"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lived and flourished a set of young men, some of them rich, some poor, and all of them idle, called "free-livers" (viveurs); and, indeed, they lived with incredible insolence —unabashed and unproductive consumers, and yet more intrepid drinkers. These spendthrifts mingled the roughest practical jokes with a life not so much reckless as suicidal; they drew back from no impossibility, and gloried in pranks which, nevertheless, were confined within certain limits; ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... befall them at the hands of the Indians if they remained under the domination of the English; that they had retired to Cape Breton, where they had remained ever since; but that the lands given them had been unproductive, and that they had been unable to support their families. They therefore wished to return to their former habitations. They cheerfully subscribed to the oath which was tendered them, and in consideration of their ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... great Babylon of ours. Wisdom told me to set the police upon her track, but pride bade me try every other means first. So with the feverish energy of one leading a forlorn hope, I began to pace the streets if haply I might see her face shine upon me from the crowd of passers by; a foolish fancy, unproductive of result! I not only failed to see her, ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... unproductive. There began to prevail amongst the islanders, a disposition to hear the wondrous discourses of this stranger, and he was employed, day after day, in explaining to large and attentive audiences, the history of the Christian world, and the observances and doctrine of that faith which ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hit from as high a point as the server can COMFORTABLY reach. To stretch unnecessarily is both wearing on the server and unproductive of results. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... without its assistance, and trade had already found new auxiliaries, so that on the 1st of October last the extraordinary spectacle was presented of a national bank more than one-half of whose capital was either lying unproductive in its vaults or in the hands ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... literary culture, it is an instructive fact that their city continued for several centuries afterwards to be one of the strongholds of Gentile superstition. But the labours of Paul at this time were not entirely unproductive. "Certain men clave unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman, named Damaris, and others with them." [107:1] The court of Areopagus, long the highest judicial tribunal in ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... multiplies. Had its opponents understood its meaning, they would have humored it into inoffensiveness; but the means they adopt to extirpate it are the sure way to develop it. Truth can no more be smothered by intolerance, than a sown field can be rendered unproductive by ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... person as her eldest daughter, showed me an Encyclopaedia, with colored prints, which she wished to send, if she knew but how, to the Free Church library. I walked with him through his garden, and saw trees loaded with yellow-cheeked pippins, where I had once seen only unproductive heath, that scantily covered a barren soil of ferruginous sand, and unwillingly declining an invitation to wait tea,—for a previous engagement interfered,—I took leave of the family, and returned to Dingwall. The following morning was gloomy, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... eyes to see if we are doing what He meant, and what He means should continue! But some men are too valuable to be thrown away on the mission field; they are such successful workers, pastors, evangelists, leaders of thought. They could not possibly be spared. Think of the waste of burying brain in unproductive sand! Apparently it is so, but is it really so? Does God view it like that? Where should we have been to-day if He had thought Jesus too valuable to be thrown away upon us? Was not each hour of those thirty-three years worth more than a ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... seclusion for a long time after that. Joan tried to think of plans, but her mind seemed, unproductive. She felt half dazed. Jim, too, appeared to be laboring under the same kind of burden. Moreover, responsibility had ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... productions, "Knickerbocker" manifests the most original power and is the most genuinely national in its quaintness and drollery. The very tardiness and prolixity of the story are skilfully made to heighten the humorous effect. The next few years were unproductive. Upon the death of his father, Irving had become a sleeping partner in his brother's commercial house, a branch of which was established at Liverpool. This, combined with the restoration of peace, induced ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... extremities, or even in the action of the will upon the muscles, as was done by M. Maine de Biran, we shall find it in none of these cases, not even in the last; for it is possible there should be a paralysis of the muscles which deprives the will of power over them, makes it unproductive, incapable of being a cause, and, consequently, of suggesting the notion of one. But what no paralysis can prevent is the action of the will upon itself, the production of a resolution; that is to say, the act of causation entirely mental, the primitive type of all ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... had become clear that to a continuation of efforts it was essential that a new supply of salmon ova should be discovered. Attention was now directed to the Penobscot River in the state of Maine, which, though very unproductive compared with Canadian rivers, might yet, perhaps, be made to yield the requisite ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... Englishwoman. Pitying the boy, as well as being considerably interested in his intelligent answers in class, Theo began to have him a good deal at the Bunk. She found many little offices there for him, such as to look after and keep tidy 'The Theodora,' the family boat, and to help in the obstinately unproductive garden. In this way the acquaintance between the three boys became a week-day as well as a Sunday one. Alick and Ned, in particular, rapidly found themselves to be kindred spirits. In each was ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... teacher must take pains to see that it is followed. Carefully to prepare his lesson according to a definite plan must become a habit with the student. Facility, accuracy, and thoroughness are impossible otherwise. Haphazard methods are wasteful of time and unproductive of results. The teacher can afford to emphasize method during the first few weeks of the course. The time thus spent in assisting the pupil to develop definite habits of study will pay rich dividends ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... economy which reaches its ends with the smallest possible waste, must blend. But as long as man's mind is not greatly changed, both will be the natural tendency of the capitalist, and both are abhorred by the governmental worker. He has no right to run risks, but does not feel it his duty to avoid an unproductive luxuriousness. He wastes in the routine where he ought to economize, and is pedantic in the great schemes in which his imagination ought to be unbridled. The opponents of socialism have often likened the future state to a gigantic prison, where every ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... contrary, Pope Paschal [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a time by Mahometan fanaticism, overran great part of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but without influencing civilization. While in possession of a great and productive idea, they remained a sterile and nomad people, or founded unproductive dynasties. For the Semitic race, the interval between God and man, and consequently between God and civilization, was and is infinite, impassable. The Arabs possessed nothing but the devastating force ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the quantity and quality of the spirit yielded from that hogshead. Cleanliness in every matter and thing, in and about a distillery becomes an indispensable requisite, without a strict observance of which the undertaker will find the establishment unproductive and injurious to his interest. Purity cannot exist without cleanliness. Cleanliness in the human system will destroy an obstinate itch, of consequence, it is the active handmaid of health and comfort, and without which, decency ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... natives, had a number of cocks and hens, and one sow, in his separate possession. With regard to the gardens which had formerly been planted though they had almost entirely been neglected, and some of them destroyed, they were not wholly unproductive. They were found to contain cabbages, onions, leeks, purslain, radishes, mustard, and a few potatoes. The potatoes, which had first been brought from the Cape of Good Hope, were greatly meliorated by change of soil; and, with proper cultivation, would be superior to those ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... rapidly recover its wonted prosperity. Its interests require that some measure should be taken to release the large amount of capital invested in the securities of the Government. It is not now merely unproductive, but in taxation annually consumes $150,000,000, which would otherwise be used by our enterprising people in adding to the wealth of the nation. Our commerce, which at one time successfully rivaled that of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... no fighting against that. Or, at least, it did not seem that fighting was any use. One may punch a bag, but the bag does not mind, and at last one grows weary of unproductive quarrelling. One shrugs one's shoulders, settles to the collar, and accepts whatever destiny the gods, in their wisdom, have ordained. Is life the anvil upon which the gods beat out their will? It is not so. The ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... influence. The land of Cape Leveque is low, and presents a sandy beach lined by a rocky reef, extending off the shore for a mile, on many parts of which the sea was breaking heavily: the land was clothed with a small brush wood, but altogether the coast presented a very unproductive appearance, and reminded us of the triste and arid character of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... villa rustica of the time,—the working farm-house with its wine-vats and olive-mills, like that recently excavated at Boscoreale near Pompeii. Yet it would be unfair to such men as Cicero and his friends, the wiser and quieter section of the aristocracy, to call their work altogether unproductive. True, it left little permanent impress on human modes of thought; it wrought no material change for the better in Italy or the Empire. We may go so far as to allow that it initiated that habit of dilettantism which we find already exaggerated ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... earning power; they will not buy anything. But, put them all together—ah! the result is magical. You see, it is the aggregate that counts. Now with this theory in view, our company gets to work and canvasses the country and it gathers together thousands of little, useless, insignificant, unproductive funds like yours and mine and joins them together into one vast, giant aggregate which we call a trust fund. I see it is appealing to you. It could not be otherwise. Now, with this aggregate, you, and I, and everyone can own vast estates, buy forty-year debentures, lend money on approved security, ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... but three in number, but this is quite in accordance with the notions of the ancient Greeks, who only recognized spring, summer, and autumn as seasons; nature being supposed to be wrapt in death or slumber, during that cheerless and unproductive portion of the year which we call winter. In some parts of Greece there were but two Horae, Thallo, goddess of the bloom, and Carpo, of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... unproductive outlay. Louis Bonaparte only possessed as much memory as is useful. Hudson Lowe did not prevent him from smiling upon Englishmen; the Marquis of Montchenu did not prevent him ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... refusing angrily to fear. The sleep seemed to him like a thin, slippery coating over gulfs unplumbed; it was insecure, yet it failed to let him down into blessed depths of oblivion below. But he would not think to no purpose (he had a dread of the wild, disordered clacking of the wheels in unproductive thought), and he would not invite again the strange humiliation, the relief tinged by aversion, that came over him when he felt, on leaving them, the inviolability of the three in their legal bond. She had looked to him so like heaven's own, he had upborne her in his ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... we were lacking in imagination but we would never believe in crushing a defeated foe, or trying to keep him down forever. That since no one could get rid of the German race, and France had to remain their neighbour, it appeared to be more sensible to try and discourage hate which was unproductive; and that there was little choice for them unless their intention was to prepare slowly and steadily for another war. He disclaimed all idea of revenge, pointing out that we were an island without frontiers, and that twice within the recollection of one generation their industrious ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... pretty plain speaking as to the late hero between the two men. Edmund Grosse half drawled out far the worst comments of the two; he liked the lawyer and let himself speak freely. And although the visit was apparently wholly unproductive of other results, it was a decided relief to his feelings. Then he heard that Rose had come back to London, and he went to see her. It was about nine months since she had become a widow. She was alone in the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... weather grows warmer your fishing this season will, I fear, prove unproductive; for it has always been observed that in cold and windy weather the fish keep in deep water and are never caught in numbers, especially ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... less suited for the abode of men could scarce have been found, or even imagined. The soil was sterile, unproductive, and rarely visited by game worthy of being hunted. The few roots and other articles of food they were enabled to raise, furnished but ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the establishment of the colony been observed to be so severe. The settlement had indeed, between the fires of the summer, and the floods and gales of the winter, suffered very considerably. Added to these, at this time, were the inconveniences arising from an unproductive harvest, from an exhausted store in the very essential articles of clothing and bedding, from the hostile disposition of many of the natives, and from the annihilation of morality, honesty, and industry in the major part ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Cultivation was easy in the neighbourhood of these natural reservoirs, but everywhere else the movements of the river were rather injurious than advantageous to man. The inundation scarcely ever covered the higher ground in the valley, which therefore remained unproductive; it flowed rapidly over the lands of medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in the hollows that they became ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and serve the passions of monarchs and their cabinets. Only sixty years ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Scotish amateur and bookseller equally look to the great metropolis for the supply of their wants, and the North Country libraries are sent up to London for sale. The capital of Scotland has lost its ancient prestige as a cover for this sort of sport, and is as unproductive as an ordinary English ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... oversee their own enterprises and manage their own workmen, but even of unproductive capitalists, men who have shares in and reap profits out of a business which they never meddle with. The first reason is, because this position of the productive, and still more that of the unproductive capitalist, is a prize for past industry expended upon production. To understand this, we must recollect once more that men work, not as individuals, but as heads of families. Every working man, from the sailor to the shop-boy, covets for himself two things, pay and leisure. The same ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... one feature that the young farmer is most likely to overlook in the selection of a farm is the relative proportion of tillable land. One farm of 200 acres, may, on account of stony land, wet land, comparatively unproductive woodland, or because of the arrangement of fences and roadways, contain only eighty acres of tillable land, while another may contain 160 acres. This is one reason why a 160-acre farm in the central West may be more valuable than ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... civilization. For this reason the question of transportation is just as important to a community as the industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs are brought ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... sold his cow, and spent the price of it again in goods. The event is noticed everywhere at once: the town's three lawyers notice it, the three little local papers notice it; money is circulating more freely of late. Unproductive—but it ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... placid face to the other; then she stepped to the baronet's side and, seizing him by the shoulder, shook him sharply. The sleeper might have been dead for all the consciousness which he exhibited at her rude touch. Another and more violent shake proved equally unproductive of results. Then she passed on to the colonel, to Mildmay, and to the professor, experimenting in like manner with each. If she wished to arouse them, her efforts were useless; they were, one and all, locked fast in the embrace of sleep—profound, unnatural, death-like sleep. A scornful laugh ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... there lived and flourished a set of young men, some of them rich, some poor, and all of them idle, called "free-livers" (viveurs); and, indeed, they lived with incredible insolence—unabashed and unproductive consumers, and yet more intrepid drinkers. These spendthrifts mingled the roughest practical jokes with a life not so much reckless as suicidal; they drew back from no impossibility, and gloried in pranks which, nevertheless, were confined within ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Johnstown, worn down with heat, fatigue, and bad fare. It is some small consolation that these tedious journeys are not wholly unproductive. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... was a kind of unforeseen ruin, which suddenly attacked the landed proprietors and utterly deprived them of the hope of subsistence; for, in the case of estates that were deserted and unproductive, the owners or tenants of which had either died or abandoned their country and hidden themselves after the misfortunes they had undergone, Justinian did not hesitate to impose a tax. Such were these "impositions," which were of frequent occurrence ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... the requirements of the college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless: we yearn, Alexander-like, for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... cultivation? They would have reduced all their most necessary establishments; they would have suspended the justest payments; they would have employed every shilling derived from the producing, to re-animate the powers of the unproductive, parts. While they were performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors whose crimes were their claims, that they must keep an awful distance; that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... to convert the world,' Herbert answered chillily, rolling himself a tiny cigarette, 'he must convince the unproductive as well as the proletariate before he can set things fairly on the roll for better arrangement. The proletariate's all very well in its way, no doubt, but the unproductive happen to hold the key of the situation. One convert like you or me is worth a thousand ignorant East-end ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the political thermometer of peace and war in their criminal hands. But it is not commerce—it deserves not the name of commerce—it does not contribute to public welfare—it does not augment the elements of public prosperity—it is but immoral GAMBLING, which transfers an unproductive imaginary wealth from one hand into another, without augmenting the stock of national property:—that is not commerce: and it is a degradation of the character of a nation, when the interests of that speculation have the slightest influence, or are made of the slightest consideration ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... what business it is of a clergyman, or of any one else, whether I own property in Dalton Street," Mr. Plimpton had said, as he sat on the edge of the lawyer's polished mahogany desk. "What does he expect us to do,—allow our real estate to remain unproductive merely for sentimental reasons? That's like a parson, most of 'em haven't got any more common sense than that. What right has he got to go nosing around Dalton Street? Why doesn't he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... McClellan when the hero of the Copperheads was in search of mud in the Peninsula. The letter rings as sound common sense; it shows, however, that common sense debarred of strong will remains unproductive of good. Mr. Lincoln commonly shows strong will, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... to those above cited are to be met with from time to time in the laws of the State of New York; but in general these attempts at centralization are weak and unproductive. The great authorities of the State have the right of watching and controlling the subordinate agents, without that of rewarding or punishing them. The same individual is never empowered to give an order and to punish disobedience; he has therefore the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... course, were early on the ground, for in spite of the father's contention that they could ill afford, at the moment, to tie up more money in unproductive properties, the son had argued that they must have "protection," and his ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... him to her arms without his knowledge, and borne him a son; the child of this furtive union was the jackal Anubis. Thus when a higher Nile overflows lands not usually covered by the inundation, and lying unproductive for lack of moisture, the soil eagerly absorbs the water, and the germs which lay concealed in the ground burst forth into life. The gradual invasion of the domain of Sit by Osiris marks the beginning of the strife. Sit rebels against the wrong of which he is the victim, involuntary ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... success, especially when the first attempts are made to grow crops. The choice of hay may be one between a crop of beggar weed and no crop at all. All are agreed as to the renovation which it brings to soils; hence, when grown or allowed to grow on unproductive soil for a few years and then plowed under, the soil becomes productive. Since it grows late rather than early in the season where the seed is in the land, it will not interfere with the growth of the corn, but will come on later, and thus exert a beneficial influence ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... pretty well the state of his finances, he began to search his pockets to see if he could not somewhere find a stray dime, or, better still, a quarter, with which to purchase the meal of which he stood so much in need. But his search was unproductive, or, rather, it only resulted in the discovery ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... complete its course unless some ingenious method of evading it can be discovered in the meantime. Alas, my beloved one! the occupation of ensnaring winged insects is indeed an alluring one, but as far as this person has observed, it is also exceedingly unproductive of taels. Could not some more expeditious means of enriching yourself be discovered? Frequently has the unnoticed but nevertheless very attentive Lila heard her father and the round-bodied ones who visit him speak of exploits which seem to consist of assuming the shapes of ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Stewart, Monge, and Chasles, all of whom possessed this power in an eminent degree. Indeed, without it, all attempts to study the geometry of space (even the very elements of descriptive geometry, to say nothing of the more recondite investigations of the science) would be entirely unproductive. It is, moreover, a power capable of being acquired by men of average intellect without extreme difficulty; and that even to the extent of "mentally seeing" the constituent parts of figures which have never been exhibited to the eye ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... are produced year after year on the same field certain constituents of the soil essential to plant growth are removed, and the soil becomes impoverished and unproductive. To make the land once more fertile these constituents must be replaced. The calcium phosphate of the mineral deposits or of bone ash serves well as a material for restoring phosphorus to soils exhausted of that essential ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... the labor and the products of tropical Africa. In reference to the benefits which had been derived from her West India colonies, before the suppression of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the command ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... throw himself down prostrate before that Dread Presence, and plead the merits of the Son of God, before it. He that finds his life shall lose it; but he that loses his life shall find it. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a single unproductive corn of wheat; but if it die, it germinates and brings forth much fruit. He who does not avoid a contact between the sin of his soul and the holiness of his God, but on the contrary seeks to have these two ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... reinforcements and offered an obstinate resistance that has rarely been equalled. They stood up to be shot down—the machine-gun men at their guns, the grenadiers on their grenade chests. All attempts at a counter-attack remained equally unproductive. The possession of the heights of Massiges enabled us to extend our gains towards Ville-sur-Tourbe, while taking in flank the trenches which we had failed to secure by a ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... stood between me and the good. Yearning for the ideal will have lost me reality. Vague aspiration and undefined desire will have been enough to make my talents useless, and to neutralize my powers. Unproductive nature that I am, tortured by the belief that production was required of me, may not my very remorse be a ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... instant to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... man must be prolific who is vigorous and enjoys good health. Neither does it follow, because a woman has never given birth to a living child, that she has not conceived. About one marriage in eight is unproductive of living children, and therefore fails to add to the population. The seeds of life have, however, been more extensively sown among women than these figures would seem to indicate. If the life of an infant for a long time after birth is a frail one, before birth its existence is precarious in the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... (Calvinism) Spaniards seem wise, and are madmen The Alcoran was less cruel than the Inquisition There are few inventions in morals To attack England it was necessary to take the road of Ireland Tranquil insolence Unproductive consumption was alarmingly increasing Upon their knees, served the queen with wine Wish to sell us the bear-skin before ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... Lawford Tapp? Hi-mighty! what you forgot this time? Fishhooks? Goin' fishin', be you? Wal, in my 'pinion you're throwin' your hook into unproductive waters around here, as ye might say. Even chummin' won't sarve ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... but for these loppings of affliction you might have effloresced into the rank luxuriant growth of mere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the outward display of Religiousness, without the fruits of true Religion. You might have lived and died unproductive cumberers, deceiving others and deceiving yourselves. But He would not suffer you to linger in this state of worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely, these severest cuttings and incisions of the pruning knife, than to listen to the stern ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier marts of commerce. "How many goodly cities could I reckon up," says Burton, "that thrive wholly by trade, where thousands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... of cotton, pledging themselves to pay the government for their subsistence from the first income of the crop. The other 7,200 included the paupers, that is, all Negroes over and under the self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospitals. This class, however, instead of being unproductive, had then under cultivation 500 acres of corn, 790 acres of vegetables, and 1,500 acres of cotton, besides working at wood chopping and other industries. There were reported in the aggregate over 100,000 acres of cotton under cultivation, 7,000 acres of which were ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... consequent on this depreciation was great and afflicting. "The requisitions of congress for eight years past," say the committee in February, 1786, to whom the subject of the revenue had been referred, "have been so irregular in their operation, so uncertain in their collection, and so evidently unproductive, that a reliance on them in future as a source from whence moneys are to be drawn to discharge the engagements of the confederacy, definite as they are in time and amount, would be not less dishonourable ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... made by the intermediary were such that the latter would have been shown the door. But if these matters had been satisfactory, ought the proposal to have been rejected because the loan was to be raised for unproductive purposes? ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and by- paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... colonel. He frowned at her, involuntarily. He was ready to accept Madame Beattie's knowing neither good nor evil, but she seemed to him singularly unpleasant in flaunting that lack of bias. She was quite conscious of his distaste, but it didn't trouble her. Unproductive opinions were nothing to her ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... to eat their bread, and drink their soup, daily at the convent gates, rather than to make any honest decent effort to maintain themselves. Every country must be poor in which a large portion of the public property goes to the unproductive classes. The soldiery, the monks, the state annuitants, the crowds of domestics, dependent on the families of the grandees, all are necessarily unproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. It makes no ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... a poor and sandy soil, so unproductive that corn is in the greatest scarcity and is always brought from Khartoum by the annual boats for the supply of the traders' people, who congregate there from the interior, in the months of January and February, to deliver the ivory for shipment ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... soon became evident to the committee, that their mission was to be unproductive of results. The government did not take kindly to them, nor would the Bishop of Quebec and his clergy trust the vague expressions of the United Colonies, whose statute books, they pointed out, still bore the most bitter and unchristian sentiments against all priests ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... things which he now brought to the store to sell. What would Sinkum Fung give for them? The payment must be made in food, for the tribe were nearly starving. Food was difficult to procure in the intense heat; the ground was arid and unproductive. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... house: a resort for the scions of the old tidewater families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened a slide and peeped ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... &c adj.; infertility, sterility, infecundity^; masturbation; impotence &c 158; unprofitableness &c (inutility) 645. waste, desert, Sahara, wild, wilderness, howling wilderness. V. be unproductive &c adj.; hang fire, flash in the pan, come to nothing. [make unproductive] sterilize, addle; disable, inactivate. Adj. unproductive, acarpous^, inoperative, barren, addled, infertile, unfertile, unprolific^, arid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of that idea, partly in the thoughts and pictures with which some speeches, principally the monologues of Faustus himself, are interwoven. The Faustus of Marlowe is the Faust of the legend, tired of learning because it is so unproductive, and selling his soul, not for knowledge, but for wealth and power. His investigating conversations with Mephistopheles, his inquiries, and the answers of the latter, are almost as shallow and childish as those in the People's Book; and Faustus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... name of farmer, with which some parts of Scotland abound. The man was listless, and apathetic with hunger and poverty, a miserable, degraded creature, who would have sacrificed anything or anybody for the sake of the few pounds that would pay his rent or sow his tiny bit of unproductive land. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Dante. Ever since that day when he had seen again the fair girl whom he had loved as a fair child he had been, as indeed he had said he would be, a changed man, no longer indifferent to the great concerns of state, no longer absorbed in unproductive studies to the extinction of all sense of citizenship, but a patriotic youth keenly alive to the duties that devolved upon a true-hearted Florentine, and zealous in the practice of all those arts that should ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... mischievous and wasteful to relieve such persons without exacting labour from them, and just as reprehensible to employ them in digging holes and filling them up again, or in any other occupation equally useless and unproductive. If their work is to be obtained, it should be directed into some channel that will benefit themselves and the community. Public roads, harbours, piers, breakwaters, and the like, appear an obvious outlet for the labour thus placed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... winter-kills so badly as to render it unprofitable. Clover makes good pastures, being nutritious, and early and rapid growing. Red-clover makes fair hay, though inferior to timothy or red-top. White clover is unsuitable for hay; it shrinks so much in drying, that it is very unproductive. It is the best of all grasses for sheep pasture, and its blossoms afford in abundance the best of honey. Red clover plowed in, even when full-grown, is an excellent fertilizer. It begins to be regarded, in western New York, as productive of the weevil, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... To-day there are less than half a dozen families left, and they survive by cutting cord wood from the sheep pastures! We must haul our wool from the Argentine, and our mutton from Montana, while our own land goes back to unproductive wilderness. As the road draws near the long hill down into Monterey, there stands a ruined house beside it, one of many ruins you will have passed, the plaster in heaps on the floor, the windows gone, the door ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... mean to say that the calling of an officer was an altogether unproductive vocation. The yearly training of a large number of soldiers, who supported the credit of the kingdom, and thereby insured peace, was, no doubt, a positive factor in ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of the great chain of American lakes, even to the head waters of the Father of Rivers, and over the rich and fertile plains stretching southward from the lake shores? Let the teeming populations—let the hundreds of millions of annual products that have succeeded to the but recent dreary and unproductive haunts of the red man—answer that question. That very preponderance of free States which the Senator from New York contemplates with such satisfaction, and which has moved him exultingly to exclaim that there is at last a North side of this Chamber, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... chaste, Like the snows which envelop the bleak arid waste Of the desert; once melted, alas! what remains But the poor, unproductive, dry soil of the plains? The flora of Cupid will never be found, However he toil there, to thrive ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to Farrukhnagar, about twelve miles over an execrable road running over a flat but rugged surface of unproductive soil.[3] India is, perhaps, the only civilized country in the world where a great city could be approached by such a road from the largest military Station in the empire,[4] not more than three stages distant. After breakfast the head native police ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... once known to their last tree, including the safest routes of approach by day or night, had been cut down to make space for substantial but unexciting houses, quite like the houses in anybody's town. Other orchards had shrunk to a few poor unproductive trees so little prized by their owners that they could no longer excite evil ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... part of four unproductive years had the life of Calico run to commonplaces. Then, early one June morning, came an hour big with events. Being the nigh horse in Uncle Enoch's pair, Calico caught first glimpse of the weird procession which met them as they turned into the Bangor ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... went to bed, but not to sleep. During the greater part of the night I lay awake, musing upon the work which I had determined to execute. For a long time my brain was dry and unproductive; I could form no plan which appeared feasible. At length I felt within my brain a kindly glow; it was the commencement of inspiration; in a few minutes I had formed my plan; I then began to imagine the scenes and the incidents. Scenes and incidents flitted ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the demesne lands were in farm; and these dues were paid by the tenant. A reference to the Promptorinm Parvulorum (a further instalment of which I rejoice to learn, from Mr. Way's communication, in No. 15., is in a state of progress) has been equally unproductive. The editorial note to the communications inserted in No. 17., on the interpretation of Pokership, induces me to send you this query, in the hope of eliciting information, if not from the gentleman you there refer to, at least from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... and gratefully acknowledged. It was proposed to give Miss Nightingale a public reception; but, with true modesty, she shrunk from appearing in any other than her own character of nurse and soother, and at once passed into retirement. But that retirement was not allowed to be unproductive. So soon as her health, which was at all times delicate, and had suffered considerably in the Crimea, had been somewhat restored, she set to work to render the fruits of her experience useful to the world. In 1859 she produced her "Hints on Nursing," one ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... subjects of his published experiments having been the conversion of bar-iron into steel in the crucible by contact with regulated proportions of charcoal. The experiments which he made in connection with this controversy, though in themselves unproductive of results, led to the important discovery by Mr. Mushet of the certain fusibility of malleable iron at ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... the business of fiction is to exhibit human life, can deny that scenes of misery and crime must of necessity, while human nature remains what it is, form part of that exhibition. Nobody can assert that such scenes are unproductive of useful results, when they are turned to a plainly and purely moral purpose. If I am asked why I have written certain scenes in this book, my answer is to be found in the universally-accepted truth which the preceding words express. I have a right to appeal to that truth; for I ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... condition of affairs early and earnestly attracted the attention of Lord George Bentinck. So vast an expenditure in unproductive labour dismayed him. He would not easily assent to the conclusion that profitable enterprise under the circumstances was impossible. Such a conclusion seemed to him unnatural, and that an occasion where we commenced with despair ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... system of rotation we keep about all of our farm under control; but the smaller farms were necessarily cropped more continuously to support the family, and they became so unproductive that many of them have been completely abandoned for agricultural purposes; and even some of the large plantations were poorly managed, one part having been cropped continuously until too poor to pay for cropping, ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... within the first third of this century. During that period, unproductive of great work, he ranked among the foremost writers. His papers in the North American Review, as the first original criticism on this side of the Atlantic, marked an era in our letters. He was one of the first to recognize the genius of Wordsworth ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... 1,040 new post-offices have been established. It hence appears that under judicious management the income from this establishment may be relied on as fully adequate to defray its expenses, and that by the discontinuance of post-roads altogether unproductive others of more useful character may be opened, till the circulation of the mail shall keep pace with the spread of our population, and the comforts of friendly correspondence, the exchanges of internal traffic, and the lights of the periodical press shall be distributed ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?" The commercial spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... rode into the forest (which was dry and very unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through Acacia Catechu, belted by Sissoo, which often fringes the stream, always occupying the lowest flats. The foliage at this season is brilliantly green; and as the evening advanced, a yellow convolvulus burst into flower like magic, adorning the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... flowering of genius in the strong soil of misery. But he had suffered enough already, poor devil! The result of loving for the last time, with no hope of possession, might fling him from Parnassus into the Inferno, where he would roast in unproductive torment for the rest of his mortal span. Even that might not be for long. He looked frail enough beside these fresh young English sportsmen, or even the high-coloured planters, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... straightened. The prospect was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Righteous. She was sister of Concobar Mac Nessa. Sualtam was the King of Cooalney [Footnote: Now the barony of Cooley, a mountainous promontory which the County of Louth projects into the Irish Sea.] a land of woods and mountains, an unproductive headland reaching out into the ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... deplorable, as offensive to Infinite Love. Property is God's gift, and he does not require us to undervalue his gifts, but to use them with his own good-will to men. To be willing that our labor or capital should be unproductive is no indication of a faithful steward. 2. There is a difference between the design of becoming rich, and that of acquiring property. The latter, under certain restrictions, is a duty incumbent on all. One may have a peculiar talent in this direction;—a turn ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... epoch, the Government spent fully one-half of its total income on works of piety. No country except in time of war ever devoted so much to unproductive expenditures. The enormous quantities of copper used for casting images not only exhausted the produce of the mines but also made large inroads upon the currency, hundreds of thousands of cash ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... that he was in a sentimental stage; but he was in another sort of contemplative mood perhaps more common in the young men of our day—that of questioning whether it were worth while to take part in the battle of the world: I mean, of course, the young men in whom the unproductive labor of questioning is sustained by three or five per cent, on capital which somebody else has battled for. It puzzled Sir Hugo that one who made a splendid contrast with all that was sickly and puling should be hampered with ideas which, since they left an accomplished Whig ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... economic point of view, can not be expected personally to take care of so large a consumption of superfluities as this posture of affairs requires at their hands. They would, as the Victorian peace teaches, necessarily have the assistance of a trained corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first and most immediate of whom would be those whom the genial phrasing of Adam Smith designates "menial servants." Beyond these would come the purveyors of superfluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeed redundant, class of tradespeople of high and low degree,—dependent ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen |
