"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not obliged, for the ways and means of this substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths: not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me,—it is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nearly a year, while doing some of his most important work. Here he wrote his treatise On Monastic Vows, declaring that they are wrong and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September 1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last published ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... necessary for the semen to be ejected at certain times from the body; that its retention is incompatible with sound health and vigor of body and mind. This is a very fallacious idea. The seminal fluid is too precious—nature bestows too much care in its elaboration for it to be wasted in this unproductive manner. It is intended, when not used for the purpose of procreation, to be reabsorbed again into the system, giving vigor of body, elasticity and strength to the mind, making the individual strong, active, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... from seaward, up this valley, is beautiful indeed, being surrounded by high barren mountains, which is the general appearance of the whole peninsula, and gives the impression that the whole country is without soil, and unproductive. When your eye gets a view of this beautiful, fertile, cultivated, rich, green valley, producing all the fruits and vegetables of the earth, Lower California stock rises. To one that has been at sea for months, on salt grub, the sight of this bright spot of cultivated acres, with the turkeys, ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... and of the force latent in it to lift it to the surface, to be our willing slave and bondsman, we, too, have some dawning notion. Will years of study and observation give us the power to wield the wand at will? We cannot but believe it. Our vast and fertile downs were never destined to be idle and unproductive for months and months, dependent only ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... concentrated in very few hands. Not only was the accumulation less than it should have been, but the slenderness of its diffusion had nearly amounted to absolute stagnation. The few possessors of capital wasted their revenues in unproductive consumption. The millions of the needy never dreamed of the possibility of deriving benefit from the capital of the rich, nor would have condescended to employ it, nor known how to employ it, had its use in any form been vouchsafed to them. The surface of Spain, save only around the few royal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... has been defined as the destruction of utilities, and thus opposed to "production," which is the creation of utilities, a utility in this connexion being anything which satisfies a desire or serves a purpose. Consumption may be either productive or unproductive; productive where it is a means directly or indirectly to the satisfaction of any economic want, unproductive when it is devoted to pleasures or luxuries. Its place in the science of economics, and its close relation with production, are treated of in every ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... general or for your particular case; and all the more, for the very good reason that your life is only really beginning now. You are not yet thirty-four, you may yet do something great, something pre-eminent, and who knows if those very qualities which have made your life unproductive hitherto, may not enable you later on to do things beside which the achievements of a Paul Haber shrink into insignificance? On the other hand, I am persuaded—quite apart from your respective ways of life—that you have chosen the better and ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... their interests that she had worked harder than any man of her acquaintance, experimenting, studying, managing, until she was recognized as one of the greatest agriculturists of the State, and the unproductive property left by Basil Kildare had become a stock and dairy farm which netted her an income that ran well into five figures. More than wealth, she had given them education, bringing to Storm the best tutors and ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... flourish on the island of Ste. Croix, which is about half a league in circumference. The rays of the sun parched the sand so that the gardens were entirely unproductive, and there was a complete dearth of water. At the commencement there was a fair quantity of wood, but when the buildings were finished there was scarcely any left; the inhabitants, consequently, nearly perished from cold ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... various characteristics, no such imperfections were found, and, for a considerable period, all efforts made to explain the differences in tests made on nuts borne by the same trees in different years were unproductive of results. Finally the matter was settled to my satisfaction as is noted in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... and responsibilities would be doubled. She would have less of Marcus's society, and the world would have claims upon them. The long three years' honeymoon was over, but, thank God, something else was over too,—the dread of approaching poverty, the sadness of unproductive labour, of work done only for love's ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... del Fuego furnish no animal fit for food, and without proper clothing or nourishment the people are reduced to a state of complete barbarism. Hunting yields them hardly any game, fishing is almost equally unproductive of results; they are obliged to depend upon the storms which now and then fling some huge cetacean on their shores, and upon such salvage they fall tooth and nail, not even taking the trouble to cook ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "treating all men alike," though they might respond better to different handling, or else the individual is undirected and his personality manifests itself in all sorts of unguided directions, many of which must necessarily be wasteful, unproductive, or incomplete in development. Under Scientific Management, functionalization, as will be shown, provides for the utilization of all idiosyncrasies and efficient deviations from class, and promotion is so planned that a man may develop along the line of his chief ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... administrative and legislative responsibilities of the states redeemed with any more success. The tax systems of the several states are in a chaotic condition. Their basis consists of the old property tax, which under its application to modern conditions has become both unjust and unproductive, but which the state legislatures seem to be wholly incapable of either abandoning or properly transforming. In the matter of education the states have been, except in the South, liberal; but they have not been as intelligent ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... these causes of discontent the vastness in number of the regular clergy, the "friars" and "monks" already referred to, who consumed, but were only too obviously unproductive, it will be sufficiently plain that the Protestant Reformation had something very much more than a purely speculative basis to work upon. Religious reformers there had been in Germany throughout the Middle Ages, but their preachings had taken no deep root. The powerful personality of ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... I should ride a pony, and this I did, abandoning my purpose of crossing China on foot with some regret. I was not yet fit, had my broken arm in splints, but rejoiced that at Yuen-nan-fu I should be able to consult a European medical man. Comparatively an unproductive task—and perhaps a false and impossible one—would it be for me to detail the happenings of the few days next ensuing. I should be able not to look at things themselves, but merely at the shadow of things—and it would serve no ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... if my LETTER TO JEAN JACQUES [now an entirely forgotten Piece], which had been printed in the Papers, was really by me? I answered, 'Sire, I am not famous enough to have my name forged' [as a certain Other name has been, on this same unproductive topic]. He felt what I meant. It is known that Horace Walpole took the King's name to write his famous LETTRE A JEAN JACQUES [impossible to attend to the like of it at present], which contributed the most to drive mad that eloquent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ourselves confronted by a weight of unreal soulless hideousness which by reason of the fact that it is deliberately protected by organized society is a more devastating example of "the thing which is in the way" than any amount of mud and litter and refuse and excremental debris. For this unproductive commercialism, this "unreal reality" projected by the malignant power which resists creation, is not only an obscene outrage to the aesthetic sense; it is actually an assassination of life. When, therefore, a philosopher who uses the complex vision ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... branch of natural and artificial produce, it is almost superfluous to remark that a vast capital is sunk annually in the mere transport of marketable commodities: and which is not only a loss to the seller as being an unproductive outlay, but entails a heavy increase of expense to the buyer also upon every article of daily consumption. Any means, therefore, that will accelerate the conveyance, and at the same time reduce materially the expense of carriage, bears upon its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... stream of lower England? So much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with which to deal with their miseries—perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... instituted, at first for his own and before long for the public service, post-horses and the letter-post within his kingdom. Towards intellectual and social movement he had not the mistrust and antipathy of an old, one-grooved, worn-out, unproductive despotism; his kingly despotism was new, and, one might almost say, innovational, for it sprang and was growing up from the ruins of feudal rights and liberties which had inevitably ended in monarchy. But despotism's good services are short-lived; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... David Trevarrow had neither wife, child, nor mother to support, so he could afford to toil for poor pay, and, being of a remarkably hopeful and cheery disposition, he returned home that afternoon resolved to persevere in his unproductive toil, in the hope that at last he should discover a good "bunch of copper," or ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... treatise in his case, I fear, for rent is a thing he could never have received, and not often been trusted to pay. However, he is one of your political economists, and wants Trevanion to sell his pictures, as 'unproductive capital.' Less mild than Pope's Narcissa, 'to make a wash,' he would certainly 'stew a child.' Besides this official secretary, Trevanion trusts, however, a good deal to a clever, good-looking young gentleman who is a great ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of gold coin, reserved against sudden contingency, was one of Bonaparte's imperial ideas. In a modified and more modern form, this notion of a "war-chest," untouched and unproductive in peace-time, is still adhered to by the Germans: they have kept to heart many of their former conqueror's lessons, lessons forgotten by the French themselves—and the enormous treasure of gold bags guarded at Spandau is a matter of common knowledge. Napoleon, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... daring, if unproductive of any evil consequences towards himself personally, caused harm to others, the ploughman being badly gored while driving off the violent animal through his missing his footing when aiming a blow at it with his pitchfork; while poor Cissy was in such a fright ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... to the first nor to the second summons—after a third, equally unproductive, Spurge looked at his companions ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... its own independent efforts has resulted in such a lack of confidence at home in the stability of currency values that capital refuses its aid to new enterprises, while millions are actually withdrawn from the channels of trade and commerce to become idle and unproductive in the hands of timid owners. Foreign investors, equally alert, not only decline to purchase American securities, but make haste to sacrifice those which they ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... we rode into the forest (which was dry and very unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through Acacia Catechu, belted by Sissoo, which often fringes the stream, always occupying the lowest flats. The foliage at this season is brilliantly green; and as the evening ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... impression is, ladies, that at present capital is exceedingly unproductive. Shares pay very small dividends, and speculating is exceedingly dangerous. As I understand it, the capitalist now finds himself in a more critical position than ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... the economic point of view, can not be expected personally to take care of so large a consumption of superfluities as this posture of affairs requires at their hands. They would, as the Victorian peace teaches, necessarily have the assistance of a trained corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first and most immediate of whom would be those whom the genial phrasing of Adam Smith designates "menial servants." Beyond these would come the purveyors of superfluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeed redundant, class of tradespeople of high and low degree,—dependent ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... camp, and a four-pounder was placed on the top-gallant forecastle and another on the poop of the Runnymede, in order to keep the natives off if they should prove aggressive. There appeared to be no chance of receiving any assistance from them. The island appeared to be wholly unproductive, neither fruit nor vegetables having been discovered, but several wild hogs ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... farthing. The same reasoning is obviously applicable to all the productive routes in the United States. And we have seen the injustice of taxing the letters on routes that are productive or self-supporting, to defray the expense of the unproductive routes which the government is bound to ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... yesterday from Johnstown, worn down with heat, fatigue, and bad fare. It is some small consolation that these tedious journeys are not wholly unproductive. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... instinctively toward each other, have taken upon themselves the vows and obligations of wedlock, and have been fruitful and happy in this relation. Alliances founded upon position, money, or purely arbitrary considerations, mere contracts of convenience, are very apt to prove unhappy and unproductive. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... only survived but had actually contrived to perpetuate their species to a very limited extent. And the reason why the lake was not swarming with them, instead of containing probably only three or four specimens at the utmost, was doubtless that the waters were too circumscribed in extent, and too unproductive in the matter of fish, to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... nod solemnly, or, if feeling especially loquacious, venture some prophecy concerning the morrow, before resuming his unproductive rounds and his lugubrious yawp. One day he discovered that she spoke French. From that time the relationship advanced rapidly. On Christmas he gave her a pair of red woolen gloves. On New Year's he took her walking among ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on without stopping one instant to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... millions at par in 1865, and most of this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium? Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... and almost impassable desert on the east, so that it was easily defended. Its population was composed of hardy, warlike, and religious people, condemned to poverty and incessant toil by the difficulty of getting a living on sterile and unproductive hills, except in a few favored localities. The climate was warm in summer and cold in winter, but on the whole more temperate than might be supposed from a region situated so near the tropics,—between the twenty-fifth and thirtieth degrees of latitude. It was an elevated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... absolutely desolate country; the only inhabitants were melancholy birds of Antarctic species. Mosses and lichens cover the nakedness of an unproductive soil. Behind the beach a few firs rise to a considerable height on the bare hill-sides, from whence great masses occasionally come crashing down with a thundering sound. Awful solitude reigns everywhere. There was nothing to attest the passage of any human being, ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... work; "Pen's" illness; "Ben Karshook's Wisdom"; return to Florence; (1856) "Men and Women" published; the Brownings go to London; in summer "Aurora Leigh" issued; 1858, Mrs. Browning's waning health; 1855-64 comparatively, unproductive period with R. Browning; record of work; July 1855, they travel to Normandy; "Legend of Pornic"; Mrs. Browning's ardent interest in the Italian struggle of 1859; winter in Rome; "Poems before Congress"; her last poem, "North and South"; death of Mrs. Browning at Casa Guidi, 28th June ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the blackthorn thickets; clambering over and under the dead-falls and debris of the slashings; climbing the side hills with the straight, silvery shafts of the poplars; wandering down the narrow aisles of the old logging roads; plodding doggedly across the unproductive fields that lay between patches of cover; always lured on in the hope of more game farther on, picking up a bird here, a bird there, each an adventure in itself. And occasionally, once in a great while, they ran against a glorious ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the police upon her track, but pride bade me try every other means first. So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I began to pace the streets if haply I might see her face shine upon me from the crowd of passers by; a foolish fancy, unproductive of result! I not only failed to see her, ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... were fully, gracefully, and gratefully acknowledged. It was proposed to give Miss Nightingale a public reception; but, with true modesty, she shrunk from appearing in any other than her own character of nurse and soother, and at once passed into retirement. But that retirement was not allowed to be unproductive. So soon as her health, which was at all times delicate, and had suffered considerably in the Crimea, had been somewhat restored, she set to work to render the fruits of her experience useful to the world. In 1859 she produced her "Hints ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the wrecks of men who have chosen the wrong occupation! The driver bathes the raw shoulder of a horse whose collar does not fit, but when men make their misfits and the heart is sore society does not soothe, but with whips it scourges the man to his fruitless task. This large class may be counted unproductive. John Stuart Mill placed the industrial mismatings among the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... unprofitable; superfluous &c (redundant) 641; dispensable; thrown away &c (wasted) 638; abortive &c (immature) 674. worthless, valueless, priceless; unsalable; not worth a straw &c (trifling) 643, dear at any price. vain, empty, inane; gainless^, profitless, fruitless; unserviceable, unprofitable; ill-spent; unproductive &c 169; hors de combat [Fr.]; effete, past work &c (impaired) 659; obsolete &c (old) 124; fit for the dust hole; good for nothing; of no earthly use; not worth having, not worth powder and shot; leading to no ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger out the remnant ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... respect to the advantage of the United States. The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the indebtedness of the Government in the manner suggested, our nation will rapidly recover its wonted prosperity. Its interests require that some measure should be taken to release the large amount of capital invested in the securities of the Government. It is not now merely unproductive, but in taxation annually consumes $150,000,000, which would otherwise be used by our enterprising people in adding to the wealth of the nation. Our commerce, which at one time successfully rivaled that of the great maritime powers, has, rapidly diminished, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... minister, author of a work on Theism (1852), in which the use of miracles as an evidence was depreciated. It is hoped that it will not be considered improper to have named a writer, whose sex might be expected to shelter her from remark; but her writings are too able to be unproductive of influence. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... life to meditate on God, with less or more of the practice of religious exercises. Painful to contemplate the spiritual loss to the community of a conception of religion that diverts the spiritual energy away from the community, and renders it practically unproductive, except as an example. Once more we recall as typical the jogi, not going about doing good, anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, but fixed like a plant to its own spot, and with inward-looking eyes. Time was that there were jogis and joginis ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... tree, including the safest routes of approach by day or night, had been cut down to make space for substantial but unexciting houses, quite like the houses in anybody's town. Other orchards had shrunk to a few poor unproductive trees so little prized by their owners that they could no longer excite evil thoughts in ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... broad sweep of country lying between the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain, which civilization with its improvements and its rush of progress has not yet invaded. It is mountainous, rocky, and for all agricultural purposes sterile and unproductive. It is covered with dense forests, and inhabited by the same wild things, save the red man alone, that were there thousands of years ago. It abounds in the most beautiful lakes that the sun or the stars ever shone upon. I have stood upon the immense boulder that forms the head or summit of Baldface ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... a living from their small and comparatively unproductive farms, and equally unable to find work elsewhere, the peasants clamor loudly for more land; and when, as the result of a bad harvest, their situation becomes intolerable, they are seized with a sort of berserker ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... of Confolens a piece of property rented for 2,956 livres in 1665, brings in only 900 livres in 1747. On the confines of la Marche and of Berry a domain which, in 1660, honorably supported two seigniorial families is now simply a small unproductive tenant-farm; "the traces of the furrows once made by the plow-iron being still visible on the surrounding heaths." Sologne, once flourishing,[5127] becomes a marsh and a forest; a hundred years earlier it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of its ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... increase in the number of laborers, by securing a larger return from those now employed, and by the permanent occupation of the fertile soil of the South by a large portion of the Union army, as settlers and cultivators, who have heretofore spent their energies upon the comparatively unproductive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... great caravans which formerly carried on trade between Europe and India. It consists largely of a high plateau, surrounded by mountains. Large parts of the country are sandy and dry from lack of sufficient rain, and therefore are unproductive. The people are a branch of the Aryan race. They doubtless lived a nomadic life, and were obliged to be ever ready to defend themselves. Success in defense against the frequent assaults of their surrounding enemies stimulated ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... history of New France; to preserve such documents as might be found amid the dust of unexplored depositories, and which might prove important to general history and to the particular history of the province. The Society has not been unproductive of good. Indeed it acquired at one time even a distant reputation. There have been both able and educated men connected with it. The Reverend Daniel Wilkie, LL.D., one of the most eminent teachers of youth, which the country has yet known, a ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... leaves and fallen trunks, the soil of the alpine pastures which skirted and indented the woods, and the mould of the upland fields, are washed away; meadows, once fertilized by irrigation, are waste and unproductive because the cisterns and reservoirs that supplied the ancient canals are broken, or the springs that fed them dried up; rivers famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; the willows that ornamented and protected the banks of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... contrary, Pope Paschal [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a prebend, or ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... pestilence into account, the decline of Italy must be attributed to other causes. These I believe to have been the extinction of commercial republics, the decay of free commonwealths, iniquitous systems of taxation, the insane display of wealth by unproductive princes, and the diversion of trade into foreign channels. Florence ceased to be the center of wool manufacture, Venice lost her hold upon the traffic between East and West.[242] Stagnation fell like night ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... And I am a man of ancient lineage as honourable, so as not to enter into unproductive argument, as yours. And I am a Master of Arts of the two Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Yet I fail to find anything dishonourable in my present estate as 33702 Private Phineas McPhail in the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... improving land which will not only be found profitable during their lives, but which will be their own and their descendants freehold for ever, than to continue starving themselves and their children on barren patches and crofts of four or five acres of unproductive land in the Highlands. We have experienced all the charms of a Highland croft, as one of a large family, and we unhesitatingly say, that we cannot recommend it to any able-bodied person who can leave it for a more promising outlet for himself and family. While we are of this ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... Marechale, in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde's approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the "young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse," "her dearest of friends," could tell me nothing more than that she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of Madeira for the Common People." His repeated re-election as Governor proves his popularity. Through lavish expenditure, his fortune was much reduced, and for many years he was sorely pressed for funds, his means being tied up in unproductive ways. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... mischievous and wasteful to relieve such persons without exacting labour from them, and just as reprehensible to employ them in digging holes and filling them up again, or in any other occupation equally useless and unproductive. If their work is to be obtained, it should be directed into some channel that will benefit themselves and the community. Public roads, harbours, piers, breakwaters, and the like, appear an obvious outlet for the labour thus placed at the command of the Board; and we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... great depth with cinders and ashes. All the lands in the immediate vicinity were also rendered unfit for cultivation. What is remarkable, but few lives were lost. The unfortunate Caribs, however, who comprised about one hundred families, dwelt in this ungenial and unproductive district, and were driven from their homes to find elsewhere and nearer to the habitations of the whites, some desolate spot, shunned by all others, where they could again set ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... isn't it—as if Mother Nature were carrying on two experiments, one at home and one on Mars. On earth it's trial of an emotional, highly competitive race in a world of plenty; here it's the trial of a quiet, friendly race on a desert, unproductive, and inhospitable world. Everything here makes for cooperation. Why, there isn't even the factor that causes so ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... a great power to have naval bases or coaling stations in several parts of the world. This presupposes preparations for war; but if international peace were maintained, such possessions would be useless and the money spent on them wasted. In any case it is unproductive expenditure. It is the fashion for politicians (and I am sorry to find them supported by eminent statesmen) to preach the doctrine of armaments; they allege that in order to preserve peace it is necessary to be prepared for war, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... sandy soil, so unproductive that corn is in the greatest scarcity and is always brought from Khartoum by the annual boats for the supply of the traders' people, who congregate there from the interior, in the months of January and February, to deliver the ivory for shipment to Khartoum. ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... wheat, the gold and silver," which he found in "fair Innis-fail." It is probable that land was cultivated then which now lies arid and unreclaimed, for a writer in the Ulster Archaeological Journal mentions having found traces of tillage, when laying out drains in remote unproductive districts, several feet beneath the peaty soil. Dr. O'Donovan also writes in the same journal: "I believe the Irish have had wheat in the more fertile valleys and plains from a most remote period. It is mentioned constantly in the Brehon laws and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... climate, scattered population, and wide expanses of unproductive land have constrained economic development. Economic activity traditionally has been based on agriculture and the breeding of livestock - Mongolia has the highest number of livestock per person in the world. In recent years extensive mineral resources have been developed ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... into whose confidence doubt had begun to be instilled, said to himself, all a-tremble, that he would hardly have staked his veracity, his standing with the brethren, if he had realized that it was so close a matter as this. He had long known that his father owned the greater part of the unproductive wilderness lying between the two ravines; the land was almost worthless by reason of the steep slants which rendered it utterly untillable. He was sure that by the terms of his deed, which his father had from its vendor, ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the better will have stood between me and the good. Yearning for the ideal will have lost me reality. Vague aspiration and undefined desire will have been enough to make my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductive nature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required of me, may not my very remorse be a mistake ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the products of tropical Africa. In reference to the benefits which had been derived from her West India colonies, before the suppression of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... were not entirely unproductive. There began to prevail amongst the islanders, a disposition to hear the wondrous discourses of this stranger, and he was employed, day after day, in explaining to large and attentive audiences, the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... circumstance that he was the first to feel the depth and power of that idea, partly in the thoughts and pictures with which some speeches, principally the monologues of Faustus himself, are interwoven. The Faustus of Marlowe is the Faust of the legend, tired of learning because it is so unproductive, and selling his soul, not for knowledge, but for wealth and power. His investigating conversations with Mephistopheles, his inquiries, and the answers of the latter, are almost as shallow and childish as those in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. [13:7]And he said to his vine dresser, Behold, I have come three years seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none; cut it down; why should it make the ground unproductive? [13:8] And he answered and said to him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I dig about it, and put on manure; [13:9]and if it bears fruit, well; but if not, at a future time you shall ...
— The New Testament • Various
... nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square feet or a quarter of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... to be done up," said Andrey Yefimitch after a moment's thought. "If the corner lodge, for instance, were fitted up as a dispensary, I imagine it would cost at least five hundred roubles. An unproductive expenditure!" ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... degree. An increase in the number of small farms, and a decrease in the average acreage, is shown in almost all the states. The increase of great estates shown by the census figures probably bears little or no relation to real farming, consisting mainly of great stock grazing ranches in the West, and unproductive gentlemen's estates ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... she had done, when she accompanied a neighbor's family, who were emigrating to seek their fortune in the New World. These neighbors had gone to the far West, and not caring to be burdened with a possibly unproductive member of their party, had left the little girl in the hands of a German employment agency, through which she had found ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... think that you could form no better wish for yourself than mine. You see, therefore, most kind and charming lady, that I can wish nothing for you on your nameday, because my wishes are too feeble, and therefore unproductive. As for me, I venture to wish for myself your kind indulgence, and the continuance of your friendship, and the goodness that I so highly prize. This is my warmest wish! But if any wish of mine may be permitted, then mine shall become identical with your own, for thus I shall feel assured that ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... its affairs without its assistance, and trade had already found new auxiliaries, so that on the 1st of October last the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a national bank more than one-half of whose capital was either lying unproductive in its vaults or in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... Preliminary Remarks. Book I. Production. Chapter I. Of The Requisites Of Production. 1. The requisites of production. 2. The Second Requisite of Production, Labor. 3. Of Capital as a Requisite of Production. Chapter II. Of Unproductive Labor. 1. Definition of Productive and Unproductive Labor. 2. Productive and Unproductive Consumption. 3. Distinction Between Labor for the Supply of Productive Consumption and Labor for the Supply of Unproductive Consumption. Chapter III. Of Capital. 1. Capital ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... but lately back from their wedding-trip. Adrian, after several years of unproductive traffic in exotic literature, had finally made a hit; he had been able not only to lay a telling piece of work at the dear one's feet, but also—by a slight discounting of future certainties—to put a good deal of money in his purse. He had at last ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Lysia all things are made manifest; she reads human nature as one reads an open scroll, and with merciless analysis she judges men as being very poor creatures, limited in their capabilities, disappointing and monotonous in their passions, unproductive and circumscribed in their destinies. To her ironical humor and icy wit the wisest sages seem fools; she probes them to the core, and discovers all their weaknesses; . . she has no trust in virtue, no belief in honesty. And she is right! Who but a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ridge of land, generally barren and unproductive, when upon a small scale. It is also a ridgy height that runs for many ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... sacrifice, begin your allotment by devoting two hours at the least in each day to active bodily exercise, and give one of these to the early morning, and the other to the evening. So with your meals. First consult health, without which your studies will be unproductive, and your hopes of future success blighted. Thus, then, would stand the account for the day:—Exercise, two hours; meals and rest, three; sleep, seven; for study, twelve.' Twelve hours for study would be too long, if he ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... then she was removed, and there were black years of poverty and loneliness for her, as she had not laid by a dollar for a day of want, but had given lavishly to all in need, especially to the negroes. She was not able to sell her valuable but unproductive real estate, and was reduced to actual need. "I tell you really and solemnly," she confesses to her diary, "I have suffered for necessary food. I have not one cent in the world. I have stood the brunt alone of a persecution that I believe no other person ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... circumstances of the time, such an amount of human suffering, that no king who had any regard for the happiness of his subjects could have consented to it. Khufu must have forced his subjects to labour for a long term of years—twenty, according to Herodotus—at a servile work which was wholly unproductive, and was carried on amid their sighs and groans for no object but his own glorification, and the supposed safe custody of his remains. Shafra must have done nearly the same. Hence an evil repute attached to the pyramid builders, whose names were handed down to posterity as ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... producing; who fills a place on the earth but does not shed upon it either good or evil, —for evil is sometimes good the meaning of which is not at once made manifest. It is seldom that old maids of their own motion enter the ranks of these unproductive beings. Now, if the consciousness of work done gives to the workers a sense of satisfaction which helps them to support life, the certainty of being a useless burden must, one would think, produce a contrary effect, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... her memory, and she hated to give it up. The kind husband would not insist, but went sadly to his work. It was not long before the sheep-pasture was worth a million dollars! Sentiment, you see, is not always an unproductive article. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the optical artists of these islands were able to compete on equal terms with their rivals on the Continent. In the case of reflectors, however, there seemed no insurmountable obstacle to an almost unlimited increase of light-gathering capacity; and it was here, after some unproductive experiments with fluid lenses, that ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Domeyko's account of those mines, in the "Comptes Rendus" tome 14 page 560.) I was assured by Mr. Lambert, that native copper without a trace of silver has been found in the same vein with native silver without a trace of copper. At the mines of Aristeas, the silver veins are said to be unproductive as soon as they pass into the green strata, whereas at S. Rosa, only two or three miles distant, the reverse happens; and at the time of my visit, the miners were working through a red stratum, in the hope of the vein becoming productive ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... true of the French Isles du Salut off the Guiana coast, of Spanish Fernando Po in the Gulf of Guinea, of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, notoriously unhealthy, which receive the criminals of British India,[911] and of numerous others. A bleak climate and unproductive soil have added to the horror of exile life in Sakhalin, as they overshadowed existence in the Falkland Islands, when these were a penal colony of Spain and later ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... make the best of existing circumstances. Here was Arthur left to me at last; and rousing from my despondent apathy, I exerted all my powers to eradicate the weeds that had been fostered in his infant mind, and sow again the good seed they had rendered unproductive. Thank heaven, it is not a barren or a stony soil; if weeds spring fast there, so do better plants. His apprehensions are more quick, his heart more overflowing with affection than ever his father's could have been, and it is no hopeless ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... harbour when he made his excursion to the westward in April last, and which, from its form, he had named the Crescent. This measure appeared the more expedient, as the soil in and about the settlement seemed to be very indifferent and unproductive, and by no means so favourable for the growth of grain as that ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... beautiful, seeks its sap in narrow formulas dictated solely by ecclesiastical interests. In order that religious fanaticism should be inoffensive, the heart in which it exists must be very pure. It is true that even in that case it is unproductive of good. But the hearts that have been born without the seraphic purity which establishes a premature Limbo on the earth, are careful not to become greatly inflamed with what they see in retables, in choirs, in locutories and sacristies, unless they have first erected in their own consciences ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... whereas to the north of Gijiga on the one hand, and Verkhoyansk on the other, we enter a land of desolation, thousands of miles in extent, chiefly composed of tundra, as yet unprospected, it is true; but probably as unproductive, minerally and agriculturally, as an Irish bog. The reader is already aware that tundra is impassable in summer, for its consistency is then that of a wet bath sponge. The foot sinks in over the knee at every step, and a good walker can scarcely cover a mile within the hour. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... property which he had no means of replacing. Estate after estate was sold for several generations, till, at last, my father found himself the heir to a half-ruined castle on the borders of the ocean, and a few thousand acres of unproductive land in the same neighbourhood. My mother, who is now a saint in heaven, was as much so as a mortal can be when on earth; and although my noble father inherited much of the true pride of ancient ancestry, he was free from the folly and vice of his predecessors, and he resolved to exert all ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of view this was an enormous success, though unproductive of glory. It destroyed at a blow a centre of commerce and supply powerfully contributive to the maintenance of the enemies of Great Britain; both to their hostile operations, and to the indirect but no less vital financial support that trade gives to national endurance,—to the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... cheap. He three days ago tendered me some stock for one shilling per share. I said, 'No, but give me one bond at three pennies per share for four months, and I will consider ze matter, and try to help you close out some unproductive property.' He would not comply, but he thought it over very much, and asked me to call again. One broker, Mr. Williams, offered to sell me plenty for four pennies, but would ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... into religious emotion and work, into patriotic effort, into artistic enthusiasms, into games and amateur employments, and an enormous proportion of the whole world's fund of effort wastes itself in religious and political misunderstandings and conflicts, and in unsatisfying amusements and unproductive occupations. In a modern Utopia there will, indeed, be no perfection; in Utopia there must also be friction, conflicts and waste, but the waste will be enormously less than in our world. And the co-ordination of activities this relatively ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of course, were early on the ground, for in spite of the father's contention that they could ill afford, at the moment, to tie up more money in unproductive properties, the son had argued that they must have "protection," and his arguments ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... especially when the first attempts are made to grow crops. The choice of hay may be one between a crop of beggar weed and no crop at all. All are agreed as to the renovation which it brings to soils; hence, when grown or allowed to grow on unproductive soil for a few years and then plowed under, the soil becomes productive. Since it grows late rather than early in the season where the seed is in the land, it will not interfere with the growth of the corn, but ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... as had been consumed by the workmen, can it be said that the work ceases to be productive simply because it is consumed by the workmen themselves? If that were so, agriculture even, would, in most countries with a low civilization, be unproductive.(315) ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... some ingenious method of evading it can be discovered in the meantime. Alas, my beloved one! the occupation of ensnaring winged insects is indeed an alluring one, but as far as this person has observed, it is also exceedingly unproductive of taels. Could not some more expeditious means of enriching yourself be discovered? Frequently has the unnoticed but nevertheless very attentive Lila heard her father and the round-bodied ones who visit him speak ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... with a circular flower-bed, extended a short distance on either side of the house. But not too much land was put to such unproductive use; and the small lawn was closely bordered by a corn-field on the one side and on the other by an apple orchard. Beyond stretched the tobacco—and wheat-fields, and behind the house were the vegetable garden ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin |
