"Uselessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... held the sea, and the British army was driven by famine in October to a surrender as humiliating as that of Saratoga. The news fell like a thunderbolt on the wretched Minister, who had till now suppressed at his master's order his own conviction of the uselessness of further bloodshed. Opening his arms and pacing wildly about the room, Lord North exclaimed, "It is all over," and resigned. At this moment indeed the country seemed on the brink of ruin. Humiliating ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... to the Inspector's chatter, or answering at random, but always falling silent again, and altogether was so unlike himself that Mandy fell to wondering, then became watchful, then anxious. At length the Inspector himself fell silent, as if perceiving the uselessness of further pretense. ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... the other. On each face she read a fatuous eagerness. She knew the futility of pleading with Frederik. She knew still more surely the uselessness of trying to make Peter Grimm change his stubborn wishes. With a little catch in her breath, she gave up the hopeless, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... all that power of writing of stone or metal or the fabric of drapery, so that we seem to be handling and smelling them, he has described a stall for the selling of odds and ends of every variety of utility and uselessness:— ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Mrs. Bird, seeing the uselessness of contention, accepted the proffered escort of the gentleman before mentioned, and was followed out of the cars by the conductor and his blackguard assistants, all of them highly elated by the victory they had won over a defenceless old woman and ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... to apparently unintentionally seat yourself on it; then beg a thousand pardons, and, as you, in your efforts to make it better, only make it worse, give it up in despair, and console the owner by a reference to spilt milk and the uselessness of crying. As to the contents of the boxes, they must look out for themselves. If they get injured, hint that they should ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... of there being no wind, and the uselessness of the stay-sails and spankers. What has brought you ashore? Galleygo tells us something of a cutter's coming in, with information that the French are out; but his news is ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... must, however, be carefully guarded, lest, instead of reconciling you to the apparent uselessness of your present life, they should contribute to increase your discontent. This they might easily do, even though such reflections and memories related only to trials and difficulties, instead of contemplating the pleasures and the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud- flats, or perhaps barren sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness. Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask. A river whose estuary resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through a most fertile country. But all the estuaries of great rivers have their fascination, the attractiveness ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and, sick at heart, went out by a side door. He was angry with himself, at his inadequate inches. What could he do for England? He was deeply grieved at his uselessness. He crept up to his room and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... friend in time of need, and when work was slack many a man has come to the pay-place on Saturday, who had done nothing all the week but dig a hole and fill it up again. Once, on being remonstrated with by a man he had thus employed, on the uselessness of the work, Williamson said, "You do as you are told—you honestly earn the money by the sweat of your brow, and the mistress can go to market on Saturday night—I don't want you to think." He often regaled his work-people with a barrel of ale or porter, saying they "worked ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Clinton got away night before last with what was left of his army. Left fires burning, and made a forced march to the ships at Sandy Hook. Left everything to save his troops. Washington, realizing the uselessness of holding them longer, sent most of his militia home. About six miles out there on the pike road a half-crazy preacher named Jenks came up with us. He was too badly frightened to tell a straight story, but we got out of him that there was a fight on here, and came over as fast as our horses ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... hard to make his companion eat something, to take at least some soup and a glass of old Bordeaux; but he soon saw the uselessness of his efforts and went on with his dinner as if he were alone. He was very thoughtful, but any uncertainty of the result of his plans never entered his head. He drank much and often, and soon emptied his bottle of Leoville. Night having now come on the waiters began ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... how I weighed the probable uselessness of my going, nor how I shrank from one so vile as he. It was not the kind ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... nothing and be happy in the possession, I might have been of some service in the world. Instead, my life has been a failure, and that which I am leaving to you was the fruit of the service of my forebears. May you never feel the humiliation of uselessness, of having contributed nothing to the world that ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... Hawkridge's reassuring reply; "he must see the uselessness of resistance, and we are not fighting Indians who learned warfare from ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... incomes are so great, that their lives are made miserable and unhappy. There are other people so poor, with incomes so small, that they are compelled to live miserable and unhappy lives. Young men and women, inheritors of vast fortunes, living lives of idleness, uselessness and vanity at one end of the social scale are driven to dissipation and debauchery and crime. At the other end of the social scale there are young men and women, poor, overburdened with toil, crushed by poverty and want, also driven to dissipation and ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... together with an effort that drove his nails bitingly into his palms and left his face gray. He saw the uselessness of pleading with these people of polished iron, who could not understand his fearful loss. For the sake of Chum—for the sake of the self-respecting man he himself had become—he would not let himself go to pieces. Forcing his shaken voice to a dry steadiness, ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... his foes as well as himself. By the time the desired position was reached, however, his spirit had calmed down a little and his philosophic mind—to say nothing of his heart—had begun to suggest the uselessness of gratifying his feelings by a revenge which he probably could not enjoy much while in the process of drowning, and, doubtless, could not enjoy at all after he ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... effect (the jar) is shaped like a belly with a broad basis; clay in the latter condition only is meant when we say 'The jar has gone to pieces.' There, sixthly, is a numerical difference: the threads are many, the piece of cloth is one only. In the seventh place, there is the uselessness of the activity of the producing agent (which would result from cause and effect being identical); for if the effect were nothing but the cause, what could be effected by the activity of the agent?—Let us then say that, although the effect exists (at all times), the activity ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... long since learned the uselessness of protesting. She kept on until the way danced in reeling colors before her eyes. Then without a sound she dropped in the scant shadow of a rock. At the cry from Molly, Kut-le turned, and after one glance at Rhoda's ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... uselessness of their fusillade against the cliff they had allowed their matches to go out, so that I was for the moment safe from musket shot. When I fired and brought down the first man, the rest hesitated, and seeing my companions clambering up behind me they scuttled back into the roundhouse ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... formula and see the thing as it is. The problem is psychologic rather than physiologic. The fact that one may learn all that can be known about physiology and still know nothing whatever about voice training should awaken us to its uselessness. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... seemed to understand all A great joy flashed across her; but she said nothing. She as well as they were long used to that peculiarity of nature—which especially belonged to the Harper family—a conviction of the uselessness of talk and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... waste then, after all!—this life of strange unreason ending in this very climax of uselessness, exactly when ordinary usefulness was about to begin. Could that be waste ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... other hand, an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "All is vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... bitterly deplored the uselessness of the war in the trans-Mississippi section of the Confederacy. It is too late for any Western divisions to affect the downward course of the sacred cause for which countless ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... each in its own place. The ancient door, cut deep into the wall, And cramped with iron rusty now and rotten, Was open half: and, when I strove to move it That I might have free passage inwards, stood Unmoved and creaking with old uselessness: So, pushing it, I entered, while the dust Was shaken down upon me from all sides. The narrow stairs, lighted by scanty streaks That poured in thro' the loopholes pierced high up, Wound with the winding tower, until I gained, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was still ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... became conscious that she could not go on living at home as she was doing, without place or meaning or worth. The very children that went to school held her uselessness in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "all conscious of the folly and uselessness of your past lives; and if my wand has done its duty, you are equally willing to repair the evils they have been the cause of. As I before said, you have been less to blame than others. You wanted instruction in every thing, but the chief and most important ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... Memmius, while satisfying the conditions of his art by the introduction of the subject, uses it only to point the contrast between the epoch when liberty had been won and that wherein it had been lost, or to illustrate the uselessness of such heroic methods as the old secessions as weapons against a nobility such as the present which was rushing headlong to its own destruction. More important was the memory of those recent years which had seen the life of the people and of their champions become ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... might, from the point of view of superior insight, turn out to be mere delusions, or at best entirely unimportant and inconsiderable entities. This attitude of mind has been amusingly satirised by the title of one of Mr. Bradley's philosophical essays—'on the supposed uselessness of the Soul.'[1] In this state of mind matter presents itself as the one solid reality—as something undeniable, something perfectly intelligible, something, too, which is pre-eminently {7} important and respectable; while thinking and feeling and willing, joy ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... other complaints, these should receive appropriate treatment, but the assertions so unblushingly made in patent-pill advertisements are unfounded. The very variety of the advertised remedies is proof of the uselessness ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... as follows: "There are two pairs of valves in the external jugular and one pair in the internal jugular, but in recognition of their uselessness they do not prevent regurgitation of blood nor liquids from passing upward. An apparent anomaly exists in the absence of valves from parts where they are most needed, as in the venae cavae, spinal, iliac, haemorrhoidal, and portal. The azygos ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... and private, is full of imperfections; yet there is nothing useless in Nature, not even uselessness itself.... Our being is cemented with sickly qualities: ambition, jealousy, envy, vengeance, superstition, despair dwell in us, and hold there so natural a possession that their counterfeit is also recognised in beasts; for instance, cruelty—so ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the car or boat, wounded Blanchard, cut the rigging, and broke the oars or wings. The aeronaut was consequently compelled to have his machine partly re-fitted in great haste, and in the course of a few hours he made the ascent alone in the usual way. Blanchard should have known the uselessness of oars, though he did not abandon their employment in subsequent ascents. The Brothers Montgolfier had dreamed of the employment of oars as a means of guidance, but had ultimately rejected the idea. Joseph ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... reformation as yet without dogma and supernaturalism. Ordinary people acknowledge no real reasons for virtue except heaven and hell-fire. When heaven and hell-fire cease to persuade, custom for a while is partly efficacious, but its strength soon decays. Some good men, knowing the uselessness of rational means to convert or to sustain their fellows, have clung to dogma with hysterical energy, but without any genuine faith in it. They have failed, for dogma cannot be successful unless it be the INEVITABLE ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... thinks that the most interesting points in the case are: the age of the patient, the enormous size of the tumor, and the advice given by the surgeon who first attended the patient (insisting that no operation should be performed). This case shows anew the uselessness of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... from him again, absently. She appeared not to be listening. There was something in her manner that advised him of the uselessness of saying anything more in that vein. After a while she folded her work, smoothing it carefully across her knee. The only sign she gave of being unusually moved was in rising from her chair and going to the open ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... an indolent streak in the young scientist, and he wondered whether here again he was doing the fair and right thing by placing it within his power to lead a life of comparative ease and uselessness. Consequently, Selwyn moved cautiously in the matter of the distribution of his great wealth, and invoked Dru's aid. It was Dru's supernormal intellect, tireless energy, and splendid constructive ability that appealed to him, and he not only admired the Administrator above all ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... the Marie Louise had burned off and sogged down in deep water, but her bow hung to the reef, and in smoke and flame he had fought the cattle over it. They clustered now in the false water-hole, silent, listless, as if they knew the uselessness of the urge of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... to Hilda, and he told of the death of Jenks, and of their arrival in Abbeville, "You must understand, dear," he said, "that all this has had a tremendous effect upon me. In that train all that I had begun to feel about the uselessness of my old religion came to a head. I could do no more for that soul than light a cigarette.... Possibly no one could have done any more, but I cannot, I will not believe it. Jenks was not fundamentally evil, or at least I don't think so. He was rather a selfish fool who had no control, that ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... conviction, not by burning hatreds or ecstatic devotions. A profound sense of the inevitable trend of the world's evolution seemed to have taken possession of the minds of the masses of men. They felt the uselessness of opposition to this universal progress, and they showed themselves ready, sometimes eager, to aid and direct its trend as best ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the uselessness of wristers, shifts from that to democratic inefficiency, and from that to the probability of Deutschland ueber Alles, you may be certain of the diagnosis. The disease ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned at regular intervals in piteous accents:—'He has forgotten and abandoned me!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, her acknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Rarity Maple, Reserve Marianthus, Hope for Better Marigold, Grief, Chagrin Marigold, French, Jealousy Marigold and Cyprus, Despair Marjoram, Blushes Marvel of Peru, Timidity Meadow Lychnis, Wit Meadowsweet, Uselessness Mercury, Goodness Mesembryanthemum, Idleness Mezereon, I Desire to Please Mignonette, You are Good Milfoil, War Milkwort, Hermitage Mint, Virtue Mistletoe, I Surmount Mock Orange, Counterfeit Monkshood, Deadly Foe Near Moonwort, Forgetfulness Morning Glory, Affectation Moschatel, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... that he still lives, and up to this time is expiating the great sin which he sinned against the saint; but they say that at certain times he is a lunatic. Further, the aforesaid possessions, since he could no longer hold them by reason of his helplessness and uselessness, returned in peace to the place to which they had belonged. Nor did Malachy refuse them, when the prospect of peace was held out at length after ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... debacle of Russia, the awful casualty lists, the return of disabled soldiers, the ceaseless war work of our women, the United States at last declaring war on Germany, the final line up and defeat of the Hun, and the horror and apparent uselessness of it all; some reflection of all these may be found by the reader in these ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... but my heart grew heavier and heavier, and my head felt as if it were being wound up; I was afraid I'd go mad and tell the whole thing out. Oh, Jack, it's those dreary days, those endless years of uselessness that terrify me. Oh, help me to be strong! Oh, Jack, help me! ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... few who were still disposed to take their revenge on Oliver in a more marked manner than by merely cutting him; but a dread of the tongue of the editor of the Dominican, as well as a conviction of the uselessness of such procedure, constrained them to give way and fall in with ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... spat full into the gaunt, starved face of the young man and made it stare forth doubly ghastly. He had made no effort to get away from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his way, something of a fatalist—London breeds so many among such as he: starved things that find every boat chained, every effort ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... she began to load and fire with the courage and decision of a seasoned gunner, standing at her post through long hours of heat and exhaustion. When at a late hour the enemy had finally been driven back with great loss, and Washington saw the uselessness of any renewal of the assault, General Greene strode over to the place where Molly Pitcher was still manfully loading the cannon, and gripped her hand ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... not so large that very many could be used without making a serious inroad upon the store; and realizing the uselessness of further efforts in this direction, Dick went ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... inmost heart, loved a silent bird, and secretly coveted Dick, but as Mick was her property, and Dick the silent was owned by Aunt Judith, she never lost an opportunity of enlarging upon the stupidity and uselessness of silent birds. Aunt Judith, on the other hand, admired a lively and talkative canary; consequently she was weighed down with the conviction that her sister's bird was the superior article. Altogether, birds as a topic of conversation were best avoided. Dick and Mick were housed in cages ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... illness with the doctor. "He has changed, has become more gentle, but is dispirited." Enter Nicholas Ivnovich and speaks to Doctor about the uselessness of treatment. But for his wife's sake he agrees to it. Enter Tnya with Stypa. Lyba with Starkvsky. Conversation about land. Nicholas Ivnovich tries not to offend them. Exeunt all. Nicholas Ivnovich with Lisa. "I am always ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... good friend of a very worthy man who lived in this place. Hearing one day that his wife had just died, I went to condole with him on this unexpected calamity. We were alone together, and he appeared to be in the deepest grief. After I had talked with him some time on the uselessness of so much sorrow, he told me that it was an established law that the living husband should be buried with the deceased wife, and that within an hour he must submit. I shuddered at the dreadful custom. In ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... garment the skins of the otter and the beaver. Instead of the mild and whispering breezes of southern skies, we have the wild winds rushing impetuously forth from their caves in the icy north, and the sun of the land of the Chepewyans, knowing his uselessness, and the inability of his beams to rend the fetters which ice has thrown around our bleak hills and verdureless plains, stays with us but for a little season, leaving us for many weary days to be lighted only by the glare of the moon and stars, on the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... palaver-house, the prince's twenty wives—almost entirely denuded, their heads shaved, and their bodies smeared with dust—were seen following his remains. The eldest spouse appeared covered with self-inflicted bruises, burns, and gashes—all indications of sorrow and future uselessness. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... rendered uninhabitable by the obliquity of the sun's rays; and though matter, in the shape of mastodons and whales, with an instinct of its antagonistic destination, had frequently invaded their precincts, it was only to leave the remains of the first embedded in fields of ice, memorials of the uselessness of struggling against destiny, and to furnish proofs of the same great truth in the instance of the others; who, if they did enter the polar basins as masters of the great deep, either left their bones there, or returned in the same characters as they went. From the appearance ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... most unlimited despotism, cannot be expressed. To show him that the authority of his subjects was thought necessary in order to confirm his own, wounded him in his most delicate part. The English were made to understand the weakness and the uselessness of what they asked; for the powerlessness of our States- General was explained to them, and they saw at once how vain their help ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... what the mental contact may be, it has its effects—we are continually gaining knowledge, making new friends, receiving fresh inspiration. The complexion of this kind of daily association determines the cast of one's mind, the thoroughness of his taste, the usefulness or uselessness of what he does. A man is known by the company he keeps, because that company forms him; he gets from it what becomes brain of his brain and soul of ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... considered the question in its other aspects. Without speaking of its uselessness from all other points of view, he looked upon the experiment as exceedingly dangerous, both for the citizens who authorised so condemnable a spectacle by their presence, and for the towns near the deplorable cannon. He also remarked that if the projectile did not reach ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... now, though she might think so herself; and Shenac knew that to try and fail would make the mother miserable. What was to be done? Over this question she pondered with an earnestness, and, alas! with a uselessness, that gave impatience to her hand and sharpness ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... ordered from Tripoli. Patience! What can be done? The Governor affected this evening to be very indignant against the son of Yousef Bashaw for destroying the ruins of Kesar-El-Ensarah. The Turks are becoming antiquaries, and, perhaps, begin to see the uselessness and folly of destroying ancient buildings for the sake of destroying them, even though they belong to an infidel age. To their credit, the Moors themselves are fond of antiquity in churches, and will patch up a marabet or mosque as long as they can. The Rais, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the youth of his people to the battle southward. To Hawthorne, being in such imperfect sympathy with this feeling and the causes which gave it passion, the war was only vexation and disaster, with much meaninglessness, foolishness, uselessness, however he might try to look at it with Northern eyes. In nothing is his natural detachment from life so marked as in this incapacity to understand the national life in so supreme a crisis and under the impulse of so profound a passion. He stood aloof from it, unmoved in his superannuated conservatism, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... The creature who passes his life without adding to the knowledge and goodness of the world has lived for naught, and he who fails to improve his own worth morally, mentally or physically has spent a life of uselessness for which his descendants must suffer; for to misuse oneself is to commit a crime against posterity. Each generation should be an improvement upon the preceding one. Having been entrusted with a piece of living machinery, it is the duty of everyone to give it ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... uselessness, and even the danger, to individuals, of the perfections, the virtues, and the duties, which Christianity peculiarly commands; let us now see whether it has a more happy influence upon politics; or whether it produces real happiness among the nations with whom this religion is ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... rapidly onward until she hovered immediately over the last-named party (just to impress upon the king a wholesome conviction of the utter uselessness of his stockade as a protection against such a foe as the Flying Fish), and then, making a majestic sweep, came gently to earth immediately opposite the principal gate ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... guarded workshop by a sidewall, the Chief and Haney and Mike the midget labored mightily to accomplish the preposterous. They grew lean and red-eyed from fatigue, and short of temper and ever more fanatical—and security men moved about in seeming uselessness but never-ceasing vigilance. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... across the cabin, flung the door open, sprang out. The uselessness of seeking his enemy in the black wet gloom was only too evident, but he would not give up. Gun in hand, he stood listening ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... is not for nothing that the Divine One has sent thee back. Live not these mortal days in loneliness and in uselessness. Regard thy fellow-mortals and seek to bless them. Thou hast learned the mystery of the highest. Let me be thine interpreter. All that thou hast learned ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look through one's eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle to call on the Philosopher, and "Shady Hollow," as Andrew called it, had surely never been more glorious than on ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... debt should be paid—and Ralph should return to college with a clean sheet so far as money was concerned, and with his handsome allowance undiminished—for the present. He himself must decide what would happen in the future. The Squire asked for no promises; he had had experience of the uselessness of promises (the listener winced again at the significance of those words); but Ralph must understand that any debts would be subtracted from his own future allowance. He must also understand that ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... she should be kept out of her room; and the mother's piteous entreaty always implied that saddest argument, "Why should I be deprived of you both in one day?" So Grace found herself condemned to uselessness almost as complete as Ermine's. She could only answer notes, respond to inquiries, without even venturing far enough from the house to see Ermine, or take out the Temple children for a walk. For indeed, Rachel's state ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... development of past experiences, for the objects of the society were practically the objects of the Mendicants; the vows were the same with a change of emphasis. The abandonment of austerities as a means of salvation or spiritual power was the natural fruit of past experiments that had proved the uselessness of asceticism merely for the sake of acquiring a spirit of self-denial. The extirpation of heresy undertaken by Ignatius had already been attempted by the friars, while the education of the young had long been carried on with considerable ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... ear-trumpet, man's dwindling counterpart of the skin-twitching muscle which we see a horse use when he jerks a fly off his flanks, and the short tail which in the seven-weeks-old human embryo is actually longer than the leg. Without committing ourselves to a belief in the entire uselessness of the vermiform appendix, which grows out as a blind alley at the junction of the small intestine with the large, we are safe in saying that it is a dwindling structure—the remains of a blind gut ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... stretched her neck out of the window, twisted it, and raised her cold, pale-blue little eyes, with their short lashes set in lids that were always rather swollen, to the attic window, endeavoring to see Pierrette. Perceiving the uselessness of that attempt, she retreated into her room with a movement like that of a tortoise which draws in its head after protruding it from its carapace. The blinds were then closed, and the silence of the street was unbroken except ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... career as an inspector of elementary schools Arnold had to reiterate this complaint again and again. He saw the incentive to cramming provided by the mode of distributing the grants, and he perceived the uselessness of the type of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... that Poverty took him by the hand and explained patiently and with diagrams the hardness of the world, the atrocious position of the declasse, who has never studied the art of roguery so as to make a living by it, and the utter uselessness as friends of those good fellows who sat in the cafes and walked the boulevards ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... He longed, with morbid longing, to share his knowledge. She, after all, was the only human being who knew the story of his tragic, incomplete love. It would be an infinite comfort and relief to tell her, if not everything, then at least of the irony, the uselessness, of their ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... divorce enough for her? And ... oh, wasn't I right?... What do you start thinking of once the shock's over? Punishment ... revenge ... uselessness ... waste ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... William Frazer, Oliver Cole, David Babcock were all living "in town" on narrow village lots, "taking it easy" as they called it, but they were by no means as contented as they seemed to the casual onlooker. Freed from the hard daily demands of the farm, many of them acknowledged a sense of uselessness, a ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other! But the contest between Truth and Falsehood is now pretty well balanced. Were it not so, and had the latter the mastery, even language would soon become extinct, from its very uselessness. The present superfluity of words is ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... as he turned from drawing the last curtain. We were both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow tree through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not have carried it through the roof. To "do something" by way of physical escape ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... shoes in the wood shed; one of his father's pipes on the kitchen window ledge. The nights were the worst, when the picture of his father's last moments would not let the boy sleep. It seemed to Jim that if he could learn to forget this picture a part of his grief would be lifted. It was the uselessness of Big Jim's death that made the boy unboyishly bitter. He could not believe that any other death ever had been so needless. It was only in the years to come that Jim was to learn how needlessly, how unremittingly, industry ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... into the worst of his old ways, is it going to pay to go on and break things all up for yourself, for the purpose of trying to bolster him up? It seems to me you would let your enthusiasm get away with your common sense. But it's your business, Jimmie. Only the thing that gets me is the blooming uselessness of it ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Shep! Way 'round 'em, boy!" she pleaded. But the dog, half-trained and bewildered, ran only a little way, to return and fawn upon her as though apologetic for his uselessness. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... shocks all my feelings! Several times I have exclaimed, 'For God's sake do not call me that!' and only been awakened, by the stupid amazement of the poor creatures I was addressing, to the perfect uselessness of my thus expostulating with them; once or twice indeed I have done more—I have explained to them, and they appeared to comprehend me well, that I had no ownership over them, for that I held such ownership ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... anger and contempt; his face underwent a sudden change; for the first time I saw how cruel it could look. My heart sank as I realized the uselessness of any appeal to him for mercy. Then I thought of Rosa, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... after shaking hands with the Chief, the Bishop began.. He spoke first of man's sin and the love of God in preparing a way of salvation for us by the sacrifice of His own Son. Then he spoke of the uselessness of mere formal religion, and that we must give our hearts to God. The Bible, he said, teaches us to care for and to do good to one another. Then he referred to our Industrial Home at Sault Ste. Marie, and after urging the people to send their children to it, left it to ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... urge her to leave Craddock Dene, but was deterred by the knowledge of the uselessness of such advice. Hadria could not ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... you are good and true. You have saved me from a life of uselessness, and your example and high noble character have given me new inspiration. It seems a poor gratitude that would turn and stab you to the heart. Ah! I cannot do it, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... A telephone message from our front line informed us that a considerable party of the enemy had crept quietly up, and were now prowling round our wire and trying to pick a way through. A hot fire from rifles, Lewis guns and machine guns, soon convinced the enemy of the uselessness of attempting, without artillery preparation, a raid against an alert enemy well entrenched with wire intact. They were beaten off, and withdrew to a fold in the ground a couple of hundred yards out in No Man's Land, where they were fired upon by our trench mortars. Nevertheless ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... the family, and that he was as likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming the Mississippi, far to the southward, and had sent out a yawl and captured him, and brought him home. He began a checkered career of uselessness when they were ferrying him over from Wheeling in a skiff, by trying to help wear the pantaloons of the boy who was holding him; he put one of his fore-legs in at the watch-pocket; but it was disagreeable ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Aye, damn him, and damn the Arctic seas, and damn this stinkin' whalin' ship of his, and damn me for a fool to ever ship on it! (Subsiding, as if realizing the uselessness of this outburst—shaking his head—slowly, with deep conviction) He's a hard man—as hard a man as ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... the uselessness of trying to escape from them, but was determined not to surrender without a struggle even in the ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... the kitchen tore up." Seeing America was too lively to have been killed, I consoled Martha and hastened to the kitchen. Evidently a shell had exploded just outside, sending three or four pieces through. When order was restored I endeavored to impress on Martha's mind the uselessness of such excitement. Looking round at the close of the lecture, there stood a group of Confederate soldiers laughing heartily at my sermon and the promising audience I had. They chimed in with ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... will tell you that you are jealous, who will point out to you that she knows you better than you know yourself, who will prove to you the uselessness of your artifices and who perhaps will defy you. She triumphs in the excited consciousness of the superiority which she thinks she possesses over you; you of course are ennobled in her eyes; for she finds your conduct quite natural. The only thing she feels is ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... she continue to impose her will upon mine? Why has she not found out by this time the uselessness of her effort? She hopes at last to wear me down. She wants me to live the life she has marked out for me to live—to take up my position in the county, and, above all, to marry and give her an heir to the property. I see it all; that is why she wanted me ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... not have misinterpreted my silence. I could not answer your letter until I had secured a time for quiet thought and for prayer. When I try to write, I feel the uselessness of words. I am doing better when I am praying for you than when I am writing to you. Yet I must write. . . . It is strange that God should have made us thus. To those whom He honours most He gives largest capacity for love, and therefore ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... understand that it would be a useless weapon for him to possess, by telling him I have but a few cartridges and that others are not procurable in Koordistan or neighboring countries. Recognizing immediately its uselessness to him under such circumstances, he then returns it without remark; whether he would have confiscated it without this timely explanation, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... clearly, does not make for peace. I should imagine that the best of diplomatists are quite aware of this. Indeed, there seems reason to suppose that Sir Edward Grey, owing to definite experience in the last two years, not only discovered the uselessness of the principle of a Balance of Power, but did his best to substitute something entirely different—the Concert of Europe. All the negotiations he conducted during and after the two Balkan wars, his constant effort to summon London Conferences and other things, were intended to create a Concert ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... things, say, in art or literature: the popular taste has changed, it may be; a new generation has grown up, which takes no interest in his work; others have gone a shorter way and got the start of him. These are the facts of life which Horace must have had in view, when he lamented the uselessness ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Peacock was wholly serious in this diatribe, but inasmuch as it produced Shelley's Defense of Poetry "as an antidote"—as Shelley said—we should be grateful for it. Both Peacock and Macaulay wrote nearly a century ago, but their statements as to the uselessness of poetry, as compared with the value of intellectual exertion in other fields, is wholly in the spirit of twentieth-century rationalism. Few readers of this book may hold that doctrine, but they will meet it on every side; and they will need all they can remember ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... often stands for any water-loving, grassy plant, and, like the Reed, it was the emblem of yielding weakness and of uselessness.[264:1] The three principal Rushes referred to by Shakespeare are the Common Rush (Juncus communis), the Bulrush (Scirpus lacustris), and the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... women, their wrongs as citizens, as wives, as the victims of men, as the "refuse of the factory system"—Winnington remembered the phrase in the Tocsin of the week before—the uselessness of constitutional agitation—the need "to shake England to make her hear"—it was all the "common form" of the Movement; and yet she was able to infuse it with passion, with conviction, with a wild and natural eloquence. Her voice stole upon him—hypnotized him. His political and economic knowledge ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... teas, and to have a dinner given in her honor, in the newspaper accounts of which the rare old Russell silver figured effectively, and on the whole she had enjoyed it. But a season of it was enough; her practical mind rebelled against the expense and uselessness of such a life. She adopted the plainest style of dress, declined invitations, and ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... at first was minded to dash it into the old woman's sneering face, but remembering the uselessness of such a performance, he thrust it into his ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... been as well acquainted with Horace Dinsmore's character as Elsie was, he would have known the utter uselessness of such a proceeding. He received a patient hearing, then a firm, though kind denial. Elsie was entirely too young to be allowed even to think of love or matrimony, her father said; he was extremely sorry the subject had been broached to her; it must not be again ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... abridgment was to have been rendered into English, took still greater liberties; and the 'Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon' had hardly been published before Burnouf, then a mere beginner in the study of Pali, was able to prove the utter uselessness of that translation. Mr. Turnour, however, soon made up for this disappointment. He set to work in a more scholarlike spirit, and after acquiring himself a knowledge of the Pali language, he published several ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... tallest, naughtiest boy of all, the one with the cherubic "soprano" voice that was just threatening to break into piping uselessness, had climbed to the top of the wall and dropped his little black velvet cap ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... a more careful consideration of the whole matter, distinguishing between the general good intention of asceticism and the uselessness of some of the particular acts of which it may be guilty, ought to rehabilitate it in our esteem. For in its spiritual meaning asceticism stands for nothing less than for the essence of the twice-born philosophy. It symbolizes, lamely enough no doubt, but sincerely, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James |
