"Futility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pistol practice together, allowing them to look on. If they once get the fact thoroughly impressed upon them that we can both pot them, if necessary, at fifty yards, it will go a long way toward simplifying matters, by convincing them of the futility of attempting any tricks. But you must not let this very elementary precaution alarm you, sweetheart. As likely as not they will prove ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... I went into a rage and cursed that nondescript kind of messenger, sent by I know not whom, in language that I think he will not forget. Then, realising the futility of swearing at a mere tool, I went up to the Great House and demanded an audience with Panda himself. Presently the inceku, or household servant, to whom I gave my message, returned, saying that I was to be admitted at once, and on entering the enclosure ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat that waits upon ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Then, hoping to kindle in Jesus' heart a passion for worldly glory, Satan artfully relates that Caesar wept because he had lived so long without distinguishing himself; but our Lord quietly demonstrates the futility of earthly fame, compared to real glory, which is won only through religious patience and virtuous striving, such as was practiced by Job and Socrates. When Christ repeats he is not seeking his ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... completely in the posterior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the Gorilla, as that of the Gorilla is further back than that of Man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of Platyrhine, or American monkeys, to which the Mycetes belongs, contains the Chrysothrix, whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... thus upon this measureless immensity, felt myself humbled thereby, and with this came a knowledge of the futility of my life hitherto. And now (as often she had done, ere this) my companion voiced the thought ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... occasionally demonstrate the futility of such teachings. In these cases a good instructor chooses appropriate stories showing the baseness of such ingratitude, the dangers of disobedience, the ugliness of bad temper, to accentuate the defects of the pupil. It would be just as edifying to discourse to ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... Stop it! They little knew what indomitable spirits some men have got. As well might they have attempted to stop the course of time! They succeeded, however, in causing vexatious delays, and, in July, had the audacity to fling a wreck in the very teeth of the builders, as if to taunt them with the futility of their labours. ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... drone, and are not playing the game." Her hand tightened on the tiller. "I think, if I were a man riding on to the polo field, I'd either try like the devil to drive the ball down between the posts, or I'd come inside, and take off my boots and colors. I wouldn't hover in lady-like futility around the ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... a long moment fixedly into her darker ones, while the two took mental stock of each other. He realized the utter futility of any further argument, while she felt instinctively the cool, dominating strength of the man. Neither was composed of that poor fibre ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... brass dish over the shallow open drain that ran past her door. At the tonga terminus, below the Mall, a couple of coughing syces, muffled in their blankets, pulled one of these vehicles out of the shed. They pushed it about sleepily, with clumsy futility; nothing else stirred or spoke at all in Simla. Nothing disturbed Miss Anderson asleep in ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... main confidence in the virtue of their cause and the strength of their character. The risks that they run through this confidence have often been pointed out, but it should also be remembered that by their reluctance to act on theory they have often been saved from the elaborate futility and expense of acting on a false theory. The disaster which has befallen Germany cannot but strengthen them in their belief that it is dangerous to devote care and thought to preparing for all imaginable conflicts. So also in the activities of civil life, before they undertake a large outlay ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... surprises like that, things that snatch you away from the present or catch you for a moment into the embrace of some old garden lurking behind a wrought iron gate, or tell you a love story no matter how much you don't want to hear it—or tease you, if you are a practical business man, with some other futility which has nothing at all ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... self-punishment in Buddhism. Did not the Buddha prove the futility of this long ago? The body must be kept in health, that the soul may not be hampered. And so the monks live a very healthy, very temperate life, eating and drinking just enough to keep the body in good health; that is the first ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... be false. He had not destroyed the will. He had not even hidden it. He had only put a book into its own place, carrying out as he did so his innocent intention when he had first lifted the book. When these searchers had come, doing their work so idly, with such incurious futility, he had not concealed the book. He had left it there on its shelf beneath their hands. Who could say that he had been guilty? If the will were found now, who could reasonably suggest that there had been guilt on his part? If all were known,—except that chance glance of his eye which never could ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... to the ranch and sat brooding over the failure of her plans. When Lawler had been brought into the hotel she had entertained a hope that the situation might be turned to her advantage. But there had been something in Ruth Hamlin's clear, direct eyes that had convinced her of the futility of attempting to poison her mind against Lawler by referring to her stay in the line cabin with Lawler. She saw faith in Ruth's eyes—complete, disconcerting; and it had made her feel inferior, unworthy, cheap, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... sacrificed did not avail to save his own chosen people. They unanimously rejected the son, if I remember, and so he had to be content with a handful of the despised Gentiles. A sorrowful old figure of futility he is—a fine figure for a big epic, it seems to me. By the way, what was the date that this religion was laughed away. I can remember perfectly the downfall of the Homeric deities—how many years there were when the common people believed in the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... men, inspired by the urgency of our situation, marched more than forty miles a day, accomplishing the whole distance in so short a period, that I doubt if the record has ever been beaten. When this reinforcement arrived, the Indians saw the futility of further demonstrations against their agent, who they seemed to think was responsible for the insufficiency of food, and managed to exist with the slender rations we could spare and such indifferent food as they could pick ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... scarcity, is at present suspended for a limited time with regard to Ireland and the British plantations, have all had the bad effects of taxes upon the necessaries of life, and produce no revenue to government. Nothing seems necessary for the repeal of such regulations, but to convince the public of the futility of that system in consequence of which they have ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... subject of consolation, Hartley retired to his inn, to meditate on the futility of the professions of the natives, and to devise some other mode of finding access to Hyder than that which he had hitherto trusted to. On this point, however, he lost all hope, being informed by his late fellow-traveller, whom ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... would resume, and for a time Rogers appears to have comforted him in his hope, but we cannot believe that it long survived. Young Hall, who had made such a struggle for its salvation, was eager to go on, but he must presently have seen the futility of any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... failed in its object, though the attempt was honestly made; and if the rate of wages fixed was somewhat low, its inequity was far surpassed by the exorbitance of the labourers' demands.[118] It was an endeavour to set aside economic laws, and its futility was rendered more certain by the depreciation of the coinage in 1351, which led to an advance in prices, and compelled the labourers to persevere in their demands ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... from generation to generation. So, let us travel ahead another one hundred years. During this time, as we learn from our historical and political archives, the socialists began to die out, since they at last realized the utter futility of combating the balance of power. The account, though, ...
— John Jones's Dollar • Harry Stephen Keeler
... of the futility of the contemporary church, but this time it came in the most grotesque form. For hanging half out of the casement he was suddenly reminded of St. Francis of Assisi, and how at his rebuke the wheeling swallow ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... was young, and the possibility chilled him and even inspired him with a kind of terror. Was he to carry the Road no further than his father had done? Would another Linforth in another generation come to the tower in Peshawur with hopes as high as his and with the like futility? ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... for the slaughter! How they perish like the beasts of the field!" she thought. Upon her, as on the poet or the patriot who could translate and could utter the thought as she could not, there weighed the burden of that heart-sick consciousness of the vanity of the highest hope, the futility of the noblest effort, to bring light into the darkness of the suffering, toiling, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the interior by a mission, and two of their servants penetrated 300 miles inland to Timbo, capital of that part of Pulo-land. A deputation of chiefs presently visited the settlement to propose terms; but the futility of the negro settler was a complete obstacle to the development of the internal commerce, the main object for which the Company was formed. Yet the colony prospered; in 1798 Freetown numbered, besides public ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... lawyers do not share the belief that the outbreak of the World War and its, in many ways, lawless and atrocious conduct have proved the futility of the work of the Hague Conferences. Throughout these anxious years we have upheld the opinion that the progress initiated at the Hague has by no means been swept away by the attitude of lawlessness deliberately—'because ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... stand, taken by the court martial, had left no glimpse of hope, at head quarters, that the prosecution of Hall, on the charge of mutiny, on which he had been imprisoned, could be attempted with any prospect of success—the futility of any further proceedings against Louallier was evident—Jackson, therefore, put an end to Hall's imprisonment on Saturday, the 11th of March. The word imprisonment is used, because Eaton assures his readers, that 'Judge Hall was not imprisoned; it ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... say that "Blind Tom" is an idiot. Out with the idea! Who ever heard of an idiot possessing such power of memory, such fineness of musical sensibility, such order, such method, as he displays? Let us call him the embodiment, the soul, of music, and there rest our investigations; for all else is futility, all else is ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... merely to a more or less correlated series of patent facts and incidents which, of itself, shows well the futility of any other treatment being given of a subject so vast within the single chapter of ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... unknown. The human mind had not then made, as it afterward did, the sole object of its energy the destruction of human life. Yet with a deepening knowledge of the instruments of death has come, I trust, a more revolting sense of the horrors and futility of war. The romance and chivalry of the profession of arms has gone forever. Let us hope that in the years to come the human mind will bend all its energies to right the wrongs and avert the contentions that ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... game in order to reach striking distance and, since she always had the better of the argument there, forced the second slowly and very surely back past the middle of the field. Then Marvin, realising the futility of pitting Freer and himself against Norton and Williams and Milton, either one of whom could outpunt the second from five to ten yards, started a rushing game on his thirty-five yards, swinging Harris and Freer around the ends for small gains and himself taking the pigskin for ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... estrangement. Neither of them could afford to go to such lengths. They saw a great deal of each other, and, despite the constant bickerings over the idle money, there was little to indicate that they were at loggerheads. Mrs. Tresslyn was forced at last to recognise the futility of her appeals to Anne's sense of duty, and contented herself with occasional bitter references to her own financial distress. She couldn't understand the girl, and she gave up trying. As a matter of fact, she began to fear that she would never be able ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... softly, pleadingly, realizing the futility of additional lies under such circumstances, "won't you forgive me this time? Bear with me for the present. I scarcely understand myself at times. I am not like other men. You and I have run together a long time now. Why not wait awhile? Give me a chance! See ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... this futility to pass; then with an air suggesting, "Now, shall we talk sensibly?" she resumed: "I approve the action of the school-board. It did well in dismissing Professor Ashton. May I speak about Mr. Clinton? He urges me to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... upon him. His disastrous want of vulgar common sense had utterly betrayed him. He had talked of war, he had talked of all the strength and irrational violence of men, of their insatiable aggressions, their tireless futility of conflict. He had filled the whole moon world with this impression of our race, and then I think it is plain that he made the most fatal admission that upon himself alone hung the possibility—at least for a ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... approach the task with divided counsel, to cope successfully with the delicate and responsible work of restoration the close of the war had made imperative. He comprehended the incongruities which characterized that great party better than its professed leaders, and foresaw the futility of any effort on its part, at that time and in its then temper, to the early establishment of any coherent or successful method of restoration. Hence, unquestionably, his prompt action in that behalf, and his failure to call the Congress into special session, to the end ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... a union without shortening, and consequently without lameness, is proof of the futility of ordinary attempts at treatment, but though this may be true in respect to fractures of the complete kind, it is not necessarily so with the incomplete variety, and with this class the simple treatment of the slings is all that is necessary to obtain consolidation. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... childish that it might have been thought unnecessary to notice it, had it not been solemnly propounded in such a work as "Essays and Reviews." [Footnote: Page 219] Anyone who is in possession of a telescope of but moderate power may satisfy himself of its futility on any starlight night. He has only to turn his telescope to one or two of the more conspicuous nebulae; the Great Nebula in Orion, for instance, or the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and his eye will receive light ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... was driving home, he passed McKelvey's limousine and saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained, and horrible conviction that the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... pity and remorse, he forgot all else save the stricken Beatrice, and what, in her anger, she had confessed to Patricia. The rapidly succeeding incidents of that day and night had unnerved him, also. He was suddenly convinced of the futility of winning the love and confidence of Patricia, and, with an impulse born, he could not have told when, or how, or why, he bent forward quickly and touched his ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... that came to him were futile denunciations of his folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. "Poor child—you poor child!" he heard himself ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the afternoon a valuable vessel was captured, from Smyrna, laden with cotton. This little success appeared the forerunner of our future good fortune; and we began to make exulting reflections on the advantages of our situation. A few hours, however, convinced us of the futility of all our views, and the instability of human projects: at ten o'clock the wind began to increase with such rapidity as scarcely to give us time to take in our sails, and prepare to encounter the gale: at midnight we were reduced to a close-reefed main-topsail; ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... though those crazy sheep were going to stay there all night," added Betty, herself growing restive at the apparent futility of waiting for something to happen. "Can't we do something, ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... only after Pao-yue and the rest of the party had entered and closed the gate behind them that she at last issued from her retreat. Then fixing her gaze steadfastly on the gateway, she dropped a few tears. But inwardly conscious of their utter futility she retraced her footsteps and wended her way back into her apartment. And with heavy heart and despondent spirits, she divested herself of the remainder of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... actually feared to meet her eye. He remembered how bitterly she had spoken, of her passion for revenge, of the relentless feud between man and woman. They had discussed the question of vengeance; he had pointed out its futility, and Hadria had set her teeth and desired it none the less. Lady Engleton had reminded her of a woman's helplessness if she places herself in opposition to a man, for whom all things are ordered in the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... main point of the work. Of course he is not true to life, of course he is not typically Russian. The typical Russian in the book is Nezhdanov, who is entirely true to life in his uncertainty and in his futility; he does not know whether or not he is in love, and he does not know at the last what the "cause" really is. He fails to understand the woman who accompanies him, he fails to understand Solomin, and he fails to understand ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... a waning moon hung in the sky. I made my way through the drive between the black shadows of the forest, and came at length to the big gates at the entrance, locked for the night. A strange thought of their futility struck me as I climbed the rail fence beside them, and pushed on into the main road, the mud sucking under my shoes as I went. As I try now to cast my memory back I can recall no fear, only a vast sense of loneliness, and the very song of it seemed to be sung in never ending ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... You've took my silver tea-set an' you've got it in there now. Other folks knows it, too, an' about moonrise they're comin' here an' surround the house an' make you give it up." She paused for an eager breath. The futility of the moment choked her. "You hear to me," she called again, in her strained, beseeching voice. "'Twon't do ye no good to hide, for they know you're there. An' 'twon't do ye no good to fight, for there's a whole b'ilin' of 'em, an' like 's not they've got guns. Now when I'm gone—I'm ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... sturdy endeavor to turn them. But he could not. He ran, nipped a sheep, and then jumped back to save himself from being cut to pieces by the blundering feet. Young Pete saw that he could not reach the pass ahead of them. Out of breath and half-sobbing as he realized the futility of his effort, he suddenly recalled an incident like this when Montoya, failing to head the band in a similar situation, had coolly shot the leader and had ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... alone, sat down and thought disturbedly. The utter futility of any efforts to assist such a family was undeniable. Nothing could be done. For a vivid instant he had an idea of rushing to the market and setting up surreptitiously a term of credit for the Carrolls, by paying ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had been thrust in under the door. In an instant he had snatched it up from the floor, and in another, acting instinctively, even while he realised the futility of what he did, he wrenched the door open, stared out into a dark and empty passageway—and, with a strange, almost hysterical laugh, closed and locked the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the futility of the speech, were about equally balanced! Candour was impossible, if only for kindness' sake. And the story, so told, was not only unconvincing, it was hardly intelligible even, to Letty. For the two personalities ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... could hardly brook this hoity-toity assumption of authority. There was, however, an obvious vein of reason in what he said; and she saw, besides, the futility of contending with one whose will was probably as strong as her own, and backed with power to make it effectual. She therefore maintained a moody silence, and Blassemarre, deeming it best to suffer her ill-humor to expend itself harmlessly, awaited better ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... reason of this restraint, according to Polybius, was, the unwillingness of the Carthaginians to let the Romans have any knowledge of the countries which lay more to the south, in order that this enterprising people might not hear of their futility. Polyb. l. iii. p. 247. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... ready to display. At the same time he does full justice to Julian's real merits. And this is perhaps the most striking evidence of his penetration. An error on the side of injustice to Julian is very natural in a man who, having renounced allegiance to Christianity, yet fully realises the futility of attempting to arrest it in the fourth century. A certain intellectual disdain for the reactionary emperor is difficult to avoid. Gibbon surmounts it completely, and he does so, not in consequence of a general conception ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... difficult to imagine a turn of mind constituting a more complete challenge to the ordinary modern point of view. To the intellect of our time the wild investigators of the school of Paracelsus seem to be the very crown and flower of futility, they are collectors of straws and careful misers of dust. But for all that Browning was right. Any critic who understands the true spirit of mediaeval science can see that he was right; no critic can see how right he was unless he understands ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Test or a School of Character bear a strong resemblance to the commonplaces of religious consolation which almost any good Christian will offer to the bereaved and afflicted. Any one who has seen an innocent friend slowly tortured to death by some vile disease will know the futility of the Christian defence (for these religious consolations amount theologically to a defence) that pain ennobles the character and "proves" the moral courage of the sufferer.[17] The leading fallacy of the defence that war, or pain, is valuable ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... fame is?" exclaimed the romantic boy. But he paused, convinced in a moment of the perfect futility of attempting to convey an idea of the unsubstantial phantom to the old man's intellect. Perhaps the old farmer was the better philosopher ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the window with her knitting needle, but he hurried by without looking up. Then the anger of Mrs. McGuire was kindled mightily, and she sometimes woke up in the night to express her opinion of him in the most lurid terms she could think of, feeling meanwhile the futility of human speech. It was a hard position for Mrs. McGuire, who had always been able to settle her own affairs with ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... and almost in the sight of all Paris. Of the fact there could be no doubt; and of the pretexts set forth by the organs of the French government, there were few men of any party who affected not to perceive the futility. Hitherto Napoleon had been the fortunate heir of a revolution, in whose civil excesses he had scarcely participated—henceforth he was the legitimate representative and ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... with its weird grey brush the pallid face of a young girl—a mere child—who sat in a dejected attitude on a rickety chair, with elbows leaning on the rough deal table before her, and thin, grimy fingers wandering with pathetic futility to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... to leave the shops, and he had, unarmed, run the gantlet of the maddened strikers who had been held at bay for six long hours. Only his great strength and physical endurance had pulled him out of the arms of violent death. There had been no shot fired from the shops. The strikers saw the utter futility of forcing armed men, so they had hung about with gibe and ribald jeer, waiting for some one careless enough to pass them alone. This Bennington did. His men had forgotten him. Bennington's injuries had been rather trivial; it had been ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... unwittingly,) what can induce B to believe that he has any reason to believe A in that only time in which he does believe him, unless he knows the same truth by evidence quite independent of A, and for which he is not indebted to him at all? Should we not, then, at once acknowledge the futility of attempting to educe any certain historic fact, however meagre, or any doctrine, whether intelligible or obscure, from documents nine tenths of which are to be rejected as a tissue of absurd fictions? Or why should we not fairly confess that, for aught we can tell, the whole is a fiction? ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Emperor, taking his crown out of his wardrobe and crushing it in his hands until the diamonds fell out upon the floor, "this shows the futility of making war without preparing for it by study. When I was a young man I was a student. I knew the pages of history by heart, and I learned my lessons well. While I was the student I was invincible. In mimic as in real war I was the conqueror. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... the pitiful futility of his father's persistence in trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the hall, half-stunned, and with all the misery of defeat and the certainty of the futility of my death to further torture my last moments. Over me stood Ramiro, his ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the madness of their declaration of the pretended rights of man,—the childish, futility of some of their maxims, the gross and stupid absurdity and the palpable falsity of others, and the mischievous tendency of all such declarations to the well-being of men and of citizens and to the safety and prosperity of every just commonwealth. He was prepared to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I had not been seen distinctly; I attempted to deny it. A deep flush suffused my face and I felt the futility of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... but of a different type, the verdict cannot be wholly unfavourable. The Kingdom of Earth is to the thick-skinned, and bad manners have a distinct vital value. A man, too sensitive to the rights and the charms of others, is in grave danger of futility. Either he will become a dilettante, which is the French way, or he will take to drink and mystical nihilism, a career very popular in Russian fiction. Bad manners have indeed a distinct ethical value. We all experience ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... beyond the great cliff—for we voyaged now during the daylight, making camp at nightfall—I became convinced of the utter futility of further effort. By this time I had recovered sufficiently from my wound to assume a share of labor at the oars, and was pulling that afternoon, so my eyes could glance past the fiery red crop of the Puritan, who held the after-oar, to ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... over him and he opened the letter and read it. Then his life fell to wreck in a moment. Its nullity, its hopelessness, its futility, its folly, the world with its elusive joys, love with its deceptions so cruel and so sweet-all, all came sweeping up on him like the sea-wrack out of a storm. In an instant the truth appeared to him, and he understood himself ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... expostulations were unavailing with this spirited young creature, smarting under continued injustice and seeing with her uncompromising clearness of vision the selfish jealousy which would keep her out of her birthright indefinitely. "You want to be real careful, Diantha," said Persis, realizing the futility of her words. "Thad's a nice boy and you're a nice girl, but it don't look well for young folks to be ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... of the actual condition of the rural church in many parts of the country all show the futility of denominational competition in maintaining two or three churches where only one is needed or can be supported. Furthermore, the present generation of young married people who desire the best religious influences for their children are no longer much interested ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... seemed to look at the matter in pretty much the same light that I did. They recognised, as I did, that Renouf was an unscrupulous rascal, likely to hesitate at little or nothing to gain his own headstrong will; they realised the utter futility of attempting to resist him, backed as he was by his whole crew; and, finally, they made up their minds to follow my example, recognising me as their actual leader, and heartily pledging themselves ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... this time, had no perception that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity. Deriving his idiosyncrasies from both sides of the Channel, he showed at such junctures as the present the inelasticity ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... entitled "What About Prejudice?"[13-2] The Courier, for its part, questioned the President's sincerity because he had not explicitly called for an end to segregation. At the same time it contrasted the futility of civil disobedience with the efficiency of such an order on the services, and while maintaining its support for the candidacy of Governor Dewey the paper revealed a strong enthusiasm for President Truman's ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... thinkers and dreamers there comes at such times the greater knowledge: the knowledge which lifts them above self and the trivialities of their own lives; the knowledge that is almost Divine. They appreciate the futility—but they realise the necessity. And in their hearts they laugh sardonically as the shadow of Dream's End clouds the sky. The utter futility of it all—the utter necessity now that futility has caught the world. Then they realise the bacon is ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... panting, but he felt he had scored a point; when to his amazement he saw the man coming toward him, and now on snow-shoes. He plunged forward, and relentlessly "Scotty" followed. Hour after hour the chase continued, until Fisher realized, at length, the futility of it all; and thoroughly exhausted, crouched shivering in the snow, waiting for the punishment that lay in the coils of the long black ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... with nautical affairs, having possessed no fleet when King of Scotland, disputes constantly arose respecting the honour of the flag, which the English claimed, and this induced the famous Hugo Grotius to write a treatise, in which he endeavoured to prove the futility of their title to the dominion of the sea. England, however, still maintained her right to be saluted by the ships of all other nations, and the learned Selden supported the English, asserting that they had a hereditary and uninterrupted right to the sovereignty of the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... history of Greek thought had shown conclusively the absolute futility of any efforts to arrive at a certain proof of the existence of God by purely rational methods. The attempts of each school to attain such certainty were repudiated by their successors, and even by their contemporaries; and the later trials—which the religious instincts and aspirations ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... corresponded with reality; but he did not cease to believe in reality. That was where he differed both from the Philistines and from the elect. He saw that the universe was something very different from what it was generally supposed to be: he saw the futility of popular morals and popular metaphysics; but he neither swallowed the conventions nor threw up his hands in despair, declaring the whole thing to be an idiotic farce. He knew that truth and goodness ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... blow. If Henry seriously contemplated the idea of reviving old claims to the French crown, he could have adopted no worse policy. Charles of course gave no practical assistance, and the allies each blamed the other for the futility of the operations. Albany on the other hand had been back in Scotland for some months; and in opposition to Angus—in conjunction therefore with Margaret —threatened an invasion as soon as the French expedition started. The ingenious Lord Dacre ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... their feud forcibly to an end in the Law Courts, the Anglo-Saxon peoples had had no cause to complain of any lack of effort on their part to be entertaining. The upshot of the law proceedings had been that the Court, with a futility almost fatuous, had ordered the duchess to return to her husband, and, what was far more important, had given the custody of their little daughter of twelve, Lady Marion Ricksborough, to ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... last word with a tentative, disarming smile. He was not quite sure of his man, but it seemed to him that even Monck must see the utter futility of making a disturbance about the affair at this stage. Matters had gone so far that silence was the only course—silence on his part, a judicious lie or two on the part of Monck. He did not see how the latter could refuse to render ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... very near his destination, he was curiously oppressed with the futility of his pilgrimage. He had come far, braving the danger of detection and death, for he had no illusions regarding the status of an Englishman approaching the battle lines under the guise of a newspaper ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... up of the Council, assembled in the cabinet of their colleague. Bonaparte asked them in my presence whether they thought he ought to go to the opera. They observed that as every precaution was taken no danger could be apprehended, and that it was desirable to show the futility of attempts against the First Consul's life. After dinner Bonaparte put on a greatcoat over his green uniform and got into his carriage accompanied by me and Duroc. He seated himself in front of his box, which at that time was on the left of the theatre between the two columns which separated ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... experience as a mere fantasy of sleep, or, if not an actual dream, some vision hailing from the borderland of consciousness, at the point where the senses merge. Yet, even as she argued with herself, she felt the utter futility of it, and knew her denials were vain in ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... strongly the futility of denial or explanation that I shrugged my shoulders and remained silent under the sneer. Two more days—two more days would take us to Rosny, and my task would be done, and Mademoiselle and I would part for good and all. What would it matter then ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... husband and wife to each other; but in his own case he had not found that a daughter produced that result. On the contrary, Lesley had been for many years a sort of bone of contention between himself and his wife; and he had retained a cynical sense of the futility of such conventional utterances, which were every day ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... be present if you wish to be," he told Sabina, but she expressed no such desire. Her attitude was modified of late, and, largely under the influence of Estelle, she began to see the futility of this life-enmity declared against Raymond by her son. Of old she had thought it natural, and while not supporting it had made no effort to crush it out of him. Now she perceived that it could come to nothing and only breed bitterness. She had, therefore, begun to tone ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... first impulse was to rush to the boat, and rejoin his comrades, to set signals, burn bonfires—anything which might possibly call the attention of those on board. Then he considered the futility of such endeavors, and he ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... when the Germans practically demanded, as a price of their abstention from indiscriminate submarine warfare, that Mr. Wilson should move against Great Britain in the matter of the blockade, they realized the futility of any such step, and that what they really expected to obtain was the presidential mediation for peace. President Wilson at once began to move in this direction. On May 27th, three weeks after the Sussex "pledge," he made ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... in detail the alternatives that are before us, and we shall scarcely fail to see, in still stronger lights, the futility of our apprehensions for the power and liberty ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Egyptian colony, another, pursuing the same course of reasoning, has, by way of ridicule, shewn how easily a learned man of Tobolski or Pekin might as satisfactorily prove France to have been a Trojan, a Greek or even an Arabian colony; thus making manifest the utter futility of endeavoring to arrive at certainty ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... attempt to trace the supernatural in life, it undoubtedly follows that God is not only weak with the creatures he has made, but punishes the innocent for the guilty. Theologians may rest complacently in such a conclusion; to unprejudiced persons, it appears to be the clearest illustration of the futility of their theories. Free thought declines to call suffering a punishment; but it admits and turns to account the undoubted fact, that men are so closely connected, that every injury inflicted upon one is inevitably propagated to others. If morality be the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... and swelled in his throat, and he choked hysterically. A voice whispered "No, not a hundred thousand; four millions!" But reason, though it tottered, regained its balance, and he saw the utter futility of attempting to dispose of the orders on the government independently. His hands trembled; he could scarcely hold this vast treasure. Twice, in his haste to pocket the certificates, they slipped from his grasp and scattered. How those six syllables ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... weeks at the academy I got my first lesson in the futility of non-resistance, so that all the lessons of my life in favour of this doctrine were, of a sudden, rendered vain. We were going home in the afternoon, gay and happy, Jack Warder to take supper with me, and to use a boat my aunt had ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... confused moment, he was seized, and a hand was clapped over his mouth. Three French soldiers had him in their grip-stalwart fellows they were, of the Regiment of Bearn. He had no strength to cope with them, he at once saw the futility of crying out, so he played the eel, and tried to slip from the grasp of his captors. But though he gave the trio an awkward five minutes he was at last entirely overcome, and was carried away in triumph ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... around had drawn off a little, and I saw the absolute futility of any remonstrance. Have you ever seen a fly, who, in these hygienic days, finding no cobwebs to entangle him, is caught in a sheet of fly paper, finds himself more and more mired, and is finally quiet with the sticky ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the points of difference between the mind masculine and the mind feminine will show the futility of confounding the two, or of drawing any useless or invidious comparisons. They are as distinct in their normal action as any two things can well be. I begin, then, by dividing our whole conscious human life ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tell something of the whole. It chanced one stray seed of Immensity fell into the pretty, petty village of Cheasing Eyebright in Kent, and from the story of its queer germination there and of the tragic futility that ensued, one may attempt—following one thread, as it were—to show the direction in which the whole great interwoven fabric of the thing rolled off the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... there is to be dramatization (and I do not wish to dogmatize on the subject), I think it should be confined to facts and not fancies, and this is why I realize the futility of the dramatization of ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... accepted the principle of the exclusion of Russia from the Black Sea, and was still ready to take up arms in defence of that system by which it considered that Russia's preponderance in the Black Sea might be most suitably prevented, this argument sounded hollow to combatants convinced of the futility of all methods for holding Russia in check except their own. Austria had grievously injured its own position and credit with the Western Powers. On the other hand it had wounded Russia too deeply to win from the Czar the forgiveness which it expected. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe |
