"Futile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would be destroyed without any sort of indemnity or reparation. Again he referred to his revoking General Hunter's proclamation of military abolition, with the hope that he might possibly win them over to his plan, but his effort was futile. Most of them replied with a qualified refusal; twenty of them later presented a written reply, pledging themselves to continue loyal, but at the same time giving the reasons why they could not accept the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the barracks, drove with Mr. Vavasour to the Rink, expecting to find both girls there: but speculating rather the most on the chance of having a more unrestrained conversation with Bluebell than he cared for under the eyes of her responsible guardians. His projects also were to prove futile, for that young person was speeding over the frozen tract on the common at the time. The snow was as dry and hard as powdered sugar, and her cloud was stiff with her frozen breath; her ears felt as though she had thrust them into a holly-bush, and the razor-like wind in that unsheltered ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... I give you my word, I didn't. If I'd known it, I'd surely have come in sooner. There, forgive me. I'm particularly light-headed and futile to-day, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... it leap from peak to peak Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 60 Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; It lights the poet's heart up like a star; Ah! while the tyrant deemed it still afar, And twined with golden threads his futile snare. That swift, convicting glow all round him ran; 'Twas close beside him there, Sunrise whose Memnon is the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... promises. Full with the sound of it, the smell of it, the deliciousness of it. Such sweet air; soft and strong, like the touch of a brave woman's hand. The air of an early March day in New Orleans. It was folly to shut it out from nook or cranny. Worse than folly the lady thought who was making futile endeavors to open the car window near which she sat. Her face had grown pink with the effort. She had bit firmly into her red nether lip, making it all the redder; and then sat down from the unaccomplished feat to look ruefully at the smirched finger tips ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... all this espionage do the Germans," said the young man. "We are easily holding our own, and with the spring will probably come our opportunity." He clicked his teeth together. "What price then all these suspected plots and futile intrigues?" ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... write somehow, Anne. It seemed so futile to try to say anything with pen and ink. And I wanted to ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 motives and practical bearings ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Trumpington walk taken by two undergraduates of the "Soler Hall" at Cambridge. Equally baseless is the supposition of one of Chaucer's earliest biographers, that he completed his academical studies at Paris—and equally futile the concomitant fiction that in France "he acquired much applause by his literary exercises." Finally, we have the tradition that he was a member of the Inner Temple—which is a conclusion deduced from a piece of genial scandal as to a record having ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... can not make it spring up and blossom, and bear fruit in perfection. Neither can man work out events after a plan of his own. He is made, in the grand drama of this world, to work out the designs of the Almighty. We must accept this or accept nothing. In this light how futile are the intemperate ravings of one class, the unreasonable complaints of another, the cunning plots of a third. We see no escape from a threatening danger, we perceive no path out of a labyrinthine maze of evil; when, lo! through ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that he protests against the publication or any circulation of it, in its present shape, and must point out to you that it may, if circulated, entail a serious legal responsibility." To this strangely impolitic and utterly futile attempt to intimidate me in the defence of my own reputation, I chose to offer not the slightest resistance. The protest only facilitated that defence. How could a libeller more conspicuously put himself in the wrong, or more effectually ruin his own evil cause in all eyes, than by ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... now; now that her love and her reason had both returned, each more vivid than before! Futile, indeed, might be Margrave's boasted secret; but at least in that secret was hope. In recognized science ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... move not best after those words the Queen spoke to you last night," she answered simply. "Besides, our best efforts at escape would be futile should she suspect you have not perished where she entombed you. I am safe here, for the present at least, while you can accomplish much more for all of us if she believes you dead and takes no precautions to ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... was accompanied by a regular interpreter, the chiefs made their salutations in a manner that dispensed with his services. Twenty times the Captain turned his glance on his former friend, endeavouring to read the expression of his rigid features. But every effort and all conjectures proved equally futile. The eye of Hard-Heart was fixed, composed, and a little anxious; but as to every other emotion, impenetrable. He neither spoke himself, nor seemed willing to invite discourse in his visiters; it was therefore necessary for Middleton to adopt the patient ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... knowing why, without having ever asked themselves whether they are fitted for historical work, of the true nature of which they are often ignorant. Generally their motives for choosing an historical career are of the most futile character. One has been successful in history at college;[20] another feels himself drawn towards the past by the same kind of romantic attraction which, we are told, determined the vocation of Augustin Thierry; some are misled by the fancy that history ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... He had no male audience to-day except Mr. Moss, who knew nothing, as he said, of the "natur' o' mills," and could only assent to Mr. Tulliver's arguments on the a priori ground of family relationship and monetary obligation; but Mr. Tulliver did not talk with the futile intention of convincing his audience, he talked to relieve himself; while good Mr. Moss made strong efforts to keep his eyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness which an unusually good dinner produced in his hard-worked frame. Mrs. Moss, more alive to the subject, and interested ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... I must know it," said Lord Colambre: "I cannot be better prepared at any moment than the present; never more disposed to give my assistance to relieve all difficulties. Blindfold, I cannot be led to any purpose, sir," said he, looking at Sir Terence: "the attempt would be degrading and futile. Blindfolded I will not be—but, with my eyes open, I will see, and go straight and prompt as heart can go, to my father's interest, without a look or thought to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... heard of him, and there were not wanting many who were anxious to put his soul under the scalpel, in the interests of Science. Mrs. Abel was the channel through which they usually attempted to act. But she knew very well that the thing was futile, not to say dangerous. For some of the instincts of the wild animal had survived in Snarley, of which perhaps the most marked was his refusal to submit to the scrutiny of human eyes. To study him was almost as difficult as to study the tiger in the jungle. At the faintest sound of inquisitive ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... be ingloriously crowned at St. John Lateran. With diminished strength and with loss of influence he withdrew to Tuscany, and laid ineffectual siege to Florence. Month after month dragged along with miserable continuance of futile war. In the summer of 1313, collecting all his forces, Henry prepared to move southward against the King of Naples. But he was seized with illness, and on the 24th of August he died at Buonconvento, not far from Siena. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... He therefore resigned his seat in the Legislature—the fact that a majority in both houses was opposed to the Nebraska Bill allowing him to do so without injury to his party—and became a candidate for the Senate. But the act was futile. When the Legislature met, in February, 1855, to make choice of a Senator, a clique of anti-Nebraska Democrats held out so firmly against the nomination of Lincoln that there was danger of the Whigs leaving ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... with equally industrious and provident fathers and uncles, and it is often bad for the man who gets the income as a reward for no effort of his own, because it gives him a false start in life and sometimes tends to make him a futile waster, who can only justify his existence and his command over other people's work, by pointing to the efforts of his deceased sire or uncle. Further, unless he is very lucky, he is likely to grow up with the notion that, just because he has been ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... examination—except one again. And that one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes transfixed upon some vision of horror—as if he knew, Martin said to himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... gift? or from your flowing wealth Give solace to my desolate penury? Or with your pitying influence neutralize My cup of scorn poured out by abject hands? That thus ye mock me with contemptuous words And futile arguments, and dig a pit In which to whelm the man you call a friend? Still darkly hinting at some heinous sin Mysteriously concealed? Writes conscious guilt No transcript on the brow? Hangs it not out Its signal there, altho' it seem to hide 'Neath an impervious shroud? Look thro' the ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... introspectionist and oscillates in his mind from yea to nay on every question. Such as this type develop ideas of compensation and power and become cranks and fake prophets. Or else, and this we shall see again, they become imbued with a sense of inferiority, feel futile as against the red-blooded and shrink from ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... abilities, my performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... empty days! Furious card-playing, gourmandising, drinking, endless conversations about the same things, futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the day and all the best of a man's forces, leaving only a stunted, wingless life, just rubbish; and to go away and escape was impossible—one might as well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... the fluid peculiar to them, the copulative organ remains paralyzed. This is the impotence which is brought on by old age, and which Ariosto has so forcibly described in the following lines, wherein he relates the futile attempts made upon ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... would be futile to attempt to return to camp before daybreak. He judged that Kiddie would understand his absence and not worry unduly. So he ate what food he had brought in his haversack, and, regardless of the driving rain, curled himself ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... an abortive attempt at a rising was made by the partisans of the exiled Obrenovich family, a troop of whom, disguised as Austrian hussars, entered Shabatz, and shot the good collector dead as he issued from his house to enquire the cause of the disturbance. The attempt, however, was futile, and the whole party ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... universe studded with shining orbs, without number numberless, what can I make of them? Nothing absolutely nothing—yet they are all creatures like myself. But—if I try—audaciously try—to strain my finite faculties, in the futile attempt to take in what is infinite—if I aspiringly, but hopelessly, grapple with the idea of the immensity of space, for instance, which my reason yet tells me must of necessity be boundless—do I not fall fluttering to the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... not attempt to delude herself with any vain and futile hopes; the safety of her brother Armand was to have been conditional on the imminent capture of the Scarlet Pimpernel. As Chauvelin had sent her back Armand's compromising letter, there was no doubt that he was quite satisfied ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and tell the commander in blue that her mother did not wish his men to use the barn at all, but she paused when she heard him speak to the sergeant. She thought she perceived then that it mattered little to him what her mother wished, and that an objection by her or by anybody would be futile. She saw the soldiers conduct the prisoner in gray into the barn, and for a long time she watched the three chatting guards and the pondering sentry. Upon her mind in desolate weight was the recollection of the three men in the ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... baling out the water had proved futile—as there was more coming in than it was possible to fling out—the people in resignation barricaded their doors and windows. Not a soul was to be seen or heard anywhere. The place was absolutely dead. Even after the storm was over no sign of life could be noticed. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... supernatural Revelation—spiritual though it be—can be recognized or believed in apart from an acknowledgment of attendant miracles, wrought in physical nature by an intervention of God. Such a contention, however, is as futile and desperate as was John Wesley's declaration, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." Such mischievous fallacies succeed only in blinding many a mind to the real issue ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... After exhaustive but futile argument by the counsel for Dodge, Judge Burns remanded the prisoner to Herlihy's custody to be returned to the State of New York, but this decision had no sooner been rendered than an appeal was taken therefrom by Dodge's lawyers, and the prisoner ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance—which he afterward, in so many futile methods, followed out—by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... the squall passed over, and the boat was again presented to his sight; she was still in the centre of the stream, about three hundred yards from the shore. The man who was in her, finding all his attempts futile, had lain on his oar, and was kneeling in the sternsheets, apparently in supplication. Newton could not resist the appeal; it appeared to point out to him that he was summoned to answer the call made upon Providence. The boat was now a quarter of a mile further down the river ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was futile; denial was dangerous; a confession forced by an appeal to New York would discredit her motives; she had not formally severed her connection with the agency. She determined to meet this man of the woods on his ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... till at last we were deposited in Chambers Street, not in a station, or even under cover, be it observed. My baggage, or "plunder" as it is termed, had been previously disposed of, but, while waiting with my head disagreeably near to a horse's nose, I saw people making distracted attempts, and futile ones as it appeared, to preserve their effects from the clutches of numerous porters, many of them probably thieves. To judge from appearances, many people would mourn the loss of their portmanteaus ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... their heels and sang whining peasant songs; and in the corridor, so jammed that it was impossible to pass, violent political debates raged all night long. Occasionally the conductor came through, as a matter of habit, looking for tickets. He found very few except ours, and after a half-hour of futile wrangling, lifted his arms despairingly and withdrew. The atmosphere was stifling, full of smoke and foul odours; if it hadn't been for the broken windows we would doubtless ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... to her child, but she is fighting a hopeless fight as I previously explained when I stated that one-half of the total effort of one-third of the race, is expended in combating conditions against which no successful effort is possible. Even her prayers are futile, because the wrong is implanted in the constitution of the child and the remedy is beyond her power to find. These are the tragedies of life, which no words may adequately describe, and compared to which the incidental troubles of the world at large ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... thrill of horror he realized that they were talking about him. They were discussing his fate as calmly and callously as if he had been a steer with a broken leg. A feeble protest trembled on his lips, but was choked back unuttered. He knew how futile any protest would be ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... friend being something too small to be seen at all from where the Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made several futile attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr Dombey perceiving, relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking Paul up in his arms, and sitting him on another little table, over against the Doctor, in the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... but the spirit of adventure lured them into teasing him. They joined hands before him, and, keeping time with their bodies, chanted in his face weird and uncomplimentary doggerel. At first he snarled curses at them—curses he had learned from the lips of various foremen. Finding this futile, and remembering his dignity, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... left the bureau and wandered about in a daze. That monster of ingratitude! That arch-adventuress, more vicious even than her bejewelled sister! All the long months of more than Lenten rigour recurred to her self-pitiful mood, that futile half-year of semi-starvation. How Madame Valiere must have gorged on the sly, the rich eccentric! She crossed a bridge to the Ile de la Cite, and came to the gargoyled portals of Notre Dame, and let herself ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... king to destroy Greece, and realized also that the most vital point in the coming conflict would be the control of the sea. Accordingly he urged upon the Athenians the necessity of building a powerful fleet. In this policy he was aided by one of those futile wars so characteristic of Greek history, a war between Athens and the island of AEgina. In order to overcome the AEginetans, who had a large fleet, the Athenians were compelled to build a larger one, and by the time this purpose was accomplished rumors came that the Persian king was getting ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... discern their true interpretation. As has been already said, he attributed to the king and his party a deliberateness of system which probably had no real existence in their minds. The king intended to reassert the old right of choosing his own ministers. George II. had made strenuous but futile endeavours to the same end. His son, the father of George III., Frederick, Prince of Wales, as every reader of Dodington's Diary will remember, was equally bent on throwing off the yoke of the great Whig combinations, and making ...
— Burke • John Morley
... temperance, courage, chastity, obedience to parents and magistrates, reverence for the oath and the law, in fact, the practice of every form of patriotism. During the last century of the republic the pontiff Scaevola, one of the foremost men of his time, rejected as futile the divinities of fable and poetry, as superfluous or obnoxious those of the philosophers and the exegetists, {36} and reserved all his favors for those of the statesmen, as the only ones fit for the people.[18] These were the ones protecting the old customs, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... the thin red line of the army, all melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrush of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the jackal and the python come again into ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... mechanically. I do not know how that may be; but the mechanism employed is something very different from any that the author of Rasselas was in the habit of bringing to bear on such occasions. There is nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than this mode of criticising a work of original genius. Its greatest merit is supposed to be in the invention; and you say, very wisely, that it is not in the execution. You might as well take ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... my dear," said Constance, gravely, "makes a futile attempt semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the illusion vanishes. These, bending inward from a flaring base, straighten and become nearly perpendicular as they rise. Now, one may fancy it the stump of a tree more than a hundred feet in diameter whose top imagination sees piercing the low clouds. But close by, all similes become futile; then the Devil's Tower can be likened ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... it argued some divine compensation somewhere that a thing so destitute should remain unaware of its destitution, that a creature so futile and diminutive should be sustained by this conviction of his greatness. For he was certain. Nothing could annihilate the illusion by which Nicky lived. But it was enough to destroy all certainty in anybody else, and there were moments when the presence of Nicky had this shattering ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... over-flowing with love towards my fellow-men. Industrial strife must cease. Strikes are a barbarous and futile method of redressing wrong. Rather think that an increase in wages of two shillings a day would appeal to our members. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... not be expected to look quietly on without any attempt at intervention. This was, in the truest sense, the announcement of a policy of peace, for it frankly made known to the despotic rulers of the Old World what their risk must be if they ventured on the futile experiment of setting up despotic states on the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in futile circles, hoping to regain the road, but all to no avail. Fear of the night fell upon him. He was wet to the skin and chilled to the bone. He shivered with cold and with fright. Dropping from his horse he pulled from ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... the tranquil young man in the arm-chair by the empty hearth. In the first place, Mr. Taylor was genuinely impressed by what he had read of Lucian's work; he had so long been accustomed to look upon all effort as futile that success amazed him. In the abstract, of course, he was prepared to admit that some people did write well and got published and made money, just as other persons successfully backed an outsider at heavy odds; but it had seemed ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the oppressed, were only with the better classes another mode of amusing a weary social life. But she soon made out a generous theory to satisfy herself on that point. Soame Rivers, she felt sure, put on that panoply of cynicism only to guard himself against the weakness of yielding to a futile sensibility. He was very poor, she thought. She had lordly views about money, and she thought a man without a country house of his own must needs be wretchedly poor, and she knew that Soame Rivers passed all his holiday seasons in the country ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... attempted to do in direct opposition to Martian custom which says that you may not fight a fellow warrior in private combat with any other than the weapon with which you are attacked. In fact he could do nothing but make a wild and futile attempt to dislodge me. With all his immense bulk he was little if any stronger than I, and it was but the matter of a moment or two before he sank, bleeding and lifeless, to ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... God, that one desires a good and meritorious thing and with perfect regularity; it is less meritorious to desire death with the sole view of escaping the ills and troubles of life; it would even be difficult to convict one of mortal offending if he desired death for a slight and futile reason, if there be due respect for the will of God. The sin of such desires consists in rebellion against the divine Will and opposition to the providence of God; in such cases the sin is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... "Which is better, to have wisdom, or success with the ladies?" "Which is better, to win a lady by skill or by boldness?" "Which are greater, the joys or the sorrows of love?" "Which brings the greater renown, Yes or No?" "Can true love exist between married persons?" Futile and ridiculous as all this may seem to us to-day, the very fact that women were here put upon the same footing as the men, even upon a superior footing, as great deference was shown them by their knightly ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the highest form of crystal and the lowest form of organic life known, viz., a simple reproductive cell, are so manifold and striking, that the attempt to make crystals the bridge over which inorganic matter passes into organic, is almost totally regarded as futile. In a layer of an onion, a fig, a section of garden rhubarb, in some species of aloe, in the bark of many trees, and in portions of the cuticle of the medicinal squill, bundles of these needle-shaped ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the sea pirate was exhausting his strength in his futile struggles. His long career of cruelty and rapine was rapidly coming ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... speculation, as it was then clearly seen that unless the actual constitution of the countries situate on the banks of the Quorra, could be placed under a different authority, and the people brought to a state of positive submission, it were futile to expect any solid or permanent advantages from any commercial relations they might form. The insalubrity of the climate, so very injurious to a European constitution, was also a great drawback to the prosecution of those commercial advantages, which ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... His sensitive soul found, nevertheless, a strange charm and beauty in the scene. There was space here, even as in the mountains. Yet this calm was not of strength, he felt vaguely, like that he had known, but the tranquillity of nature in another, a weaker, less-wholesome mood, apathetic, futile. The thickly dotting cypresses and junipers, bedecked with streaming draperies of Spanish moss, touched the vistas with a funereal aspect. The languid movement of the festoons under the breeze was like the sighings of desolation made visible. The dense tangle of the undergrowth stretched ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... his torch on a ledge of rock, tying the spring down by a piece of cord so that the light would focus on the big bowlder. Then, with their pocket-knives as chisels, and stones as mallets, they began their futile attempts to cut away the ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... yielded, and their leader himself counselled no resistance, why should they encompass their own destruction by a gesture of futile heroism? They answered without much hesitation that they would do as ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... resisted. For example: In order to correct the evils resulting from the undue competition for land among the tenants, they limit the amount per acre which the outgoing tenant is permitted to receive; but the limitation is futile, because the tenants understand one another, and do what they believe to be right behind the landlord's back. The market price is, say, 20 l. an acre. The landlord allows 10 l.; the balance finds its way secretly into the pocket of the outgoing tenant before he gives up possession. As ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... how futile this was. As a matter of fact, the shells were passing high over them and exploding even back of the line of cannon. For the Germans did not yet have the range, some of the Allies' guns having been moved ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... him out. Half-way to the foot of steep stairs that he could dimly outline he halted, for advance against hidden pistol-fire and dazzling light was futile. ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... for a school proving futile, I pushed on to the town of Farmington, where the Dakota branch of the Milwaukee railroad crossed my line of march. Here I felt to its full the compelling power of the swift stream of immigration surging to the west. The little village had ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping Wildeve withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. Half-way down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the general darkness ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... in which the agonized Louise is compelled to write the compromising letter is one of the most effective in the piece; and yet how futile and absurd the whole intrigue would be if the conspirators were not able to count upon her being a goose! One cannot blame her, of course, for doing that which appears to be necessary in order to save her father's life. One may pardon to her distress the solemn oath that she will acknowledge ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... to trace with a briefer touch our intensely odd successions. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feeble flicker of my plea. Did she know and if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she would have nothing ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... presidential reception on the following evening would be of special dignity and splendour, and it was thought the part of duty by all who were of consequence in Richmond to attend and make a brave show before the world. Mr. Davis, at the futile peace conference in the preceding July, had sought to impress upon the Northern delegates the superior position of the South. "It was true," he said, "that Sherman was before Atlanta, but what matter if he took it? the world must ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... clear of all those court and political intrigues with which Emperor William was surrounded, as if with a very network, prior to his accession to the throne; intrigues, I may add, which since William became emperor, have been devoted to many a futile endeavor designed to create mischief between the two brothers. It is probable that they will have less effect than ever from henceforth, since William, now that his eldest boy has attained his majority, will have no longer any reason to apprehend the possibility of Henry's undoing, in the capacity ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... appear to take a humorous view of the futile attempts of small ones to accomplish some feat beyond their strength or stature. A friend of mine once possessed a very large animal of a cross between the Mount St. Bernard dog and the English mastiff, and as remarkable for his good-nature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... their sailorly and soldierly way tokens of profound sorrow. Everything that could had been done to cause their captive to be regarded as a menace to human safety, and to be forgotten altogether; but how futile to attempt such a task while the world of civilisation is swayed by human instinct and not ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... impress him as a victory that Bell had been depending upon an utterly futile threat for safety. It restored ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... so very much better than these as might be wished, are our efforts to translate Homer. From Chapman to Avia, or Mr. William Morris, they are all eminently conscientious, and erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope makes him a wit, spirited, occasionally noble, full of points, and epigrams, and queer rococo conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, lumbering, a ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... energies to make their lot more endurable. His father's wiser and more experienced judgment had decided that the better course was to serve his people as mediator between them and the Arabs rather than to attempt futile resistance at the head of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... censured by Nelson. The peasantry and the lower orders of the city took up arms, under the guidance of their priests, and for some time sought, with rude but undisciplined fury, to oppose the advance of the enemy; but such untrained resistance was futile before the veterans of France, and on the 23d of January, 1799, Championnet's troops entered the city. This was followed by the establishment of the Parthenopeian Republic, a name which reflected the prevailing French affectation of antiquity. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... been lifted from Beauregard's eyes when he began that bombardment! If he could but have seen the riches become poverty, cities become a waste, happy homes a desolation, the Southern hillsides covered with graves, the Southern plantations grown up with weeds, and the whole secession movement futile, what a vision would ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... this promise William Rufus was crowned, and likewise Henry I., who even distributed copies of the charter to be kept in the archives of all the chief abbeys, but afterward caused them, it seems, to be privately destroyed. Stephen made the same futile promise, failing perhaps, more from inability than from design; and after his death the nation was so glad of repose on any terms, that there were no special stipulations made on the accession of Henry II. He and his Grand Justiciary, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... its endeavours to pass itself off as that wonder figure which, radiant of brow and humorous of mouth, deep of breast and profound of thought, stands motionless in high and by-ways with hands outstretched to those futile figures, blindly hurrying past the Love they fondly imagine is to be found in the front row of the chorus, the last row of the cinema, or the unrestrained licence ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the man in regard to whom she had promised herself that her feeling should henceforth be one of simple and purest friendship. She had made a great effort to carry out that intention, but the effort had been futile. She had striven to do her duty to a husband whom she disliked,—but even in that she had failed. At one time she had been persistent in her intercourse with Phineas Finn, and at another had resolved that she would not see him. She had been madly angry with him when he came to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... characterization, but a review, of Mr. Mill's powerful work, we should venture to take issue on some matters both general and special,—as an example of the latter, on the possible utility of protective duties. The reasoning by which he, in common with his class, proves these to be necessarily futile for good, is indeed faultless so far as it goes, but, in our clear judgment, fails to cover the whole case; so that the question, whether as one of general polity or of industrial economy, is still open to consideration. Especially it may be urged, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... what I mightn't do to him—and yet it's not of my temptation to violence, after all, that I'm most afraid. It's of the brutal mistake of one's breaking—with one's priggish, precious modernity and one's possibly futile discriminations—into a general situation or composition, as we say, so serene and sound and right. What should one do here, out of respect for that felicity, but hold one's breath and walk on tip-toe? The very celebrations and consecrations, as you tell me, ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... cause by entirely inappropriate arguments. They do not know the real good that can be said for the good cause, nor the real good that can be said for the bad one. They are represented by the animated, learned, eloquent, ingenious, and entirely futile and impertinent arguments of Juris Doctor Bottinius and Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis. These two men brilliantly misrepresent, not merely each other's cause, but their own cause. The introduction of them ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... people He will search for it in vain. By the writers of many books He shall find Himself scorned and rejected,— in the cheap and spurious philosophy of modern egotists He will see His doctrines mocked at and denounced as futile. Few men there are in these days who would deny themselves for His sake, or sacrifice a personal passion for the purer honouring of His name. Inasmuch as the pride of great learning breeds arrogance, so the more the wonder of God's work is displayed to us, the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... bibliophiles as warm and enthusiastic in book collecting as the Doctor himself. But I must here crave the patience of the reader, and ask him to refrain from denouncing what he may deem a rash and futile attempt, till he has perused the volume and thought well upon the many facts contained therein. I am aware that many of these facts are known to all, but some, I believe, are familiar only to the antiquary—the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... honest young eyes as well as I could. How was I going to convey to his candid intelligence the fact of my speedy withdrawal from political life without shattering his illusions? Besides, his devotion touched me, and his generous aspirations were so futile. Office! It was in my grasp. Raggles, with his finger always on the pulse of the party machine, was the last man in the world to talk nonsense. I only had to "buck up." Yet by the time Sanderson sends in his resignation to the King of ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... companions, or mercenary soldiers, who, when war and plunder failed them, lived by violence and robbery of the peasants. Charles VII., who had awakened into vigour, thereupon took into regular pay all who would submit to discipline, and the rest were led off on two futile expeditions into Switzerland and Germany, and there left to their fate. The princes and nobles were at first so much disgusted at the regulations which bound the soldiery to respect the magistracy, that they raised a rebellion, which was ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gathering with the gathering darkness. The light was fading out of the west, and the early autumnal dusk was at hand. Lillian was sensible of an accession of lassitude, a realization of defeat in a cause which she felt now it was futile to have essayed. Why should he forgive? How was reparation possible? She could not call back the Past—she could not assuage griefs that time had worn out long ago, searing over the wounds. She was quite silent as she rose ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... that an incident occurred which gave me to a certain extent a new sidelight on Oscar's nature by showing just what he thought of me. I make no scruple of setting forth his opinion here in its entirety, though the confession took place after a futile evening when he had talked to M—— of great houses in England and the great people he had met there. The talk had evidently impressed M—— as much as it had bored me. I must first say that Oscar's bedroom was separated from ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Yet doth a rival hold My darling, and my futile prayers deride: For I dreamed madly of a life all gold, If she were healed,—but ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... testified. The two troopers who had come in the other car, and the men who had brought the investigative equipment and done the photographing at the scene testified. Brannhard called Ruth Ortheris to the stand, and, after some futile objections by Coombes, she was allowed to tell her own story of the killing of Goldilocks, the beating of Kellogg and the shooting of Borch. When she had finished, the Chief Justice ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... less futile chapter in diplomacy began with the arrival of Francis James Jackson as British Minister in September. Those who knew this Briton were justified in concluding that conciliation had no important place in the programme of the Foreign Office, for it was he who, two years before, had ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the subject, and through the succeeding summer hope was centered in a "constitutional conference" participated in by eight representatives of the two houses and of the two principal parties. A total of twenty-one meetings were held, but all effort to reach an agreement proved futile and at the reassembling of Parliament, November 15, the problem was thrown back for solution upon the houses and the country. November 17 there was carried in the Lords, without division, a new resolution introduced by Lord Rosebery to the effect that in ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... signally failed in his attempt to show that "much of what Thomson's biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact, have been blind wonderment," let us accompany him in his equally futile efforts to show "how the rest is to be accounted for." He attempts to do so after this fashion: "Thomson was fortunate in the very title of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared sympathies of every one; in the next place, notwithstanding his high powers, he writes ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the monster, to flatten out the onrushing mountain! The red bottom-plates of a submarine freighter came rolling up behind the surge to show how futile was the might of man. And the next moment marked the impact of the wall of water upon a widespread area of landing roofs, where giant letters stared mockingly at him to spell the words: Harkness Terminals, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... of qualities, however, is one thing, and a comparison between different degrees of merit is quite another. The former is the essence of criticism; the latter, one of the most futile pastimes that can readily be imagined. That each man should have his own preferences is right enough. It would be a nerveless and unprofitable mind to which such preferences were unknown. More than that, some rough classification, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of this knowledge the convulsive movements become a little more comprehensible. They are futile attempts to run away. They are the partial ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... fasted in the secret cave And called up Samuel from the quiet grave, And stood with darkness and the mantled ghosts A bitter night on shrill Samarian coasts, Knew well the end—of how the futile sword Of Israel would be broken by the Lord; How Gath would triumph, with the tawny line That bend the knee at Dagon's brittle shrine; And how the race of Kish would fall to wreck, Because of vengeance stayed at Amalek. Yet strove the sun-like king, nor ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... great injustice she had done him, and remembered the good reason he had to believe that she was not his friend. She tried to speak calmly and within the bounds of propriety, but the cold words she would have spoken refused to leave her lips, and after a futile effort to restrain herself, that which was in her heart came forth, because she could not keep ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... less contaminated than other towns in Switzerland, in spite of its model brothels, and Zurich has lately, by popular vote, confirmed abolition by a crushing majority, in opposition to a few interested persons who wished to reestablish the brothels under futile and fallacious pretexts. Some clandestine brothels still exist in towns where the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... futility!—Ah, these Germans, what they have not cost us! Futility—that has always been the work of the Germans.—The Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the war of "liberation"; the empire—every time a futile substitute for something that once existed, for something irrecoverable.... These Germans, I confess, are my enemies: I despise all their uncleanliness in concept and valuation, their cowardice before every honest yea and nay. For nearly a thousand years they have tangled and confused everything ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... His jaw! I was terribly angry, in my desolation. But it was a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm. Could they not understand, would they never understand, that they were grotesquely deceived? How much longer would they continue to fuss over that body on the bed while I, I, the person whom they were supposed to be sorry for, suffered ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... use for purposes of aerostation, we are indebted to Mr. Charles Green. Up to his discovery, the process of inflation was not only exceedingly expensive, but uncertain. Two, and even three days, have frequently been wasted in futile attempts to procure a sufficiency of hydrogen to fill a balloon, from which it had great tendency to escape, owing to its extreme subtlety, and its affinity for the surrounding atmosphere. In a balloon sufficiently perfect ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... king peculiarly incapable of taking a broad statesman-like view of any question, who manifested no thought for the interests of the people of whom he regarded himself as ruler by right divine, whose futile domestic policy was inspired solely by considerations for the advancement of his own personal power, whose feeble and shifty foreign policy was determined only by considerations for his own family interests, who intrigued with ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... American agriculture. All endeavors, it will be remembered, were failures, so dismally and pathetically complete that we are wont to think of the two hundred years from the first settlements in America to the introduction of the Isabella, a native grape, as time wasted in futile culture of a foreign fruit. The early efforts were far from wasted, however, for out of the tribulations of two centuries of grape-growing came the domestication of our native grapes, one of the most ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... instant, was, from the natural carelessness of his disposition, hastily cast aside, and, no doubt, often burnt with the waste paper of his chambers; so that every endeavour I have made to possess even a shred of these scraps, has been futile. All I have been able to gather are the few letters alluded to, with a few poetical lines which will be given to the reader; and, as we often judge of character from trifles, he must, from the slight sketch I have given, and the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... saw a funnier sight than Pat craning and twisting his head in futile efforts to look at it under his ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... A shudder ran through him as he knelt, bending over her. The new wound had effaced all the traces of Timothy's blow. How long was it since she had stood there before him pointing to it? The features were already rigid. No one felt the smallest hope. Yet, with that futile tenderness all can show to the dead, everything was tried. Mary Anne Waller came—white and speechless—and her deft, gentle hands did whatever the village doctor told her. And there were many other women, too, who did their ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... involuntary working of genius, which, since the birth of poetry, has exercised "as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom it pleases." Speculation or debate as to why genius bestowed its fullest inspiration on Shakespeare is no less futile than speculation or debate as to why he was born into the world with a head on his shoulders instead of a block of stone. It is enough for wise men to know the obvious fact that genius endowed Shakespeare with its richest gifts, and a very small acquaintance with the literary ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... it faced about, and the preparations for the war of 1866 were beginning. I only remember a meeting of the Prussian cabinet which took place in Regensburg in 1865 with a view to procuring the necessary money, but which was rendered futile by the agreement of Gastein. In 1866, however, the war broke out in full force, as you know. A circumspect use of events alone enabled us to ward off the existing danger of turning this duel between Prussia and Austria into ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... more denied all knowledge of it, employing the strongest figure of denial. "If," said the helpless old man, "you think I have any concealed treasures, they must be within me. Rip open my bowels, and satisfy yourself." The tormentor then tried cajolery and promises, but they were equally futile. "God protect you, who has laid me aside," said the fallen Monarch. "I am ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... desperately, as if seeking a way of escape. But he was cut off at the rail by the guard from the Nark and the boys, while the others had swung about him in a half-circle, barring the way. Seeing an attempt to flee would be futile, he pulled himself together, not without dignity, and faced Captain Folsom and Lieutenant Summers. It was to the former that he ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... so far as I can recollect, all you did was to grin in a futile and somewhat vulgar way. Finally, I tried to talk to you about child culture, which is one of the most important problems of our day; a problem which is occupying the attention of statesmen, philanthropists, ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... Sovereign regarded the displacement of Palmerston by Aberdeen, began to lead to a better entente. The scheme of fortifying Paris continued, however, to be debated, while the Orleanist family were still the subjects of futile attentats. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... when a heavier fall than usual from some over-charged water-spout sent it toppling over, on one side, and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling violently to get it right. After making one or two sallies to her relief, which were rendered futile by the umbrella's hopping on again, like an immense bird, before I could reach it, I came in, went to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... entertain any doubt but that the Rigsdag will grant us the compensation to which we have the most incontestable right, and which cannot be controverted by such futile arguments, as, that the owners have lost nothing by the government depriving them of their property, as the stock of labor is the same, and to be had for an equitable hire. If it even in reality were the case, that the expenses were not greater, and the work not less than before the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... In futile rage Muda Saffir called down the most terrible curses of Allah and his Prophet upon the head of Ninaka and his progeny to the fifth generation, and upon the shades of his forefathers, and upon the grim skulls which hung from ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it was a futile battle. He was prying at her inner mind with short questions and ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... have happened during that futile journey westward and back? Poussette vouchsafed no reply, no solution. He avoided the puzzled stare of the other man, and after giving some orders in French to Crabbe and the other guide, Martin, a very decent Indian, quickly went up to the house ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... enemies, always willing to serve the Confederacy, never serving us; acting as a sponge to draw supplies from us by means of blockade-running, which could in turn be absorbed by the Confederates. The efforts of our gunboats to stop the traffic were futile, as ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... foreseen or reckoned with this matter of marriage in the designs of the Duke. He had forgotten that sovereign dukes must make sure their succession even unto the third and fourth generation. His first impulse had been to tell the Duke that to introduce him to the Countess would be futile, for he was already married. But the instant warning of the mind that his Highness could never and would never accept the daughter of a Jersey ship-builder restrained him. He had no idea that Guida's descent from the noble de Mauprats of Chambery would ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... futile, on the other hand, to treat the chronic indigestion that arises from persistent worry, or indulgence in passion, by one change after another in the dietary. The founder of homoeopathy insisted that there was no such thing as a physical "symptom" without corresponding mental ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... and envied Dainty that it extended to her gentle mother, and even the sight of her pale, sorrowful face, as she moved unobtrusively about the place, giving the most motherly care to Love in his affliction, goaded them to futile rage, until in the malice of their natures they decided that she should no longer remain ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... kinder feeling for her in the heart of her brother. As one fights fire with fire in the great conflagrations of the prairies, Amelie hoped also to combat the influence of Angelique des Meloises by raising up a potent rival in the fair Heloise de Lotbiniere but she soon found how futile were her endeavors. The heart of Le Gardeur was wedded to the idol of his fancy, and no woman on earth could win him away ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... with soap, water, razor, brush, and garments, to make himself spruce. Salamander is there, before a circular looking-glass three inches in diameter in the lid of a soap-box, making a complicated mess of a neck-tie in futile attempts to produce the sailor's knot. Blondin is there, before a similar glass, carefully scraping the bristles round a frostbite on his chin with a blunt razor. Henri Coppet, having already dressed, is smoking his pipe and quizzing Marcelle Dumont—who is ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... feudal society, a sort of enervated languor, a morbid longing for something new, now that the old had ceased to be possible or had proved futile; after the great excitement of the Crusades it was impossible to be either sedately idle or quietly active, even as it is with all of us during the days of weariness and restlessness after some long journey. To such a society the strongly ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... all. And the thought occurred to him that perhaps he never would be able to make anything of it—that, without losing any part of the penalty justly attendant upon his crime, the crime itself might prove to be, so far as the practical benefit that he sought was concerned, absolutely futile. As this dreadful possibility arose before his mind a faintness and giddiness came over him. The room seemed to be whirling around him; life seemed to be slipping away from him; there was a strange, horrible ringing in his ears. He leaned forward over the table ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... Catalan, Genoese and Frenchman, Andalusian and the dwellers in the Archipelago, were all banded together in league against this common foe? Did not the redoubtable Andrea range the seas in vain, and were not all the efforts of the Knights of Saint John futile, when the son of the renegado from Mitylene and his Christian wife put forth from the Golden Horn? What was the magic of this man, it was asked despairingly, that none seemed able to prevail against him? Had it not been currently reported that Carlos Quinto, the great Emperor, had driven ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... months now, the greater number of the troopers had been dodging up and down over the surface of the Orange River Colony on the heels of the tireless De Wet. After accomplishing forty futile miles a day, after subsisting chiefly upon army biscuits and bully beef, they had earned their right to rest. This, at least, was the ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... best customers, and our only chance of increasing or maintaining our trade lies in 'the development of the colonies.' What development means he does not very clearly explain. Subsidised emigration and all such devices he dismisses as futile. Some means should be devised, he says, whereby the independent colonies should have a voice in the management of matters affecting the empire: what those means might exactly be he does not even hint. The mother country and the colonies might be drawn ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... compounded of the united measure of these, and of the use made of them by the possessor; this must include good or ill temper, and other moral dispositions. Some with transcendent talents waste these in futile projects; others make them a source of misery, by indulging that overweening anxiety for fame which ends in disappointment, and excites too often the powerful passions of envy and jealousy; others, too humble, or too weak, fret away their spirits and their life in deploring that ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... there was no further hesitation. One and all subjected themselves to the ordeal suggested; even Mr. Spielhagen. But this effort was as futile as the rest. The ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... arc, extending from the interior of New Jersey through Southeastern New York State to Long Island Sound and into Connecticut. This had been the situation since midsummer of 1778. It was but a detachment from our main army that had cooperated with the French fleet in the futile attempt to dislodge a British force from Newport ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Tennessee, each content that the other was afraid to weaken himself by sending troops to the Mississippi, Grant was occupied in a series of enterprises apparently more cautious than that in which he eventually succeeded, but each in its turn futile. An attempt was made to render Vicksburg useless by a canal cutting across the bend of the Mississippi to the west of that fortress. Then Grant endeavoured with the able co-operation of Admiral Porter and his flotilla to secure a safe landing on ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... completer perusal of his writings is not merely destructive of this hope. It is positively stunning and bewildering. Mr. Crockett is not only not a great man, but a rather futile very small one. The unblushing effrontery of those gentlemen of the press who have set him on a level with Sir Walter is the most mournful and most contemptible thing in association with the poorer sort of criticism which has been ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... attacks and prompt releases, and possibly a few other definitely established facts about conducting; but unless our would-be leader has musical feeling within him and musicianship back of him, it will be utterly futile for him to peruse these pages further, or to make any other kind of an attempt to learn to conduct; for, as stated above, only a very small part of conducting can be codified into rules, directions, and formulae, by far the larger part of our task being based upon each ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... the blow or the immediate sentence will be futile. The offender must know he has trespassed in a realm beyond your administration and rule; he has done more than commit an offense against you. Whatever consequences follow—such as your hesitation to accept his word—must evidently be a part of the operation of the entire moral ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... beforehand. Angelo was to help her in all she did, until the Palazzetto Borgia should be as beautiful as the Palazzo Braccio itself, though of course it was much smaller. Then she scrawled on the walls again, trying to explain to him, in childishly futile sketches, her ideas of decoration, and he would come down from his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with delight and was ultimately carried off by her governess to be made ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... less pure and lovely than any Perdita or Miranda, and her success is as complete; yet who would venture to deny that the atmosphere of Measure for Measure was more nearly one of despair than of serenity? What is it, then, that makes the difference? Why should a happy ending seem in one case futile, and in another satisfactory? Why does it sometimes matter to us a great deal, and sometimes not at all, whether virtue is rewarded ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... hind legs, laid his paws on his trousers, and stuck some claws into his thigh. It was no more than gentle, arresting pricks; but the tender nobleman sprang from his chair with a short howl, kicked with futile violence a portion of the empty air which Melchisidec had just vacated, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... my company, I boarded a steamer, bound for Morris' Island, intending, if possible, to avoid the guard. In this I was foiled. But after making several futile attempts, I fell in with an officer of the First South Carolina Regiment, who promised to pilot me over. On reaching the landing, at Cummings Point, I was to follow his lead, as he had a passport, but in going ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... feeling of dissatisfaction at the cycle of moves which had rendered futile both rest and training. Consciousness that one was helping to win the war was more often imputed than felt. Early in August, 1918, the 61st relieved the 5th Division in front of the Nieppe Forest. Minor attacks had already cleared the enemy from the eastern ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... the soul of a father, suffering indeed, for his human frailties, but not doomed to perish for eternity; you have, indeed, an object of pursuit worthy of all the hardships and dangers of a maritime life. If it ends in your death, what then? Where else end our futile cravings, our continual toil, after nothing? We all must die—but how few—who indeed besides yourself—was ever permitted before his death to ransom the soul of the author of his existence! Yes, Philip, I ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is doubtless obscure. But the epithets and phrases are in themselves sufficient to suggest the varying moods of the Venetian merrymakers. The plaintiveness, the sighs, the sense of death, the trembling hope that life may last, the renewed love-making, the new round of futile pleasures or evil deeds, the end of it all in the grave, are clearly brought forth. An elaborate explanation of the musical terms is given in the notes to the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... counselled him to change his tactics: "The God of the Hebrews is a God of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they." The advice, however, proved futile, for he sustained on the open plain a still more severe defeat than he had met with in the mountains, and the Hebrew historians affirm that he was taken prisoner during the pursuit. The power of Damascus ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... all the principal papers. Nothing is more important to the outside contributor than a thorough comprehension of their various policies and their essential differences. Many beginners, with a quite creditable literary technique, render all effort futile by omitting to study what I may call the characters of the publications to which they offer MSS. They know papers (except the one or two which they happen to read for pleasure) merely by name. They may by chance have ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... wasting time, antiquarianism is perhaps the most futile;" and Mr. Vansittart wiped his mouth with an ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... face and the patient waiting attitude of one who had watched for miracles for fifty years, spoke to him when the meeting was breaking up, and after a brief conversation, invited him to address a club of workingmen on the following Friday. Though the old clergyman had spent half a century in a futile endeavour to persuade every man to love his neighbour as himself, and thereby save society the worry and the expense of its criminal code, he still hoped on with the divine far-sighted hope of the visionary—hoped ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... drive the Comitajis out of the swamp. First they surrounded it, watching all possible landing places, but the outlaws had supplies smuggled in to them by the peasants. Then the Turks began bombarding with heavy cannon, which, of course, was futile, since they could not distinguish the points at which they were firing. And finally they gave up molesting the Comitajis, who continued making the swamps their headquarters until the Young Turks came into power. Then, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... with clenched teeth. I had nailed down my resolutions, I had determined to hold fast to such threads of my common sense as remained. Only in the night-time, when sleep mocked me and all hope of escape was futile, was I forced to grapple with this new-born monster of folly. It drove me up across the Park to where the house, black and lightless, rose a dark incongruous mass above the trees, down to the sea, where the wind came booming across the bare country northwards, and the spray leaped ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be brought face to face with the capitalist, it was futile to attempt to unravel the enigma. How he longed in his bewilderment for the sympathy and counsel of a fresh perspective! But on Tiny's discretion he could place no reliance and even had he been able to do so, everything within him shrank from the disloyalty of voicing evil against ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... shell and canister from our batteries, while our lines were thinned by his ricochetting projectiles, that rebounded again and again over the thinly covered limestone formation and sped on to the rear of Negley. But all his efforts to dislodge or destroy us were futile, and for the first time since daylight General Hardee was seriously checked in the turning movement he had begun for the purpose of getting possession of the Nashville pike, and though reinforced until two-fifths of Bragg's army ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... sack of flour which he knew weighed an even hundred pounds. He stepped astride it, reached down, and strove to get it on his shoulder. His first conclusion was that one hundred pounds were real heavy. His next was that his back was weak. His third was an oath, and it occurred at the end of five futile minutes, when he collapsed on top of the burden with which he was wrestling. He mopped his forehead, and across a heap of grub-sacks saw John Bellew gazing at him, wintry ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... which is the least monument that the pious biographer builds? The perspective is all wrong. Bossuet got the history of the world into a fifth of the space. How keen must be the struggle for life amid these shoals of "Lives." How futile and vain this aspiration for a "Life" beyond the grave! Vainer still the bid for immortality, when one's own hand raises the mendacious memorial. It is an open question whether even Marie Bashkirtseff's self-hewn ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... when I stand in the presence of Death, How futile is earthy endeavor, If it be, with the flight of the last labored breath, The ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... incident on this journey deserves recording, as an instance of a futile "warning." On the night of October 6-7, Huxley woke in the night and seemed to hear an inward voice say, "Don't go to Stuttgart and Nuremberg; go straight home." All he did was to make a note of the occurrence and carry out his original plan, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... and stilled his inarticulate protest, the futile agony of his striving died down. He began to be conscious vaguely that somewhere within his reach there lay a way of escape. He stared out over the silver-blue of the sea with strained and throbbing vision. The sun had gone down behind High Shale, and ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the same time, a prophecy of the restoration. A look to the wonderful Child, and despair must flee. Behind the clouds, the sun is shining. Every attempt to assign the Immanuel to the lower sphere, must by this passage be rendered futile. For how, in that case, could Canaan be called His land? The signification "native country" which [Hebrew: arC], it is true, sometimes receives by the context, does not suit here. For the passage just points out the contrast of reality and idea, that the world's ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg |
