of such ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... but what is far more certain is that your fashionable friends—whose positions and occupations you admire—would care nothing more about you. You are interesting to them now because you are a favorite of the public, because you play the chief part at the New Theatre. What would you be as a briefless barrister? Who would provide you with salmon-fishing and deer-stalking then? If you aspired to marry one of those dames of high degree, what would be your claims and qualifications? You say you would almost ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... like a fatherland, never loses its influence over its children. He who has lived in the Temple will return to the Temple. All things are surrendered for the Temple. All distances are traversed to reach the Temple. The Temple is never forgotten. The briefless barrister, who left in despair and became Attorney-General of New South Wales, grows homesick, surrenders his position, and returns. The young squire wearies in his beautiful country house, and his heart is fixed in the dingy chambers, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... at the Zoological Gardens, and do you grudge him his jewelled coronet and the azure splendor of his waistcoat? I like my Lord Mayor to have a gilt coach; my magnificent monarch to be surrounded by magnificent nobles: I huzzay respectfully when they pass in procession. It is good for Mr. Briefless (50, Pump Court, fourth floor) that there should be a Lord Chancellor, with a gold robe and fifteen thousand a year. It is good for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at Fulham and Lambeth: ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it has trees—those of the Foundling Hospital and those of Gray's Inn—at either end, and all about it cluster memories of the Bedford Row conspiracy, and of that immortal dinner which was given by the Briefless One and his timid partner to Mr. Goldmore, and of Sydney Smith's sojourn in Doughty Street, and of divers other pleasant things. In connection, however, with Praed himself, we do not hear much more of John Street. It was soon exchanged for the more cheerful locality of Teignmouth, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... donned a wig and gown during the following session, and the delicate face that was so grave and refined looked very picturesque with the luminous eyes gleaming out from under the grey horse-hair. He joined the ranks of those 'Briefless Barristers' whose business it is to walk the hall of the Parliament House in search of clients. He had either one or two briefs, but he gave them away as he never acted as an advocate. His mother treasured the shillings he got for them among ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... briefless young lawyers, his unsuccessful rivals at the bar, credited it to the "loud" advertisement afforded by his handsome office and the general appearance of wealth and ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... contentment and success. Many men and women, in the temporary bitterness of some disappointment, have hastily made marriages which will embitter all their future life,—or which at least make it certain that in this world they will never know a joyous heart any more. Men have died as almost briefless barristers, toiling into old age in heartless wrangling, who had their chance of high places on the bench, but ambitiously resolved to wait for something higher, and so missed the tide. Men in the church ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Englishman," replied Hammond; "a briefless barrister, [Endnote: 5] in fact, of Lincoln's Inn, who, having little or nothing to detain him at home, has come to spend a few idle months in seeing the new republic which has been made ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... any, they have not had sufficient method to succeed in any. They have been trained perhaps for the bar, but wanted assiduity to master the dry details of the law, and patience to sustain them throughout a long round of briefless circuits. They have devoted themselves to the study of physic, and recoiled from or broken down under examination; or wanted the hopeful sanguine temperament which enables a man to content himself with small beginnings, and to make his way by a gradually widening circle to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... had to assume the costume of that order of workers whom a persistent popular joke nicknames the "Devil's Own:"—that is, he had to put on gown and wig and go off to the courts, where he was envied of all the briefless as a man who for his age had a great deal to do. He "devilled" for Mr. Asstewt, the great Chancery man, which was the most excellent beginning: and he was getting into a little practice of his own which was not to be sneezed at. But he did not find himself ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... consented to her marriage with Joseph Blondet upon one condition—the penniless and briefless barrister must be an assistant judge. So, with the desire of fitting his son to fill the position, old M. Blondet racked his brains to hammer the law into his son's head by dint of lessons, so as to make a cut-and-dried lawyer of him. As for Blondet junior, he spent almost every evening at the Blandureaus' ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Willey, who were partners, and Judge Starkweather, who still survives. Considering the limited business of the place, which scarcely numbered five hundred inhabitants, the profession was evidently overstocked then, as it has been ever since. Briefless lawyers had, however, a wide field to cultivate outside this county, embracing at least all the counties of the Reserve; with horse and saddle-bags, they followed the Court in its travels, judges and attorneys splashing through the mud on terms ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Egmont before an office which was yet unvisited by clients. It was true love on both sides, they said, with sympathy; they had been boy and girl together, and during her long stay in the East at school she had never forgotten him. But Mr. Anderson would have none of the briefless youth; his prosperity had fed his pride—a lawyer without a case was not a fit match for his daughter. "If you were famous, if it were common talk that some day you might be governor or United States senator, I might consent, but, sir, you have done nothing," he had ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... what's the matter?" said a briefless one, starting up: this was Mr. Sharp, a personage on former occasions distinguished highly as a thieves' advocate, but now, unfortunately, out of work. "Loosen his cravat, some one there; the gentleman is ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a shade the glowing lustre of Mr. Froude's encomiums. Facts, authentic and notorious, might be adduced in hundreds, especially with respect to [85] the Port of Spain and San Fernando magistracies (both of which, since the administration of Sir J. R. Longden, have been exclusively the prizes of briefless English barristers*), to prove that these gentry, far from being bulwarks to the weaker as against the stronger, have, in their own persons, been the direst scourges that the poor, particularly when coloured, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... wants of every man whose services they are likely to need, and to attack him, if his surrender should be essential to their victory, at his weakest point. Men with political ambition are encouraged to aspire to preferment and are assured of corporate support to bring it about. Briefless lawyers are promised corporate business or salaried attorneyships. Those in financial straits are accommodated with loans. Vain men are flattered and given newspaper notoriety. Others are given passes ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... and the companion stories, there is probably some good cause for the distinction. The apparent injustice to books resembles what we often see in the case of men. A. B. becomes Lord Chancellor, whilst C. D. remains for years a briefless barrister; and yet for the life of us we cannot tell but that C. D. is the abler man of the two. Perhaps he was wanting in some one of the less conspicuous elements that are essential to a successful career; he said, 'Open, wheat!' instead of 'Open, sesame!' and the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... be a great parliamentary counsel on the ground floor, who drives off to Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some garret of the Inn; lived by stealthy literature; hoped, and waited, and sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends' kindness; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the patience of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these directors of public opinion as they were three months earlier: Desmoulins, a briefless barrister, living in furnished lodgings with petty debts, and on a few louis extracted from his relations. Loustalot, still more unknown, was admitted the previous year to the Parliament of Bordeaux, and has landed at Paris in search of a career. Danton, another second-rate lawyer, coming out of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... among others of less importance, and from them only I quote. In 1802, when Tory rule was strongest and Lord Eldon flourished, there was living in Edinburgh a group of young men who were for the most part briefless barristers. Their case was worse because they were Whigs. Few cases came their way and no offices. These young men were Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, and there was also Sydney Smith who had just come to Edinburgh ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... said Somerville the Briefless. "He's been cracking his jokes, and some silly woman has ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome |
