"Inutility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her two predecessors both in the creation of boroughs and the recommendation of candidates; but her keen political instinct soon perceived the inutility of both expedients. She saw that the "management" of the Houses, so easy under Cromwell, was becoming harder every day. The very number of the members she called up into the Commons from nomination boroughs, sixty-two in all, showed the ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... slight interchange of shots took place, during which a troop of the 18th Hussars, reconnoitring too boldly, was cut off, and was seen no more that day.[98] With the enemy in this attitude upon strong ground, General Yule saw the inutility of further efforts of this kind, and gave the order for retirement. At 1 p.m. the force was again below Indumeni, as it had been in the morning, having effected nothing. As the men climbed the last few yards of the precipitous ascent, the fog, rolling for a short time from the summit ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... born into an institution is a thing which must not be lightly considered: it imposes certain duties upon you—the quiet examination of its tenets, for example—and unless you are convinced of its utter inutility, not to say immorality, it is your duty to bear such a part in relation to it as shall not mar its usefulness; and you may no more throw it away through caprice or indifferentism than you may throw away your own life, simply because you did ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rejoices the heart of man, and is agreeable to both gods and men, would have typified his victory—and if the expedition had proved fruitless, the wood of the vine, which is useless for any kind of work, and only good for burning as firewood, might in that case signify the inutility of this expedition. It is allowed that the artifice, malice, and inventions of the heathen priests had much to do with the oracles; but are we to infer from this that the demon had ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... has a spiritual, a ritual meaning far beyond its immediate political results. It is a religious service. If, for instance, the Socialists were numerous or courageous enough to capture and smash up the Bank of England, you might argue for ever about the inutility of the act, and how it really did not touch the root of the economic problem in the correct manner. But mankind would never forget it. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... intended to reform the world: had an all-wise Being planned it, nothing is more improbable than that it should have failed: omniscience would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme which experience demonstrates, to this age, to have ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... continued seeking an entrance; but the thought of admitting them never once crossed my imagination. At last, one among the number suggested the inutility of any further attempt; and, abandoning their original design, they all marched off to the grave-yard, where they remained till dawn as it seemed in some grand carousal. They then, as I was afterwards told, returned to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... aborted Organs.—Organs or parts in this strange condition, bearing the stamp of inutility, are extremely common throughout nature. For instance, rudimentary mammae are very general in the males of mammals: I presume that the "bastard-wing" in birds may be safely considered as a digit in a rudimentary state: in very many snakes one lobe of the lungs is rudimentary; in other snakes there ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... sports, from a desire to display their grandeur, courage, and address before the ladies and the assembled multitude, that no bulls, decretals, or anathemas of the church were able to restrain them. The use of gunpowder, and the consequent inutility of armour to defend the person in battle, gradually put an end to these animating shows. The tragical death of Henry II. of France, in 1559, who was accidentally killed in a tournament, caused laws to be passed prohibiting ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... system of outward righteousness. In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul speaks with unusual boldness and earnestness, severely rebuking them for their departure from the truth, and reiterating with dogmatic ardor the inutility of circumcision as of the Law abrogated by Christ, with whom, in the liberty which he proclaimed, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all are one in Him. And Paul reminds ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... with the kind of justice of which the other is so easily capable, and which consists in treating his friends and his enemies alike: from this proceeded the penury of the treasury. Another misfortune also resulted from the last war, and especially from the last peace: the inutility of the generous feeling which had illustrated the Austrian arms in the battles of Essling and Wagram, had cooled the national attachment to the sovereign, which had formerly been very strong. The same thing ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... both cold and rainy, the poor children, who were too young to understand the nature of their situation, or the inutility of complaining, incessantly cried out for water, and begged that more clothes might be wrapped round them. Even after they came to us the little things were still crying, "Oh! do give us some water"—words which long sounded in our ears. None of these women were by any means strong—on ...
— The Junior Classics • Various |
