"Useful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gossip, make trivial remarks, and amid all this issue orders, trace plans, interrogate prisoners, decree, determine, decide, in a sovereign manner, simply, unerringly, in a few minutes, without missing anything, without losing a useful detail or a second of necessary time. In this intimate and familiar life of the bivouac flashes of his intellect were seen every moment. You can believe me when I say that he belied the proverb: 'No man is great in the eyes ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... know we got that bonbon dish locked away in the sideboard, and we never take it out. Let's give 'em something useful." ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... "gave Pitt a little political instruction in a very respectful and cordial way, but with the authority of an old and most informed statesman; and although nobody ever takes the whole of Burke's advice, yet he often, or always rather, furnishes very important and useful matter, some part of which sticks and does good. Pitt took it all ...
— Burke • John Morley
... infanteria of Alva, Gonsalvo, and Cuesta "still lived." So she sends us specimens of the first, if not just now the foremost, of all infantry. This microscopic invasion of our soil by an armed force will be useful in reminding us of the untiring tenacity which takes no note of time or of defeat, and which, indifferent whether the struggle were of six, fifty, or seven hundred years, wore down in succession the Saracens, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... asked upon one occasion what would be left for men to do when they had been perfected on the lines which he desired. He replied, after a long and painful hesitation, that they might find satisfaction in reading the poems of Wordsworth. But Wordsworth's poems are useful in the fact that they supply a refreshing contrast to the normal thought of the world, and nothing but the fact that many took a different view of life was ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... more company now than was agreeable, and it was picked not to suit Marion's taste, but her father's a very different matter. Fleda and Hugh were not forbidden the dinner-table, and so had the good of hearing much useful conversation, from which the former, according to custom, made her steady, precious gleanings. The pleasant evenings in the family were still better enjoyed than they used to be. Fleda was older; and the snug, handsome American house had a home-feeling to her that the wide Parisian saloons never ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... said with a frosty, teacher-to-student smile. "And whoever it was had a much higher concentration time than Charlie had ever attained. He seems to be able to retain contact as long as he can find useful information flowing in the mind ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... abundance of spindle fibers and sphere substance which were stained by haematoxylin. The safranin-gentian combination used by Miss Wallace and others in the study of the accessory chromosome did not prove to be especially helpful with these forms. Thionin was found to be a very useful stain for distinguishing between the accessory chromosome and an ordinary nucleolus. Licht-gruen was often ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens
... the French student, however, the theatre is a useful institution. For French has got to be learned somehow or other. A dancing master of my acquaintance used always to commence his course by a short address to his class in which he remarked: "Mesdemoiselles! ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... It may be proper to inform some readers, that a sheep-fold in these mountains is an unroofed building of stone walls, with different divisions. It is generally placed by the side of a brook, for the convenience of washing the sheep; but it is also useful as a shelter for them, and as a place to drive them into, to enable the shepherds conveniently to single out one or more for any particular ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... at Cambridge among the Learned; but, I repeat, you would rather live among the Ignorant. However, your Path is cut out for you: and, to be sure, it is a more useful and proper one for you than the cool sequestered one which one ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... with a sense of limitations, and of impotence against fate. This nightmare is now thrown off, and, the doors to the world being open and development free, the French people will learn that new initiative has its full recompense and that a living and a useful activity can be found for all the sons and daughters they may get. The habit of home-staying is broken by the war, and new and great undertakings are developing in the ruined north-east as well as in the ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of maintaining that there can be ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... illegal; for they were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the Parliament; and which he would not have been if it had not been an offence to maintain and publish such opinions. Yet were not their falsehoods and errors useful and beneficial? Did they not provoke Locke to rise in all the majesty and strength of truth and cast down Filmer and his doctrines into the lowest abyss of contempt, never again to emerge? See, now, if the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... cousin at Oxford; you've never met him. I should like to take you down with me to-morrow to where he lives and introduce you. You'll find it useful." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... conclusively proven how grave a mistake was committed. General Hooker, who served in that campaign under General Sherman, writes "This retreat was so masterly, that I regard it as a useful lesson for study for all persons who may hereafter elect for their calling the profession of arms." "The news that General Johnston had been removed from the command of the army opposed to us, was received by our officers with universal rejoicing." "One of the prominent historians of the Confederacy ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... you something useful. Here are a quantity of stockings of yours that need mending. I am going to show you how to mend them. Go and get your work-box and bring ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... was very pleasant to Dickens, and scarcely three years after his leaving the Daily News he began the publication of a new magazine which he called Household Words. His aim was to make it cheerful, useful and at the same time cheap, so that the poor could afford to buy it as well as the rich. His own story, Hard Times, first appeared in this, with the earliest work of more than one writer who later became celebrated. Dickens ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... they can make a brave show, and can spend sums upon masques and feastings that would well-nigh pay a king's ransom. After a great victory they will set the public conduits running with wine, and every varlet in the city can sit down at banquets prepared for them and eat and drink his fill. It is useful to have friends among such men. They are as proud in their way as are the greatest of our nobles, and they have more than once boldly withstood the will of our kings, and have ever got the best of ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... of this article in the second number of the Review was written by me under my father's eye, and (except as practice in composition, in which respect it was, to me, more useful than anything else I ever wrote) was of little ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Esperantists have greatly desired a suitable collection of writings as a model of style. To fulfil this requirement, Dr. Zamenhof has just brought out an interesting and most useful work. Here are some phrases from its foreword:—"In order that all shall be able equally to use the language, it is necessary for some models to exist which shall lay down the law for all. This is the reason why, having given way to the request of many ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various
... as he rode, projected backwards, and displayed its little pennoncelle, to dally with the faint breeze, or drop in the dead calm. To this cumbrous equipment must be added a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and worn, which was thus far useful that it excluded the burning rays of the sun from the armour, which they would otherwise have rendered intolerable to the wearer. The surcoat bore, in several places, the arms of the owner, although much defaced. These seemed to be a couchant leopard, with the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... law. Stockbrokers are, of course, men apart from the rest. They draw most of their customers from a class which knows nothing of business; and must therefore be humoured; moreover, a little eccentricity, a lightheartedness, verging at times on the clownish, is useful, for, if duly reported, it procures the Stock Exchange a free advertisement in the Press. Even Mr. Marlow had been known to play football with a silk hat and wave a little Union Jack, when the news of a British victory, which meant an improvement in the Market, was recorded in ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... very good to allow me this conversation. Command me at any time if I can be useful ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nervousness. Those might seem like pretty good excuses to some fellows; but when a boy becomes a scout he somehow looks at things in a different way from in the old days. No matter how tired he may be, he eagerly seizes on a chance to be useful to others; to do some good deed, so as to experience the delightful glow that always follows ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... over to a utilitarian Scotchman with red hair. Later the immortal shanty was a useful granary. Thoreau went back to the village to live in a garret and work at odd jobs of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... during the day, where going, and by what route; what remaining at New York, and what expected in the next day. Give the numbers, as near as convenient, and what corps they are. This information, reaching us daily, will be very useful as ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... with Sisters of Mercy in a Convent," went on Saxham. "You know of their lives even more than I—greatly to my advantage—have learned. Energetic, useful, stirring, active, never complaining, always ready to make the best of the world as they find it, and help others to do the same; always regarding it as the preparatory school or training-college for a state of being infinitely greater, nobler, and more glorious than anything ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a search for them beyond an examination of each man's pockets. He found nothing, however. It seemed that they must have agreed upon disarmament before the drinking began. But from Forsythe he secured a bunch of keys, which he was to find useful later on. ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... breaks, nor cuts the fingers. It renders the bearer invincible in battle against any one under eighteen. Half a crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful—shield of safety, sandals of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... is," answered Nicholl, "that oxen, cows, bulls, and horses, all those ruminants would be useful on the lunar continent. Unfortunately we cannot make our projectile either a stable ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... lands. America presenting a vast field for missionary labor, he sent over Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore, in 1769. These were the first Methodist missionaries. From their labors the Methodist Episcopal church in the United States gradually came into being. Dr. Coke was preeminently useful in establishing missions in various places This society was organized ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... exchanged some good shore clothes of my own for what I had been told were more suitable to the work I was looking out for, and say further that though I had never yet been at sea, I was hardy, and willing to make myself useful in any way. But how could I tell whom to trust? I might speak fair to some likely-looking man, and he might take me somewhere and strip me of my slops, and find my leather money-bag, and steal that too. When I thought how easily my fellow-traveller might have treated me thus, I felt a thrill of ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Oxen talked among themselves. "We are stronger, wiser, and more useful than the Pigs," they said. "Why does ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... skipper of a sloop, one Roderick Macfarlane, whom I forthwith determined to see, in order to pick from him what intelligence I could, without being at the time well aware in what manner the same would prove useful; I felt myself, however, stirred from within to do so; and I had hitherto, in all that concerned my avenging ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... when she was so overburdened with the crushing pressure of the battle for her very existence. It has been a mighty lucky thing for her that the Red Cross was ready to take it off her shoulders, and she has turned to us (How does that sound? Can you imagine me doing anything useful?) with tears of appeal and gratitude. That isn't a figure of speech. I have actually seen the Prefect of this Province, who would rank with the governor of one of our states, and who is a brave, capable man, cry like a woman over the seeming hopelessness of the ghastly problem. I have heard him say ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... is of it, is built in a gully or chasm in the rock: the inhabitants are composed mostly of the military establishment and those connected with it, with perhaps a few exceptions. The island is only useful as a stopping-place for outward and homeward bound India-men, etc; and the inhabitants would be in a state of starvation, were it not for the supplies of provisions which they obtain from the shipping which put in there. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... hysterics, and he was crouching on his haunches ready for a spring; all of which convinced me that unless I was pretty quick upon the trigger, posterity would know little of the termination of my eventful career, and it would be far less glorious and useful than I intend ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... but too glad to make himself useful; too happy to have some faces, however bad, to look upon; too desirous to conciliate those about him when he could honestly do so; to throw any objection in the way of this proposal. So he at once expressed his readiness; and, kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... same time, a parallel in principle. If a globe were not made upon a principle involving the scientific combination of skilled labor, it would be a mere article of luxury from its excessive costliness. It is now a most useful instrument in education. For educational purposes the most inexpensive globe is as valuable as that of the highest price. All that properly belongs to the excellence of the instrument is found in combination with the commonest stained wood frame, as perfectly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Correlations serves the useful purpose of fixing specific facts in the memory, yet the MAIN OBJECT in making and memorising Correlations is to develop the latent power of the Natural Memory to such a degree that all facts are hereafter remembered without the aid of ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... think father will let you, Dinny," replied Dick. "They're very useful in their way, and clear off all the foul decaying carcases of the animals that ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... features (enumerated above) of the Maulbronn Formula. The majority decided, says Chemnitz, that the Saxon Concordia should be retained, but in such a manner as to incorporate also the quotations from Luther, and whatever else might be regarded as useful in the Maulbronn Formula. The Torgau Book contained the twelve articles of the later Formula of Concord and in the same sequence; Article IX, "Of the Descent of Christ into Hell," had been added at ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... shouted. "Wait a minute. I didn't mean that. I thought at first you were a tapir or a tiger. No harm intended. I say, Professor," Tom called back to the savant, "you'd better speak to him in his lingo, I can't manage it. He may be useful in guiding us to that Indian village ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... fell to me to manage the boat. Carlos was of no use—he knew it, and, without saying a word, busied himself in bailing the water out. But Castro, I was surprised to notice, knew more than I did about a boat, and, maimed as he was, made himself useful. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... definitely mentioned. Roughly speaking, an illusion is an error of vision; delusion, of judgment. "In literary and popular use an illusion is an unreal appearance presented in any way to the bodily or the mental vision; it is often pleasing, harmless, or even useful.... A delusion is a mental error or deception, and may have regard to things actually existing, as well as to illusions. Delusions are ordinarily repulsive and discreditable, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... much information that relates to man; but that relationship has generally been the last part reached in the treatment of each topic, and the part most neglected. Under the influence of these general aims any useful purpose, whether involving service to the individual or to society at large, has somehow been eschewed or thought too sordid to be worthy of ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... firmness, honesty of purpose, benevolence, and unvarying equanimity of temper, united with a modest and pleasing address. And by the long and continued exercise of this golden mean of qualities, he was destined to leave behind him an honest, enduring fame—a memorial of good deeds and useful every-day examples, to be remembered and quoted, both in the domestic circle and in the public assembly, when the far superior brilliancy of many a contemporary had passed away and been forgotten. He was now something over fifty; but so fine were his physical ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Yocomb, "if editors and newspaper writers were only as eager to quiet the people as they are to keep up the hubbub of the world, they might make their calling a useful one. It almost takes away my breath to read some of ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... manufacturers of London, &c., in the making of orchil, cudbear, litmus, and other lichen dyes. While investigating the dyeing properties of the lichens, I made experiments, with a view to test their colorific power, on as many species as I could obtain in sufficient quantity, to render it at all useful to operate on—that number, however, being very ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... had detected his simulated insanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cunning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters of dice for amusement of night-watches as well as with other useful suggestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamedes was drowned while fishing by the hands of Odysseus and Diomedes. Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name of Palamedes occur; the lofty position which Odysseus occupies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Spokane River, at the point where that stream, separated by rocky islands into five separate channels, rushes onward and downward, at first being merely a series of rapids, and then tumbling over the rocks in a number of beautiful and useful waterfalls, until the several streams unite once again for a final plunge of sixty feet, making a fall of 157 feet in the distance of half a mile. This waterfall, with its immense power, would alone make a city; engineers have estimated ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... their energies to the furtherance of athletic contests and similar games of chance and skill. It might even be said that sports of this kind are apprehended to have some efficacy as a means of grace. They are apparently useful as a means of proselyting, and as a means of sustaining the devout attitude in converts once made. That is to say, the games which give exercise to the animistic sense and to the emulative propensity help to form and to ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... to the level of doubtful guesses. We have now to deal with those who while taking this view of certain doctrines, still declare them to be indispensable for restraining from anti-social conduct all who are not acute or instructed enough to see through them. In other words, they think error useful, and that it may be the best thing for society that masses of men should cheat and deceive themselves in their most fervent aspirations and their deepest assurances. This is the furthest extreme to which the empire of existing facts over principles ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... his, a Greek whom he had picked up one adventurous night in Rome, who had made himself useful, whom he had attached to his household, whom he consulted, and on whom he relied. Early that day he had sent him off with instructions to run the demagogue to earth, to listen, to question if need were, and to hurry back and report. ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... scribble upon grave matters! I ought to be acknowledging instead your scrupulous honesty, as illustrated by five-franc pieces and Tuscan florins. Make us as useful as you can do, for the future; and please us by coming often. I am afraid your German Baroness could not make an arrangement with you, as you do not mention her. Give our best regards to Miss Agassiz, and accept them yourself, dear ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... good little demon, and shalt have good pay," said Spini, patronisingly; whereupon he thought it only natural that the useful Greek adventurer should smile with gratification ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... known that my fire-making would have made a cannibal of thee, Ackbau," I said, "I would never have kindled the element upon this island. Fire is a useful and necessary article in the life of a good man, but it becomes a curse if put ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... us are taking an unusual interest in bullets just now there should be a large public for a story that is so largely concerned with them. On its own merits as a tale it is bustling and picturesque enough. The scene of it is laid in a South American Republic (that useful variant on Ruritania), and the plot deals with the rescue of the charming daughters of a rapscallion President, threatened by local revolutionaries. Naturally, therefore, there is some shooting—in the American sense—all of which bears the sign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... wasted dwelling on the subject. Jane, the youngest, had been some time in a delicate and declining state of health; and, viewing life as uncertain in its tenor, had wisely adapted her mind to passing circumstances. Next to her brightest hopes, was her desire to be useful whilst she ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... "It's a very useful language," said my uncle. "Put a point on things. Zzzz. As for accent, no Englishman has an accent. No Englishman pronounces French properly. Don't you tell ME. It's a Bluff.—It's all a Bluff. Life's a Bluff—practically. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... slothful, dull living side by side in common, to which is attached a serious significance and a show of rational activity; the circle replaces conversation by debate, trains you in fruitless discussion, draws you away from solitary, useful labour, develops in you the itch for authorship—deprives you, in fact, of all freshness and virgin vigour of soul. The circle—why, it's vulgarity and boredom under the name of brotherhood and friendship! a concatenation of misunderstandings and cavillings under the ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... partner, who still survives him, mourning on her bereaved and solitary pilgrimage, yet cheered by the recollection of her long and useful course as a "Mother in Israel," we will say no more than to offer the incense of loving hearts, and prayers for the best blessings ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... at times a very profitable side line, had been known to act as a "fence" for stolen goods. He had skirted for years on the ragged edge with the police, and then, caught red-handed at last, had changed his occupation for a more useful one during a somewhat prolonged sojourn in Sing Sing. Affairs after that had not prospered with Melinoff. His wife, honest if her husband was not, and already an old woman, had been hard put to it with the shabby shop and the meagre business she was able to transact; so hard put to it, indeed, that ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Inhabitant of South Carolina & Georgia. He was taken Prisoner last Summer & carried to New York, from whence he lately came to this Place. And though his Fortune would enable him to live here at Ease, he thinks he can be useful to America by returning to that Part of it, and at the Age of 73 has undertaken the long Journey. He has always mixed with the People of those States, & is well acquainted with their Temper & Sentiments. He also has been much among the Indians & is greatly beloved ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... first and only, foundation of virtue, or the rule of right living is (IV:xxii.Coroll. and IV:xxiv.) seeking one's own true interest. Now, while we determined what reason prescribes as useful, we took no account of the mind's eternity, which has only become known to us in this Fifth Part. Although we were ignorant at that time that the mind is eternal, we nevertheless stated that the qualities attributable to courage and high- mindedness are of primary ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... is better born, and blood never fails to tell. Again, he generally adopts the profession from taste, not because il faut vivre. He is better bred; he knows the negro from his childhood, and his education is more practical, more generally useful than that of his rivals. Moreover, I never yet heard him exclaim, "Capting, them heggs is 'igh!" Lastly he is more temperate and moderate in his diet: hitherto it has not been my fate to assist in carrying him ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... by artistic groundsmen. I am thinking rather of the excessive practice at nets. An enthusiastic house captain is apt to believe that by assiduous practice the most unlikely and awkward recruit can be converted into a useful batsman, and the result is that he will drive all his house day after day to the nets, until they begin to loathe the sight ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... But he could be admitted safely into the secret, since, once he knew that the princess had become Lady Rowington, he would be able with sufficient truthfulness to profess an entire ignorance of her whereabouts. Also he would be very useful, for he could bring them word if suspicion had ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... her thighs with her legs doubled on them upon her sides, and thus engages in congress, it is called the position of Indrani, and this is learnt only by practice. The position is also useful in the case of ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... This useful work should be in the hands of every Bible Student. It contains sixteen maps with nearly 2000 questions and answers ... ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... discussion not only tends to diminish our inherited defects, but also, in one case at least, to augment a heritable excellence. It tends to strengthen and increase a subtle quality or combination of qualities singularly useful in practical life-a quality which it is not easy to describe exactly, and the issues of which it would require not a remnant of an essay, but a whole essay to elucidate completely. This quality ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... the most sterile and wild yield sometimes either delicious fruits or most wholesome medicines that are wanting in the most fertile countries. Besides, it is the effect of a wise over-ruling providence that no land yields all that is useful to human life. For want invites men to commerce, in order to supply one another's necessities. It is therefore that want that is the natural tie of society between nations: otherwise all the people of the earth would be reduced to one sort of food and clothing; and nothing ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... of the end of the voyage. The thought would come—the image standing there would start up—but she always put it aside and kept to the present; and that was one reason certainly why Eleanor's mind was so quiet and free and why the enjoyable and useful things of the hour were not let slip and wasted. So her spirits maintained their healthy tone; no doubt spurred to livelier action by the abiding consciousness of that spot of brightness in the future towards ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... can, sir, and a party that shall have its good players. Miss Mary Wallace plays as good a hand at Whist, as a woman should, Mr. Worden; and a very pretty accomplishment it is, for a lady to possess; useful, sir, as well as entertaining; for anything is preferable to dummy. I do not think a woman should play quite as well as a man, our sex having a natural claim to lead, in all such things; but it is very convenient, sometimes, to find a lady ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... even if it were possible, to describe all the many kinds of silkworms. Several distinct species exist in India and China which produce useful silk, and some of these are capable of freely crossing with the common silk-moth, as has been recently ascertained in France. Captain Hutton (8/65. 'Transact. Entomolog. Soc.' 3rd series volume 3 pages 143-173 and pages 295-331.) states that ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... enthusiastic lover of, than a contributor to, the national minstrelsy, is entitled to remembrance. His numerous communications addressed to the editor of this work, have supplied much information, which has been found useful in the preparation of these volumes. Roger was born at Clovenford, in the parish of Stow, in 1792. For thirty-seven years he wrought as blacksmith at Glenormiston, on the banks of the Tweed, near Innerleithen. In 1852, he removed to Peebles, where he had purchased a small cottage and garden. He ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper was a poet!—The Mail-Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy; but I fear it will hardly bear so poetical a description. The picturesque and dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and mechanical. The telegraphs that lately communicated the intelligence of the new revolution to all France within a few hours, are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less striking and appalling than the beacon fires (mentioned by Aeschylus,) which, lighted from hill-top to hill-top, announced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... Admiral," Crochard went on, extending for his inspection what looked like an ordinary revolver. "It is a most useful toy, of my own invention—or, perhaps, I would better say adapted by me from an invention of that ingenious Sieur Hyacinthe, who was pistol-maker to the Great Louis. Should you ever visit Paris, I should be charmed to show you the original at the Carnavalet. This embodies some ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... always hate that which they cannot understand; so Friar Bacon was persecuted, and accused of dabbling in magic when he was making discoveries useful to mankind. I say not that they will do any great harm when they first rise, for it cannot be said that the serfs here are so hardly treated as they were in France, where their lords had power of life and death over them, and could slay them like cattle if they chose, none ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... hard at work at their disagreeable task, Mildred was enjoying seeing George in his warm bath. Ailwin held him there, while Mildred continued her useful business of filtering water, talking to the child all the while. The poor little fellow soon left off crying, and moved his weak limbs about in the tepid water, trying to splash Ailwin, as he had been wont to splash his mother in play, every morning when she ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... justification for itself on the simple ground that it exists! Under such an argument a howitzer is as good as a plough, a sword is as good as a sickle, a pillory is as good as a baby-wagon. By such reasoning a shark is as useful as a horse. By this logic a boa-constrictor is as good as a reindeer, a tiger is as useful and salutary in his office as an ox or a St. Bernard, and a cancer is as beautiful as a blush. That is, everything ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... I immediately laid before the Venetian consul. Following his advice, I wrote to the secretary of the Tribunal to the effect that I was happy to have given the Government a proof of my zeal, and an earnest of my desire to be useful to my country and to be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... "Useful enough for our purpose, however," returned Davidson. "Send him up to Fort Garry with a message, while you lie down and rest. If you don't rest, you will yourself be useless in a short time. La Certe is not such a ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... not that, but you are much too useful here to drop everything, especially now every one is away. I would willingly ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exercise of religious duties. Thus connected together, it was found that a part only of society was sufficient to provide, by their manual labor, for the necessary subsistence of all; and leisure was given to others to cultivate the human mind, to invent useful arts, and to lay ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... be considered one of the most useful vegetables in hygiene. As a stimulant and auxiliary in digestion it has been considered invaluable, especially in warm countries. A kind called the tobacco red pepper, is said to possess the most pungent properties of any of the species. It yields a small red pod, less than an inch in length, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... slave regime must be removed from the statute books. The negro, like Mohammed's coffin, swung in midair. He was neither fish, flesh nor fowl, nor good red herring. For our own sake we must habilitate him, educate and elevate him, make him, if possible, a contented and useful citizen. Failing of this, free ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... contrary," Dominey replied, "both are deposited at the Foreign Office. We hope to find them very useful a ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... such work needed; but it was God's work, and He had made them for His instruments, in the judgment of the Book of Judges. If we try to understand the reasons for such judgments, we may learn some useful lessons. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... small incident. Governor Sterndale had given me a bag of coffee in the husk, and Clark, the American, in an evil moment, had put a goat on board, "to butt the sack and hustle the coffee-beans out of the pods." He urged that the animal, besides being useful, would be as companionable as a dog. I soon found that my sailing-companion, this sort of dog with horns, had to be tied up entirely. The mistake I made was that I did not chain him to the mast instead of ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... Skaife (1867), and other portions elsewhere; (4) Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae, 1291 (Rec. Corn., 1802), the taxation of benefices by Nicholas IV. by which assessments of papal and ecclesiastical taxes were long made. A very useful compilation, recently undertaken under the direction of the deputy-keeper, is Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, 1284-1431, of which three volumes, dealing in alphabetical order with the shires from Bedford to Norfolk, are published Cheshire and Durham are entirely omitted ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the Mother Country; and occupied with this belief, they have legislated for the Mother Country and not for the Colonies. Vain, selfish, fear-inspired policy! that keeps the Colonies down in the dust at the feet of the Parent State, and yet is of no value or advantage to her. To make her Colonies useful to England, they must be cherished in their infancy, and carefully encouraged to put forth all the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... real clue that I have discovered. You must know that before the confiscated gold captured in the Lucsia Cavern was sent to Vienna, every coin of it was marked with a little cross, a very simple official precaution, but it has proved very useful to us. Now I have come upon these marked ducats among the people here. They themselves, I believe, are innocent and can give the name of the persons from whom they received them; and so, by tracing the various intermediaries, we shall ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... information, to be worshiped for its mere possession, but as a practical means to a definite end. They are being taught that mind-training is the logical helpmeet of hand-training, and that both, supplemented and sweetened by heart-training, make the high-souled, useful, productive, patriotic, law-loving, public-spirited citizen, of whom any nation might well be proud. The outcome of such education will be that, instead of the downtrodden child of ignorance, shiftlessness, and moral weakness, we shall generate the thoroughly ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... requesting him to comfort, console, and enlighten her. Such was the origin of the book now presented in an English dress to the reader. It accomplished its purpose with the Marchioness de Vermandois, and afterwards its author concluded to publish the work, in hopes it might be equally useful to others. ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... that the Ulster leader had been ready a few weeks previously to betray Ulster in order to save the House of Lords, but Carson did not yet realise the degree to which he had already won the confidence of his followers; moreover, the incident proved useful as an opportunity of emphasising the uninterrupted mutual confidence between Lord Londonderry and himself, in spite of their divergence of opinion over the Parliament Bill. It also gave those present a glimpse of their leader's power of shrivelling meanness with a few ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... is worth the extra trouble and the extra care which he demands, because he is sent into the world with mechanism which, just because it is more powerful than the common run, is more difficult to master and takes longer to control and to apply for useful ends. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... never talked unless they had something useful to say, there would be a marvelous change," ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... the undermining of any real conviction in the minds of his juniors, or the shaking of anything which did not need shaking, but only helped them to clear their ideas and brains as to what they were talking and thinking about, and gave them glimpses—soon clouded over again, but most useful, nevertheless—of the truth; that there were a good many knotty questions to be solved before a man could be quite sure that he had found out the way to set the world thoroughly to rights, and heal all the ills that flesh ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to the summit of a hill, where stand the cathedral and many elegant private houses. The city is, in general, tolerably well built; but many of the streets have domes, or arcades of wood, which are frequently fifty or sixty feet in height, and which have an inelegant appearance, but are useful in the winter, and under some of them are rows of shops, Containing every article of luxury or utility, in equal perfection with those that are to be met with in some of ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... said with a far-away look in her eyes: "It may be a useful accomplishment sometime. If one were going after wounded at night it would ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a few partitions at very unequal heights, stuffs three or four compartments with Spiders and passes on to another bramble-stump, with no reason, so far as I know, for abandoning the first. Her cells, therefore, occur in series that are too short to give us any useful information. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... He reads a useful lesson to young and zealous advocates in the same treatise—that sometimes it may be wise not to touch at all in reply upon a point which makes against your client, and to which you have no real answer; and that ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... meanings which escaped the committees that drew them up, and the senates that passed them into laws, and to explain wills, into a sense wholly contrary to the intention of the testator. How easily may an adept in these admirable and useful arts, penetrate into the most hidden import of this prediction? A man, accustomed to satisfy himself with the obvious and natural meaning of a sentence, does not easily shake off his habit; but a true-bred lawyer never contents himself with one ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... and needles in a needle-case, an' an emery," said Christianna. "I wanted a little pair of scissors that was at Mr. Moelick's, but I didn't have enough. They'd be right useful, I reckon, to a soldier, but I couldn't get them. I wondered if the bag ought to be smaller—but he'll have room for it, I reckon? I ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... settler, or whatever Klaes van Roosevelt may have been, his children and grandchildren had in them more than ordinary ability. They were not content to stand still, but made themselves useful and prosperous, so that the name was known and honored in the city and State even before the birth of the son who was to make ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... am directed to invite you here (Peking). Please come and see for yourself. The opportunity of doing really useful work on a large scale ought not to be lost. Work, position, conditions, can all be arranged with yourself here to your satisfaction. Do take ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... knowing that this readiness was in his enemies to pour out his bowels to the earth, he cried out to Timothy, saying, 'make thou full proof of thy ministry, for' I am now ready to be slain; 'I am now ready to be offered' (2 Tim 4:5,6). These words thus understood may be useful many ways. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... neighbors and fellow-citizens called him to their service in the national councils. He was conscious of the possession of talents, knowledge, experience, and all the qualifications which would enable him to become highly useful, not only in acting as the representative of his direct constituents, but in promoting the welfare of our common country. This conviction once becoming fixed in his mind, decided his course. He felt he had no choice left but to comply unhesitatingly with the demand which had been made upon ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... too preoccupied to pay any heed to the weather, and, after informing a man who stopped him to tell him that he had lost a wife, six children, and a right leg, that it was just five minutes past six, resumed his way with a hazy idea of having been useful to a fellow-creature. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... For a time my health suffered to a serious degree. My tribulations increased to such an extent that I seriously contemplated suicide. I am convinced that this period left an indelible mark, and that not an improving one, on my character. Where sensitive children are concerned, chaff may be useful in hardening them, but it should not be carried ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... poisons the sources of renovation. It suppresses every generous insurrection of human intelligence. It merely arms tyrants with the power to crush genius and patriotism. It prevents the healthful development of energies in useful channels. The most that can be said in favor of the armies of the empire is, that they preserved for a time the decaying body. They could not restore vitality; they warded off the blows of fate. They could only keep the empire from falling until the forces of enemies ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Bob Pretty, shaking his 'ead. 'He's a kind-'arted old gen'leman when 'e's left alone, and he'll soon see wot a mistake 'e's made about me. I'll show 'im. But I wish it was something more useful ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of what came under my own observation in connection with what I experienced. While an inmate of this prison I occupied cells at various times with convicts who had served terms in the Missouri prison. From these persons I gathered much useful material for my book. After my release I visited the Missouri penitentiary, and verified the statements of those criminals, and gathered additional material from the prison records and the officials. I have written chiefly ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... with tears. "No," he said, "take the book, Julian. If it does you all the good it has done me, it will have been more useful than I could ever have made it. And when you hang on the eloquent and earnest words of the great poet philosopher, mingle his teachings with some few memories of me; it will be like a drop of myrrh, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... opportunities of getting the air; and I mean to do little but drive out for some time. It does not answer to be mastered so. For months I have done nothing but dream and read French and German romances; and the result (of learning a good deal of German) isn't the most useful thing in the world one can attain to. Then, of course, I teach Peni for an hour or so. He reads German, French, and, of course, Italian, and plays on the piano remarkably well, for which Robert deserves the chief ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... and the boys. Sam Yates, at Jim's request, had agreed to see to the preparation of an appropriate outfit for the bridegroom. Such invitations had been given out as Miss Butterworth dictated, and the Snow family was in a flutter of expectation. Presents of a humble and useful kind had been pouring in upon Miss Butterworth for days, until, indeed, she was quite overwhelmed. It seemed as if the whole village were in a ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser's face, "it's your kindness makes you say I'm useful to you. You don't really want me now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you're in good health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few—some of them come to sit with my uncle ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... too, had grown into early manhood and had adopted his father's calling. Strong arms were as useful in their way as a creative brain, and if Sigmund could never be an artist like Peter Vischer, he promised at least to make an excellent workman. People said he was the handsomest young artisan in Nuremberg, with his dark skin bronzed by the fires among which he labored, and his black eyes sparkling ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... the Empire, and was secret factotum to our great Napoleon; I have served King Louis—with a brief interval of one hundred days— for the past two years, and I can only repeat that no one, in the whole of France, has been so useful or so zealous in tracking criminals, nosing out conspiracies, or denouncing traitors as ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... in the house, my dear, except old Nurse. It'll be very dull for you; but I thought I'd teach you to cook; it's rather useful." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the home for crippled children that interested her most. The girls at Miss North's took turns going there to amuse the children. They cut paper dolls, carried toys, and made themselves generally useful during the brief hour they spent within the wards. Blue Bonnet soon began to look forward to these visits, and begged Miss North to allow her to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... past twelve years. He was a direct importation from France, which he had left just before attaining his majority, the glory of soldier-life not proving seductive to his imagination. He had no sooner taken up his abode with his uncle than he was regarded as the most useful and ornamental piece of foreign ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... was hardly in human nature not to mourn the untimely demise of so useful a body, one who carried such beautiful credentials and serviceable letters of introduction, whose character boasted so much charm with a solitary fault—too facile vulnerability to the prying eyes of those to whom Paris meant those days and social strata in which ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... consented willingly; whereupon he arranged a number of them as for exhibition and delivered himself impromptu of the most vehemently instructive lecture on art I had ever heard. Beginning with the family, the tribe, and the totem-pole, he was able to demonstrate a theory that art was not only useful to society but its primary necessity; a curious thought, probably more attributable to the fact that he was a Frenchman than to that of ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... in New York, at the Strollers' Club. A pal of mine, an actor, this fellow Mifflin I mentioned just now, put him up as a guest. He coined money at picquet. And there were some pretty useful players in the place, too. I don't wonder you found him ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... fertile for everything," says Galvez, "for it lies in the same latitude as Spain." So they carried all sorts of household and field utensils, and seeds of every useful plant that grew in Spain and Mexico—the olive and the pomegranate, the grape and the orange, not forgetting the garlic and the pepper. All these were placed in two small ships, the San Carlos, under the gallant Captain Vila, and the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... us, finally, to the highest and also immediately practical method of moral education, viz., training the will by and for intellectual work. Youth and childhood must not be subordinated as means to maturity. Learning is more useful than knowing. It is the way and not the goal, the work and not the product, the acquiring and not the acquisition, that educates will and character. To teach only results, which are so simple, without methods by which they were obtained, which are so complex ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... adversaries augmented, he turned all his mind to God's service; for he was not distracted by other thoughts, or by the labour he formerly had upon his hands, for during all the time he sat upon the throne he was endeavouring to promote what was most useful: and first to free and protect the country from foreign chiefs' oppressions, then to convert the people to the right faith; and also to establish law and the rights of the country, which he did by letting justice have its ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... and hall. At any moment he is ready to march out with all the Huguenot soldiers and charge the rioters. Peace restored about midnight, Household troops sent home to bed, and constables decided to strike only on the heads of roughs, rowdies, and burglars. This shows how useful it is to have a Sheriff on the premises. At Her Majesty's last winter they had the nearest approach to it, that is, Sheriff's officers on the premises. But this is not precisely the same thing, as Sheriff's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... Experience alone can teach the time required with different objects in different lights. Here are four card-portraits from a negative taken from one of Barry's crayon-pictures, illustrating an experiment which will prove very useful to the beginner. The negative of No. 1 was exposed only two seconds. The young lady's face is very dusky on a very dusky ground. The lights have hardly come out at all. No. 2 was exposed five seconds. Undertimed, but much cleared up. No. 3 was exposed fifteen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... willing to carry a rifle. Moreover, some 150 loyal and zealous Natal colonists volunteered for scouting duties, and were formed into a corps under the command of the Hon. T. K. Murray, C.M.G., finding their own horses, saddlery, and rifles, and serving without pay. This body of patriotic men did useful work to the north of Maritzburg, in the neighbourhood of Mooi River, from the 4th to the 16th November, when on the arrival of reinforcements from the Cape they were released from further duty, and thanked in General Orders ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... and false bottoms, and several paper bags (in the untearable Japanese paper), which close of themselves and are fastened by strings, also in paper, arranged beforehand in the most ingenious manner—quite the cleverest and most handy thing of its kind; for little useful trifles ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... tranchait pour moi les questions a man usage, qui toute experience faite, devinrent bientot les seules questions a ma, portee." This "le sentiment seul tranchait pour moi les questions" is another self-revelation, or instance of self-knowledge, which it will be useful to remember. What more natural than that this "being of sentiment" should prefer the poets to the philosophers, and be attracted, not by the cold reasoners, but by Rousseau, "the man of passion and sentiment." It is impossible to describe here the various experiences and doings ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... effect, however, which Marion's decision had upon her. It interested her in those of her schoolmates who were looking forward to a definite and useful future. She could recall now how often her room-mates had spoken of what they intended to do, but she had only listened to it as she had to what they said about ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins |
