"Futility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to explain the grievance of the young dancer, and I read the agreement he had made with her, telling him politely that I could easily force him to fulfil it. The Jew put in several excuses, of which the Corticelli demonstrated the futility. At last the son of Judah was forced to give in, and promised to speak to the ballet-master the same day, in order that she might dance the 'pas' ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... way of fence or shrubbery. Finding no means of entrance he returned again to the front door which he shook with an impatient hand that however produced no impression upon the trusty lock, and recognizing, doubtless, the futility of his endeavors, he drew back, and merely pausing to give one other look at its deserted front, turned his horse's head, and to my great amazement, proceeded with sombre mien and clouded brow to retake ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... the alarm which affects the fair debutante at a court presentation, he beheld the confusing labyrinth of counters, department aisles and shelves, which combine in such a depressing suggestion of intellectual plethora and transient futility ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... yoke whose burden he hated he was placing about his own neck. He had run away from the sound of "right" and "duty," but had not escaped their power. He felt galled, humiliated, and angry with himself, because he had long seen the futility of blind indignation against the unseen force which impelled him forward ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... myself that I had not been seen distinctly; I attempted to deny it. A deep flush suffused my face and I felt the futility ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... with him," she said, resolutely; and, putting the aforesaid appendages behind her back to prevent any forcible appropriation of them, she hurried away, and clambered up on her father's knee. The General, knowing probably by painful experience the futility of trying to combat any determination of this very decided young lady, did not attempt to make any remonstrance, but allowed her to establish herself in her accustomed position. During this process Guy had leisure to inspect her. This he did without any feeling of the immense ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... think I fully comprehend the absence of moral tone in our current politics and business, and the almost entire futility of absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise against the enormous greed for worldly wealth, with the trickeries of gaining it, all through society our day, I still do not share the depression and despair on the subject which I find possessing many good ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... doctor in a minute consulting-room and his shirt-sleeves, a tall tumbler at his elbow; at least I caught sight of the tumbler on entering; thereafter he stood in front of it, with a futility which had my sympathy. ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... as well as he could, and as a prudent dramatic poet should, by close and observant study of the document. He endeavored to reconcile the evident superiority of Julian with the absurd eccentricities of his private manners and with the futility of his public acts. He noted all the Apostate's foibles by the side of his virtues and his magnanimities. He traced without hesitation the course of that strange insurrection which hurled a coarse fanatic from the throne, only to place in his room a literary pedant with inked fingers and ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... He ran, nipped a sheep, and then jumped back to save himself from being cut to pieces by the blundering feet. Young Pete saw that he could not reach the pass ahead of them. Out of breath and half-sobbing as he realized the futility of his effort, he suddenly recalled an incident like this when Montoya, failing to head the band in a similar situation, had coolly shot the leader ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... said Sanford sardonically. "Our first job is more futility—to get the guided missiles you've brought us into the launching tubes. A lot of good ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... with a young cock, as I think is certainly the case with blackbirds and others that are known to fight for the youngest and handsomest females. One of each pair being already an 'old bird,' will be competent to instruct its younger partner (not only in the futility of 'chaff,' but) in the selection of a site for a nest and how to build it; then, how eggs are ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... them the three cyclopean salients, the Ecossais, the Grand Jardin, and la Rochette, while further to the west, in extension of the line, were Fort Nassau and Fort Palatinat, above the faubourg of Menil. The sight produced in him a melancholy impression of immensity and futility. Of what avail were they now against the powerful modern guns with their immense range? Besides, the works were not manned; cannon, ammunition, men were wanting. Some three weeks previously the governor had invited the citizens to organize ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... make a difference. He would not make such ardent love to her when they were married. They would both have so many other things to think about. It was the present that so weighed upon her, her lover's almost appalling intensity of worship and her own utter inadequacy and futility. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... end to. The present owner of Waddow, tired, as we have seen, of such ridiculous alarms, and the terrors of her domestics, and wishful to do away with the evil report and scandal sustained thereby, was now resolved to dissipate these idle fears, to show at once their folly and futility. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... eliminates force. And it thus cancels the power of the units to use it against other units (other than as a part of the community) by standing ready at all times to reduce the power of any one unit to futility. If A says that B began it, the community does not say, "Oh, in that case you may continue to use your force; finish him off." It says, on the contrary, "Then we'll see that B does not use his force; we'll restrain him, we won't have either ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... admitted and reprobated by the opposite taste of Salmasius and Grotius, (Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Aa.) Hottinger doubts of its authenticity, (Hist. Orient. p. 237;) Renaudot urges the consent of the Mohametans, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 169;) but Mosheim (Hist. Eccles. p. 244) shows the futility of their opinion and inclines to believe it spurious. Yet Abulpharagius quotes the impostor's treaty with the Nestorian patriarch, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 418;) but Abulpharagius was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the international peace propaganda illuminates this point. Not long ago a meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, to forward peace among nations broke up in great disorder. Thousands of people who hate the waste and futility of war as much as any of the orators of that evening were filled with an unholy glee. They chuckled with delight at the idea of a riot in a peace meeting. Though it would have seemed perverse to the ordinary pacificist, this sentiment sprang from a respectable source. It had the same ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... stick to his land. A public meeting held on Sunday week determined to support him, and to show forth its mind by planting the ground for him. Mr. Strachan seems to have seen the futility of looking to the law, on the security of which he invested his money. Too late he finds that his savings are not safe, and he endeavours to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. He ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Nelka spent again with her aunt Martha in Washington. Her aunt had a large house and was in the social whirl of the capital. Dinners, balls, the White House, the Embassies—but all this meant little to Nelka and she felt the futility of all that activity, its artificiality and uselessness. Irritated and longing for a change she once again returned to Russia, and once again went back to ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... completely in the posterior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the Gorilla, as that of the Gorilla is further back than that of Man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of Platyrhine, or American monkeys, to which the Mycetes belongs, contains the Chrysothrix, whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward than in any other ape, and nearly approaches ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... of disillusionment. At the breakfast table he met his wife's advances with an air of tolerant aloofness. In the past, the first moves toward adjusting a misunderstanding had come usually from him. He had an aptitude for kindling the fires of domestic harmony, but he had discovered overnight the futility of fanning a hearthstone blaze when the flue was choked so completely. Before him lay the task of first correcting the draught. Temporary genialities had no place in his sudden, bleak speculations. Helen shirred his eggs to a turn, pressed the second cup of coffee on him, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... realising the futility of his efforts against the encroachments of Germanism, resigned his mandate and devoted his energies to scientific and philosophical work. In 1900, however, he founded a party of his own, with a ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... job to another, lending a hand here and a shoulder there. In order that I might hasten the tearing down and clearing away, I plunged into the hardest and dirtiest tasks, but at night, after the men were gone, dark moods of deep depression came over me, moments in which the essential futility of my powers overwhelmed ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... her virtues were exalted in the minds of the living. Their judgment was softened by a vague feeling of awe, but they were not troubled, while they stood in a solemn and curious row around her grave, by any sense of the pathetic futility of individual suffering in the midst of a universe that creates and destroys in swarms. The mystery aroused no wonder in their thoughts, for the blindness of habit, which passes generally for the vision of faith, had paralyzed in youth ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... chilled with apprehension. Here were three men very desperately set upon what they considered a mere act of justice. How was he to dissuade them? By argument? They would not listen to it. By proofs? He had none to offer them. By excuses? Of all unsupported excuses which can match for futility the excuse of mistaken identity? It springs immediate to the criminal's lips. Its mere utterance is ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... road to the sea will be quite useless; but its futility will not be apparent—at least, not so apparent—and the people's hearts will not ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... imagine a turn of mind constituting a more complete challenge to the ordinary modern point of view. To the intellect of our time the wild investigators of the school of Paracelsus seem to be the very crown and flower of futility, they are collectors of straws and careful misers of dust. But for all that Browning was right. Any critic who understands the true spirit of mediaeval science can see that he was right; no critic can ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... enough! Dore was becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, assuredly, by his illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac—but by his shuddering Biblical conceits. In pious circles Dore was saving art from the reproach of futility and frivolity. It was indubitably a tasteful idea on Gerald's part to take his love of a summer's afternoon to gaze at the originals of those prints which had so deeply impressed the Five Towns. It was an idea ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... shock-headed and turnip-faced, returned not a word to my salutation, but savagely flogged his horses. The tired animals, who could scarce put the one foot before the other, paid no attention to his cruelty; and I continued without effort to maintain my position alongside, smiling to myself at the futility of his attempts, and at the same time pricked with curiosity as to why he made them. I made no such formidable a figure as that a man should flee when I accosted him; and, my conscience not being entirely clear, I was more accustomed to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corresponded with reality; but he did not cease to believe in reality. That was where he differed both from the Philistines and from the elect. He saw that the universe was something very different from what it was generally supposed to be: he saw the futility of popular morals and popular metaphysics; but he neither swallowed the conventions nor threw up his hands in despair, declaring the whole thing to be an idiotic farce. He knew that truth and goodness had nothing to do with law and custom; but he ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... peaceful and still, while the sunshine made a network of gold through the leafy trees upon the antique masonry. Yet as she looked around upon the empty desolation her heart grew sad with a nameless sorrow; that old, old ache, and old, old tiredness, for the utter futility of work and of striving, that sometimes seems to fill the human heart, when in a depressed mood it looks upon the ruins of something that has once had strength and greatness. Meryl carried in her ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... some dim recollection of the futility of gainsaying that peremptory voice, she opened her lips obediently and let the strong spirit trickle down ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... an art, a music, all his own—derived from many and various things of price. Trash, in the fullness of its insimplicity and cheapness, is impossible without a beautiful past. Its chief characteristic—which is futility, not failure—could not be achieved but by the long abuse, the rotatory reproduction, the quotidian disgrace, of the utterances of Art, especially the utterance by words. Gaiety, vigour, vitality, the organic quality, purity, simplicity, precision—all ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... Karyl, without reply, scowled up into his face. The sense of futility left Pagratide silent. He lay insanely furious like a trapped ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... of the actual condition of the rural church in many parts of the country all show the futility of denominational competition in maintaining two or three churches where only one is needed or can be supported. Furthermore, the present generation of young married people who desire the best religious influences for their children are ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... her, and then she heard the key turn on her egress. For a single moment, Wyandotte stood hesitating whether he should endeavour to get Mrs. Willoughby and her other daughter into the same place of security; then, judging of the futility of the attempt, by the approach of the sounds within, among which he heard the full, manly voice of Robert Willoughby, calling on the garrison to be firm, he raised an answering yell to those of the Mohawks, the war-whoop of ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... palpably affords their male relatives one of the greatest enjoyments of life, and when there are husbands and brothers who, it is said, advance arguments which for number and ingenuity would do credit to a King's Counsel, designed to show the absurdity and the futility of the desire expressed. It is a question upon which it would be out of place for me here to take any side, though it seems to me that there is something to be said for the complete separation of the men's golf from the ladies' ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... battle-storm foreboded by the long lull and the active preparations observed in its front. At 1 P.M. Longstreet's batteries opened, and the superior guns of the Union Army, though not in position in such great number, promptly responded. This terrific duel lasted about two hours. Meade, recognizing the futility of his artillery fire, and in anticipation of the assault soon to come, ordered a large portion of his artillery withdrawn under cover, to give the guns time to cool and to be resupplied with ammunition. This led the enemy to believe he had silenced ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... hand went to her hip, and she flew at the culprit only to be caught in Smoke's arms, where she surrendered herself, sobbing with the futility of her rage. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... incredible, the length of time that small spot evaded Isabel's questing handkerchief, and the futility of Gerard's directions. He was obliged to halt the car, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... and left arms gripped, with lagging feet and furious eyes, Hampton went between them to the door. For an instant only did he struggle; then, with a snort of disgust, seeing the futility of making a fool ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... and ready at an early hour on the morning of August 1st. Again the city was blue with police. But this time they were reinforced. As I walked through streets lined with soldiers in the workingmen's quarters, I realised the futility of any further ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... excavate at a certain spot where he believed treasure to be hidden. Sir Gaston accompanied him to the place, and a tunnel was bored into what appeared to be virgin sand and rock. At the end of the first day's work the futility of his labours was pointed out to the man, but he was not to be daunted. For two more days he stood watching the work from morn to nightfall with hope burning in his eyes, and on the following morning his reward came. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... far in this mad advocacy of his darling pursuit, as to justify suicide! In this, however, he was perfectly consistent—for if gaming of any kind is right, so is murder, robbery, and suicide. In this, Mr. Freeman over-reached himself—and by attempting too much, exposed the futility and weakness of ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... rotten remnants of thatched roofs through which they had aspired toward the sun, rose about him. Quick-growing trees had shadowed the kingposts so that the idols and totems, seated in carved shark jaws, grinned greenly and monstrously at the futility of man through a rime of moss and mottled fungus. A poor little sea-wall, never much at its best, sprawled in ruin from the coconut roots to the placid sea. Bananas, plantains, and breadfruit lay rotting on the ground. Bones ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... chose was a fresh contradiction to our previous expectations. The value of experience as a guide is unquestionable in many of the most important affairs of life; but, speaking for myself personally, I never understood the utter futility of it, where a woman is concerned, until I was brought into habits of daily communication with our ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... even at the present day is often considered as a crime or misdemeanor, should be simply regarded as a reason for divorce. We have already treated the question with regard to civil law, and have shown the futility of trying to obtain fidelity by law. In my opinion, the misdemeanor of adultery should be entirely abolished from penal law. When it is complicated by fraud or other crimes, it is the latter only which ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... eyes looked for a long moment fixedly into her darker ones, while the two took mental stock of each other. He realized the utter futility of any further argument, while she felt instinctively the cool, dominating strength of the man. Neither was composed of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... duty to live my time, to be content, and to proclaim the praise of God within the sphere assigned to me. Could men or plants but once elevate their thoughts to the vast scale of creation, it would teach them their own insignificance so plainly, would so unerringly make manifest the futility of complaints, and the immense disparity between time and eternity, as to render the useful lesson of contentment as ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the futility of human effort, that there is neither bad work nor good work to do, nothing but to await the coming ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... mapped out their path long and long ago; their feet are set therein, and they must tread it to the end. Such was the conclusion of our Scandinavian ancestors—a belief forced upon them by their intense realisation of the futility of human hopes and schemings, of the terror and the tragedy of life, the vanity of its desires, and the untravelled gloom or sleep, dreamless or dreamfull, which lies beyond ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... The futility of Charles's public life was of a piece throughout. He never succeeded in any single purpose he set before him; for his deliverance from England, after twenty-five years of failure, and at the cost of dignity and consistency, it would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he had come perilously near to the borderland beyond which are gibbering, moving things: that he had stood upon the frontier of insanity; and realizing the futility of such reflections, he struggled to banish them from his mind, for his mind was not yet healed—and he must be whole, be sane, if he would take part in the work, which, now, strangers were doing, whilst he—whilst he was ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... further attempt to advise you. As fast as my counsels rise to my mind follow reflections that convince me of their futility. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... for a confab on the last upset. Both Generals went word by word through my M.F. 657 of the 26th September,—(1) as to drawing in our horns at Suvla,—(2) as to our power of holding on after we lose the 10th and 53rd Divisions. They concur in my cables and are emphatic as to the futility of making a gift of ground to any enemy who are shaking in their shoes. What the Turks want is a gift, not of ground but of high explosive shell. A few thousand pounds worth of that and Byng would go ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Ossip seemed conscious to the full of the futility and the senselessness of what he had done: and in his state of sliminess, as he sat nodding his head, picking at the sand, looking at no one, and emitting a torrent of remorseful words, he reminded me ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... near the window and saw the sunset glow die over the mountain ridge she asked herself what she had achieved. Apparently very little. She felt the futility of human endeavor and desire. To her knowledge Code was in love with nobody, although rumor had for years linked his name with Nellie Tanner's. That was exploded now, for Nellie was ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... histories of civilizations and civilization assemble and present a great body of factual information which support and substantiate this factual summary. The present study aims to organize the facts, to compare them and to draw conclusions as to the benefits and detriments; the practicality or futility; the wisdom or folly of building empires and ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... entered the Baltic in 1810, not one was really a neutral: they were all charged with English goods, with false papers and forged certificates of origin manufactured in London.[246] Any other unit among earth's millions would have been convinced of the futility of the whole enterprise, now that his own special devices were being turned against him. It was not enough to conquer and enchain the Continent. Every customs officer must be an expert in manufactures, groceries, documents, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... destroyer and submarine attack. A possible exception is the island of Polillo, twenty miles east of the eastern coast of Luzon; and in many ways Polillo seems ideal. The practical difficulties are so great, however, the status of the islands in our national policy is so ill defined, and the futility of strengthening it, unless Guam be adequately strengthened also, is so apparent, that the question has been hardly even mooted. Polillo made impregnable, with Guam defenseless, supported by an undefended line of communications ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... we are able to see, they have not been led by their feelings, but rather by their judgments. When the nation was wild with indignation over Europe's interference with the treaty which brought the China-Japanese war to a close, the men at the helm saw too clearly the futility of an attempt to fight Russia to allow themselves to be carried away by sentimental notions of patriotism. Theirs was a deeper and truer patriotism than that of the great mass of the nation, who, flushed with recent victories by land ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and unspeakable evil of sin as he had sin living and working in himself. But all the resources of the Greek language, that most resourceful of languages, utterly failed Paul for his pressing purpose. And thus it is that, as if in scorn of the feebleness and futility of that boasted tongue, he tramples its grammars and its dictionaries under his feet, and makes new and unheard-of words and combinations of words on the spot for himself and for his subject. He heaps up a hyperbole the like of which no orator or rhetorician of Greece ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... charge against Henry of Falsehood, Hypocrisy, and Impiety. — Futility of the Charge, and utter failure of the Evidence on which alone it is grounded. — He is urged by his people to vindicate the Rights of his Crown, himself having a conscientious conviction of the Justice of his Claim. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... short time, had exercised such sway over his fancy, stimulated by his culte for the beautiful, that he had plead with her to win his father's consent for an art life. Yet he had himself acquiesced in her quiet but inflexible showing of the futility of attempting such an overturning of Giustiniani traditions, though he still went with dangerous frequency to the studio of the Veronese, to which she had procured him entrance upon his promise that he would not seriously consider that ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... men who had been his associates. The whole situation had to be readjusted in the altered light of events. The first impulse of the man, to act, seemed strangled almost at its birth by the absolute futility of any move he could possibly make. He had no idea where to find his daughter, with whom she was living, or how. Any publicity of any sort was of course out of the question. No wonder that his frown grew heavier as he realized more completely the helplessness of his position. He was a man unaccustomed ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the soul, precede all high uses of communication. Though Demosthenes or Phillips speak, it is the hearer's own spirit that convinces him. Conviction cannot be forced upon one from without. Hence the well-known futility of belligerent controversy. No possible logic will lead a man ahead of his own intelligence; neither will any take from him the persuasions which correspond to his mental condition. A good logical pose may sometimes serve to lower the crest of an obstreperous sophist, as boughs of one species ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... losing both its officers and many men, the regimental adjutant and another officer being struck down at the same moment. Watson, recognising the preparations made to receive him, seeing from the confusion which had arisen the futility of so informal an attack, directed a retirement, intending, doubtless, no more than that his men should temporarily seek the cover of the dead ground from which they had just climbed. But such instructions, at such a time, were more ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... like a little wound. I want you so, O dearest girl in all the world! I want you.... Ah, time travels very slowly that brings you back to me, and, meanwhile, I can but dream of you and send you impotent scrawls that only vex me with their futility. For my desire ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... sat down and thought disturbedly. The utter futility of any efforts to assist such a family was undeniable. Nothing could be done. For a vivid instant he had an idea of rushing to the market and setting up surreptitiously a term of credit for the Carrolls, by paying their bills himself, but the absurdity of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... indefensible delight. Hunter excelled himself at giving my own views voice over the pudding. Never did I hear an indictment more sweeping. He spoke of the reading of people's letters, the bluffing of unhappy natives. He hinted darkly at dark methods of persuasion. He hammered in the debasing futility of the whole spy system, our own and the other side's. He ended with schoolboy personalities about people he had met, some of our host's own agents. His remarks about them were unworthy of the eloquence that had gone before. Our host took it all in very kindly part. He was a man of deeds rather ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... considering the methods employed for measuring aggregates, emphasis should be placed on the futility of rigid requirements for the aggregates, both as regards quality and range of sizes, if the materials are carelessly proportioned at the mixer. If even reasonably near uniform wearing qualities are to be secured throughout ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... many moments of terrible doubt and still more terrible temptation through which he had fought to-day, this was perhaps the most intolerable because the worldly man in him cried out against the futility of his own sacrifice. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... speak out to this man, stranger as he was. Mr. Van Ostend evidently had confidence in him; why shouldn't he? Perhaps he might help him to decide, and for the best. But even as the thought flashed into consciousness, he was aware of its futility. He was sure the man would repeat only what his mother had said. He did not care to hear that twice. And what was this man to him that he should ask his opinion, appeal to him for advice in directing this step in his career? He ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... insanity," and leave no loophole through which it might be said that he was impelled to seek death for any extraneous reasons whatever. He would go to death in the midst of the most perfect worldly prosperity the mind could conceive, desiring nothing but rest, profoundly convinced of the futility of all else, and the perfect ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... If the futility of brute force as an appeal to reason required an object lesson, it might easily be found in the fact that while the hand that wielded one pen lies motionless in death, hundreds of others have been raised up to ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... W. Blithers was a self-made man who had begun his career by shouting lustily at a team of mules in a railway construction camp. Other drivers had tried to improve on his vocabulary but even the mules were able to appreciate the futility of such an ambition, and later on, when he came to own two or three railroads, to say nothing of a few mines and a steam yacht, his ability to drive men was even more noteworthy than his power over the jackasses had been. But ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and more especially the vocal cords in tone-production. While the early discoveries regarding the mechanism of the voice were hopefully believed to have solved all problems concerning its cultivation, experience has shown the futility of attempting to formulate a set of rules for voice-culture based alone upon the incomplete data furnished by the laryngoscope. This instrument is a small, round mirror which is introduced into the throat at such an angle, that if horizontal rays of light are ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... had shone on you," observed the old minister, while I helped her into her cloak; "but we Christians can't afford to waste regret on heathen superstitions. I married your mother," he added, as if there were possible comfort in a proof of the futility of omens, "on a cloudless morning ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... his introduction, says of the book that it gives, in his judgment, the best record of legislation in the United States yet presented in regard to coinage, to legal tender acts, and other matters connected with our financial history. It shows in the most conclusive manner the futility of all attempts to cause two substances to become, and to remain of the same value or estimation, by acts of legislation. It gives a true picture of the vast injury to the welfare and to the moral integrity of the people ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... hands, and she had no other alternative but to read it in his presence. "George has lost his election," the letter began. For one moment Alice thought of her money, and the vain struggle in which it had been wasted. For one moment, something like regret for the futility of the effort she had made came upon her. But it passed away at once. "It was worth our while to try it," she said to herself, and then went on with her letter. "I and Aunt Greenow are up in London," the letter went on to say, "and ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... tells us. 'The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter—the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild—the savage, frozen-hearted Northern Wild!' Here, I say, is the Wild. And here is the life of the Wild: 'Bill opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. Instead, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Vigilance Association raised no protest, and I do not blame them. None would have been heard. But while the banquets were held and the speeches were published in the newspapers some of the members of the Association must have meditated sadly on the futility of their efforts and the death of Mr. Vizetelly. It requires a heavy blow of a very heavy mallet to get anything into some people's heads, and nothing short of the reception that was given to Zola could have affected the minds of the Vigilance Association. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to her at Simpson's in the Strand. As she trod the staircase, narrow, but carpeted thickly, as she entered the eating-room, where saddles of mutton were being trundled up to expectant clergymen, she had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged. Then came a little surprise. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... opinions. They have not only no foundation in nature or experience, but are directly opposed to both. In proportion, then, as we advance in our researches into Nature's economy and laws, shall we perceive their futility and absurdity. As in other cases, take away the cause, and the effect ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... last fifteen hundred years. As one blends wine of very old stock with newer brands, so has France been blended and mellowed. A strange cosmic feeling one had, on the top of the great building in that town older than Rome itself, of the continuity of human life and the futility of human conceit. The provincial vanity of modern States looked pitiful in the clear air above that vast stony ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... aspects, affecting; but the very stubbornness and the prolonged success of its resistance to all attempts to draw it into the current of modern life and thought only enhances the significance of its ultimate failure, and furnishes an expressive commentary upon the futility of a people's most determined efforts to hold itself aloof from the brotherhood of nations. Contact is God's manifest decree. The five Basques at Bayonne bridge, helpless against the incoming tide, present a truthful prophecy of the destiny of the whole race before the advancing and mounting wave ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... have now appeared in place of the antiquated, obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who suffer from the oppression these theories seek ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... with a pocket-knife. The amado are thin sliding screens of soft wood, easy to break with a single blow; and in most Izumo homes there is not a lock which could resist one vigorous pull. Indeed, the Japanese themselves are so far aware of the futility of their wooden panels against burglars that all who can afford it build kura—small heavy fire-proof and (for Japan) almost burglar-proof structures, with very thick earthen walls, a narrow ponderous door fastened with a gigantic padlock, and one very small iron-barred ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... deluged with flattery, she would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such pin-pricks: ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... enough to keep the world going comfortably. The date of this address will be noted; and the fact that the war, which was then just beginning, has probably caused its author and has caused everybody else to see the utter futility of such assertions. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... we have but too many) make them such animals as they are.—[Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as other people he should have been as great a blockhead as they. W.C.H.] [And Bacon before Hobbe's time had discussed the "futility" of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... consolidation and establishment, of the Afghan power at which we must now begin to aim." As for the mountain barrier, in which men of the Lawrence school had been wont to trust, he termed it "a military mouse-trap," and he stated that Napoleon I. had once for all shown the futility of relying on a mountain range that had several passes[302]. These assertions show what perhaps were the weak points of Lord Lytton in practical politics—an eager and impetuous disposition, too prone to be dazzled by the very brilliance of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... fact that a wrong use has been made of a just idea is no reason why a right use should not be made of it. It ought to be brought under the patronage of its real friends. Let it be said again that autocracy must first be shown the utter futility of its claim to power or leadership in the modern world. It is impossible to apply any standard of justice so long as such forces are unchecked and undefeated as the present masters of Germany command. Not until ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... hour; any one but an impulsive Irish woman would have realised the futility of organising any fresh feature, and would have contented herself with doing well what was already planned, but such tame methods were not for the woman who had been Esmeralda O'Shaughnessy. She was accustomed to acting in haste; at home, at Knock, the most extensive entertainments ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... without at once interfering with Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general rule, we believe, in the Public Schools of the United States, and hence we have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the utter futility and barrenness of which must be evident to every one. Catholics, agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous Protestants, believe that secular education, administered without religion, is not only vain, but exceedingly pernicious; that it is fast undermining ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... she spoke, the futility, the obviousness of the lie, yet somehow unable to help speaking it, Marie answered in abrupt confusion. Yes, she had been gardening; it—it was a favourite hobby ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... great choking fist shoot up into his throat. It was not a sensation of fear but of humiliation—the humiliation of defeat, the knowledge of his own weakness in the hands of this man who had so quickly and so surely blocked his claim. His quick brain saw the futility of argument. He possessed no absolute proof and he had thought that he needed none. Strang saw the flash of doubt in his face, the hesitancy in his answer; he divined the working of the other's brain and in his soft voice, purring with friendship, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... families terrified by the thought of their collapse. The orphan forever dreams of the day when a home will be found for him. The child whose parents seek freedom, leaving him to school or servants, never fails to nourish a sense of injustice. Whatever one generation may decide as to the futility or burdensomeness of the home, the oncoming ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... fallen into a stupor of despair at the futility of learning. He remained in a state of coma while the rest of the committee laughed over the familiar idiocies and debated a verdict. Two of the professors, touched by some reminiscence of romance, voted to ignore the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Road Station, and thence, as the night was fine, walked to Chelsea. This semblance of freedom, together with the sense of having taken a courageous resolve, raised her spirits. She hoped that a detective might be tracking her; the futility of such measures afforded her a contemptuous satisfaction. Not to arrive before the appointed hour she loitered on Chelsea Embankment, and it gave her pleasure to reflect that in doing this she was outraging the proprieties. Her mind was in a strange tumult of rebellious ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... growth. He found the inward bent toward comprehension and thoroughness diverging more and more from the track marked out by the standards of examination: he felt a heightening discontent with the wearing futility and enfeebling strain of a demand for excessive retention and dexterity without any insight into the principles which form the vital connections of knowledge. (Deronda's undergraduateship occurred fifteen ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of Cuthbert's attachment to Violet. No remonstrances of his mother—and they were but mild, in spite of her objection to Violet, since she recognized the futility of opposing her son's determined will—had the slightest effect with him. He felt confident in the final acquiescence of both parents in whatever he might choose to do with regard to marriage. Everything, as he saw, rested with Violet, and he was shrewd enough to appreciate the advantages—not ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... himself at his desk, and took up his pen to resume his manuscript. "All evils come from not following Right Reason and the Law of Nature." He wrote on for hours, pausing from time to time to select his Latin phrases. Suddenly a hollow sense of the futility of his words, of Reason, of Nature, of everything, overcame him. What was this dreadful void at his breast? He leaned his tired, aching head on his desk and sobbed, as little Daniel had ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not found that a daughter produced that result. On the contrary, Lesley had been for many years a sort of bone of contention between himself and his wife; and he had retained a cynical sense of the futility of such conventional utterances, which were every day ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... at the canvas of the tent till it glowed a purplish crimson against the dawn. The air choked him; it reeked with pestilence and death. O God! the futility of everything he had ever done! The lie he had written was futile; it had come too late. His coming out here was futile; he had come too soon. If he had waited another three weeks he could have gone without breaking Molly's heart. "Her brain ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... Martha de Boskowitz' whom the Brethren in addressing the King had adduced as one of their supporters. From the castle of Znaim, his official residence as Supreme Captain of Moravia, Artlebus wrote, telling Erasmus of the steady growth of the Brethren, and of the futility of all attempts to withstand their doctrines by argument; and sending him a copy of their Rule, with the request that he would read it and frame thereupon a standard of Christian piety, which all men, including the Brethren, might follow. He turned then ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... enough now, and the ruts, holding the rain, were regular wheel-traps. Apart from any other trouble, Thornton did not like the prospect—and, away from Helena now, his face was serious. He cranked the engine—no result. He tried it again with equal futility—then, going to the tool-box, he took out his electric flashlight, and, lifting the engine hood, began to peer into the machinery. Everything seemed all right. He tried the crank again—the engine, like some cold, dead ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... result of the striving? was Death to be feared or a Hereafter to be desired?—incessantly he beat straining wings in the void. But even in early manhood he never sought to deceive himself. His Richard II. had sounded the shallow vanity of man's desires, the futility of man's ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... come within the state. Tennessee also forbade such immigration, while Maryland passed a law to the effect that all free Negroes must leave the state and be colonized in Africa—a monstrous piece of legislation that it was impossible to put into effect and that showed once for all the futility of attempts at forcible emigration as a solution of the problem. In general, however, the insurrection assisted the colonization scheme and also made more certain the carrying out of the policy of the Jackson ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley |
