"Fruitless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now; and therefore I acquiesced in the dispositions of Providence, which I began now to own, and to believe, ordered every thing for the best; I say, I quieted my mind with this, and left afflicting myself with fruitless ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... seemed, with a face that never changed and sleep seldom known to be broken, men saw little of the inner anguish with which the tool of Henry's injustice bent before that overmastering will. But seldom as it was that the silent lips broke into complaint the pitiless pillage of his see wrung fruitless protests even from Cranmer. The pillage had began on the very eve of his consecration, and from that moment till the king's death Henry played the part of sturdy beggar for the archiepiscopal manors. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... deprives the proceeding of a compulsory air; and to procure this gratification, Contrecoeur made his arrangements. The British army was so overwhelming in strength, so well appointed and disciplined, that he perhaps deemed any opposition to its advance would be not less fruitless than the defence of the works. However this may be, he had as yet on July 7th announced no definite conclusion, though possibly his views were perceptible enough to his subordinates. On that day it was known that the enemy, whose ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... carefully away just before falling asleep; and, indeed, previously to my last journey to the trap, I had been able to remember the exact spot where I had deposited them. But now I endeavored in vain to call it to mind, and busied myself for a full hour in a fruitless and vexatious search for the missing articles; never, surely, was there a more tantalizing state of anxiety and suspense. At length, while groping about, with my head close to the ballast, near the opening of the box, and outside of it, I perceived a faint glimmering of light ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... though a humble part,—the work of the "holy life of action." It will find religion in love and wisdom and virtue, not in bloodless asceticism, philosophical disputation, the maintenance of withered creeds, the cultivation of fruitless emotion, or the recrudescence of forms from which the life has gone out. It is possible, Thoreau tells us, for us to "walk in hallowed cathedrals," and this in our every-day lives of profession or trade. It is the loyalty to ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
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