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More "Useless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... botany, his time was not entirely occupied; that for two months he had written him in regard to the duties of his position; referred to the statements of two of his seniors, who repeated the old gossip as to the claim of La Billarderie that his place was useless, and also found fault with him for not recognizing the artificial system of Linne in the arrangement of the herbarium, added: "However, desirous of retaining M. La Marck, father of six children, in the position which he needs, and not wishing to let his talents be useless, after several ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... she was gone. He looked across the beach—there was no sign of her. She was gone; and he avowed to himself that it would be wonderful if ever in this world he saw her again. She did not remain at Tintagel; to do so would be useless, hopeless. She saw it now. She had hoped against hope: she had said to herself that in a year and a half he would surely have altered his mind—he would have found now how hard it was to live alone, to live without love—he would have ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... is copiously distributed. The leaves are long and narrow, not unlike those of a willow. The wood is heavy and fine grained, but being much intersected by the channels containing the gum, splits and warps in such a manner as soon to become entirely useless; especially when worked up, as necessity at first occasioned it to be, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... porter made up the berth as soon as Joner came in with his satchel, and Joner pulled off his boots and gave them to the porter to black, and put his watch under the pillow and turned in. The boys in Sunday school all laffed, and the minister said I was a bigger fool than Pa was, and that was useless. If you go back on me, now, I won't have a friend, except my chum and a dog, and I swear, by my halidom, that I never put no sand in your sugar, or kerosene in your butter. I admit the picking off of the codfish, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... was lest Mrs. Rocke and Traverse, failing to hear from her, should imagine that she had forgotten them. She longed to assure them that she had not; but how should she do this? It was perfectly useless to write and send the letter to the post-office by any servant at the Hidden House, for such a letter was sure to find its way—not into the mail bags, but into the pocket of Colonel ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... never ready for her to look down. If it had been a secular occasion, and she had dropped her handkerchief, seven-eighths of the students would have started to pick it up—but I should have got there first! Well, all this is but a useless prelude, for there are facts to be considered—delightful, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spoke up Talbot musingly. "It seems to us unnecessary, but who can tell? And useless? I don't know. If we hadn't happened to stumble on that poor chap just then, Johnny Fairfax might be in his fix right this minute, and Johnny Fairfax seems to me likely to prove a ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... children to learn. The Chinese classics, formerly the basis of Japanese education, are now mainly taught as a vehicle for conveying a knowledge of the Chinese character, in acquiring even a moderate acquaintance with which the children undergo a great deal of useless toil. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... and anxious-looking. Mrs. Somers took it from her, and placed it on the table; it tottered and nodded to the chirrups of the guests. Ben, from the opposite side of the table, addressed me by a look, which enlightened me. His voyage to India was useless, as the property would stand for twenty-one years more, lacking some months, unless Providence interposed. Adelaide was oblivious of the child, but Desmond thumped his glass on the mahogany to attract it, for its energies were ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... account of those labour-saving machines, so- called. But under a happier state of things they would be used simply for saving labour, with the result of a vast amount of leisure gained for the community to be added to that gained by the avoidance of the waste of useless luxury, and the abolition of the service of ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... it is Old Alamo, lead steer. A young woman owner of the herd trails with it. The success of the romance caused Emerson Hough to advise his friend Andy Adams to put a woman in a novel about trail driving—so Andy Adams told me. Adams replied that a woman with a trail herd would be as useless as a fifth wheel on a wagon and that he would not violate reality by having her. For a devastation of Hough's use of history in North of 36 see the Appendix in Stuart Henry's Conquering Our Great American Plains. Yet the novel does ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... broke off for a moment. She was extremely agitated. But presently she continued: "I endeavored to evade him. The attempt was useless. He found me out at once. The persecution went on. It was more terrible here than it had been in England. There I had friends. I had hours, sometimes ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... taken and received verily and indeed by the faithful in the Lord's Supper, to the strengthening and refreshing of their souls,—as declared in the Church Catechism and the Twenty-eighth Article of Religion. Being assured of this fact, it is useless and only fruitful in doubt and perplexity, to speculate upon the manner of this Presence, which is a Mystery of the Gospel; as such the Church has received and taught it, but has never explained or defined. This being the attitude of the Church, it will ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... received from our Spiritual Father the principle of Everlasting Life, and the aspirations which, if followed, will enable that life to expand and come to perfection; but, as in the case of physical organism, the gift is useless unless we elect to use those aspirations aright, and gain thereby a knowledge of our Spiritual Environment, which alone can bring us into sympathy with the Great Reality. Without this "Knowledge of God," we can see ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... more than fifty miles from Table Bay; and although they had no sails, the wind was in their favour. Philip pointed out to them how useless it was to remain, when before morning they would, in all probability arrive at where they would obtain all they required. The advice was approved of and acted upon; the boats were shoved off and the oars resumed. So tired and exhausted were the men, that their oars dipped mechanically into ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... more efficient, it is to be noted that different experiences may vary in their value. Many of these, from the point of their value in meeting future problems or making adjustments, must appear trivial and even useless. Others, though adapted to meet our needs, may do this in a crude and ineffective manner. As an illustration of such difference in value, compare the effectiveness and accuracy of the notation possessed by primitive men as ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... too late, for there was a thin red flash amidst the undergrowth, and he reeled with a stinging pain somewhere about his knee. It yielded and grew almost useless under him, and while his rifle fell with a rattle he lurched into a thicket of withered fern. For a moment he lay still, his face awry with pain, and groaned as he strove to draw his leg up beneath him. It felt numbed and powerless, and, desisting, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... corporeal is material and therefore impermanent. Man in his bodily existence is liable to sorrow, decay, and death. The reign of unholy desires in his heart produces unsatisfactory longings, useless weariness, and care. Attempted purification by oppressing the body is only wasted effort. It is the moral evil of the heart which keeps a man chained down in the degraded state of bodily life, which binds him in a union with the material world. Virtue and goodness will only insure him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... carves its channel, broken into cataracts and rapids, or cachoeiras, as they are called throughout Brazil. Its lowest one, the Itaboca cataract, is about 130 m. above its estuarine port of Cameta, for which distance the river is navigable; but above that it is useless as a commercial avenue, except for laborious and very costly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that sees remembrance fade; And pansies, deeper than the gloom of dreams; But ah! if utterable, would this earth Remain the base, unreal thing it is? Better be out of sight of peering eyes; Out—out of hearing of all-useless words, Spoken of tedious tongues in heedless ears. And lest, at last, the world should learn heart-secrets; Lest that sweet wolf from some dim thicket steal; Better the glassy horror ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... terrified by the brutality of the man—who was none other than Bill Sikes, the roughest of all Fagin's pupils—what could one poor child do? Darkness had set in; it was a low neighbourhood; resistance was useless. Sikes and Nancy hurried the boy on between them through courts and alleys till, once more, he was within the dreadful house where the Dodger had first brought him. Long after the gas-lamps were lighted, Mr. Brownlow sat waiting in his parlour. The servant had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... good as taken," the captain answered, "and would be forced to haul down their flags, if I were to wear round and continue the fight. But they would be worse than useless to me. I should not know what to do with their crews, and should have to cripple myself by putting very strong prize crews upon them, and so run the risk of losing ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... found amongst it pure water in great abundance, into which all our native companions immediately plunged, and rolled about like porpoises. This, they said, was the "Narran," but to the vast swampy plain they gave the name of Keegur, a name quite useless for white men's memories or maps. They seemed to say it was wholly an emanation from the Narran, and pointed to the nearest part of the trees beyond, saying the river Narran was there. I still endeavoured to proceed, as they ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... the devoted wife sat by his side, doing what little she could for his comfort, the canoe party came down the river, bearing the gallant Macleland, their loved but dying officer. Again the hapless wife begged, with piteous tears, that they would take her husband in. No! All her prayers were useless. Macleland was ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... own feelings, especially when I am well aware that many, who listen, cannot or will not understand or believe me. I care little for mistake or invective; either is the natural condition of public life: but I do not feel called upon to enter into useless controversies in my own defence; I know how to wait ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... learned who this tall stranger was. The Count of Poictou had ridden into his father's country and robbed his father's man of his wife. We are ruled by devils in Normandy, then! There was no immediate pursuit. Saint-Pol knew where to find him; but (as he told William des Barres) it was useless to go ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... product of the indigenous peoples who formed the population of the valley of the Nile some ten thousand years ago, according to the opinion of others. All that is known is that it existed there at a period so remote that it is useless to attempt to measure by years the interval of time which has elapsed since it grew up and established itself in the minds of men, and that it is exceedingly doubtful if we shall ever have any very definite knowledge on ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... do it," she said. "It's useless trying to dissuade me. It's so clear to me that it's the one thing I must do. Don't any anything more about it, Kitten. You're only wearing yourself out"—appealingly. "I wish—I wish you'd try to help ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... not, to my knowledge, a living relation in the wide world; and, till I met with you, I knew not the meaning of the word love; and I still believe that, had I met you earlier in life, your influence would have caused me to become a useful man and an ornament to my profession. But it is useless to talk now of what cannot be recalled. When I left this village, years ago, I was equally indifferent as to whither I went or what I did. I felt no wish to return to my wife; and, had I been then inclined, I well knew the just ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... that you are not the sort of person to be easily frightened. It is useless to adopt the usual prison methods with you. Very well; then we will try a different one. It may be that we shall part quite good friends! What do I say? Part? Say, rather, that we may continue together, hand in hand! But to the ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... how can I tell you how mad the king was, when he saw the hare that the Gubbaun had made av him, and how he wouldn't spake a word all day, but cursin'. However, next mornin' he considered that after all it was useless to fret, and that no time must be lost, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... a position not very far from that taken by my eccentric friend. General or regular correspondence is useless, baneful, and in most cases impossible; but special correspondence, born of the necessities of man as a social being, and circumscribed by them, may be from time to time possible. There can be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... abuses, even though in itself it had something advantageous and good. How much more ought we to relinquish it, so as to prevent [escape] forever these horrible abuses, since it is altogether unnecessary, useless, and dangerous, and we can obtain everything by a more necessary, profitable, and certain way without ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... party. The sun, indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds than was desirable; yet so disappointed were they, and so disgusted with the sun in particular, that they unanimously hissed him; though, of course, it was useless to cry "Off! off!" Here, however, the fault was in their own erroneous expectations, and not in the sun, who, doubtless, did his best. For, generally, a sunrise and a sunset ought to be seen from the valley, or at most horizontally. [3] But as to Cape Horn, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... with the report that he had fallen dead while standing at the altar; and the church was thronged, and the street rapidly blocked up with a hushed crowd, eager for news and eager to give aid. So great was the press that the police had to interfere, and push back the throng from the door. It was useless to attempt to disperse it with the assurance that Father Damon was better; it patiently waited to see for itself. The sympathy of the neighborhood was most impressive, and perhaps the thing that the public best remembers about this incident is the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... they would be filled with despair at the sight of these boiling cataracts. They refuse bait on the way, apparently never stopping for food, from the time they leave the salt water. Often with fins and tails so worn down as to be almost useless, their noses worn to the bone, their eyes sunken, sometimes wholly extinguished, they struggle on to the last gasp, to ascend the streams to their sources. In calm weather they swim near the surface, and close to the ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... talons were limp and feeble. When we came with food, he would hobble along toward us like the worst kind of a cripple, drooping and moving his wings, and treading upon his legs from the foot back to the elbow, the foot remaining closed and useless. Like a baby learning to stand, he made many trials before he succeeded. He would rise up on his trembling legs only ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... provided with a waterproof cloak and a sailor's tarpaulin hat, as a defence against the rain, which frequently falls. An umbrella would be totally useless, as the rain is generally accompanied by a storm, or, at any rate, by a strong wind; when we add to this, that it is necessary in some places to ride quickly, it will easily be seen that holding an umbrella open is a thing not to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... acknowledge nothing," she said, deliberately. "You and your friends can settle this between yourselves when they arrive. Until then, you need not seek to tamper with me—it will be useless; and I hope you are too much of a lady to be insulting to a person who has no choice but to do ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... guest and to make a speech. She had quite a large company at her table. When the champagne corks began to explode all around us, she asked what I thought she ought to do. I answered: "As the rest are doing." Mr. Sage vigorously protested that it was a useless and wasteful expense. However, Mrs. Sage gave the order, and Mr. Sage and two objecting gentlemen at the table were the most liberal participants of her hospitality. The inspiration of the phizz brought Sage to his feet, though not on the programme. He talked until the committee ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Try as he might to do justice to the Jinnee's gratitude and generosity, he could not restrain a bitter resentment at the utter want of consideration shown in overloading him with gifts so useless and so compromising. No Jinnee—however old, however unfamiliar with the world as it is now—had any right to be ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... a motto for the Middle Ages, during which, to quote St. Paul, all things were "counted dung but to win Christ." In this attitude of mind the wisdom of the Greeks was not simply foolishness, but a stumbling-block in the path. Knowledge other than that which made a man "wise unto salvation" was useless. All that was necessary was contained in the Bible or taught by the Church. This simple creed brought consolation to thousands and illumined the lives of some of the noblest of men. But, "in seeking a heavenly home man lost his bearings upon earth." Let me commend for your reading ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... breath—"Aye, Parsee! I see thee again.—Aye, and thou goest before; and this, this then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me; if not, Ahab is enough to die—Down, men! the first thing that but offers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.—Where's ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressure of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... of my sister, I devoutly wish that you had never seen her, Mr Headstone. However, you did see her, and that's useless now. I confided in you about her. I explained her character to you, and how she interposed some ridiculous fanciful notions in the way of our being as respectable as I tried for. You fell in love with her, and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to be able to cure stammering by mail. In the hope that I would get some good from the treatment, my parents sent this mail order man a large sum of money. In return for this I was furnished with instructions to do a number of useless things, such as holding toothpicks between my teeth, talking through my nose, whistling before I spoke a word, and many other foolish things. It was at this time that I learned once and for all, the imprudence of throwing money away on these mail order "cures," so-called, and I made up my ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... little left. What I can give her is little enough, but it will save her from the worst extremities. And I beg you, dear sister, to forgive her fault, if only for my sake, because she has been so loving to a silly and useless fellow. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... this time, declared the fricassee was excellent, and that there were no eels anywhere like those in the Castlewood moats; would not allow that the wine was corked, or hear of such extravagance as opening a fresh bottle for a useless old woman like her; gave Madam Esmond Warrington, of Virginia, as her toast, when the new wine was brought, and hoped Harry had brought away his mamma's permission to take back an English wife with him. He did not remember his grandmother; ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... find in it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern times—over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools and universities useless to a large number of the men ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... roused from their beds to make good a dynamited embankment and block the relentless Thames did not work with a more untiring zeal to baffle a real enemy than did Dave and Dolly to keep out a fictitious one, and hypothetically save Uncle Moses and Aunt M'riar from drowning. But all efforts would be useless if there was to be ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... thousand ducats': 't is a good round sum'. It is useless to point out the beauties of nature to one ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... subsequent nights, and sharp eyes were looking out all night and all day, and still no enemy's frigate hove in sight. Paul was very ambitious to be the first to see her. Whenever his duty would allow, he was at the mast-head till the hot sun drove him down, or darkness made his stay there, useless. He often dreamed, when in his hammock at night, that he heard the drum beat to quarters, and jumping up, slipped into his clothes, and hurried on deck, when finding all quiet, with no small disappointment ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... won't be told just a suspicion that came to me; something that was told to me the other day; a conjecture so vague that it would be useless to dwell ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... be a useless procedure," replied Britz. "There is no conspiracy of silence. If those men outside could shed any light on the crime, they would do so eagerly. The murderer could not have enjoined silence on thirty or thirty-five men. No, they have told all they know. You ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... of punishment to go regularly to the German theater, with a view to their improvement, and in order to make this as effective as may be, enormous compensations attract the best German stars to St. Petersburg. And yet all this is useless, and the Russian theater is not raised above the dignity of a workshop. Only the comic side of the national character, a burlesque and droll simplicity, is admirably represented by actors whose skill and the scope of whose talents may he reckoned ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... as simple as that. Without a spokesman, the plan could fall through completely. There's only one thing you need to make your decision, Tom—faith in men, and a sure conviction that man was made for the stars, and not for an endless circle of useless wars. Think of it, Tom. That's what ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... on to the sand, for the shed was on the seashore, and he beckoned me to follow. To my astonishment, we found out there an old rickety bedstead with a much rent and rusted spring mattress—apparently left for me providentially. It was so old and useless that it could not be considered property, even in Russia. It belonged to no one. Its nights were over. I ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... what the sorcerer thinks of himself; whether he really believes himself to be a magician, or whether he realizes the fact that he is an arrant old humbug. I think there is a mixture of both feelings.' It would be useless to pursue ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... A swift, absurd, wholly useless memory came to her from the preceding day. Yes, it would be no more than a prayer, but she would send it out blindly into the air.... ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... 'I think, Destiny is supreme. Fie on exertion which is useless, inasmuch as the son of Adhiratha, though fighting resolutely, could not vanquish the son of Pandu. Karna boasts of his competency to vanquish in battle all the Parthas with Govinda amongst them. I do not see in the world, another warrior like Karna! I often heard Duryodhana speak in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... cases contained in the foregoing testimonies. The slaveholder mentioned by Mr. Ladd, p. 86, who knocked down a slave and afterwards piled brush upon his body, and consumed it, held the hand of a female slave in the fire till it was burned so as to be useless for life, and confessed to Mr. Ladd, that he had killed four slaves, had been a member of the Senate of Georgia and a clergyman. The slaveholder who whipped a female slave to death in St. Louis, in 1837, as stated by Mr. Cole, p. 69, was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... rid of Herodias. Some of us think ourselves good Christians because we assent to truth, and even like to hear it, provided the speaker suit our tastes. Glad hearing only aggravates the guilt of not doing. It is useless to admire John if you ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Shaw was still suffering from his first mukunguru; Zaidi, a soldier, was critically ill with the small-pox; the kichuma-chuma, "little irons," had hold of Bombay across the chest, rendering him the most useless of the unserviceables; Mabruk Saleem, a youth of lusty frame, following the example of Bombay, laid himself down on the marshy ground, professing his total inability to breast the Makata swamp; Abdul Kader, the Hindi tailor and adventurer—the weakliest of mortal bodies—was ever ailing for ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... districts this section of a river's course is nearly always small in proportion to the rest; but the Thames, just as it has the longest proportion of navigable water, has also by far the shortest proportion of useless head-water of all the ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... the dummy that had stood him so well for the time, Tom did not hesitate to throw him overboard as a useless incumbrance, and, thus relieved of the dead weight, he sped forward with wonderful speed. In a short time after that the redskins had vanished from view, and almost any one would have supposed that the danger was passed; but Tom was well aware that it was only a temporary lull in the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... Ferris—"don't do anything of the kind. Leave matters just where they are. Everything has turned out what you would call all right. You see that your interference, as far as it went, was perfectly futile and useless. I want now to draw your attention ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... machines—belongs, comparatively speaking, to our own epoch, the idea of it was born many centuries ago. Like other contrivances and discoveries, it was effected step by step—one man transmitting the result of his labours, at the time apparently useless, to his successors, who took it up and carried it forward another stage,— the prosecution of the inquiry extending over many generations. Thus the idea promulgated by Hero of Alexandria was never altogether lost; but, like the grain ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... your opinion of us, Prince," he said, "it is useless to enter into argument with you, especially as you have already acted upon your convictions. I should like to ask you this question, though. A few weeks ago an appeal was made to our young men to bring up to its full strength certain forces which have been organized for the defence of the ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... indefinitely; but of what use can they possibly be, unless the things to be carried be first produced, and whence can those things be obtained except from the earth? The grist-mill is useful, provided there is grain to be ground, but not otherwise. The cotton-mill would be useless unless the cotton was first produced. Agriculture must precede manufactures, and last of all, says ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... unwilling to exasperate the Indians by useless bloodshed, and finding that no captives could be recovered, sailed to the mouth of the Kennebec, then the Sagadahock. Here he established a garrison on the eastern bank of the river, opposite the foot of Arrowsic Island. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... stable to the drawing-room of Ravenshoe Manor. 'I hope you like this fellow, William,' he says in one place, and then there is a naive enumeration of some of the ex-groom's social deficiencies. This, at best, is a useless interruption of the story, but it helps, with other signs, to show Kingsley's constant interest in ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... useless to allure mankind by promises of a pig's paradise. Much has been rightly written about the horrors of war. Everyone knows them to be sudden, hideous, and overwhelming; those who have seen them can speak also of the squalor, the filthiness, the murderous swindling, and the inconceivable ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... of the constitution. That world is rapidly ceasing to understand itself. It is vain to repeat the complaint of the old Quarterly Reviewers, that Dickens had not enjoyed a university education. What would the old Quarterly Reviewers themselves have thought of the Rhodes Scholarships? It is useless to repeat the old tag that Dickens could not describe a gentleman. A gentleman in our time ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... had stood firm had been obliged to flee for safety, and did not dare return until I went there. The wrath of their persecutors seems to have reached its height, and the poor people know not what to do. Appeal to the government seems useless, for it is from the government that their chief oppressor gets his power to persecute. All who went back came to call on me, and most of them attended the services. They said, in palliation of their ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... over. Eventually, at 8.40, I got a signal from Dickinson to go on. So forward we went, platoons in column of route. Could you possibly imagine what it was like? Shells were bursting everywhere. It was useless to take any notice where they were falling, because they were falling all round; they could not be dodged; one had to take one's chance: merely go forward and leave one's fate to destiny. Thus we advanced, amidst shot and shell, over fields, trenches, wire, fortifications, roads, ditches and ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... urge in self-defence that she would willingly have taken the baby to bed with her if she had been allowed; she knew it was useless to offer arguments or excuses. She was busy thinking. Miss Todd's reproaches stung her like a whip. She would let the school see that she was not the pampered, spoilt darling that they imagined. On that ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... now developed treacherous spots like quicksands and while one foot remained comparatively secure, the other sank deeply, tripping me. Prone, the entangling fronds caught at my arms and neck; the green blades, no longer tender, scratched my face and smothered my useless cries for help. I sobbed childishly, knowing myself doomed to die in this awful morass, drowned in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... purse in my clothes. He took it and found in it twenty dinars, as the soldier had said, whereat he was wroth and calling to the officers to bring me before him, said to me, 'O young man tell me the truth. Didst thou steal this purse?' At this I hung down my head and said to myself, 'It is useless for me to say I did not steal the purse, for they found it in my clothes: and if I confess to the theft, I fall into trouble.' So I raised my head and said, 'Yes: I took it.' When the prefect heard what I said, he wondered and called for witnesses, who came forward ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... pretty old-fashioned, low-ceilinged kitchen, full of quaint corners and impossible cupboards so high up in the wall as at first sight to be pronounced useless. ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... which stops all this, you and your pride. Not even a woman's love—There, I have said it!—not even a woman's love—will move your sense of justice. Go! leave me. Since my love is nothing, since the sacrifice I make is useless, go; you are free!" The tears which came into her eyes this time were genuine; tears of chagrin, vexation, and of a third sensation which still ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... that everything was useless; he realized she was no longer for him, because she belonged to another. As his suffering returned, he pushed her ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... her ear. "My little white soul. Do not fight, it is perfectly useless, because I will do what I wish. See, I will be gentle and just caress you, if you do not madden me ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "It will be useless. I have traveled too far after that gold to give it up now. You had better surrender. I'll guarantee to get you safe ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... negroes; wild, ferocious races who have neither knowledge of God nor respect for the Pasha, and you must travel with a powerful armed force; the climate is deadly; how could you penetrate such a region to search for what is useless even should you attain it? But how would it be possible for a lady, young and delicate, to endure what would kill the strongest man? Travel along the Atbara river into the Taka country, there is much to be seen that is unexplored; but give up the mad ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... non-professional supervision, but in many districts they have been prepared by the cadastral branch of the Survey Department. The difficulty mentioned by the author has been severely felt, and it constantly happens that beautiful maps become useless in four or five years. Efforts are made to insert annual corrections in copies of the maps through the agency of the village accountants, and the 'kanungos', or officers who supervise them, but the task is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... from which we could watch for contingencies which might give us a better opportunity. Our experience proved what I have before stated, that the facility for railway concentration of the enemy in our front made this line a useless one for aggressive movements, as they could always concentrate a superior force after they received the news of our being in motion. It also showed the error of dividing my forces on two lines, for had Crook's brigade ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Arab evidently did not understand, and Adair saw that it would be useless to press the point, knowing that whatever the Arab might say, whether true or false, he should not be the wiser. "And now, as to those fellows tumbling about there, and butting against each other with their curly pates, and looking more like chimney-sweeps ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... kind of you! I'll write to Esmeralda at once, and I daresay she would be most grateful. You make me quite ashamed of myself when I think of all the work you do, and how lazy and useless I am in comparison!" cried Bridgie earnestly. Her grey eyes were fixed on Miss Munns's face with the sweetest, most unaffected admiration, and Sylvia looked at them both and ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to Derby merely the unfortunate venture the prince thought it, but when, in the course of their talk, it came out that Scorpa was the "friend" who had sold him the mine, Derby was sure that the duke had deliberately saddled him with a property which he knew to be useless. And yet every word that Scorpa had urged as a reason for the mine's value, was—taken literally—true. The mine was in close proximity to his own; the surveys, furthermore, showed the "Little Devil" to be ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... to depend upon me, and they shall not be disappointed. God forbid it should so happen, that the enemy escape me, and get into any port! You may rely, if I am properly supplied, that there they shall remain, a useless body, for this summer. But, if I have gun and mortar boats, with fire-ships, it is most probable they may be got at: for, although I hope the best, yet it is proper to be prepared for the worst; which, I am sure, all this fleet would feel to be, the escape of the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... remarks of Mr. Field, Judge Turner said that it was useless to say more, as the mind of the court was made up. I think Mr. Field then offered to read from the Statutes, whereupon Judge Turner ordered him to take his seat, and that a fine of two hundred dollars be entered up against ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... outrage is punishment or justice or something else that is all right, or perhaps by a heated attempt to argue that we should all be robbed and murdered in our beds if such senseless villainies as sentences of imprisonment were not committed daily. It is useless to argue that even if this were true, which it is not, the alternative to adding crimes of our own to the crimes from which we suffer is not helpless submission. Chickenpox is an evil; but if I were to declare that we must either submit to it or else repress it ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... she commanded her mount, who obeyed her voice quite as well as though she had tugged at the reins. "Now we'll go back quietly and trail this useless one ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... not Eric, my little one, my darling!" burst forth the poor bereaved mother in a passion of tears; and then, the merchant, seeing that any words of comfort on his part would be worse than useless, withdrew. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the thousand useless lives, Upon the guilt that vaunting thrives, Thy wrath were better spent! Why should'st Thou take my little son— Why should'st Thou vent ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... to cross until the river should fall, and knowing that it was impracticable to join General Sherman, and useless to adhere to my alternative instructions to return to Winchester, I now decided to destroy still more thoroughly the James River canal and the Virginia Central railroad and then join General Grant in front of Petersburg. I was master of the whole country ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... other countries of the globe to render the first steps of man, an infant still, easy in the career of civilized life. A rich soil, on which overflowing rivers spread every year a fruitful loam, as in Egypt, and one where the plough is almost useless, so movable and so easily tilled is it, a warm climate, finally, secure to the inhabitants of these fortunate regions plentiful harvests in return for light labor. Nevertheless, the conflict with the river itself and with the desert,—which, on the banks of the Euphrates, as on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... though there is every gaiety and amusement in the town, a comfortable little opera, a good old library filled full of good old books (none of your works of modern science, travel, and history, but good old USELESS books of the last two centuries), and nobody to trouble you in reading them, and though the society of Valetta is most hospitable, varied, and agreeable, yet somehow one did not feel SAFE in the island, with perpetual glimpses ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mamuliekala, and several others. They were eating the first meal of the day, and Dave was given a fair share of the food. When he started to talk, he was told to keep silent, and after that saw it would be useless, for the present, to ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... breaking out in that part of the regiment which was in garrison at Fort George, on the Niagara, under the command of the junior lieutenant-colonel, the head quarters being, we believe, at York, the capital. This officer, it seems, more by useless annoyance than by actual severity, had exasperated the men under his command to that degree that they formed a plot to murder all the officers present, with the exception of a young man who had recently joined; and then to cross over to the United States. Far be it from us to justify ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... It would knock the management of foreign affairs by this Administration into the region of sheer idiocy. I'm afraid any peace talk from us, as it is, would merely be whistling down the wind. If we break with England—not on any case or act of violence to our shipping—but on a useless discussion, in advance, of general principles of conduct during the war—just for a discussion—we've needlessly thrown away our great chance to be of some service to this world gone mad. If Lansing isn't stopped, that's what he ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... threatened me. I knew they were telling me the truth—but I wouldn't listen. I hadn't been brought up to care what results my actions brought on other people. I thought only of myself—of the indulgence of my own desires. I lived a useless, contemptible life—entirely without scruples or restraints. There was scarcely a vice that I was not steeped in—hardly a sin that I had not explored. I had enough money to gratify all my senses. Nothing was beneath ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... conveniently carry. He walked rapidly along, evidently very much occupied with his own thoughts, when, suddenly, two or three stones came skipping over the ground, and aroused him from his reverie. He looked up in surprise, and discovered that his enemies were so close to him that flight was useless. ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... a belief in an immediate coming of Christ as indicated by present world conditions interpreted in the light of Old and New Testament prophecy is to paralyze all motive for social action. Such action, if this belief is correct, is useless. The devotee is driven to the position of finding his sole religious duty that of getting himself and those in whom he is interested ready to enter the new kingdom through the observance of the personal ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... It is useless to ask. They are dead. They will never again be heard upon the heaths at morning singing their happy songs: they will never more drink with their peers in the deep ingle-nooks of home. They are perished. They have disappeared. Alas! The ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... did see. It was useless to reason with her. She was like a captive bird beating wild wings for freedom and wholly unable to gauge its ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... so. I arranged to meet him at lunch, and somehow I took a wrong turn with him: I have no tact whatever, as you perceive. But I wrote to him on Friday night, offering to call upon him, and just giving him a hint. Well, it was useless. He refused to ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... yet young, vigorous and ambitious, and with the help of heaven he would carve out his own fortune. Seeing it was useless to argue the question, Storms fell back upon the original intention of Captain Bergen, which was to devote the greater portion ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... after the old rate, loose and infamous scribbler; and it is well I escape so cheap. Bear your good fortune moderately, Mr Poet; for, as loose and infamous as I am, if I had written for your party, your pension would have been cut off as useless. But they must take up with Settle, and such as they can get: Bartholomew-fair writers[40], and Bartholemew-close printers; there is a famine of wit amongst them, they are forced to give unconscionable rates, and, after all, to have only carrion ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... of water in a brook, which flowed with a murmuring sound down a little glen behind the huts, but there were no buckets, and Marco called in vain. It would have been equally useless to have raised an alarm of fire, as there was nobody within ten miles to hear the cry. The flames spread rapidly, and Forester and Marco soon saw that there was nothing to be done but for them to stand quietly by and witness the ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... and female, who are being dragged from the interior of Africa. You and I may perhaps do some small matter in the way of helping to free slaves, if we keep quiet and watch our opportunity, but we shall accomplish nothing if you give way to useless bursts ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... vicar addressed his wife, she can do nothing; it's useless. If ever patience is counselled to us, it is when accidents befall us, for then, as we are not responsible, we know we are in other hands, and it is our duty to be comparatively passive. Perhaps I may say that in every ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... before this the girl is either dead or she is safe far away, and in either event it is useless to look for her about here, since Van Vooren's kraal is watched, and we know that she is not in it." To which ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... cloudless sky; I remember that I never once looked back, or shed a tear on taking leave of her, and this almost terrified me. As I travelled along in the train I could not conceal from myself an increasing feeling of comfort; it was obvious that the absolutely useless worries of the past weeks could not have been endured any longer, and that my life's ambition demanded a complete severance from them. On the evening of the same day I arrived in Geneva; here I wished to rest a little and pull myself together, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... cousin, Herbert Hill, at that time one of the librarians of the "Bodleian:"—"When I was at the British Museum the other day, walking through the rooms with Carey, I felt that to have lived in that library, or in such a one, would have rendered me perfectly useless, even if it had not made me mad. The sight of such countless volumes made me feel how impossible it would be to pursue any subject through all the investigations into which it would lead me, and that therefore I should either lose myself in the vain ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... only when they were taking the almost enforced moment of rest together at the water hole—which might as well have been a thousand miles from help as ten—that little chills did run up and down her back. As for her companion, it was useless to try to read him from his face or manner; if she were playing one game, he might well be playing another as far as anything she could gather from his features was concerned. But she had to confess there ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... including the gallant Major Hamill, whose death is commemorated in a marble tablet set in the little piazza of the town. But with the retirement of the relieving fleet and the continuance of foul weather, Colonel Lowe deemed it useless to resist further, and like a sensible man decided to capitulate on the best terms he could obtain. In return for his immediate surrender of Capri the British commandant accordingly stipulated that his garrison should be allowed to embark and sail for Sicily ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... is useless to waste time in persiflage," he began and then turning to Sam, "There is a place in Wisconsin," ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... the pharaoh, "know this, that I have no desire to quench the divine light. Let the priests guard wisdom in their temples, but let them not make my army useless, let them not conclude shameful treaties, and let them not steal," he said this excitedly, "the treasures of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... several wives. They had accompanied the warriors of the tribe to battle; and with their guns had killed many of the enemy, which had given them great renown. Having expended all their powder and bullets, their guns had become useless. They had therefore taken bows and arrows and had become quite skilful in their use. As to religion, they never had any. The libertine life they were now practising was quite ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... "Hello" is a useless and obsolescent form of response in business offices. The name of the firm, of the department, or of the man himself, or of all three, according to circumstances, should be given. When there is a private ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... philosopher or scholar—"Not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones into the unity of breathing life." It is useless to complain of his having lavished and diffused his talents and acquirements over so vast a variety of often comparatively trivial and passing topics. The world must accept gifts from men of genius as they offer them; circumstance and the hour often ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... with some humiliation at being helpless, where Flora was doing so much, and to leave their father to be watched by a stranger. If he had been wanted, Norman might have made the effort, but being told that he would be worse than useless, there was nothing for him but ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... words are hard upon me, saith Jehovah. Ye say, 'What have we said against thee?' Ye have said, 'It is useless to serve God, And what gain is it to us to have kept his charge, And that we have walked in funeral garb before him? Even now we call the proud happy, Yea, those who work iniquity thrive, Yea, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... some risk—for at the present season occur nightly heavy showers brought by the vendaval—and because the king is not peaceably inclined, and considering that all the land would revolt, I concluded that it would be useless for me to go thither, since the said river of Taguaran is on the way to Borney, so that any one may very easily ascertain what he wishes. In my opinion, if we effect a colony in Borney, the Spaniards must live ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... his inability, looked around him for an active agent, and believed he had found one in a Mr. Gray, a man of captivating manners and good connexions, but almost as useless a person as the General himself. Fully confident in his own abilities, Gray had already been concerned in many speculations, not one of which had ever succeeded, but all had led to the demolition of large fortunes. Plausible in his address, and possessing ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to enquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus;[374] it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the South, "Verily they will ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... will, but what is that to the purpose? Will it cure sore eyes? No; or sprains? Far from it. No, no, my most excellent ladies and gentlemen, let us not form unreasonable expectations; day is not night; summer is not winter; nor is a horse-medicine a febrifuge. It is useless to assert such trash to sensible, well-informed people, Here is an opportunity, such as most of you may possibly never have again, of buying a most delightful and effectual medicine, sweet, not nauseous (strongly reminding one ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... have been of essential service in watching the more dangerous points. Le Brun, a most trustworthy man, was away, and two of his best hunters and scouts had been killed, while another lay wounded and useless. Still he endeavoured to make up for the limited number of his men by ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... Four feet,—useless, Eyes fast closed, Borne in a basket The other dozed. Searching in terror Far and wide, "Golden Hair's" mother Moaned ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... the exotics. I told him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreign appointment. I had resolved, when the administration came in, not to take an appointment; and I had kept my resolution. As to any home office, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be useless for me to take one. The President mused a moment, and then smiled, and said he would see what could be done for me. I did not change the subject; but nothing further was said by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... tone, Mr. Quentin," said the count, his eyes flashingly angrily. Phil's blood was up. He saw it was useless to temporize, and there was no necessity for disguising his true feelings. They had come to the point where all that had lain smothered and dormant was to be pricked into activity; the mask was to be thrown down with ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... carried the trouting basket slung over his shoulder by the canvas strap, and made sure that his hunting knife had a good edge to it, for he meant to fix the frogs as he took them, thus saving himself more or less of a burden in carrying the useless portions along with him. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... to consist of steep rocky mountains, with craggy precipices, either clad with impenetrable forests, or quite barren, and covered with snow on the tops. No meadows or lawns were to be seen, and the only spot of flat land that was found, presented so much wood and briars as to be useless for either garden ground or pasture, without very considerable toil. This heartless description is somewhat relieved by a glowing picture of the scenery about what was called Cascade Cove, which seems to have ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... and his other ornaments, are but light, and will be very agreeable to his spirit. His pipe also will afford him amusement on the road. If he has any thing more, let it be divided among his nearest relatives and friends, but on no account incumber his spirit with heavy and useless articles." ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... "It's useless to murmur and pout— There's no good in making ado; 'Tis well the old year is out, And time to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... which had assumed the responsibility of intercepting us had separated itself some distance from the main body, and was now formed in a double line right across our course, altering its position from time to time in such a manner as to keep always square ahead of us. I saw that it would be useless to attempt to dodge them; we had not time for that; so I directed the coxswain to steer straight for the broadside of the midship canoe, the craft, that is to say, which occupied the centre of the opposing line. She was a biggish craft for a canoe, being somewhere about fifty feet long, and ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Hygelac Kinsman and folk-thane; fair deeds have I many Begun in my youth-tide, and this matter of Grendel On the turf of mine own land undarkly I knew. 410 'Tis the seafarers' say that standeth this hall, The best house forsooth, for each one of warriors All idle and useless, after the even-light Under the heaven-loft hidden becometh. Then lightly they learn'd me, my people, this lore, E'en the best that there be of the wise of the churls, O Hrothgar the kingly, that thee should I seek to, Whereas of the ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... "but it is useless attempting to govern him. He is harmless, but he must be left alone. He cannot endure being ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... probably almost ceased to pray for a child, or to urge the matter. It seemed useless to pray further. There had been no heaven-sent sign to assure them that there was any likelihood of their prayer being answered, and nature seemed to utter a final No; when suddenly the angel of God broke into the commonplace of their life, like a meteorite into the ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Hundred on priests and public worship, in which he recommended, inter alia, that the use of church-bells and the erection of crosses be again permitted by law. This reactionary measure excited Paine's liberal bigotry. He published a letter to Jourdain, telling him that priests were useless and bells public nuisances. Another letter may be seen, offering his subscription of one hundred francs to a fund for the invasion of England,—a favorite project of the Directory, and the dearest wish of Paine's heart. He added to his mite an offer of any personal service he could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... path in life—in a manner essentially Gallic. The check trousers, of a pattern somewhat loud and startling, had the mincing gait in them of any "pantalon de fantasie," purchased a prix fixe in the Boulevard St. Germain, across the water. It is useless to lift a Lincoln and Bennett from a little flat-topped head, cut, as they say, to the rat and fringed all over ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... the contract-tablets would be useless, for all the deeds of sale are exactly alike, except the names of parties, witness, or neighbors, and the specification of the property. The repetitions were necessary, for each deed required an exact statement. But it is ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... has had its ration, it is fed; it lies down for the present satisfied; my faculties have wrought a day's task, and earned a day's wages. I am no teacher; to look on me in that light is to mistake me. To teach is not my vocation. What I AM, it is useless to say. Those whom it concerns feel and find it out. To all others I wish only to be an obscure, steady-going, private character. To you, dear E ——, I wish to be a sincere friend. Give me your faithful regard; I willingly dispense ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... concrete when it would be firmly gripped in wet concrete. The writer has been unable to find any record of the tests to which Mr. Thacher refers. The tests made at the University of Illinois, far from showing reinforcement of this type to be "worse than useless," showed most excellent results by ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... be perfectly useless, if you will allow me to say so," replied the advocate. "The Judge will not hear a word against a family like the Ramonez. So noble and so poor! Perhaps you are not aware that the Archbishop of Toledo is Don Luis' first ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... were collected and exposed to the direct action of the sun, until they were reduced to powder. Then with the back of his knife, Godfrey endeavoured to strike some sparks off with a flint, so that they might fall on this substance. It was useless. The spongy stuff would not catch fire. Godfrey then tried to use that fine vegetable dust, dried during so many centuries, which he had found in the interior of Will Tree. The result ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... It is made in three degrees, No. 3 being the softest, and, of course, the blackest. But some of the ordinary Venetian and vine charcoals sold are good. But don't get the cheaper varieties: a bad piece of charcoal is worse than useless. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... pugnaciously than ever. It was the strangest attempt ever made to gibe and flout a wandering sheep back into the fold. Robert's resentment was roused at last. The squire's temper seemed to him totally inexplicable, his arguments contradictory, the conversation useless and irritating. He got up to take ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the secrecy and expedition with which Com'modus was assassinated, that few were acquainted with the real circumstances of his death. His body was wrapt up as a bale of useless furniture, and carried through the guards, most of whom were either drunk ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... native material, corn husk, dried grasses and reeds, all from our own Garden Spot, and a few colored strands of raffia from Madagascar, and forming them into baskets. This faculty of using apparently useless material and fashioning from it a useful and beautiful article is one of our Pennsylvania Dutch heritages and one we ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... something wrong, and poor old Mr. Bacon felt it now more deeply than ever. Another feeble effort at remonstrance was made, when Mr. Dyer coldly referred him to Grant the lawyer, who had now entire control of the business. But he did not go to him. He felt that to do so would be utterly useless. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... disputes concerning the settlement of their accounts had arisen between the company and the Government, threatening the interruption of the route at any moment. These the United States in vain endeavored to compose. It would be useless to narrate the various proceedings which took place between the parties up till the time when the transit was discontinued. Suffice it to say that since February, 1856, it has remained closed, greatly to the prejudice of citizens of the United ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... matter as altogether a subject for joking," continued Becker, "and sincerely hope that all our precautions may prove useless. Take each of you a rifle and proceed with caution; above all, do not go far apart from each other; do not fire without taking good aim, and only in case of self-defence or absolute necessity; for this time it does not appear to be a question ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... sunset and drank it, Yet must I stammer with such strange uncouthness And tear it from me, tangling my arms in it. Why should I so befool myself and seem A laughable bundle in each woman's eyes, Wearing such things as no one ever wore, Useless ... no head-cloth ... too unlike my fellows. Yet he turns miser for a tiny coif. It would cut into many golden coifs And dim some women in their Irish clouts— But no; I'll shape and stitch it into shifts, Smirch it like linen, patch it with rags, to watch His silent anger when he sees ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... co-operate in any way to bring it about. They said that although they had not consulted with the other gentlemen present, they had no doubt they were all agreed upon this subject. They thought, however, it would be utterly useless to attempt to sell four per cent. bonds, and that as far as such bonds were concerned there need ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the absorbing one, and their utmost effort was to speak of the past with composure; but they all felt relieved, though at first unconsciously, when one, whose interest in their feelings could not be doubted, gave the signal of withdrawing their reflections from vicissitudes which it was useless to deplore. Even the social forms which the presence of a guest rendered indispensable, and the exercise of the courtesies of hospitality, contributed to this result. They withdrew their minds from the past. And the worthy Bishop, whose tact was as eminent as his good humour and benevolence, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the functions of the punctuation marks and the common rules for their use. Rules for the use of punctuation marks are very different from rules for the use of purely material things. They are useless unless applied intelligently. No set of rules could be devised which would work automatically or relieve the compositor from the necessity of thinking. Punctuation can never be reduced to an ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... "It is useless to endeavour to deceive us," said Mrs. Quelch, sternly. "Look at that telegram, Mr. Fladgate, and deny it if you can. You have been gadding about in some vile foreign place ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... circumstances. You may treat me as you please, but your welfare will always be dear to me. I shall not seek to change your convictions, nor shall I plead for myself, for I know that all this would be useless; but I wish to see you face to face once more alone in your own home. I must also request that Mrs. Hunter will not interfere with our interview. You are not a child, and you know that I am a gentleman, and that I am incapable of saying a word ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... for all the anxiety and unhappiness which I underwent last year. Whenever I am now called upon to discontinue my labours in the Peninsula, I shall comply without the slightest murmur or remonstrance, my heart being filled with gratitude to the Lord for having been permitted, useless vessel as I am, to see at least some of the seed springing up which during two years I have been casting on the stony ground of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... was so crowded that Cis had to share a mattress with Mrs. Talbot, and Diccon had to sleep in his cloak on the floor, which he persuaded himself was high preferment. He woke, however, much sooner than was his wont, and finding it useless to try to fall asleep again, he made his way out among the sleeping figures on the floor and hall, and finding the fountain in the midst of the court, produced his soap and comb from his pocket, and made his ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... city that one year I received notice of my personal property tax, the amount assessed against me being about ten times higher than it ought to have been. Experience had taught me that it was useless to make any protest against small impositions, but a multiplication of my obligations by tenfold was not to be submitted to without a struggle. I wrote therefore to the proper authority, making protest, and was told that the matter would be investigated. After a lapse of some days, I ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... nearly twelve o'clock; then, deciding that it would be useless to remain there longer, turned his footsteps toward the railroad yards, for he was tired and wanted to get to bed ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... from the widely-known and popular proprietor of the Kingsley House at Ashuelot, N.H.: "It may seem useless to add testimony to the overwhelming mass already given of the many remarkable cures performed at your Institution, but I deem it a pleasure and a duty to add mine to your long list as very remarkable. I had a rupture of twenty-seven years' standing, with hemorrhage ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... confound the unessential parts of his system with those which are of profound importance. His baggage train is bigger than his army, and the student who attacks him is too often led to suspect he has won a position when he has only captured a mob of useless camp-followers. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... calculated to nip me in the bud, I shall feel very much inclined to make the experiment. See what a gulf you may save me from if you shall have previously made it on ANIMA VILI, on some less important sufferer, and shall have found it worse than useless. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the only proper way to do. Why in the world should you wake her up, just to spend the whole night in useless grieving? unfitting her utterly for her journey, and doing yourself more harm than you can undo in a week. No, no; just let her sleep quietly, and you can go to bed and do the same. Wake her up, indeed! ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... as he was bidden, but as for the plate of gold it was useless, for Fontenelle's head was thrown on the pavement to serve as a ball for the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... probably heard from Murad, was owing to the scarlet dye, which I brought to perfection with infinite difficulty. The powder, it is true, was accidentally found by me in our china vases; but there it might have remained to this instant, useless, if I had not taken the pains to make it useful. I grant that we can only partially foresee and command events; yet on the use we make of our own powers, I think, depends our destiny. But, gentlemen, you would rather hear my adventures, perhaps, than my reflections; and I am truly concerned, for ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... year round, should have the Princess and half the kingdom. Well! you may easily know there was many a man who came to try his luck; but all their hacking and hewing, and all their digging and delving were useless. The oak got bigger and stouter at every stroke, and the ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... Finding it useless to struggle further, Wyat threw himself upon the bench, and endeavoured to discover some means of deliverance from his present hazardous position. He glanced round the cell to see whether there was any other outlet than the doorway, but he could ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hurry up, or there will be much music in this bleating fold; and you know I am as utterly useless with a crying child, as a one-armed man ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... privileges as they did formerly. Sometimes they would take their provision grounds away, and sometimes they would go on their grounds and carry away provisions for their own use without paying for them, or as much as asking their leave. They had to bear this, for it was useless to complain—they could get no justice; there was no law in Manchioneal. The special magistrate would only hear the master, and would not allow the apprentices to say any thing for themselves[A]. The magistrate would do just as the busha (master) said. If he say flog him, he flog him; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... less essential to a Book, than an Exordium to a Sermon. As few read the one, as listen to the other; however, if either be wanting, the Performance is defective, and, is not so much as thought worthy to be read in order to be censured. Nevertheless, what can be said with Regard to a useless Discourse? Why, really, I think, it is best to say nothing at all. This little Work places Truth in so just a Light, that no Characters are wanting to point it out. But perhaps, the real Truth may be amplified in it, and there may be Applications made of it ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... towards the only vulnerable point. She may know the whole secret of the art of stabbing her victim, but this means nothing if she does not know where to fasten her egg. The suitable spot may be found, but all the foregoing will be useless if the grub be not versed in the method to be followed in devouring its prey while keeping it alive. It ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... blindness may easily be borne, provided you have the support of good health in other respects. Democritus was so blind he could not distinguish white from black; but he knew the difference between good and evil, just and unjust, honorable and base, the useful and useless, great and small. Thus one may live happily without distinguishing colors; but without acquainting yourself with things, you cannot; and this man was of opinion that the intense application of the mind was taken ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Phaeton's reception by his father. His request to drive the chariot. The Sun's useless arguments to dissuade him from the attempt. Description of the car. Cautions how to perform the journey. Terror of Phaeton, and his inability to rule the horses. Conflagration of the world. Petition of Earth to Jupiter, and death ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... soon began to weary of the little heaps and bundles; they were growing up, and began to dream of some more lucrative business. Marjolin remained very childish for his years, and this irritated Cadine. He had no more brains than a cabbage, she often said. And it was, indeed, quite useless for her to devise any plan for him to make money; he never earned any. He could not even do an errand satisfactorily. The girl, on the other hand, was very shrewd. When but eight years old she ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... had been nearly shipwrecked more than once, but at the time of this story he was on the top of the wave; and as his past was even more entirely a matter of conjecture than his future, it would be useless to inquire into the former or to speculate about the latter. Moreover, in these break-neck days no time counts but the present, so far as reputation goes; good fame itself now resembles righteousness ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... circumstance that Niebuhr's own arrangement and style are obscure, and that his translators have need of translators to make them intelligible to the multitude, rendered it more desirable that a clear and neat statement of the points in controversy should be laid before the public. But it is useless to talk of what cannot be mended. The best editors cannot always have good writers, and the best writers cannot always ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... attacking except by haphazard attempts can be brought under a method of what has been called "glorified trial"—a system of shortening our labours by avoiding or eliminating what our reason tells us is useless. It is, in fact, not easy to say sometimes where the "empirical" begins ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... "got busy," but they were tired with the long drive and everything seemed to go wrong. Their usually skillful fingers fumbled, the tire was "too big or too little or something," to quote Amy, and at the end of a quarter of an hour's useless struggle their tempers were worn to a frazzle and they were ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Thou wilt not get Mabon, for it is not known where he is, unless thou find Eidoel, his kinsman in blood, the son of Aer. For it would be useless to seek for ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... no direct reply. "It's useless hoping," she presently said. "She won't. But he ought to." Her friend's expression of a moment before, which had been apologised for as vulgar, prolonged its sharpness to her ear—that of an electric bell under ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... was none the less because she realized her helplessness to get what she wanted. Her teeth set fast to keep back useless words. Into his stony eyes her angry ones burned. The quick, irregular rise and fall of her bosom against his heart told him how she was struggling with ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... opportunity, he suddenly bade the trumpet give the signal, and burst into the camp of the marauders. On the other hand, the Germans could do nothing but pour forth useless threats and shouts, not being allowed time to collect their scattered arms, or to form in any strength, so vigorously were they pressed by the conquerors. Thus numbers of them fell pierced with javelins and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... hawser move over the side and run towards the shore. When it ceased to run out they knew that Paul must have got hold of the end of it, so, making their end fast to the heel of the bowsprit, they waited, for as yet the rope lay deep in the heaving waters, and quite useless as ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... called on Apollonius, who put up with him because those whom he loved desired it. The doctor felt his pulse, came again and again, prescribed and re-prescribed; Apollonius became ever paler and gloomier. At last the good man declared that here was a malady against which all art was useless. So deep-seated was the trouble that no remedy of his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... power to do so. He needs only stretch out his hand, and kingdoms fall to ruins—nations are at his feet, and cry imploringly: 'Let us be your slaves, and lay your hand on us as our lord and master!' It is useless to resist him. Let ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... ran, choking and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take refuge in a cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in the dismantled drawing-room and thought of Dick in his blindness, useless till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind the sorrow, the shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath of the red-haired girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never feared her companion before. Not until she ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... explanation. I will find modes of amusing him a little every day, and, for the rest, let him doze in the sunshine. His mind is worn so smooth that it fails any longer to catch in ideas as they flit against it. They pass off, glide away. It is useless, Rhea, ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... at the shores of their own island, and all their ideas and affections were confined within its limits. Their mutual tenderness, and that of their mothers, employed all the activity of their souls. Their tears had never been called forth by long application to useless sciences. Their minds had never been wearied by lessons of morality, superfluous to bosoms unconscious of ill. They had never been taught that they must not steal, because every thing with them was in common; or be intemperate, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Addison in the Spectator and from Steele in the Tatler, but everybody knew that Addison's vanity was wounded by the grotesque failure of Rosamond, and that Steele had interests in the playhouse. It was useless at that particular moment to champion the cause of English opera, for England happened to possess not a single composer who was equal to ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... Union-street, Borough, and is not uncommon even now in France, where you may also find the 'Cochon sans Tete,' (the pig without a head,) which is generally a restaurateur's sign, indicating that 'good pork is here—the useless animal's head is off,' illustrative of the Negro's opinion of a pig in England—"de pig," said Mungo, "is de only gentleman in England—man workee, woman workee, horse workee, ass workee, ox workee, and dog workee—pig do nothing but eat and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... striking series of letters, no doubt, and he had replied to them. As to Ferrier's wish that he should communicate certain points in those letters to Barton and Lankester, he had done it, to some extent. But it was a most useless proceeding. The arguments employed had been considered and rejected a hundred times already by every member of the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... {513} Useless to go through the whole roster of the plagues. Suffice it to say that whatever now torments poor mortals, from tooth-ache to cold in the head, and from rheumatism to lunacy, was known to our ancestors in aggravated forms. Deleterious was the use of alcohol, the evils ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... from Cairo, and, harassed by official tergiversation and delay, he would have been driven to give up his task in disgust if not despair. But being what he was—a man of the greatest determination and the highest spirit—he abandoned any useless effort to negotiate with either the English or the Egyptian authorities in the Delta, and he turned to the work in hand with the resolve to govern the Soudan in the name of the Khedive, but as a practical Dictator. It was then that broke from him the characteristic ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... have been almost useless to despatch a new Governor to the Red River settlement unless there had also been obtained a number of settlers to fill the place of those so skillfully led away by Duncan Cameron. Lord Selkirk now secured the best band of Emigrants attainable. ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... way back to the London she hated. Now she was going back again, because she had nowhere else to go. As she sat there with closed eyes, and the tears on her cheeks, she counted up her resources. They were so small, so slender, yet she had been so careful. And now this useless journey had eaten deeply into ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... in him was not the useless lie Of boasting pride or laughing vanity: It was the gainful, the persuading ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... summon before him known culprits, and to return to them the insufficient oblation. Again, the thruppenny bit most powerfully disciplines the soul of man, for it tries the temper as does no other coin, being small, thin, wayward, given to hiding, and very often useless when it is discovered. Learn also, King of Macedon, that the thruppenny bit is of value in ritual phrases, and particularly so in objurgations and the calling down of curses, and in the settlement of evil upon enemies, and in the final expression of contempt. For to compare some worthless thing to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... gather up her hair, coiling the strands about her head carelessly, and I watched the simple operation, all the life gone out of me, unable to decide what to do. It was useless to go back; almost equally useless to go forward. I had no information to take into our lines of any value, and had failed utterly in my efforts to intercept the important despatches for Beauregard. The knowledge of my mistake stung me bitterly, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... young, pretty, and well educated according to my taste—that is to say, she had been brought up at home by a good sensible mother, who never thought of letting her learn to play on the piano, nor to dance, nor any accomplishment useless to one in the rank she appeared destined to fill. Her father was the owner and master of a small trader running between London and Ramsgate. After I married I made two more trips to the Cape, and on my return from the second I found my father-in-law on the point of death. He made me promise to remain ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... habit of saying to every new fact, 'What is its use?' Dr. Franklin says to such, 'What is the use of an infant?' The answer of the experimentalist is, 'Endeavour to make it useful.' When Scheele discovered this substance, it appeared to have no use; it was in its infancy and useless state, but having grown up to maturity, witness its powers, and see what endeavours to make it ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... Miss Carr. It is not like you, and—it is useless. You know what I meant a moment ago. I read it in your reply. You meant that I, like others, had deceived ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... that had taken his place, or she was held by some farcical nightmare from which she should awake presently with a start. The half-used glasses on the little table beside her; the candle burned down in the socket, and overlooked; the tightly corked phials of useless drugs; the strong odour of mustard from the saucer in which a plaster had been mixed—these things struck upon her faltering consciousness with a shock of horrible reality. The odour of the mustard was more real than the breathing of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Chisia Hill, and remained for the night at a blacksmith's, or rather founder's village; the two occupations of founder and smith are always united, and boys taught to be smiths in Europe or India would find themselves useless if unable to smelt the ore. A good portion of the trees of the country have been cut down for charcoal, and those which now spring up are small; certain fruit trees alone are left. The long slopes on the undulating country, clothed with fresh foliage, look very beautiful. The young ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... an end to Mademoiselle de Cernay's resistance. She felt how useless was further argument, and falling on a sofa, crushed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... long-continued and trying for which life affords any opportunity. He abandoned his studies. He paid attention to no other interest. He passed years in silent and lonesome endeavors that seemed to all others useless. He subjected himself to the reproaches of all his friends, lost the confidence of business men, gained the reputation of being a monomaniac, and was finally given over to the following of devices deemed the most useless and unpromising ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... eyes had been partly opened. Thrown among men who pretended nothing, in a land where pretense is generally useless, he was learning to depreciate much that he had admired. Called upon to make the true adventure he had blindly sought for, he found that little counted except the elemental qualities of courage and steadfastness. Dear life was the stake in this game, and the prizes were greater ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... appointments left much to be desired. The navy which was to contest the supremacy of the seas with the victor at Trafalgar consisted of twelve sea-going vessels and some two hundred gunboats, which were useless except for coast defense. There was bitter truth in the manifesto issued by the Federalist members of Congress when it said: "Our enemy is the greatest maritime power that has ever been on earth, and to her ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes ascertained that England has acquired something more than a permanent array and a suspended Habeas Corpus; it is enough for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in the south "verily ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... she realized that it was useless to attempt to alter what he had come to believe in absolutely. Beyond the windows the first pale streaks of a spring dawn were visible, but the earth still clothed itself in silence. The moments were racing on to the final act of the ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... feel more and more, as one reads many books, that judicial decisions are laughable and useless in this rare atmosphere, and that the mere utterance of such platitudinous decrees sets the pronouncer of them outside ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Estelle! Nothing in Blodgett and Blatherwick's notes about Estelle. "A whole directory of names," as Judge Blodgett had said, but no Estelle. The world full of useless people—a billion and a half of them—and not an Estelle at poor Amidon's call in this time of need. Hence this ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... the ears of that numerous class who are dependent on the world around them for their happiness—who never originated any good, and are becoming more and more useless everyday! Would that I could make them believe that true happiness is not to be found externally, unless it first exist in their own bosoms! Would that I could convince them that the royal road to happiness—if there be one—is that which has ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... stereotypical notions about what constitutes an attractive person; usually it involves having some meat on ones bones. Hollywood and Hugh Hefner have both influenced the masses to think that women should have hourglass figures with large, upthrust, firm breasts. Since breasts are almost all useless fatty tissue supporting some milk-producing glands that do not give a breast much volume except when engorged, most women fasters loose a good percentage of their breast mass. If the fast is extensive, there should also develop an impressive showing of ribs and hip bones; these ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... for nothing, like a useless cigarette end," I went on musing. "My parents died when I was a little child; I was expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble family, but I have received neither education nor breeding, and I have no more knowledge than the humblest mechanic. I have no refuge, no ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... hasten to the city. To mention my purpose to the Hadwins would be useless or pernicious. It would only augment the sum of their present anxieties. I should meet with a thousand obstacles in the tenderness and terror of Eliza, and in the prudent affection of her father. Their arguments I should be condemned to hear, but should not be able to confute; and should ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... than wickedness. At anyrate, he was humble-minded, for he wrote a touching letter to me when I lost a very dear relation lately, wondering why such a valuable life should have been taken and such a 'useless log' as ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... companions fired at once. One of the rifles gave a sharp jerk and disappeared, the other was fired, and Withers dropped his axe, but still ran forward. The sheriff began an onslaught at the door, his companion's right arm being useless. A minute later the sharp crack of rifles was heard in the rear, and the sheriff and two men rushed in that direction, while Vincent and the other lay watching the door. Scarcely had the sheriff's party disappeared round the house than the door was thrown open, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and Maisie knew Dennis would be sure to choose the one which led across the rick-yard of the Manor Farm; indeed, she liked this best herself except for one reason, and that was the risk of meeting the turkey-cock. It was useless for Dennis to say, "He won't gobble if you're not frightened of him." She always was frightened, and he always did gobble, and turned purple with rage, and swelled out all his feathers, and shook a loose scarlet thing which hung down from his ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... dying cadence of the last two lines, recalls even more strongly some of the finest sonnets of Keats. "Had Statius written often thus," in the words Johnson uses of Gray, "it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him." ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... immaterial, but, together, speak volumes and make you quite an impossible quantity in the scheme of domesticity. For instance, the other day, when you had someone's gun in your hands, you deliberately fired at an overflying woodpecker to test your skill. The dead bird was useless. That showed the instinct of a wanton destroyer, and a wanton destroyer, my friend, is not just the safest ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... feeble and useless, was left. According to some accounts it was reversed, in order to cause a collision with the on-coming train, but according to others, the steam was exhausted, and the engine just stopped for want of power. However this may have been, the hunters of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
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