"Purposeless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were, taken complete possession of her, by right of the deed of gift which she had made of herself that morning. She had endeavoured to resume the gift, but had altogether failed. She declared to herself that she was weak, impotent, purposeless; but she admitted, on the other hand, that he had displayed more of power than she had ever guessed at his possessing. A woman always loves this display of power in a man, and she felt that she could have loved him had it not been ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... far better to wait until something occurs that gives one an opportunity of talking to some rational purpose, than to insist that one's tongue shall incessantly utter articulate sounds whether the brain give it anything to say or no. This sort of purposeless talking exerts a positively injurious influence upon the mind, by leading it into the too common error of mistaking sound for sense, ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... companion. There were great beads of perspiration on his ashen-gray forehead and on the ends of his lank hair; the hand which twitched spasmodically in his was cold and clammy, the other, which was free, had a vague, purposeless, jerky activity, as if attached to some deranged mechanism. Without any apparent concern in these phenomena, Tommy halted, and, seating himself on a log, motioned his companion to a place beside him. Johnson obeyed without a word. Slight as ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and tendencies of mankind; a thing to be got rid of before any near approach could be made to that social perfection in the future coming of which he fully believed. But, though useless, the Earl was beautiful to the eye. Though purposeless, as regarded any true purpose of speech, his voice was of silver and sweet to the ears. His hands, which could never help him to a morsel of bread, were soft to the touch. He was sweet with perfumes and ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... interminable hours of mental and physical agony. But now she was hardly conscious of pain—only of a stupefied sense of loss. She felt as if her life were finished, as though all the days and years that lay ahead of her were entirely empty and purposeless. Sometime or other, she supposed, she would come alive again, be able to feel and realise things once more. But she dreaded the coming of that time. Better this apathy, like the stupor of one drugged, than a repetition of the anguish ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... that thing. There was a vague admission that this last pause before his entry into Jerusalem where he must accomplish so much was an opportunity for some sort of preparation, but he lacked direction and resource. He was irritable and purposeless. ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... specific acts. For instance, Mary G., who said, "Leave me alone," and covered her head or buried it in the pillows, accompanied her muscular resistiveness with laughter. This shows the affective nature of the apparently purposeless muscular tension. The case of Annie K. (Case 5) is more instructive. In the stage of deeper stupor she had the automatic type of resistiveness but also outbursts of anger, particularly toward the nurses, striking one of them she said, "You are the cause ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... and we both, I think, were busy with our thoughts. Presently I saw a man, a negro, come into the avenue a little before us with a bundle of tools on his back. He went as slowly as we, with an indescribable, purposeless gait. His figure had the same look too, from his lop-sided old white hat to every fold of his clothing, which seemed to hang about him just as it would as lieve be off as on. I begged Preston to hail him and ask him the question about church ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... deepest dejection. It was true that he had made no advance of late in his pursuit of her, but so long as she remained there had always been hope. Now that she was gone for ever, even his riding and hunting became uninteresting and purposeless. What was the use of excelling in them when she was not there to hear of ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... die in an instant; and though, if dying at sea, I might sink to the depth, where something of Dorothy remains, I would as soon be reduced to ashes and scattered on the shores of this lake that I have known so long. That would be symbolical of my purposeless and wasted life. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... triumph in having run down and captured a thing that had been so long struggling with death. Groot Willem, who had been for a time highly elated with the prospect of recovering the lost giraffes, was again in great despondence. Much time had been squandered in this purposeless pursuit. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... excitement, that eager crowding into one day and night of gaieties which might fairly relieve the placid monotony of a month's domesticity, a month's professional work—some there are to whom this Vanity Fair is as a treadmill or the turning of a crank, the felon's deepest humiliation, purposeless, unprofitable, labour. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... his fanatic hordes, who carried "fire, the sword, and desolation" far and wide over that unhappy land. It is not to the British administrators in Egypt that the blame of all this failure, and of the purposeless bloodshed of the two expeditions from Suakin, is to be laid, nor can it be said that after the fall of Khartoum any other course could have been adopted than to retire for a time; but it is to the British administrators in ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... those who have to tend and care for the sick, to lighten the burden and the sorrow for them, that has a meaning surely for all concerned? The reason why we feel as we do about broken lives, why they seem so utterly purposeless, is because we have the proportion so wrong. We do not really, in fact, believe in immortality, when we are bound in the body—some few of us do, and many of us say that we do. But we do not realise that the little life is but one in a great chain of lives, ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was in no hurry to share his happiness. Since his youth he had made few friends, and in all his life had never known comradeship with a woman. Suddenly, and as a well-spring in the desert, Vashti had come into the dull round of his duty—his purposeless, monotonous duty—to refresh it; nor perhaps were the waters less sweet for the feeling that they were stolen. So he lived in the day, and put off thinking ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... chosen the boy's right hand upon which to rain the blows. Edward was told to sit down at the principal's own desk and copy the lesson. He sat, but he did not write. He would not for one thing, and he could not if he would. After half an hour of purposeless sitting, the principal ordered Edward again to stand up and hold out his hand; and once more the rattan fell in repeated blows. Of course it did no good, and as it was then five o'clock, and the principal had inflicted all the punishment that the law ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... rhymes are trivial, but my aim Deem ye not purposeless: I would the homely truth proclaim— That times which knaves full loudly blame For feudal haughtiness Would put the grinding crew to shame Who prey on ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... upset,' replied Mumford, with irritation at this purposeless talk, 'hadn't we better leave the house and go to live as far ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... something was happening to prevent it. On a flat piece of green in front of the rocky kopjes, where the enemy evidently was, I could see men, not running, but walking about in different directions. They were not crowded, but they seemed to be moving about like black ants, only in a purposeless kind of way. "They are Boers, and we've got them between our men and our battery," said a Gordon officer. But I knew his hope was a vain one. Very slowly they were coming towards us—turning and firing and advancing ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... head dispassionately. Her manner expressed fatigued failure to comprehend why he was making so much of this purposeless point. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... be cast by accident of circumstances or fate so far away from the yearning glance of our regretful eyes, so far beyond that pass, where pleading, human voices become lost in thousand-tongued confusions, how changed the once bright picture of our lives becomes; how vain and purposeless all other aims, save that which, with the powerful strength of a hope that is half despair, pursues the object of our rash unkindness, with outstretched hands and plaintive tone, beseeching for a pardon that may never greet ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... whose common place comfort and respectable dulness are more dismal than the picturesque dreariness of a moated grange amid the Lincolnshire fens. To the masculine mind this needlework seems nothing more than a purposeless stabbing and sewing of strips of calico; but to lonely womanhood it is the prison-flower of the captive, it is the spider ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... it hope to attain by keeping up this incessant din? If a love-song, surely the most optimistic cicada must realise that his amorous strains can never reach the ears of his lady-love, since hundreds of his brethren are all keeping up the same perpetual purposeless chirping, which must obviously drown any individual effort. Have the cicadas a double dose of gaiete francaise in their composition, and is this their manner of expressing it? Are they, like some young men we know, always yearning to turn night ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... lost is the Star of Truth to which the face is set, and while that shines all lesser lights may go. It was the long months of suffering through which I had been passing, with the seemingly purposeless torturing of my little one as a climax, that struck the first stunning blow at my belief in God as a merciful Father of men. I had been visiting the poor a good deal, and had marked the patient suffering of their lives; my idolised mother had been ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... be too stupid if we never hear any more. But that is always the way with modern ghost stories—there is no sense or meaning in them. The ghosts appear to people who never knew them, who take no interest in them, as it were, and then they have nothing to say—there is no denouement, it is all purposeless." ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... and Wilkins passed on, thoughtfully, towards Royal-street. In the excitement of the recent adventure, he had almost forgotten what had called him forth at that time of night, and now walked on, like one who wanders forth purposeless, into darkness and solitude. But suddenly, in passing a brilliantly lighted cafe, the thought of Arthur crossed his mind; and, for the first time, the idea flashed upon him, that he might have been one of those concerned in the capture ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... Amongst other things you do not know what money will buy. You have your coarse pleasures I do not doubt, which seem sweet to you! Beyond them—what? A tasteless and barbaric display, a vulgar generosity, an ignorant and purposeless prodigality. Bah! How different it is with those who know! There are many things, my young friend, which I learned in my younger days, and amongst them was the knowledge of how to spend money. How to spend it, you understand! It is an art, believe ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hand—"and I move it, you see, not Northward but—yes, I move it Upward—that is to say, not Northward, but I move it somewhere—not exactly like this, but somehow—" Here I brought my sentence to an inane conclusion, shaking the Square about in a purposeless manner, much to the amusement of my Grandson, who burst out laughing louder than ever, and declared that I was not teaching him, but joking with him; and so saying he unlocked the door and ran out of the room. Thus ended my first attempt to convert a pupil to the ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... ever hope to become a really great or celebrated novel-reader who does not begin his apprenticeship under the age of fourteen, and, as I said before, stick to it as long as he lives. He must learn to scorn those frivolous, vacillating and purposeless ones who, after beginning properly, turn aside and whiling away their time on mere history, or science, or philosophy. In a sense these departments of literature are useful enough. They enable you often to perceive the most cunning and profoundly interesting touches in fiction. Then I have no doubt ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... was evil could contain the shock of a new experience. He had fought and lost all his battles—bitter struggles to think of even now, after the lapse of years, and the little he had to tell of himself was an intricate mingling of truth and falsehood, grotesque exaggeration, purposeless mendacity. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... that, Abdul, I know it, but yet these lapses come. I feel alone, abandoned, useless, my life purposeless, wasted." ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... young man, upon the whole, which was evinced by his making no attempt to write a book of travels, though he might safely have done so; and really, upon the whole, "lily of the field" though chance had made him, he was neither useless nor purposeless, and rather deserved his good ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... answered: "Oh it's nothing. I do this often." She went slowly into the back room where the maid was. In a few minutes she returned, apparently as usual. She flitted about uneasily, taking up now one thing, now another in a purposeless, nervous way. ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... are some, whom a thirst Ardent, unquenchable, fires, Not with the crowd to be spent, Not without aim to go round In an eddy of purposeless dust, Effort unmeaning and vain. Ah yes! some of us strive Not without action to die Fruitless, but something to snatch From dull oblivion, nor all Glut the devouring grave! We, we have chosen our path— Path to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... himself," said Daniel, a poet of the Elizabethan era, "how poor a thing is man!" Without a certain degree of practical efficient force—compounded of will, which is the root, and wisdom, which is the stem of character—life will be indefinite and purposeless—like a body of stagnant water, instead of a running stream doing useful work and keeping the machinery of a ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... comings and goings, accounts of dances, estimates of new acquaintances. But besides this she filled page after page with "impressions," "outpourings," queer little speculations about her soul, quotations from poets, solemn criticisms of new novels, or as often as not mere purposeless meanderings of words, exclamatory, rhapsodic—involved lucubrations quite meaningless and futile, but which at times she re-read with vague thrills ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... to be considered as a continuous series of achievements of the human mind than as the conquest of any single individual. It has sometimes taken centuries of experience to ascertain the value of a single fact in its various bearings. Like man himself, experience is feeble and apparently purposeless in its infancy, but acquires maturity and strength with age. Experience, however, is not limited to a lifetime, but is the stored-up wealth and power of our race. Even amidst the death of successive generations ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... there was a third principle of selection—"interest." And as she glanced about the appointments of Conny's smart little house, her admiration for her old schoolmate rose. Conny evidently had a definite purpose in life, and had the power and intelligence to pursue it. To the purposeless person, such as Isabelle had been, the evidences of this power were ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... beyond sound of his voice or reach of his hand. He realized with an overwhelming certainty how badly he needed her, how much he wanted her—not only in ways that were sweet to think of, but as a friendly beacon in the murky, purposeless vista of years that stretched before him. Yes, and before her also. They had not spent all those hours together without talking of themselves. No matter that she was cheerful, that youth gave her courage ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to his cell after these purposeless wanderings always with a sense of relief, with the thought of taking refuge from grey. As he lit the gas and opened the desk of his bureau and saw the pile of papers awaiting him, it was as if he had passed from the black skies and the stinging wind ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... possibilities. Often it was only the smallest trace, Watson, the faintest indication, and yet it was enough to tell me that the great malignant brain was there, as the gentlest tremors of the edges of the web remind one of the foul spider which lurks in the centre. Petty thefts, wanton assaults, purposeless outrage—to the man who held the clue all could be worked into one connected whole. To the scientific student of the higher criminal world no capital in Europe offered the advantages which London then possessed. But now——" He shrugged his shoulders ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... afraid," he said, "that Miss Lenora's evidence will help no one. As an expert in these affairs, Mr. Quest, does it not seem to you that her imprisonment was just a little purposeless? There seems to have been no attempt to harm her in any way whatever, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... successive changes through which each embryo is forced to pass, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes says that "none of these phases have any adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive contradiction to it or are simply purposeless; whereas all show stamped on them the unmistakable characters of ancestral adaptation, and the progressions of organic evolution. What does the fact imply? There is not a single known example of a complex organism which is not developed ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... down to the Cherokee towns. His mission was one of the greatest peril, for there was imminent danger that the justly angered savages would take his life. But he was a man who never rushed heedlessly into purposeless peril, and never flinched from a danger which there was an object in encountering. His quiet, resolute fearlessness doubtless impressed the savages to whom he went, and helped to save his life; moreover, the Cherokees knew him, trusted ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... why he had yielded to Nan's entreaty. It all seemed so purposeless now in the broad light of day. He could force himself to live with his wife—under the same roof. Perhaps in time he could even meet her in daily intercourse. She might even become a factor in the great work of the Obar. But the joy of achievement had been snatched ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... had not been beyond humor, he would have smiled at the idea that in the face of all eternity it mattered what nation on one little planet eventually possessed a fragment called California. To him that fair land was empty and purposeless save for one figure, and even of her he thought with the terrible calm of dissolution. During these last months of illness and isolation he had been less lonely than at any time of his life save during those few weeks in California, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... much I had dared and how little, how pitifully little I had won. Over me the ragged rainclouds swept, obscuring the stars and in their movement and in the feeling of the dawn lay something illimitable and prophetic. Such moments do not come to men often—but to me for an hour, life was painfully purposeless. "What does it all ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... carts—drawn by active little Sumatra ponies, and driven by natives of Southern India, known as Klings, were immediately requisitioned, but nothing came of it apparently, and when I came back at sunset I found that, after an hour or two of apparently purposeless wanderings, all my fellow-passengers had returned to the ship, pale and depressed. True, the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the stage of publicity. There was always a haughty aloofness in his eyes that killed any word of greeting upon the lips of these same beholders with whom, a few hours later, he was to sit and wrangle in bitterest intimacy; a certain brisk importance of step which was a palpable rebuke to their purposeless unemployment. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Man thus divested would be God—would be unindividualized. But he can never be thus divested—at least never will be—else we must imagine an action of God returning upon itself—a purposeless and futile action. Man is a creature. Creatures are thoughts of God. It is the nature ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to nervousness are entirely purposeless; they even defy the most earnest efforts at inhibition. A marked feature of this type of involuntary action is the contraction of antagonist groups of muscles, productive of ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... knowledge is quite indifferent as to what is near or distant. Nevertheless his local movement is not purposeless on that account: for he is not moved to a place for the purpose of acquiring knowledge, but for the purpose of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... upon him, willing to be angry; but he saw that he had no need of further revenge. The man's body seemed to have shrunk into itself, and to have grown smaller. His lower jaw hung down, giving a purposeless expression to the face and mouth. The eyes were vacant and stared out on space, focussing nothing. Whatever anger he had had was turned to pity as he regarded him. So Spurling had not known that Mordaunt was a woman! And the ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... degrees to be a pretty regular thing, that Mr. Copley spent the evening abroad, excused himself from going anywhere with his family, and when they did see him wore an uncertain, purposeless, vagrant sort of look and air. By degrees this began to ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... has ever made an assumption more perfectly useless and purposeless than the assumption of the Unknowable. We have seen that the distinction between appearance and reality is a serviceable one, and it has been pointed out that it would be of no service whatever if it were not possible to refer particular appearances to their own appropriate ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... the book it is remarked that voluntary movements are preceded, not only by reflex, but also by "impulsive movements," the ceaseless activity of young infants being due to purposeless discharges of nervous energy. Reflex movements are followed by instinctive, and these by voluntary. The latter are first shown by grasping at objects, which took place in Preyer's child during the nineteenth week. The opposition ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... and for a few moments struggled with his purposeless and disconnected thoughts; but a blank, a darkness, an annihilation overwhelmed Alaric and the Gothic camp, which he vainly endeavoured to disperse. He sighed bitterly to himself—'It is gone!' and still grasping Antonina by the hand, drew her after ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... tale? Yet, in those hills that hung o'er Arcady, Some roving inebriate Daimon Begat him fair children On nymphs of the vineyard, On nymphs of the rock:— And in the heart of the forest Lay bound in white arms, In action creative a father Without a thought for his child:— A purposeless god, The forbear of men To corrupt, ape, inherit and spoil That ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... on my purposeless voyage till I reached the swollen branch of the creek. Piled up at a bend of the stream was a heap of logs, planks, boards, and other fugitive lumber which had come down from the saw-mills, miles up in the country. I seated myself on this heap of lumber, to think of the present ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... confine himself to purposeless copying, without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances sweetness, that elegance ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... keep at heel, and to be permitted to admire. I have seen him sit for half an hour on a doorstep, a canine monument of patience, waiting for her to come out, and I have seen her travel about the Place in apparently purposeless zigzags and circles for the mere pride and vanity of knowing how closely he would follow her least ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... serve you then, you and Lucy. If you need me, I equally need you. Let me give what little there is in me to somebody that wants me. My life, so far, has been full of change and somewhat purposeless. I have drifted about the world. Let me now anchor with you. I feel as though I ought to ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... it was one which I could not fulfil? Nevertheless, I promised and I should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more favourable light, would seem purposeless, if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the mainspring of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... of this underground colony; their six little legs carrying their curious globular bodies backward and forward over the disturbed area from which the stone had been removed. At first the movements of the ants were extremely erratic and purposeless. Panic and alarm appeared to be the order of the day during the few minutes which elapsed after removal of the stone. But soon the eye could discern movements of purposive kind on the part of the alarmed residents. There was "racing and chasing" in all ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... context in which it belongs. But in art, where expression is freed from the particular setting within which it arises, thus attaining universality, the repetitious and imitative, having no environment from which they may derive new meaning, are purposeless. They are, indeed, worse than negligible, because having grown into the habit of expecting originality, we are disappointed and bored when we fail to find it. Originality is, of course, relative; it is not incompatible ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... with lightning-like decision and be exploited with the utmost energy. On the other hand, one should never allow one's self to be induced to undertake charges in which the probable losses bear no reasonable proportion to the possible results. Such conduct could only lead to the purposeless sacrifice of men and horses, just as happened to the French Cavalry ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... for the simplest manual operations will rouse me to indignation: but if a thing will contribute largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I will undergo a considerable amount of labour to accomplish it, though without steady effort, being liable to side-winds and whims, and purposeless relaxations. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... seem to be half typical and only half historical. Thus did the early poets endeavor to make realities out of appearances; for, except a few typical men in whom certain ideas get embodied, the generations of mankind are mere apparitions who come out of the dark for a purposeless moment, and reenter the dark again after they have performed ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... right through to the gates of the palace at Kensington, and was only prevented from carrying it out by her death. At present the avenue intersected by Queen's Road and St. Leonard's Terrace is disjointed and purposeless. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... purposeless exile—nor altogether an unhappy one—now," I said. "I have work to do, Lady Angela, and I am going to it with a good heart. When we meet again I hope that it may be differently. Your coming—the memory of it will stand ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... intolerable, purposeless thing. He sat down at his desk and leaned his head in his hands. His whole life seemed to spell failure. With sudden impulse he seized a pen ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... limbs; it is the mind that feels the direful stroke. She had brought, too, with her a monstrous composition of liquid poison, the foam of the mouth of Cerberus, and the venom of Echidna;[64] and purposeless aberrations, and the forgetfulness of a darkened understanding, and crime, and tears, and rage, and the love of murder. All these were blended together; and, mingled with fresh blood she had boiled them in a hollow vessel of brass, stirred about with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... an evil thing; purposeless work is idleness in another and worse form. Aimlessness, as my friend Ned said, is a miserable state for a man; it tortures him in prison, and the habit of it, acquired in prison, cripples and degrades him after he gets out. Contract labor ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... which I could not enjoy. Summer approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him—I could ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... weak will breaks down. Between the ability to control one's thoughts and the inability to control them lies all the difference between right actions and wrong actions; between withstanding temptation and yielding to it; between an inefficient purposeless life and a life of purpose and endeavor; between success and failure. For we act in accordance with those things which our thought rests upon. Suppose two lines of thought represented by A and ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... particularly fond of cemeteries, but the knowledge that finally one has to go there himself makes a visit not wholly purposeless. We strolled past. the quiet homes to the more quiet plot of ground, "hallowed by many congenial and great souls." Here on a lofty elevation of ground stood the headstones of Louise May Alcott, Thoreau and Charming, with that of Hawthorne ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... higher; but still he might swell the list of those followers she seemed to like to behold at her feet offering up every homage to her beauty, even to their actual despair. And he thought of his own condition—very hopeless and purposeless ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... surprised if he did not talk politics, as did all its other male inhabitants. It came about that more politics than hardware was discussed on Scattergood's piazza, but to the casual listener it seemed only purposeless discussion. But Scattergood was a master of purposeless discussion. His methods were his ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... recalls one of the purposeless and impetuous exploits of Grey, resulted in the death of Gibson and the loss of several horses. Giles' horse soon knocked up, and he had to return on foot. Having, with really astonishing prudence, left a keg of water buried on his way out, he made for that. To his dismay, after ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... it. But when, a few weeks ago, my memory came back to me, I realized a sort of shock. I saw how tremendous the change was, and is. A few years ago I was home for a long leave, and I went a good deal into society. What did I see? I saw that the women of England were in the main a mass of useless, purposeless butterflies. I saw that the great mass of the young men of our class were mere empty-headed, worthless parasites. The whole country was given over to money getting and pleasure seeking. I didn't realize ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... not expect this. I thought that you would remain as silent as myself. But men's ways are not our ways. They cannot exhaust longing in purposeless words on scraps of soulless paper, and I am glad that they cannot. I love you for your impatience; for your purpose, and for the manliness which will win for you yet all that you covet of fame, accomplishment and love. You expect no reply, but there are ways in which one can ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... compelled to say that it was not. The struggle represented no great principles, begot no far-reaching consequences. It was not inspired by the "holy glee" with which in Wordsworth's sonnet Liberty fights against a tyrant, but by the faltering boldness, the drifting, purposeless unresolve of statesmen who did not desire it, and by the irrational violence of a Press which did not understand it. It was not a necessary war; its avowed object would have been attained within a few weeks ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... no human thing, you love not even yourself, you love only the eternal spirit of beauty in all things, you love only me. Me you may sacrifice, your own heart you may deny, in the weakness of human pity for human love; but, should this be, your life will be in secret broken, purposeless, and haunted, and to me at last you will come, at the end—at the end and too late. This is your own heart's voice; you know if ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... peculiar province of negative judgements is solely to prevent error. For this reason, too, negative propositions, which are framed for the purpose of correcting false cognitions where error is absolutely impossible, are undoubtedly true, but inane and senseless; that is, they are in reality purposeless and, for this reason, often very ridiculous. Such is the proposition of the schoolman that Alexander could not have subdued any countries ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... philosophers in France might have motives. We know the character of our David Hume perfectly well, and though it was not faultless, its fault certainly lay rather in an excessive desire to make the world comfortable for everybody, than in anything like purposeless malignity, of which he never had a trace. Moreover, all that befell Rousseau through Hume's agency was exceedingly to his advantage. Hume was not without vanity, and his letters show that he was not displeased at the addition to his ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... art Olaf the Brave, as men do call thee," said the vision, "turn thyself to nobler deeds than vikings' ravaging and this wandering cruise. Turn back, turn back from thy purposeless journey to the land of Jerusalem, where neither honor nor fame awaits thee. Son of King Harald, return thee to thy heritage; for thou shalt be ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Something had decreed otherwise, and a subtle spirit under whose power they were but purposeless puppets inspired them to commit an act of folly which was to hurl them from the fools' paradise wherein they were reveling down to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... an idle, purposeless man, without friends to visit or money to spend, he was in no hurry ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the life of humanity, and I am human. I—" The unfinished sentence sank into the silence of things inexpressible or which it was purposeless to express. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... early yet for breakfast, and he sauntered about idle and purposeless. Suddenly he came upon the young man upon whose advice he had purchased his ticket. He, too, had a Herald in his hand, but ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... floating things like rafts, or logs, or buoys, or bodies. Into this wide waste of muddy ripples every sound in the school-room swam, and also sights and colors, till between her eye-lash and that filmy distant margin nothing existed but a freshet, alive yet with nothing, eddying around with purposeless power, and still moving onward with an under force. The open book in her hand appeared like a great white wharf, or pier, covered with lime and coal in spots and places, and pushed forward into this ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... heed of, leaving me wretched amongst my ills. Alas, what may men do, I pray you, in whom put trust? In truth thou didst bid me entrust my soul to thee, sans love returned, lulling me to love, as though all [love-returns] were safely mine. Yet now thou dost withdraw thyself, and all thy purposeless words and deeds thou sufferest to be wafted away into winds and nebulous clouds. If thou hast forgotten, yet the gods remember, and in time to come will ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... master, develop an idea of goodness very different from that of princes. From our slave ancestry, says Lester Ward, we learnt to work, and certainly it is from slavery we derive the conception that industry, even though it be purposeless industry, is a virtue in itself. The good slave, too, has a morality of restraints; he abstains from the food he handles and hungers for, and he denies himself pride and initiative of every sort. He is honest in not taking, but he is unscrupulous about adequate ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... which made many who knew him much, but not truly, feel that he was purposeless and restless. They knew his talent, his opportunities. Why does he not concentrate? Why does he not bring himself to bear? He did not plead his ill-health; nor would they have allowed the plea. The difficulty was deeper. He felt that he had shown his credentials, and they were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... himself unable to give the answers. But he bore in mind the fact that Hamilton, the most punctual of living men, was not quite punctual this time. He turned his keen eyes upon the Clock Tower, and could see that during his purposeless reflections quite five minutes had passed. 'Something has happened,' he thought. 'Hamilton is certainly not coming. If he meant to keep the appointment he would have been here waiting for me five minutes before the time. Well, I'll give him five minutes ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the table. It is a theory among those who believe that a spirit nourishes all things from within, that there was some competition amongst these chairs as to which should be used at table, so dull, forlorn and purposeless was their life against the wall. Seven pictures hung on that wall; not because it was a mystic number, but because it filled up all the required space; two on each side of the looking-glass and three large ones on the opposite wall. ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... the reign of Edward the First, and still retaining its carved old oaken chimneys and paneled chambers and latticed windows, and intricate ups and downs of internal architecture, to present use apparently as purposeless and inconvenient as if one was living in a cat's-cradle. I have seen a rush-bearing with its classical morris dance, executed in honor of some antique observance by the country folk of Lancashire, with whom this commemoration, but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... there was no more silence; but a confusion of terrible farewells, and wild cries of affright, and purposeless ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... satisfied to do what others of her own class and rank did. Even now, though she was conscious that there was some danger for herself, she could not realize the half of the peril in which she stood. After Ann Holland left her she lingered still beside the little grave in a tranquil but somewhat purposeless reverie. There could be no harm, she thought, in taking just enough to deliver her from her very worst moments of depression, or when she had to write cheerfully to her husband. That was a duty, and she must keep a ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... back— handsome head-gear, which he gladly bartered for several strings of bright coral-red beads. Around the upper arms of two of them were bands bound so tightly as to cut into and deform the muscles—a singular custom, seemingly not only purposeless but mischievous, which is common among this ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... appearance which Dorothy bore on her return home was proof of this. Her clothes, the set of her hair, her very gestures and motions had framed themselves on town ideas. The faded, wildered, washed-out look, the uncertain, purposeless bearing which had come from her secluded life and subjection to her sister had vanished from her. She had lived among people, and had learned something of their gait and carriage. Money we know will do almost everything, and no doubt money had had much to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... for inciting a riot. Nobody cared enough seriously for the redoubtable Sam to object to this. The situation was ticklish, but the police handled it tactfully for once, opposing only a passive opposition, leaving the crowd to fritter its energies in purposeless cursing, surging to and fro, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... this, the Mundurucu displayed signs of fresh animation. He had been for some minutes lying upon his face, craning out over the gangway, and his long withered arms submerged in the water. The others occupied themselves in guessing what he was about; but their guesses had been to no purpose. Equally purposeless had appeared the actions of the Indian; for, after keeping his arm under water for a period of several minutes, he drew it in with a dissatisfied air, and once more arose to his feet. It was just then that he perceived the tree-tops, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of the water yet allowed one to discern every half-formed ripple, and even the purple of the rocks beneath. Five hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile out, were three boats. They also, like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But, unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... with good will on the viands prepared (Pork chops were the principal portion), Then retiring to bed, with their dreams they were scared, And spent half the night in contortion; Then rose in their sleep and came down to this room, And, instead of a purposeless pawing, They painted these pictures, then fled in the gloom, And Furniss ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... enthusiasm which had at first lifted the most ineffectual trial, the most useless essay, to the plane of actual achievement, died out, leaving them only the dull, prosaic record of half-finished ditches, purposeless shafts, untenable pits, abandoned engines, and meaningless disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star claim, and empty flour sacks and pork barrels in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... that before attacking the offices of Daitzelman, a big Moscow merchant, the mob was directed by shouts: "Let us go to Daitzelman; there is a lot to be gotten there." The murder of Daitzelman, who was beloved by his Russian laborers, and that of other Jews, was not prompted by revenge, but by mere purposeless savagery. It is impossible to assume that the mob was moved to action by the rumor which had been spread by the ringleaders of the rioting hordes concerning the kidnapping of a Christian child by the Jews—the more so since at the very beginning of the excesses the police produced the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... in their own chambers, enfranchised for an hour: one only remained on duty. All six women had the feeling, which comes to most women at a certain moment in each day, that life had, for a time, deteriorated into the purposeless and the futile; and that it waited, as in a trance, until some external masculine event, expected or unforeseen, should renew its ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... No wonder this purposeless lullaby is satirised in the orthodox libretto of Punch's Opera or the Dominion of Fancy, for Punch, having sung it, throws the ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... indeed be he? Where was the martial air, the flashing eye, the warrior face which she had pictured? There, framed in the doorway, was a huge twisted old man, gaunt and puckered, with twitching hands and shuffling, purposeless feet. A cloud of fluffy white hair, a red-veined nose, two thick tufts of eyebrow and a pair of dimly questioning, watery blue eyes—these were what met her gaze. He leaned forward upon a stick, while his shoulders rose and fell with ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a little laugh. "At least, I shall not be sorry to return to Silverdale. It has a charm of its own, for while one is occasionally glad to get away from it, one is even more pleased to come home again. It is a somewhat purposeless life our friends are leading yonder in the cities. I, ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... flannel trousers, a short blue boating coat, a soft grey felt hat, tennis shoes, a shambling and uncertain gait as of one who neither knows nor cares whither he is going or why he goes—the whole effect purposeless, slovenly, inept. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... not,' cried the other, 'so simple a thing; 'Tis nothing on earth but a butterfly's wing. They flit through the garden all hours of the day, They turn to each bud in a purposeless way, And many a time have they halted to see What fun could be made of my neighbours and me. But who cares for them? On their way let them go. When the summer has passed they have nothing to show, While one of our efforts more profit ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... that the man had any definite purpose in mind. He was simply yielding in a purposeless way to his mood, which, for the time being, could find no other expression. The remote chance that some opportunity looking toward his desire might present itself, led him to seek the scenes where such an opportunity would ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Afterwards!" he said. "Otherwise Creation would not only be a senseless joke, but a wicked one! Nay, it would almost be a crime. To cause creatures to be born into existence without their own consent, merely to destroy them utterly in a few years and make the fact of their having lived purposeless, would be worse than the dreams of madmen. For what is the use of bringing human creatures into the world to suffer pain, sickness, and sorrow, if mere life-torture is all we can give them, and death is the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... for, anyway? What mattered all this terrible tramping to and fro—was it an end or only a means? Would there ever come anything like satisfaction of desire? Life for him had been a silent, gloomy, and almost purposeless struggle. He had not looked forward to anything very definite, though vaguely he had hoped for ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... taking care of me, which you repudiated with scorn—in fact refused to entertain it seriously at all. Of course there may have been other grounds, but the one you laid stress on was that I was lazy and purposeless, and that if you ever did take up such a vocation it would be to take care of some one you could respect. I don't say for an instant that I approach to that altitude, but at least I may say I am no longer an idler, that ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to make purposeless visits," continued he, "especially among frivolous, idle people like you. I've been coming here to make a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... lotus," cries the Eastern visionary. "Hold thou to thy Centre," says his Christian brother, "and all things shall be thine." This is a practical recipe, not a pious exhortation. The thing may sound absurd to you, but you can do it if you will: standing back, as it were, from the vague and purposeless reactions in which most men fritter their vital energies. Then you can survey with a certain calm, a certain detachment, your universe and the possibilities of life within it: can discern too, if you be at all inclined to mystical adventure, the stages of the road along which you must pass ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... was afraid that if he stayed around the hotel some one might ask him to register. He went, therefore, to the postoffice and stood just outside the door with his hands still in his pockets and the purposeful look on his face; whereas no man was ever more completely adrift and purposeless than was Jack Corey. Now that he had lost himself from the world—buried himself up here in these wonderfully green mountains where no one would ever think of looking for him—there seemed nothing at all to do. He did not even want to go fishing. And as for journeying ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... this largely purposeless provender, he will pay thousands of simians to be reporters of such events day and night; and they will report them on such a voluminous scale as to smother or obscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets will be read ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... constantly endeavoured, by reminiscence and inference, to post him up in the usages of his adopted country; and he regaled me with the folk-lore of the hill-side where his ancestors had passively resisted extinction since the time of Japhet. Purposeless fairy tales and profitless ghost stories for the most part, with another class of legend, equally fatuous; but ah! how legitimately born of that auroral fancy which ceases not to play above the grave of homely ambition, penury—crushed and dead! Legends wherein ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... constitutions there is a natural chemistry, and these constitutions may produce chemic wonders—in others a natural fluid, call it electricity, and these may produce electric wonders. But the wonders differ from Normal Science in this—they are alike objectless, purposeless, puerile, frivolous. They lead on to no grand results; and therefore the world does not heed, and true sages have not cultivated them. But sure I am, that of all I saw or heard, a man, human as myself, was the remote originator; and I believe unconsciously to ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sung her to sleep with in her infancy—are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakspeare alone so to temper such a picture that ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... ultimate verdict upon Goldsmith's greatest poem, one thing is as significant as it is certain. These poetic yearnings were long in his heart ere he gave them utterance. A wayward, careless lad, heedless of all responsibility, he seems purposeless and perplexing to the last degree, yet the profoundest meditations of his life moved his soul. The very spell of poetry was upon him. This Divine revealing may have accounted for that outward want of earnestness of the character, and the career that troubled others if it did not ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... through a chink!' How does one live? What life has one? The life of sheep. Here am I; I can read and write; I read books, I think a whole lot. Sometimes I don't even sleep the entire night because I think. And what sense is there in it? If I don't think, my existence is a purposeless existence; and if I do, it is also purposeless. And everything seems purposeless. There are the peasants, who work and tremble over a piece of bread for their homes, and they have nothing. It hurts them, enrages them; they drink, fight, and work again—work, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... obstinate. With the timid obstinacy peculiar to their race, they stuck to their point and refused to be enticed into purposeless extravagance. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sovereignty and property are separated, when the Government is centralized, when the regime is a pacific one. The bondage which, in the tenth century, was necessary to re-established security and agriculture, is, in the eighteenth century, purposeless thralldom which impoverishes the soil and fetters the peasant. But, because these ancient claims are liable to abuse and injurious at the present day, it does not follow that they never were useful and legitimate, nor that it is allowable to abolish ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... before. But it was the end, the end, the end! The end of so much that had given her a new soul during the last few months. She must go back to those dreary years that had had no meaning in them, all those purposeless grey days that had stretched in endless succession on to a dismal future in which there shone no sun. Oh! he couldn't know what it had all meant to her—it could be flung aside by him without regret. For him it was a foolish memory, for her ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... unintentional, unintended; accidental; not meant; undesigned, purposed; unpremeditated &c 612; unforeseen, uncontemplated, never thought of. random, indiscriminate, promiscuous; undirected; aimless, driftless^, designless^, purposeless, causeless; without purpose. possible &c 470. unforeseeable, unpredictable, chancy, risky, speculative, dicey. Adv. randomly, by chance, fortuitously; unpredictably, unforeseeably; casually &c 156; unintentionally &c adj.; unwittingly. en passant [Fr.], by ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... be got to give a plain answer. It wasn't near enough, anyhow; not near. The evasion seemed to Anderson purposeless; the mere shifting and doubling that comes of long years of dishonest living. And again the question stabbed his consciousness—were his children justified in ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... organ for feeling our way through the gloom of the world. That I found no peace in these views I need not say. Many an hour have I spent in disconsolate depression, thinking that my existence and that of others is purposeless and unprofitable—perchance only a casual product of creation, coming and going like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... are conducive to the condition. 8. The paroxysm in short and temporary. 9. While light touches are painful, firm pressure and rough handling give relief. 10. It may occur in the occupied, but an idle, purposeless life is conducive. 11. The subject delights in exciting sympathy and in being fondled and caressed. 12. There is defect of will and a strong stimulus is required to lead ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that, fortunately for himself and unfortunately for his country, it was balanced by the pay and emoluments of a Brigadiership. Reluctant to allow Burnside quietly, a Caesar's opportunity to "cover his baldness with laurels," his whimsical movements, now galloping furiously and purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front of his command, cursing the officers,—and that for fancied neglect of duty,—poorly concealed the workings of ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... himself at something definite in the way of action, Henrietta would have been really disturbed instead of simply pretending to be. She had a good mind, a keen wit that had become bitter with unlicensed indulgence; but she was as indolent and purposeless as her husband. All her energy went in talk about doing something, and every day she had a new scheme, with yesterday's forgotten ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of Christmas Day broke over the scrubby garden of the hotel. I had been in a sort of dream, in which the form of Mary Deane was the chief figure, but there was another less pleasing shape, which came and went in my visions in a purposeless kind of way, one which I had seen that day lounging about the landing-stage, where he passed me first with a scowl and then with ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... of sudden birth and doom, Whose sound and motion not alone declare, But are their whole of being! If the breath Be Life itself, and not its task and tent, If even a soul like Milton's can know death; O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant, Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes! Surplus of Nature's dread activity, Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase, Retreating slow, with meditative pause, She formed with restless hands unconsciously. Blank accident! nothing's anomaly! If rootless thus, thus substanceless ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... retreat," he says; "it was a nightmare, like being seized by a madman after coming out of a serious illness and forced towards the edge of a precipice." The constant marching, the want of sleep, the restless and (as it sometimes seemed to the men) purposeless backward movement night and day drove them into a fury. The intensity of the warfare, the fierce pressure upon the mental and physical powers of endurance, might well have exercised a mischievous effect upon the men. Instead, however, it only ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... dawn the next day Mrs. Davilow accompanied her daughter to the railway station. The sweet dews of morning, the cows and horses looking over the hedges without any particular reason, the early travelers on foot with their bundles, seemed all very melancholy and purposeless to them both. The dingy torpor of the railway station, before the ticket could be taken, was still worse. Gwendolen had certainly hardened in the last twenty-four hours: her mother's trouble evidently counted for little in her present state of mind, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... chilblained, but all the world was waiting for him to be a man to do him honor. If he could sit for an hour with the old man on the beach, would it bring the boyish feeling back again? He was conscious of a purposeless temptation—unreasonable as that which he had felt at the edge of a precipice to throw himself over. Nonsense! The committee would be waiting; there were appointments for every hour of his stay in Philadelphia; there was the leading article on the situation which nobody but he could write, that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... that morning, while it was yet dark, they were called up from their broken sleep to undertake what to them was another purposeless march. Even the Eagles drooped in the hands of their bearers. The soldiers did not know, they could not see. The great high roads that led to Paris were being abandoned; they were plunging into unfathomable morasses; they were being led through dark, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... floor and no one can give them any further care. What could one do when all means are lacking? Under those circumstances, it is almost useless to bring them in. Among the passersby, there are many who are uninjured. In a purposeless, insensate manner, distraught by the magnitude of the disaster most of them rush by and none conceives the thought of organizing help on his own initiative. They are concerned only with the welfare of their own families. It became clear to us during ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... him, and feeling almost impelled to detain them and expound his doctrine. But the planlessness of average human nature was of course the measure of his opportunity; and he smiled to think that every purposeless face he met was a guarantee of his own advancement, a rung in the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the hand of M'liss, and commenced mechanically to button his coat around his chest with fumbling, purposeless fingers. He then passed his hand across his forehead as if to clear his confused and bewildered brain; all this, however, to no better result than to apparently root his feet to the soil and to intensify the stupefaction which seemed ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the second stage there is complete loss of consciousness; and though the reflexes persist, the movements in response to the stimuli are purposeless. The muscles generally ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... over,—that one will progress easily and quickly in his life. Another approached carefully, climbed slowly up the board and as cautiously descended on the other side— careful, thoughtful, and certain. The third climbed up and jumped down—a deed purposeless, incidental, uninforming. The fourth ran energetically to the obstruction, then stopped and crawled boldly underneath—disgusting boy who nevertheless will have carried his job ahead. Then, again, there came a fifth who jumped,— but too ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Government was held up on all hands to the popular derision and censure—for it will be remembered that to many minds the mysterious accompaniments of some of the deaths daily occurring conveyed a still darker significance than that implied in mere self-destruction, and seemed to point to a succession of purposeless and hideous murders. The demagogues, I must say, spoke with some wildness and incoherence. Many laid the blame at the door of the police, and urged that things would be different were they but placed under municipal, instead of under imperial, control. A thousand panaceas ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... thirst. How long intelligence has existed upon Mars, if intelligence there be, no one can say; nor yet what its future will be. It would seem probable that our own fate must be similar, but it is far removed. And though the Whole may seem wanton, purposeless, stupid, we are very little folk; we see very dimly; we see only what we have the capacity to see; and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the wisest of us. So also there are many ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... stopped to listen, but without hearing any sound that might herald the approach of a visitor; then resumed her wild and purposeless walk, until the clock struck the quarter, when she suddenly threw herself down in the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth |
