"Valueless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders; when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the sense of melody; motives and actions are tested by conscience; we approach the stars with a telescope, while purity of heart is the glass by which we see God. The scales that are useful in the laboratory are utterly valueless in the art gallery. The scientific faculty that fits Spencer for studying nature unfits him for studying art. In his old age Huxley, the scientist, wrote an essay forty pages long to prove that man was more beautiful than woman. Imagine some Tyndall approaching the transfiguration of Raphael ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... it, but without success; he adds that he relinquished his own rights to Hawthorne, who had sold the tales to him so far as they had appeared in "The Token," and that he also joined in the bond given by Bridge; but in these remarks he seems to be taking credit to himself, for the tales were valueless to him and his property in them was of a sort not often claimed by an editor, while Bridge took the real risk. This transaction was unknown to Hawthorne at the time, and Bridge felt obliged to warn him not to be too grateful to Goodrich. A glance at the other letters of this month shows ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... our first experience of the present currency,—the valueless circulating medium of Cuba. When one has occasion to visit the island it is best to take American funds, either in bank-bills or gold, sufficient to meet all ordinary expenses. Our bank-bills and our gold are both at ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... teaching you see no more the empty letters, the valueless husks or shells, of the Law, which unceasingly enjoins, "This thou shalt do and observe," and ever in vain. You see instead the true kernel and power which confers Christ and the fullness of His ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... and yet he had an intolerance of hypocrisy and cant that was almost violent. He was steadfast of purpose and there is nothing that shows this better than his lifelong work in plant breeding and the ruthless manner in which he rooted out his inferior seedlings as soon as he felt them to be valueless. His likes and dislikes were strong. Above all, he was modest and retiring in the extreme. He not only avoided, but shunned publicity. He avoided the outdoor meetings of the American Rose Society in the National Rose Test Garden as much from the fear of publicity ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... The British aerial raids upon Cuxhaven and other places would have been impossible, and probably valueless as an effective move, but for the fact that it was possible to release the machines from a certain point upon the open sea, within easy reach of the cooperating naval squadron. True, the latter was exposed to hostile attack from submarines, but as results proved this was easy to repel. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... sumptuous indifference. His gluttony appropriated to itself the best provisions the colony could afford—"oatmeal, sacke, oyle, aqua vitae, beefe, egges, or whatnot"—and, in this intemperate feasting, it seemed as though his valueless life were only spared that he might endure the disgrace he so richly merited. Seeing the forlorn condition of the settlement he attempted to seize the pinnace, which had been left for their use by Newport, and make his escape to England. These outrages so wrought upon the council that they instantly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the landlady, reported the disappearance of her two roomers on August first, a week after she last saw them. First, however, to the disgust of the police, she cleaned their apartment, giving to the trash man all valueless and inconsequential articles, including a box of old sea shells which she found in the closet. It was a curious fact that neither Sutter nor Travail possessed relatives or friends to make inquiry as to their whereabouts and thus without ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... before practising or studying your new piece of music, to play this piece, even if it is done quite mechanically, two or three times, first slowly, then faster; for without ready, flexible fingers, my teaching and preaching will be valueless. ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... the police power, the Dartmouth College case notwithstanding. For instance, the State of Massachusetts in 1827 granted a perpetual franchise to a corporation to make beer. It was allowed, forty years later, to pass a law that no corporation should make beer, and the brewery became valueless. The State of Minnesota granted a perpetual franchise to a railroad to fix its own fares. Twenty years later it took away that right, thereby, as claimed, making the railroad property valueless; the railroad had ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... as played in our boyhood, was a simple, robust, straightforward contest, where the hardest hitter was the best man; but it is every year becoming perfected into a sleight-of-hand, like cricket; mere strength is now almost valueless in playing it, and it calls rather for the qualities of the billiard-player. In the last champion-match at Worcester, nearly the whole time was consumed in skilful feints and parryings, and it took five days to make fifty runs. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... us. We encounter it also in the Kiche Popol Vuh and the Cakchiquel Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan. These members of the Maya family also grafted that myth upon their own traditions. As history, it is valueless; but as indicative of a long and early intercourse between the Maya and Nahuatl speaking tribes, it is of great interest. As this question will also recur in reference to various later passages in the Maya chronicles, I will discuss ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... kindred tribes, no robes whatever are furnished for trade. During only four months of the year, (from November until March,) the skins are good for dressing; those obtained in the remaining eight months are valueless to traders; and the hides of bulls are never taken off or dressed as robes at any season. Probably not more than one-third of the skins are taken from the animals killed, even when they are in good season, the labor of preparing and dressing the robes being very great; ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... conjecture), and not only takes the very dubious "letters" published by herself for gospel, but attributes to her, on the slightest evidence, if any, the anonymous Memoires sur la Vie de Henriette Sylvie de Moliere, and, what is more, accepts them as autobiographic; quotes a good deal of her very valueless verse and that of others, and relates the whole in a most marvellous style, the smallest and most modest effervescences of which are things like this: "La religion arrose son ame d'une eau parfumee, et les fleurs noirs du repentir eclosent" or "Soixante ans pesaient sur son crane ennuage d'une ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... witness in the course of the short ramble will "change the spirit of his dream." In Darlaston, as a sample of what he would see, there are hundreds of men and women whose clothes, made of the coarsest materials, are patched, and threadbare, and valueless; hundreds of houses without anything in them deserving the name of furniture; hundreds of beds without clothing, and hundreds of children whose excuses for clothes are barely sufficient, with every contrivance decent poverty can suggest, to cover the body ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... joke! Oh, I dare say, ship for ship and gun for gun, we are more powerful than any other nation. But if hostilities broke out, our Fleet would be valueless. We should want every vessel to guard our island shores, and our commerce and colonies would have to shift ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... rampantly facetious at her expense. But the damsel with the unkempt auburn locks flowing about her comely face, lit up by a pair of blue Irish eyes under their dark lashes, takes the cad's vulgarity together with his money, like the pill with the jam, giving in return the valueless pieces of carved wood, until her little stock is exhausted and a good ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Valueless as explaining this tragedy, being founded upon insufficient evidence, they may be interesting as showing the workings of my mind even at this early stage of the matter. They were drawn up under ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... she tagged my forest work as being valueless. Had I been the boy who rode through the May sunshine frantically to announce his poverty, I might have accepted her verdict as a just sentence. Now there was a calculating light in her dark blue eyes that put me on my mettle. She was throwing ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... always insisting on the shortness of human life. But it does not insist on the shortness of human life as the pessimists insist on it. Pessimism insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is valueless. Religion insists on the shortness of human life in order to show that life is frightfully valuable—is almost horribly valuable. Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives nobody a chance; religion says that ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... consider the matter, conscious only of the fact that each time he had opened his lips to mention it, he had felt a marked but purposeless disinclination to do so. He consoled himself now with the reflection that the information would be more or less valueless until the afternoon, and he forthwith proceeded upon the investigation which he ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... determined by their fundamental law. If the inhabitants of any territory should refuse to enact such laws and police regulations as would give security to their property or to his, it would be rendered more or less valueless, in proportion to the difficulty of holding it without such protection. In the case of property in the labor of man, or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... age. To a superficial glance it may appear that since this has become a matter of such indifference to the steamer, no analogies to it are to be found in present conditions, and the lessons of history in this respect are valueless. A more careful consideration of the distinguishing characteristics of the lee and the weather "gage,"[3] directed to their essential features and disregarding secondary details, will show that this is ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... cent of the people have their eyes on the goal of integrity, our investments are secure; but with fifty-one per cent of them headed in the wrong direction, our investments are valueless. The first fundamental of prosperity ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... possession of Geoffrey she might prefer to do so, but failing him, judging from her own low and vulgar standard, Elizabeth was convinced that she would take Owen. It did not seem possible that what was so precious in her own eyes might be valueless and even hateful to those of her sister. As for that little midnight incident, well, it was one thing and marriage was another. People forget such events when they marry; sometimes even they marry in ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... ten it is unfavourable. One has no objection to their praise, nor to any amount of it; what is so abhorrent is their advice, and still more their disapproval. It is like throwing 'half a brick' at you, which, utterly valueless in itself, still hurts you when it hits you. And the worst of it is that, apart from their rubbishy opinions, one likes these people; they are one's friends and relatives, and to cut one's moorings from them altogether would be to sail over the sea of life ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... usual, and stood watching the course of the sun. This was a labour of patience, as the difference of altitude was now very slight. The result at which we finally arrived was of great interest, as it clearly shows how unreliable and valueless a single observation like this is in these regions. At 12.30 a.m. we put our instruments away, well satisfied with our work, and quite convinced that it was the midnight altitude that we had observed. The calculations which were carried out immediately afterwards gave us 89deg. 56' S. We ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... that all investigations with the laryngoscope are valueless on account of the supposed necessity of holding the tip of the protruding tongue. He says, in a letter to the "Orchestra" (January, 1880): "One of our most promising singers told me he could not rightly produce his voice when under laryngoscopic investigation. It is a moral impossibility ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Bailiff, who orders her to remain quiet, and, finally, turns round and speaks to the crowd. The Judge, absorbed in the attempt to master the account-book, does not for the moment notice this, till, as he comes to the conclusion that the book is utterly valueless, he looks up and finds the Defendant with her back turned gesticulating and describing her wrongs to the audience. Even his command of silence is with reluctance obeyed, and she continues to mutter ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... influence was brought to bear on the Governor, and the appointment was given to another. But time has shown. Discredited and beaten though he seemed to be, my husband was right. The Gordon lands proved valueless. Those in which Professor Hollister invested his savings were ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... religion would be necessary in the case of his accession. But Shaftesbury saw, and it is his especial merit that he did see, that with a king like James, convinced of his Divine Right and bigoted in his religious fervour, securities were valueless. From the first he determined to force on Charles his brother's exclusion from the throne, and his resolve was justified by the Revolution, which finally did the work he proposed to do. Unhappily he was equally ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... I find, too, something of pathos in these embryons of unborn dreams which, for one cause or another, were obliterated and have been utterly forgotten by their creator, very much as in this book vexed Miramon Lluagor twists off the head of a not quite satisfactory, whimpering design, and drops the valueless fragments into his waste-basket.... But I do know that the entire book developed, howsoever helterskelter, and after fumbling in no matter how many blind alleys, from that first memorandum about the troubling window of Ageus. All leads toward—and ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... institutions and societies are all valueless. You can't reach your fellowman that way. They build up buildings and pay salaries—but there's a better way." (I was thinking of St. Francis and his original dream, before they threw him out and established monasteries and a costume ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... you up there! O pennant! where you undulate like a snake, hissing so curious, Out of reach—an idea only—yet furiously fought for, risking bloody death—loved by me! So loved! O you banner, leading the day, with stars brought from the night! Valueless, object of eyes, over all and demanding all—O banner and pennant! I too leave the rest—great as it is, it is nothing—houses, machines are nothing—I see them not; I see but you, O warlike pennant! O banner so broad, with stripes, I sing ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... he replied. "I am trying to supply the real note. It is badly wanted. There are all kinds of stuff being written, but all indifferent and valueless. If it has a swing, it's merely vulgar, and what isn't vulgar is academic, commonplace. There's a crying need for the high level poetry that shall interpret with dignity and nobility the ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... abstract, infinite and eternal, as the far-away creator of the universe, or even as the ruler of the world, which Paul worships, but it is God revealed in Jesus Christ, the Father of Jesus Christ, the grace and mercy in Jesus Christ which deliver from evil. Metaphysics and speculative theories were valueless for Paul; he was conscious of a mighty power transforming his own life and filling him with joy, and that this power was identical with Jesus of Nazareth he knew. In all this Paul is the representative of that which is highest and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the group, that blood has united—on which family love has shed its genial influence—and of which, each member, albeit bowed down by sympathetic grief, attempts to lift his drooping head, and to others open some source of comfort, which to the kind speaker, is inefficient and valueless indeed! ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... "is, no doubt, salutary. The Italians say: 'Le avversita sono per l'animo cio ch' e un temporale per l'aria.' Suffering teaches us to prize health and happiness; were there no such things as pain and grief, we should be apt to regard these blessings as valueless, and to estimate them as our legitimate rights. For my own part, I was never so happy in my whole life as when I embraced you the other day, after escaping out of the clutches of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... others, these hasten to the red-woollen lure, which my straw insidiously keeps moving; they come from their tent among the leaves as readily as from the centre of the web; they explore it with their palpi and their legs; but, soon perceiving that the thing is valueless, they are careful not to spend their silk on useless bonds. My quivering bait does not deceive them. It is flung ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... correctness, without which the scheme would be utterly valueless, I would propose that a certain number of competent transcribers be appointed for each county, either at a given salary, or at a remuneration of so much per entry, to copy the registers of those parishes ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various
... made of nectar and poison"; "Women have long hair and short wits" and so forth. Nor are the Hindus behindhand. Woman has fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings of lightning (Katha s.s. i. 147); she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind (169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in fear (170) and, like the fly, she quits camphor to settle on compost (ii. I7). "What dependence is there in the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Temple, into the shopping district. The clangor, the smoke and dust, the hurrying crowds, all worked into his mood. The expectation of adventure was far from him. Nor was he a man who sought impressions for amusement; whatever came to him he weighed, and accepted or rejected according as it was valueless or useful. Wholesome he was; anyone might infer that from his face. Doubtless, his fault lay in his overemphasis on the purely practical; but that, after all, was a lawyer's fault, and it was counterbalanced by a sweet kindliness toward all the world—a loveableness ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... future—with whom, and about what you deal. We're told, that 'Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul.' Avoid taverns and bad company, and you may yet do well. You promise to become a first-rate workman. But you want one quality, without which all others are valueless. You want industry—you want steadiness. Idleness is the key of beggary, Jack. If you don't conquer this disgraceful propensity in time, you'll soon come to want; and then nothing can save you. Be warned by your father's fate. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... essential qualification, that of being misunderstood by his admirers. Mr. Baildon has many interesting things to tell us about Stevenson himself, whom he knew at college. Nor are his criticisms by any means valueless. That upon the plays, especially "Beau Austin," is remarkably thoughtful and true. But it is a very singular fact, and goes far, as we say, to prove that Stevenson had that unfathomable quality which belongs to the great, that this admiring student of Stevenson ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... would. Thinking, and hesitating, she looked as far as the autumnal haze on the marshy ground would allow her to see distinctly. There was the fragment of a hedge—all that remained of a 'wet old garden'—standing in the middle of the mead, without a definite beginning or ending, purposeless and valueless. It was overgrown, and choked with mandrakes, and she could almost fancy she heard their shrieks.... Should she withdraw her hand? No, she could not withdraw it now; it was too late, the act would not imply refusal. She felt as one in a ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... earnestness and noble love of truth to that which appears to them true science, deem occult science mere idle dreaming and fantasy, in the same category with what is called superstition. To some, occult science is like a light without which life would be valueless; to others, it represents a spiritual danger, calculated to lead astray immature minds and weak souls, while between these two extremes is to be found every possible intermediate ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... see him again! . . . he whose words were so sweet, whose manners were so graceful, that lovely head that had so often rested on my knees, will now be bruised . . . What! Can I not throw to my husband an empty and valueless head in place of the one full of charms and worth . . . a rank head for a sweet-smelling one; a hated head ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... opposed to closed hearts or grudging bestowals; and, second, that willingness embodied in the largest gift possible. The absence of either vitiates all. The presence of both gives trifles a place in God's storehouse of precious things. A father is glad when his child brings him some utterly valueless present, not because he must, but because he loves; and many a parent has such laid away in sacred repositories. God knows how to take gifts from His children, not less well than we who are evil know ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the fourth estate, that of the toilers,* still suffers and continues to demand its share of fortune. The working classes have been proclaimed free; political equality has been granted them, but the gift has been valueless, for economically they are still bound to servitude, and only enjoy, as they did formerly, the liberty of dying of hunger. All the socialist revendications have come from that; between labour and capital rests the terrifying problem, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... bullets, lay among the rocks. Wanton slaughter it was, without even the excuse of the necessity of meat, since only a yearling's hind quarters were gone. Not even the plea of killing for trophies could be offered, since the heads of the ewes were valueless. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... murderers were not regarded as heroes; or if they were hung, canonised them as martyrs. They attempted to prostitute the law to their own base standard of political morality. They assiduously laboured to render life valueless in Ireland and property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively taught the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Governor of Tennessee, and said: "Governor, I have been implored by a poor miserable wretch in the penitentiary to bring you this rude fiddle. It was made by his own hands with a penknife during the hours allotted to him for rest. It is absolutely valueless, it is true, but it is his petition to you for mercy. He begged me to say that he has neither attorneys nor influential friends to plead for him; that he is poor, and all he asks is, that when the Governor shall ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... happiness on earth like that of deciding for God. And so they go on day after day, not deciding either way, but just frittering their lives away bit by bit, until the last day comes, and the last bit of life, and then it is too late to decide. Would you like such a poor, mean, valueless thing as this to be the one life which is all you have? Would you not rather have a bright, rich, full life, with God Himself for your best friend on earth, and then a triumphal entry into the Golden City, and the singer's harp, and the victor's palm, and the prince's crown, and ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... the real estate holdings of Clayton & Worthington to his partner before the old trouble came on. Only this, a then valueless, tract was forgotten. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... sustains the interest of the veriest trifles Dear, dirty Dublin—Io te salute Delectable modes of getting over the ground through life Devilish hot work, this, said the colonel Disputing "one brandy too much" in his bill Empty, valueless, heartless flirtation Ending—I never yet met the man who could tell when it ended Enjoy the name without the gain Enough is as good as a feast Escaped shot and shell to fall less gloriously beneath champagne Every misfortune has an end at ...
— Quotes and Images From The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer • Charles James Lever
... aware that the flames would obliterate a portion, if not all of the evidence against him, had rifled the safe in which, John testified, his cousin always kept considerable money. Scattering broadcast valueless papers, he had safely made his escape through the window, leaving his victim's face to the licking flames. Foot-prints below the window at the base of the fire-escape indicated that the fugitive had returned that way. This was the sum ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... carries its explanatory programme in its words. Still more tolerable and even righteous is it in the opera where it is but one of several factors which labor together to make up the sum of dramatic representation. But it must ever remain valueless unless it be idealized. Mendelssohn, desiring to put Bully Bottom into the overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream," did not hesitate to use tones which suggest the bray of a donkey, yet the effect, like Handel's frogs and flies in "Israel," is one of absolute musical value. The canon which ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... man had said: "It looked like a silver wire laid down along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break." He had paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of knowledge, and I had traveled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk, on twenty-five shillings a week, he who had never been out of sight of a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... which is true, we may think, in a further sense than he meant, and that it was the "paradoxical" that he actually preferred. Happy, at all events, he still remained—undisturbed and happy—in a hundred native prepossessions, some certainly valueless, some of them perhaps invaluable. And while one feels that no real logic of fallacies has been achieved by him, one feels still more how little the construction of that branch of logical inquiry really helps men's minds; fallacy, like truth itself, being a matter so dependent on innate ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Ratignolle's opinion in such a matter would be next to valueless, that she herself had not alone decided, but determined; but she sought the words of praise and encouragement that would help her to put heart ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... at Alice. "Oh, well, if it comes down to 'big serious eyes,' then all criticism is valueless. Aren't men curious? Character is nothing, intellect is nothing—it's all a question of whether we're good-lookin' or not. Sometimes I'm discouraged. An artist husband is ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... experience, but to get experience one must suffer and make others suffer; consequently, love-advice is undesirable from both experienced and inexperienced. In the first instance it makes the adviser inconsistent, and in the second case it is valueless. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... well to remember that we did not originate the Christian Religion, but inherited it; and that the practices of devotion that have been found helpful by generations of saints, and after full trial have retained the approval of the greater part of Christendom, can hardly be treated as valueless, much less as superstitious. The fact that saints have found them valuable and one has not, may possibly not be a ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... however, that he would not permit the expatriation of her children, and that before her own departure she must deliver into his hands the written promise of marriage, which, although according to the decision of all the high ecclesiastics of the kingdom totally void and valueless, she had nevertheless been so ill-advised as to render a source of uneasiness ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... methods, they knew that blows struck across the immense roadless spaces were so diminished in strength, by the time they reached the spot aimed at, that they became a mere mockery of force; and, just because they were so valueless, paved the way to effective compromises. Being adepts in the art which modern surgeons have adopted, of leaving wounds as far as possible to heal themselves, they trusted to time and to nature to solve political differences which western countries boldly ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... gave me a hard chase up and down three mountain ridges. Finally, we located the animals in a deep valley, and I had an opportunity to examine them through my glasses. Much to my disgust I saw that the velvet was not yet off the antlers and that their winter coats were only partly shed. They were valueless as specimens and forthwith I abandoned the hunt. Before leaving Peking I had visited the zoological garden to make sure that the captive sika had assumed their summer dress and antlers. But at the Tung ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... you on the same subject," said Frederic, hesitatingly, "I have already told you that it is my fixed determination to leave the army, and retire to peaceful life on my own estate. But although my fortune is princely, I feel it would be valueless without your lovely daughter. Signior Morelli, I love Bianca; I have made no attempt to conceal it from you; were my intentions dishonorable, do you not think that I would endeavor to hide them from a father's eye? Do you take me for the bold, hardened libertine that would trample under foot a father's ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... wears down. On Kygpton there was a variety of useful metals, others that were valueless. There was comparatively little of the first, much of the second. Kygpton itself was a world as large as your entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles. Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... something in the climate favourable and necessary to the perfection of the hound. Packs of them have been sent to other countries, neighbouring and remote; but they have usually become more or less valueless. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... that there is power enough in a single acre of grass to drive all the mills and steam-cars in the world, could we but concentrate it upon the piston-rod of a steam-engine. But it is at rest, and so, in the light of science, it is comparatively valueless. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... fraud or injustice to either side: a magistrate would refuse to hear a case either for or against one of these unlicensed shops. They carry on their trade in daily fear of the rowdies who infest every Chinese town, granting loans to these ruffians on valueless articles, which in many cases are returned without payment either of interest or principal, thereby securing themselves from the disturbances which "bare poles" who have nothing to lose are ever ready to create at a ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... garden, on the road or the hillside, or tete-a-tete and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in married life. Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes are valueless; they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of woman prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in the intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out and shared, the two persons ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the Red Plum, of the same size and form, and equally symmetrical; distinguished only by the color of its skin, which is a fine, clear, transparent yellow. It is used principally for preserving; its small size rendering it comparatively valueless for use ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Ambrosius de Bolate. He who lets time pass and does not grow in virtue, the more I think of it the more I grieve. No man has it in him to be virtuous who will give up honour for gain. Good fortune is valueless to him who knows not toil. The man becomes happy who follows Christ. There is no perfect gift without great suffering. Our glories and our triumphs pass away. Foul lust, and dreams, and luxury, and sloth have banished every virtue from the world; so that our Nature, wandering and perplexed, has almost ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... price; the German host would have spread over the countryside like a swarm of locusts. Perhaps it would pay for what it ate, but it would eat at all events, regardless of that, and the money it might leave in the place of the food it took would be valueless, since money can buy nothing when there ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... propagandists of Zen-shu doctrine. It has been well said that the torch of religion burns brightest among dark surroundings. In circumstances of tumultuous disorder and sanguinary ambition, these great divines preached a creed which taught that all worldly things are vain and valueless. Moreover, the priests themselves did not practise the virtues they inculcated. They openly disregarded their vow of chastity; bequeathed their temples and manors to their children; employed hosts of stoled soldiers; engaged freely in the fights of the era, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... with the merchant and whom they judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... you had no judgment or mind of your own; but the time has gone by to treat you thus, you are old enough to assume the prerogatives of a man. The day has come when you must show that you are a man in action as well as word. A promise wrung from one is valueless; tear asunder this invisible chain by which you are ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... of evil reputation, a society of workmen in Chicago, With the object of obtaining from Congress an embargo on the export of arms—an undertaking which according to the aforementioned report cost a great deal and proved entirely valueless from the point of view of the German Government. It is not known whether this undertaking brought Rintelen and his assistants within the reach of the Sherman Act against conspiracies inciting industrial ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... below, the inheritance of the Three Brothers was a desert. What had once been the richest soil in the kingdom became a shifting heap of red sand; and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the adverse skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, to seek some means of gaining a livelihood among the cities and people of the plains. All their money was gone, and they had nothing left but some curious, old- fashioned pieces of gold plate, the last remnants of their ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... treasures. Here he kept a spare hunting-bow and a full stock of arrows, together with his fishing lines and nets and a miscellaneous assortment of traps and tools. Here, too, was the secret depository of his cherished spying-glasses and of another equally marvellous but unfortunately valueless piece of mechanism—a revolver of large caliber. This latter had belonged to his grandfather (for whom he had been named), and upon his death Constans had claimed and taken possession of it. The weapon was in perfect order, for its former ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... was not very communicative during that dainty little tea a trois, but she listened smilingly to Jack's optimistic views and Millicent's somewhat valueless comments. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Hassan, at the mercy of his savage nature and passionate changeable moods? What reason to suppose that the love that had flamed up so suddenly at the thought that he had lost her would survive the knowledge of repossession? To him, all his life, a thing desired had upon possession become valueless. With the fulfilment of acquisition had come always disinterest. The pleasure of pursuit faded with ownership. Would this hapless girl who had poured out such a wealth of love at the feet of the man who had treated her brutally fare any better at his hands? Her chance was slight, if any. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... not care to know), the care and preciseness with which such comparisons require to be made, (and are made), in order to be of any value whatever, they would spare their tongues. In comparing the deaths of one hospital with those of another, any statistics are justly considered absolutely valueless which do not give the ages, the sexes, and the diseases of all the cases. It does not seem necessary to mention this. It does not seem necessary to say that there can be no comparison between old men with dropsies ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... ordinary cultivators, and the demand for Sharpless become less sharp through its sensitiveness to the influence of Jack Frost; and hosts of other sorts, really good and valuable somewhere, and under peculiarly favorable conditions to be comparatively valueless for general cultivation. Therefore every person designing to plant should repeat to himself this injunction—"Go slow ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... metre and rhyme, with various expressions, like "bless" and "caress," which of course are utterly beyond an Australian's mental horizon. This absurd procedure, which has made so many documents of travellers valueless for scientific purposes, is like filling an ethnological museum with pictures of Australians, Africans, etc., all clothed in swallow-tail coats and silk hats. Cf. Grosse (B.A., 236), and Semon (224). Real Australian "poems" are ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of false cherubs, etc. Explain the meaning of this sentence. If true money were valueless, would ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... tests specified in the Allen citation to determine the character of ink constituents, if made alone are practically valueless, because the same behavior occurs with different materials employed in the admixture of ink. To avoid error in judgment the operator should verify if possible by confirmatory tests. Thus, in the one for logwood, sulphurous acid will cause a logwood ink mark to turn yellow; mercuric ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... methods of mining, from 10 to 75% of any given deposit of coal is left underground as props and supports, or as low-grade material, or in overlying beds broken up through mining the lower bed first. An average of 50% of the coal is thus wasted or rendered valueless, as it cannot be removed subsequently because of the caving or falling in of the roofs of abandoned galleries and the breaking up of the adjoining overlying beds, including coal, floor, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... that will make them more manly, more self reliant, more generous, more noble and sweeter in disposition. Such a story I have aimed to make THE BOY BROKER. The moral or lesson it contains could be put into a very short lecture, but as a lecture I am confident that it would prove valueless. Boys are benefited little by advice. They seldom listen to it and less frequently make any practical application of it. Imitative by nature, they are easily influenced by those with whom they associate, and no associate, ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... presents her compliments to Count Pateroff, and begs to return the enclosed manuscript, which is, to her, perfectly valueless. Lady Ongar must still decline, and now more strongly than before, to ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... form proceed from several causes. Phrenology and physiognomy are sciences, though the studies hitherto known by these names are almost valueless because they have not been carried on with the necessary scientific precision. Doubtless Gall and Lavater possessed the gift of penetrating both mind and heart, as was also the case with Mlle. Lenormand Desbarolles and the genuine graphologists; ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... ain't any sufficient excuse for it!—why, my old boy, when they used to tell me I would shorten my life ten years by smoking, they little knew the devotee they were wasting their puerile words upon; they little knew how trivial and valueless I would regard a decade that had no smoking in it! But I won't persuade you, Twichell—I won't until I see you again—but then we'll smoke for a week together, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... ask him this question: Why must we go out? any more than the others: Why is it proper that I should go to mass to be seen? Why should I wear gowns that ruin us? Why do you accept decorations that are valueless in your eyes? Why do you seek the society of men who have no merit but what they derive from their official position or from their fortune? Why do we take upon ourselves social duties that weary both of us, instead of remaining together in a tender and intelligent intimacy ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... sacrosanctity. It is well, no doubt, that all such versions should be collected by someone (as in this case by Professor Child) who has the means, the time, and the patience. But for the purposes of reading, for the purposes of poetic enjoyment, such a collection is nearly valueless. We must have it for reference, of course; nobody grudges the guineas he has spent for the best part of the last twenty years on Professor Child's stately, if rather cumbrous, volumes. But who can read a dozen versions, say, of 'The Queen's Marie' with any ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... soil; how he had made the survey secretly, because Greenfield would have refused to close the deal if he had known that Worth wanted it after he had it investigated, and because if Greenfield believed the district stock to be valueless he would sell at a very low figure rather than not sell at all; and how it was that same low figure that enabled him to give the men who were working on the canal a chance to acquire ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... principles, and want of principles, of which we get glimpses in our travels abroad; at any rate, they reveal another and not impossible world, and it is fine to have Newman discover that the opinions and criticisms of our world are so absolutely valueless in that sphere that his knowledge of the infamous crime of the mother and brother of his betrothed will have no effect whatever upon them in their own circle if he explodes it there. This seems like aristocracy indeed! and one admires, almost respects, its survival in our day. But I always ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... successful, placed the guilt without question or cavil upon Klanner, but that was not all—strong as that motive might be, Clarke had had still another in view, and one that perhaps took precedence over the first. Hunchback Joe had defined it clearly enough. The documents would have been valueless to Clarke, either to sell, or to put to any use himself, if the plans and arrangements they contained were subsequently altered or changed. But it was obvious that a man in Klanner's station could have no personal interest in them; it was obvious, as evidenced by the money, that he ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... delay, even if it could not secure ultimate victory. No words could say more clearly than do his actions that, under the existing conditions, the navy was useless, except as it contributed to that end; valueless, if buried in port. Upon this rests the merit of his bold advance into the lower narrows; upon this his choice of the strong defensive position of Valcour; upon this his refusal to retreat, as urged by Waterbury, when the full force of the enemy was disclosed,—a decision ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... did was in itself of no consequence. It is as sure as north is north and south is south that you and America would never quarrel for the sake of Japan. That is another reason, if another reason is needed, why a treaty between us would be valueless. You and I—the whole world knows that before a cycle of years have passed Japan and America must fight. When that time comes, it will not be you ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... misfortune hardest. This had been a black season for him, indeed. Beginning with O'Neil's rivalry, everything had gone against him. He had dropped his coal interests at Kyak in favor of the copper- mine, because they failed to yield quick profits. Then he had learned that the mine was valueless, and realized that it could not serve him much longer as a means of raising funds. Still, he had trusted that by taking a vigorous part in the railroad struggle he would be able either to recoup his fortunes or ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... pounds avoirdupois; and in this estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold watches; three of the number being worth each five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as time-keepers valueless, the works having suffered more or less from corrosion; but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars; and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... books that you consider valueless? There are thousands of boys and girls all over the country who cannot pay the price of new books and can use those you ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 41, August 19, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... years a new system of farming has been developed in the West, which is of great interest to all of us, both because it is opening up for production a large part of our country that has seemed valueless, and because the lessons that have been learned there are of the greatest advantage in every ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... life. Why,—even Rodney himself, about whom everything else swung in an orbit! What price had she paid for him, or for any of the rest of it? It was all as free as the air she breathed. It had come to her without having cost even a wish. Was Rodney's love for her, therefore, valueless? No, the French woman was certainly wrong ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... lands for internal improvements owned and controlled by private corporations, but in this instance I would make an exception. Between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains there is an arid belt of public land from 300 to 500 miles in width, perfectly valueless for the occupation of man, for the want of sufficient rain to secure the growth of any product. An irrigating canal would make productive a belt as wide as the supply of water could be made to spread over across this entire country, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... character. The impression is current in European countries—perhaps less generally since the war—that America is given over solely to a worship of the American dollar. While between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to say, from personal knowledge, that the Dutch worship the gulden infinitely more than do the Americans ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... kinds of affection which appear very elevated and very perfect in the eyes of creatures, but which in the sight of God are of low degree and valueless. Such are all friendships based, not only on true charity, which is God, but only on ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... want what the Martha Brown school calls 'distinction' in prose. My little friend, I know how it is done, and I find it contemptible. People write their articles at full speed, putting down their unstudied and valueless conclusions in English as pale as a film of dirty wax—sometimes even they dictate to a typewriter. Then they sit over it with a blue pencil and carefully transpose the split infinitives, and write alternative adjectives, and take words away out ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... with a menacing gesture. "Don't waste your gratitude. Greek you pretend to be, more the shame! Such as you it is that have brought Hellas under the heel of the oppressor; such as you have made the word of a Hellene almost valueless in the Roman courts, so that juries have to be warned to consider us all liars; such as you have dragged down into the pit many an honest ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... hands of us can then go to work at diamond-hunting in good earnest. Meanwhile, if these large stones are of such inestimable value, it seems to me that they are likely to prove, after all, practically valueless, for the simple reason that nobody will be found willing to spend the enormous sum which would enable him ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... government, civilization and progress. The result of this war is to settle the question whether they who are hereafter to inhabit this magnificent country are or are not to have that primal blessing of a good government, without which the most abundant material resources are as valueless as scientific books or philosophical installments would be among the most barbarous tribes of Africa or Australia. Surely there cannot be imagined a war more worthy of calling forth all the energies of a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Where he approaches his own times, his servile attitude towards all the members of the imperial family, and towards Sejanus, who was still first minister to Tiberius when the book was published, makes him almost valueless as a historian; but in the earlier periods his observations are often just and pointed; and he seems to have been almost the first historian who included as an essential part of his work some account of the more eminent writers of his ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... its care and strife and toil Seem strangely valueless, while the old trees Which grew by our youth's home, the waving mass Of climbing plants heavy with bloom and dew, The morning swallows with their songs like words. All these seem clear and only worth our thoughts: So, aught connected with ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... fireplace, a funeral pyre, on which Christian cast one basketful after another of letters, papers, ball-cards, hunt cards, pamphlets, old school-room books, stray numbers of magazines, all the accumulated rubbish that life, like the leader in a paper-chase, strews in its trail; all valueless, yet all steeped in the precious scent of past happiness, of good times that were over and done with. She spent those short, dark days in desolation and destruction, and Rinka trotted after her, up and downstairs, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... moralist. He is a kindly soul, and in his easygoing way he has learnt something of the tricks of the world and something of the hearts of men. He writes as an unsuccessful courtier; and in that capacity he has remarks to offer which are not always valueless, and in which there is sometimes a certain shrewdness. But the unsuccessful courtier is on the whole a creature of the past. Such interest as he has is rather historical than actual; and neither in the nursery nor in the schoolroom is he ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... happens, got mixed up with the will instead of having been destroyed as it should have been. You know, it's astonishing, the junk people keep in their safe deposit boxes! I'll bet that ninety-nine out of a hundred are half full of valueless and useless stuff, like old watches, grandpa's jet cuff buttons, the letters Uncle William wrote from the Holy Land, outlawed fire insurance and correspondence that nobody will ever read,—everything always gets mixed up together,—and yet every paper a man leaves after his death ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... tree, or of the wintergreen vine, after being bruised in the hand and applied to the nose or the mouth, makes instant impression upon the senses of taste and small, and at once informs us of its distinctive qualities. Not so with the tea leaf; a hundred valueless plants impress those senses more vividly than the leaf which is worth them all. Infuse the green leaf of the Tea plant and the prized properties of "Tea" are still wanting, but in their stead, positively deleterious qualities are said to appear in ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... particularly the apple industry. Apples could not be shipped any very great distance. Crops had to be marketed immediately and when they were large the markets were soon glutted and the fruit became almost valueless. The first hot spell would demoralize the trade altogether. Then later in the season the supply would become exhausted and famine would ensue where but a few weeks before there had been a feast. Under such conditions it is not surprising that the apple industry did ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... the region to be penetrated. Apart from the new line's prime object—that of providing an outlet for the system—there was a goodly heritage of local business awaiting the first railroad to reach the untapped territory. Mines, valueless now for the lack of transportation facilities, would become abundant producers; and there were many fertile valleys and mesas to attract the ranchman, who would find on the western slopes of the mountains an unfailing ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Cynthia was not really happy. In her desire to please everyone she ceased to be sincere, and degenerated into a mere coquette; and even her lovers felt that the charms and fascinations which were exercised upon all who approached her without distinction were valueless, so that in the end they ceased to care for ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... the deadroom, there lay a broken, useless mass of flesh and bone that in the sight of the Bureau Arabe was only a worn-out machine that had paid its due toll to the wars of the Second Empire, and was now valueless; only fit to be cast in to rot, unmourned, in the devouring African soil. But to him that lifeless, useless mass was dear still; was the wreck of the bravest, tenderest, and best-loved friend that he ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... such stones, and I cheered myself with the hope that at last I should be rewarded for all my hardships. But, alas! They brought in "bright stones" truly bright stones in abundance but quartz crystals chiefly; bright, clear, and sparkling, but of course utterly valueless; and though I sent them out again and again, they brought ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... and-most effective of all-faultless jewels of not less than two carats. The preventive uses of astrology have seldom been seriously studied outside of India. One little-known fact is that the proper jewels, metals, or plant preparations are valueless unless the required weight is secured, and unless these remedial agents are worn next ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... waited she might do likewise. The president of the Denboro Trust Company had been very kind, but his counsel was not too encouraging. The Development shares were nonsalable at the present time, he said, but that did not mean that they were valueless. The Skoonic Creek property was good. Shore land on the Cape was becoming more valuable every year. Some time—perhaps ten years from ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in towns in the vicinity of Pelham; and there the story of their purpose and use is universally and implicitly believed. A clergyman of the Pelham church gave to many of his friends these Presbyterian checks, which he had found among the disused and valueless church-properties, and the little relics of the old-time deacons and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... yesterday of a letter from Charles, but I shall say as little about it as possible, because I know that excruciating Henry will have had a letter likewise, to make all my intelligence valueless. It was written at Bermuda on the 7th and 10th of December. All well, and Fanny[199] still only in expectation of being otherwise. He had taken a small prize in his late cruise—a French schooner, laden with sugar; but bad weather parted them, and she had not yet been heard ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... men camped in the Basin for three weeks, until the close of which time they saw no human being. During this period they examined carefully the various ledges on which the mineral claims had been based. Ware pronounced them valueless, as far ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the Count, as he watched the fast lessening sails. "No, there is no treasure on this island save one, and that would be valueless to you!" ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... about us that so many heiresses should be plain. Plain girls have a right to be cheered and comforted by the thought. It teaches them the happy lesson that beauty, as compared with a settled income, is skin-deep and valueless; and that what man looks for in the companion of his life is not so much a bright cheek or a blue eye, as a substantial and useful ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... set out with the goddess Ashthertet ('Ashtoreth) to do this, and they saw the enemies lying fettered on the ground. The legend here introduces a number of curious derivations of the names of Edfu, &c., which are valueless, and which remind us of the derivations of place- names propounded ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... should be kept carefully in mind in attempting to discover the meanings of these names, and it is a disregard of these considerations that has made most of the published works on the subject so singularly valueless. The great majority of Cornish names are composed of epithets suffixed to certain nouns, such as tre, trev, a town; pol, a pool; pen or pedn, head or top; rôs, often written rose, a heath; car, a fort or camp; lan, an enclosure, or a church; eglos, a church; ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... and locomotives; some did not. If one country had some coal to spare but was starving for lack of the wheat which could be spared by its neighbor, which was freezing, there was no way of making the needed exchange. The money of each country became valueless in the others—and of less and less value in its own land. Everything was going to pieces, including the relief. It simply could not go on ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... did he not understand the gravity of the situation? Was it with him phlegm or contempt of danger, courage or indifference? Was his life valueless in his eyes, and, according to the Eastern expression, "an hotel for five days," which, whether one is willing or not, must be left the sixth? At any rate, the smile on his rosy face never faded for ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... live in material things, but in mental states; and solely as they affect these are the material things valuable or valueless. Religions, arts, laws, historic events, all have but one standard of appraisement, to wit, the degree to which they produce permanently beneficial mental states in the individuals influenced by them. All must agree to this, though they may differ widely as ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... hour, my fortune was secure. No one bought a perfume afterwards but of Civilis. Civilis was soon the next person to the Emperor. And, to this hour, has this same goddess befriended me. And many an old jar, packed away in the midst of rubbish in dark recesses now valueless, do I look upon as nevertheless so much gold—its now despised contents one day to disperse themselves upon kings and nobles, in the senate and the theatres. I need not tell you what this diminutive bottle might have been had for, before the Kalends. Yet, by Hercules, should ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... was going headlong down to hell, but God, through her, has pulled me up short. Gold is utterly valueless to me now. The child is dying, and I cannot part with her for all eternity. You can ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Mawm Mason had lef' a lookin'-glass behin', so's I could see how I look. My! wouldn't she whack me if she seen me with this bonnet on!" The child smiled broadly as she continued her confidential address to the other valueless things left behind. "I allays knowed she warn't my own mother, an' I'm glad Pete nor Matty aint my own brother nor sister neither. I'd like him to ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... us is most to blame? I who am fool enough to speak seriously of such things in a law-court? or you who are slanderous enough to include such charges in your indictment? For sportive effusions in verse are valueless as evidence of a poet's morals. Have you not read Catullus, who replies thus to those who wish ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the hand is opened and the fingers separated from each other. If the person at whose expense the sign is made is present, the hand is moved towards him, and the head sometimes averted from him." This sudden extension and opening of the hand perhaps indicates the dropping or throwing away a valueless object. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... plentiful; its utility to man is not due to man's labor, and it has, therefore, no economic value. But in exceptional circumstances, as in an arid desert or in a besieged fortress, a millionaire might be willing to give all his wealth for a little water, thus making the value of what is ordinarily valueless almost infinite. What may be called natural use-values have no economic value. And even use-values that are the result of human labor may be equally without economic value. If I make something to satisfy some ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... experience can show other instances of this kind. If it stood alone, it would be valueless, for it might well be explained by mere coincidence. But it forms part of a very normal series; and I could easily enumerate many others within my own knowledge. This, however, would merely mean repeating, with uninteresting variations, the essential features of the present case, a proceeding ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... life is trivial and insignificant, where men work like devils for things of no value in order to accumulate them in great ugly houses; always collecting and collecting, like mad children, possessions that they never really possess—things external to themselves, valueless and unreal—" ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... pounds more than he himself had given for it, and this very satisfactory profit mitigated the slight regret which he felt when it came to transferring to Roland the insurance policies. To have effected policies amounting to rather more than seventy thousand pounds on a building so notoriously valueless as the Windsor Theater had been an achievement of which Mr. Montague was justly proud, and it seemed sad to him that so much earnest ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... which such direful allies could afford, not only to a private revenge, but to a kingly ambition. Had he acquired the knowledge he declared himself to possess before the feebleness of the decaying body made it valueless, how he could have triumphed over that world which had expelled his youth from its pale! He spoke of means by which his influence could work undetected on the minds of others, control agencies that could never betray, and baffle ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... another. But now the tremendous task of storming a virgin heart lay ahead of him, as he imagined. Torments unfelt by those of less sensitive mould also awaited Martin Grimbal. The self-assertive sort of man, who rates himself as not valueless, and whose love will not prevent callous calculation on the weight of his own person and purse upon the argument, is doubtless wise in his generation, and his sanguine temperament enables him to escape oceans of unrest, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... learn is the mastery of a difficulty; and the mastery of one helps to the mastery of others. Things which may at first sight appear comparatively valueless in education—such as the study of the dead languages, and the relations of lines and surfaces which we call mathematics—are really of the greatest practical value, not so much because of the information which they yield, as because of the development ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... high and dry," the solicitor explained. "You see, the drainage and lighting will be largely influenced by the purchaser of the whole estate. If Dowling gets it, he means to treat your plots so that they will become practically valueless. It's rather a mean sort of thing, but then he's a mean ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... come home with a new experience, which is the best thing one can come home with, and the rarest nowadays; and with a pocketful of Alaskan garnets, which are about the worst he can come home with, being as they are utterly valueless, and unhandsome even when they ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... straight to them from Miller's room. No wonder that Lussigny, when insulted at the tables, had sat like a tame rabbit and had sought him in the garden. No wonder he had accepted the accusation of adventurer. No wonder he had refused to play for the cheque which he knew to be valueless. But why, thought Aristide, did he not at once consent to sell the papers on the stipulation that he should be paid in notes? Aristide found an answer. He wanted to get everything for nothing, afraid of the use that Aristide might make of a damning confession, and also relying for ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... their arrangement.' Very forcible and significant are the reflections upon invention, the 'greatest and rarest of all the qualities of art;' and on 'Composition.' If one part be taken away, all the rest are helpless and valueless; yet true composition is inexplicable—to be felt, not reasoned upon. 'A poet or creator is, therefore, a person who puts things together; not as a watchmaker, steel; or a shoemaker, leather: but ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... They seem to have attached a high value to silver, and it is often found in thin sheets, no thicker than paper, wrapped over copper or stone ornaments so neatly as almost to escape detection. The great esteem in which they held a metal so intrinsically valueless as silver, is another evidence that they must have drawn their superstitions from the same ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... experiment is far from being a failure. It has been a success, even if only the corpse is left in Newfoundland. We have proved conclusively that the deer can live, thrive, and multiply on the otherwise perfectly valueless areas of this North country, and furnish a rapidly increasing domesticated "raw material" for a food and clothing supply ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the Bhandaris, be it noted, know little of western theories of disease and sanitation; and such precautions as the boiling of water, even were there time to boil it, and abstention from fruit seem to them utterly beside the mark and valueless, so long as the goddess of cholera, Jarimari, and the thirty-eight Cholera Mothers are wroth with them. Thus at the time we speak of, when many deaths among their kith and kin had afforded full proof ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... well content with the turn of things. He raged at Brilliana, but she should marry him all the same when the Puritan dog was dead. He had, as he believed, convinced the King at meat that the plea Evander raised was valueless, that Evander's life was rightly forfeit. Evander was under close guard; so, indeed, was Brilliana, for he had stationed a sentry at the door of her apartments: he was determined that she should not see the King again. Now the King lay in the inner room, sleeping; when he rose it ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Strength and resources may be artificially supplied or increased, but it passes the power of man to move a port which lies outside the limits of strategic effect. Gibraltar in mid-ocean might have fourfold its present power, yet would be valueless in a military sense. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... pray do not cherish any false hopes on that ground. The letter is valueless in a legal way. To you and to your friends it may be a satisfaction; but it can have no effect on the court. There is nothing to prove that it is genuine. It may have been written by any friend of yours with a view of obtaining your acquittal. Of course we shall put it in at ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... the scurrying mass. It was a handful of men splattered into the faces of the enemy. Toward it instantly sprang the yellow tongues. A vast quantity of blue smoke hung before them. A mighty banging made ears valueless. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... old woman who used to sell tapers and other Popish trickeries in front of the cathedral. If so, as she had frequently seen us, I had no doubt that from the first she knew who we were. I immediately guessed that, finding her old calling valueless, she had betaken herself to her present mode of life, in the hopes of preying on the superstition and credulity of her fellow-creatures. And I found that I was correct in ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston |
