"Worthlessness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to hear any excuse that No. 3, rear rank, had to offer, so that he would be able to remark upon its utter worthlessness. Now, No. 3. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened to worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially: it is ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... so to persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature. Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the utter worthlessness of his prospects in Barlingford, Mr. Sheldon turned his eyes Londonwards; and his father happening at the same time very conveniently to depart this life, Philip, the son and heir, disposed of the business to an aspiring ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... this, that every necessary and useful regulation was suggested that could promote the convenience and advantage of these people, who being in possession of land that yielded the most ample returns, nothing but the greatest worthlessness on their part could have prevented their getting forward, and becoming men of property. That too many of them were of this description will appear evident, from its being notorious that their crops were no sooner ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... of a not over-wise doctor). If he seems to be extreme in his condemnation of medicine and to rely too much on diet and exercise, he might appeal to nearly all the best physicians of our own age in support of his opinions, who often speak to their patients of the worthlessness of drugs. For we ourselves are sceptical about medicine, and very unwilling to submit to the purgative treatment of physicians. May we not claim for Plato an anticipation of modern ideas as about some questions of astronomy and physics, so also about medicine? As in ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... is a duty or a grief must be worth it,' said John. 'Consider the worthlessness of what we think most important in That Presence. A kingdom less than an ant's nest in comparison. But, here, I must show you a more everyday bit. It was towards the end, when she hardly ever left her grandfather, and I had been writing to urge her ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... applicability of his teaching to all times and to all countries. Many will ask what possible good could be derived from the works of men who must have been either deceived or deceivers, nor would it be difficult to quote some passages in order to show the utter absurdity and worthlessness of the religious books of the Hindus and Chinese. But this was not the spirit in which the apostle of the Gentiles addressed himself to the Epicureans and Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and a sincere believer in the divine ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... worthlessness of the replies that were made in response to Hay's note of September 6, 1899, became fully apparent in the discussions that soon arose as to the status of consuls in the various spheres of influence. Japan claimed that sovereignty did not pass with a lease ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... nullify everything else; they may contract and even seemingly destroy man and his spiritual potencies; all his acts may seem fruitless and vain, and his whole existence may seem to sink into nothingness and worthlessness. Yet, through the entrance of the new life and a new world, everything is transformed from within, and the clearness of the light appears all the more by contrast with all the depth of the darkness. Indeed, in the ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... some accident might have happened to the boy; but, instead of making a serious effort to find out what had become of him, his mother found it easier to accuse him of indecorous conduct and general worthlessness. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... doctor, probably a quack, acquired some notoriety by always prescribing the left leg of a boiled fowl. Reiteration of the superior nutritive qualities of that member, and positive assertions of the comparative worthlessness of the right leg, doubtless impressed the patients' minds in a ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... his request that Admetus, now threatened with premature death, may live out the appointed seventy years. The Fates retort on him by exclamations on the worthlessness of such a boon. They enumerate the follies and miseries which beset the successive stages of man's earthly career, and maintain that its only brightness lies in the delusive sunshine, the glamour of hope, with which he (Apollo) gilds it. Apollo owns that human happiness may rest ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... banks of a stream which came to plentiful flood in the spring was worth more in hard dollars and cents than a much larger and finer piece back in the hills. A piece of timber which had no access whatever to water approximated worthlessness. On the atlas, the largest pieces of Crane & Keith timber were back from the river—not too far back, but still separated from it by narrow strips which, for the most part, were farms. Some few pieces ran down to the river, but it was apparent that Crane & Keith were looking ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... themselves have been the first to feel the Zeitgeist. They have written as they have because they have found the melancholy view of life the most fruitful thing in recent culture. They have found it the richest in novelty, surprises, images, scenes, reflections, effects, and sensations. The worthlessness of life is an idea that agrees with science, meets the mood of the age, and fires the imagination of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... of worthlessness is often referred to as when it is said that "There is small choice in rotten apples," with which may be compared another which warns us of the contagious effects ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... known that the masters were trafficking in dangerous investments to the probable loss of the public, duty would have required him to examine their accounts and place all trust-moneys beyond their reach; but until the crash came, Lord Macclesfield knew neither the actual worthlessness of the South Sea Stock, nor the embarrassed circumstances of the defaulting masters, nor the peril of the persons committed to his care. The system which permitted the masters to speculate with money not their own was execrable, but the Lord Chancellor ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... conspicuous and characteristic features which serve to distinguish it and make its lessons peculiarly important and memorable. For example, the first period is that of the lost days of sin, in which the great lesson taught is the bitterness and worthlessness of a disobedient life. In the second period may be traced the remarkable steps of preparation for the great work of his life. The third period embraces the actual working out of the divine mission committed to him. Then for seventeen or eighteen years we find ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... hope to hear the bulk of the music for the theatre, as has been remarked, because of the worthlessness of the plays to which it is attached. Even King Arthur, The Tempest, The Fairy Queen and Dioclesian pieces are too fragmentary, disconnected, to be performed with any effect without scenery, costume, and some explanation in the way of dialogue. In King Arthur there ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... attitude toward her father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie her affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Pierce agreed. "Poor little thing, she's lived in a world of bottles and splints and bandages. She's never had a chance to realize either the value or the worthlessness of things." ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... and required her physician to cast her nativity. Agrippa replied, that he would not encourage such idle curiosity. The result was, he lost her confidence, and was forthwith dismissed. If it had been through his belief in the worthlessness of astrology, that he had made his answer, we might admire his honest and fearless independence; but, when it is known that, at the very same time, he was in the constant habit of divination and fortunetelling; and that he was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... sometimes think that the Kosekin may be nearer to the truth than we are. We have by nature a strong love of life—it is our dominant feeling—but yet there is in the minds of all men a deep underlying conviction of the vanity of life, and the worthlessness. In all ages and among all races the best, the purest, and the wisest have taught this truth—that human life is not a blessing; that the evil predominates over the good; and that our best hope is to gain a spirit of acquiescence with its inevitable ills. All ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... persons who speak English, the objection to the engagement of domestic servants who have acquired the language of their Christian masters not existing to the same extent here as in Bengal, where, in most cases, it is a proof of utter worthlessness. Numbers of very respectable servants, who are found in old established families at this presidency, speak English, and the greater portion take a pride in knowing a little of their masters' language. These smatterers ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... own worthlessness, perhaps, until I saw Mabel. I have travelled with some as fair, and have guided them through the forest, and seen them in their perils and in their gladness; but they were always too much above me to make me think of them ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... principles, and to make him comprehend and fear—nominally God, but really—society. But why, in addition to doing this, should we strangle the unpractical side of his nature,—the ideal, imaginative, spiritual side,—the side which alone can determine his value or worthlessness in eternity? If our minds were visible as our bodies are, we should behold on every side of us, and in our own private looking-glasses, such abortions, cripples, and monstrosities as all the slums of Europe and the East could not parallel. We pretend ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... now. Call not for the police. The stones of the street and the coin of the vaults are of equal value to this simple pair. Strange sight! They take up the bright gold in handfuls and throw it sportively into the air for the sake of seeing the glittering worthlessness descend again in a shower. They know not that each of those small yellow circles was once a magic spell, potent to sway men's hearts and mystify their moral sense. Here let them pause in the investigation of the past. They have discovered the ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... extraordinary communication which had led to this disorder of mind, we do not hesitate, under the circumstances, to pronounce it an act of gratuitous cruelty. Of all pangs that can assail a human heart, none transcends that of learning the worthlessness of those we love; and to lay this burden, which has crushed and crazed the strongest natures, upon the tender heart of a child, was little less than murderous. Nor can the motive assigned justify an act so cruel; since modern morality increasingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... districts of the mind, we do not remember that any one has sharply examined the value of the treasures so often displayed, set forth the methods of their influence and its qualifications, and determined the respective limits of their use and their worthlessness. Undertaking this task, we must, in the outset, divide aphorisms into the two classes of proverbs and maxims, plebeian perceptions and aristocratic conclusions, moral axioms and philosophic rules. This distinction may easily be made ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... "universal remedy for all diseases." I had often read in the apothecaries' advertisements cautions against counterfeits, and rewards for their detection, and I always noticed, from these printed evidences, that the counterfeits were exactly in proportion to the worthlessness of the genuine article, and that medicine which was utterly valueless itself suffered most from the abundance of counterfeits. So it was with the Lady of Remedios; after she had fallen below the dignity of a humbug, and no man was found so poor as to do her reverence, she was spirited away ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... an hour of bargaining, during which Captain Van Horn had insisted on the worthlessness of the parcel, he had bought a fat pig worth five dollars and exchanged it for her. Thus, since he had paid for the pig in trade goods, and since trade goods were rated at a hundred per cent. profit, the girl had actually cost him ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... a change has taken place in personal reputation. Many of the men on whom the country depended as most likely to prove able defenders in the day of need, have not only discovered to the world their worthlessness, but filled up the fable of the man who leaned upon a reed, by fatally piercing those whom they had betrayed to their fall. Bubble-characters have burst, and high-sounding phrases have been exploded. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dog there was, Petronius by name— A cur of no degree, yet which the same Rejoiced him; because so worthless he That in his worthlessness remarkably He shone, th' example de luxe of how a cur May be the very limit of a slur Upon the honored name of dog; a joke He was, a satire blasphemous; he broke The records all for sheer insulting "bunk;" No dog had ever breathed who ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... (Fig. 5) is an aspen of Constable's, on the left in the frontispiece to Mr. Leslie's life of him. Here we have arrived at the point of total worthlessness, the tree being as flat as the old purist one, but, besides, wholly false in ramification, idle, and undefined in every respect; it being, however, just possible still to discern what the tree is meant ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... surprised approval of the fine tall soldierly figure, as he advanced to meet Mr and Mrs Selby and their daughter, the nearest neighbours, who were, of course, in the regular course of instruction of the new-comers in the worthlessness and ingratitude of Uphill and the impossibility of doing anything for the good of ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of our mistake, not the worst, and I think this effort helped us to respect each other, when there couldn't be any question of more. He was a rich man, and he had made his money out of nothing, or, at least, from a beginning of utter poverty. But in his last years he came to a sense of its worthlessness, such as few men who have made their money ever have. He was a common man, in a great many ways; he was imperfectly educated, and he was ungrammatical, and he never was at home in society; but he had a tender heart and ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... paid 6 shillings per week, which was double his worth, and that he should go elsewhere if he was not content, as I could daily get a better man for half his wages; but he will not go hence, nor will he perform, and has persuaded others to join with him, his very worthlessness having made him their leader, and they threaten, unless they may receive additional 4 shillings per week, and a groat each night for sack, they will have no plays performed, nor will they allow others to be hired in their stead. They do further demand that you shall write ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... accused, that several of them are members of the church in full communion, of blameless conversation, and "walking as becometh women professing godliness." They relate the methods by which they had been deluded and terrified into confession, and show the worthlessness of those confessions as evidences against them. They use this bold and significant language: "Our troubles we foresee are likely to continue and increase, if other methods be not taken than as yet have been; and we know not who can think himself safe, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... I have expressed Horace's meaning, though he has chosen to express himself as if the two things compared were dead worthlessness and uncelebrated worth. By fixing the epithet sepultae to inertiae he doubtless meant to express that the natural and appropriate fate of worthlessness was to be dead, buried, and forgotten. But the context shows that ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... DENDOSTREA FOLIUM), too mean of proportions, too dull and commonplace of colour to be termed pretty, worth nothing, and justifying, in appearances its worthlessness, is remarkable for the exercise of a certain sort of deliberate wit in accordance with special conditions. Nature provides various species of the great oyster family with respective methods of holding their own in the sea, and in the case under review ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... almost coldly continued: "Suicide is an act of importance; it shows that a man recognises, at least, the worthlessness of his life. He does one dramatic and powerful thing; he has an instant of great courage, and all is over. If it had been a duel in which, of intention, he would fire wide, and his assailant would fire to kill, so much the better; so much the more would the world ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Louis XIV predominate, and nature suffers by the change from the cottage to the palace. Madame d'Aulnoy was followed by a host of imitators; the Countess Muerat, who died in 1710; Countess d'Auneuil, who died in 1700; M. de Preschac, born 1676, who composed tales of utter worthlessness, which may be read as examples of what popular tales are not, in the collection called Le Cabinet des Fees, which was published in Paris in 1785. Not much better are the attempts of Count Hamilton, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... he accounts by the juxtaposition of his figures, denoting the amount of paper in circulation, and this assumed fall in the price of merchandise for the present anomalous condition of the Money Market, and for the apparent worthlessness of capital. We cannot agree, however, with our correspondent to the full extent, because the very low prices of commodities, with a minimum rate of interest for money, proves that there is no fictitious or inflated ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... reform, or in the unreserved boldness and plainness with which he published those sentiments. The whole of Christendom rang with loud and bitter complaints against the avarice, the sensuality, the overreaching and overbearing tyranny, the total degeneracy and worthlessness of the Popes, the Cardinals, and the religious orders; but in no place were the protests against such deplorable (p. 052) corruptions more unsparingly uttered than at the Council of Constance itself: and among those who willingly offered themselves to testify, in their Saviour's ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... allusion to her sketches as fool stuff, contrasted with the benefit and advantage of earning something—something real and solid—hit the artist very hard. That was the thought that troubled her so much, and paralysed her imagination. They were unsaleable—she saw the worthlessness of them far more than Iden. They were less in value than the paper on which they were traced; fool stuff, fit for the ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... things that stand for Belial, that are Belial, is one of the most effective ways I know of crucifying Christ afresh, and putting Him to open shame. Whatever the King of Israel might think of his company, the fact that he was in it gave to their worthlessness a new tenure of existence and to their wickedness an added licence. He did not make them better men, but they made him a worse man. And for us to appear to countenance wrong things, so as to favour an impression ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... the hours of toil fixed by society rather than by contract. This law of New Hampshire, which was destined to have a widespread influence, was hailed by the workmen everywhere with delight; mass meetings and processions proclaimed it as a great victory; and only the conservatives prophesied the worthlessness of such legislation. Horace Greeley sympathetically dissected the bill. He had little faith, it is true, in legislative interference with private contracts. "But," he asks, "who can seriously doubt that it is the duty of the Commonwealth to see that the tender frames ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... disciplines of the older philosophies is still open to the philosophy of evolution. Behind it, as behind the "self-hypnotised catalepsy of the devotee of Brahma," the Buddhist aspirations to Nirvana, the apatheia of the Stoics, there may lie a recognition of the worthlessness of the individual: an equable acceptation of one's self as part of a process: a triumph of intelligence over selfishness. Finally, behind the sharp division made between man and the Cosmos, there still lurks one of the oldest and most enduring fallacies of the world, a fallacy ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... remained on the outside of the building; and, for nearly an hour, sustained a series of the most intolerable abuse. This was chiefly from the officers of the light infantry, for the most part young and insolent puppies, whose worthlessness was apparently their recommendation to a service, which placed them in the post of danger, and in the way of becoming food for powder, their most appropriate destination next to that of the gallows. The ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... another time, when Jesus sat at supper with his disciples, wishing to show them, by example, the utter worthlessness of station, for station's sake, rose from the table, took a towel and basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet. Peter objected, but when he understood, he said, "Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." At the last Jesus said, "Verily I say unto you, the servant is not ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... other. Reckless what became of her, she had only a feeling that seeing he had been so good he ought to have any satisfaction he could find in marrying her. But what her indifference would have abandoned to him her love could not endure the thought of giving. The worthlessness of the gift, which before had not concerned her, now made its giving impossible. While before she had thought with indifference of submitting to a love she did not return, now that she returned it the idea of being happy in it seemed to her guilty and shameless. Thus to gather ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... fleeing for his life, had opened his parcel and discovered the worthlessness of that for which he had turned Judas, something snapped in his befuddled brain. He became an Ishmael driven before the torture of a fixed idea—terror of capture, until one day his body was found, worn to a skeleton; matted of beard and hair, and lying with its head in a creek bed at ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... widens. The air grows thin. I see the solemn streaks of dawn appearing through the gloom. Ah," he murmured, again; "weak and erring though I undoubtedly am, I have a kinship with the living Christ. Yes, even such kinship as human worthlessness may have with infinite perfection. People will say to you about here, Miss Hungerford; 'Oh, never mind Godfrey Cradlebow. He's always being converted, why, he has been converted twenty times already!' very true, ay, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... value or the worthlessness of the Bible; the value or the worthlessness of the Church—I require no guide, Mr. Holland. I do not need to go to a priest to ask if it is wrong to steal, to covet another's goods, to honor my father——Oh, I cannot discuss what is so very obvious. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... mostly of the sentimental and tearful sort. And for many years after he began to write, it was much the same. Weeping poetesses filled whole columns with their tears, and in every local sheet new Werthers were trying to tell of the worthlessness of life and the beauties of dying. Young bards were inditing odes to melancholy, and everybody was chanting in chorus, if not the words, at least the sentiment of, "how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong." There was no ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... How many a prefatory argument issues virtually in this! It is not deference to merit, but impudent pretence, practising on the credulity of ignorance! Commonness alone exempts it from scrutiny, and the success it has, is but the wages of its own worthlessness! To read and be informed, is to make a proper use of books for the advancement of learning; but to assume to be an author by editing mere commonplaces and stolen criticisms, is equally beneath the ambition of a scholar and the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the first of orators than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere." And yet this same Boswell is "a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect"; and, strangest of all, only achieves his amazing success by force of his worthlessness and folly. "If he had not {39} been a great fool he would never have been a ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... gratification become more and more imperious and exacting day by day, and rears a throne that becomes impregnable in proportion as the sun is allowed to set on its possessions. Even filial love has withered under the shadow of Cassier's worthlessness. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... wealth and importance; and his daughter in sparkling, catching comeliness—although certainly not in the refinement of manner which gives a quickening life and grace to personal symmetry and beauty. James Dutton remained firm in his theory of the worthlessness of education beyond what, in a narrow acceptation of the term, was absolutely 'necessary;' and Anne Dutton, although now heiress to very considerable wealth, knew only how to read, write, spell, cast accounts, and superintend the home-business of the farm. I saw a good deal ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... it is to think that Swift knew the tendency of his creed—the fatal rocks towards which his logic desperately drifted. That last part of Gulliver is only a consequence of what has gone before; and the worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the pompous dullness, the mean aims, the base successes—all these were present to him; it was with the din of these curses ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... meaned to write to you before on the subject of your loss[76]; but the recollection of the uselessness and worthlessness of any observations on such events prevented me. I shall only now add, that I rejoice to see you bear it so well, and that I trust time will enable Mrs. M. to sustain it better. Every thing should be done to divert and occupy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... important place in their own eyes and those of contemporaries than he does in ours; but if not a leader, he was in the front rank, and must have been aware of all that went on. The passages relating to his exile, to the worthlessness of his companions, to his gratitude towards those who helped him, gain immensely in force and pathos if we regard them as an aging man's reminiscences of ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... completed until 1846. It was built of cross-ties three feet apart, connected by string pieces of timber about six by eight inches in dimensions, and a flat iron bar two and one-half inches wide and five-eighths of an inch thick. The worthlessness and danger of such a railroad was soon demonstrated by innumerable accidents caused by the spreading of rails, the "snaking" of the flat bars of iron through the cars, and the feebleness of the engines. Both road and engines soon ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... boys one after the other, and woke them all up. He was satisfied enough with himself now; his tail was doing the wagging of forty; there was no tucking of it away now,—no drooping of the head in mute confession of conscious worthlessness; he was a dog self-satisfied because his master was well pleased ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... however introduced again, and seated among them in his rags; Sir William being one of the few who pay a greater regard to the man than the dress, can discern and support merit under rags, and despise poverty of soul and worthlessness in embroidery; but, notwithstanding the success of this stratagem, our hero always looked upon it as one of the most unfortunate in his whole life; for, after he had been at Sir William's, as above-mentioned, coming ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the wonder of one of the wisest of men, and indeed, considering his infinite highness above the height of heavens, his immense and incomprehensible greatness, that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, and then the baseness, emptiness, and worthlessness of man, it may be a wonder to the wisest of angels. And what is it, think you, the angels desire to look into, but this incomprehensible mystery of the descent of the Most High to dwell among the lowest and vilest of the creatures? But as Solomon's temple, and these visible symbols of God's ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... classics of our ordinary middle-class schools? [1] I will tell you. It means getting up endless forms and rules by heart. It means turning Latin and Greek into English, for the mere sake of being able to do it, and without the smallest regard to the worth, or worthlessness, of the author read. It means the learning of innumerable, not always decent, fables in such a shape that the meaning they once had is dried up into utter trash; and the only impression left upon a boy's mind is, that the people who ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... too tough for animals to masticate. Strangers, when journeying in these parts, often make the mistake of selecting camps in this tall grass, being deceived by its thrifty appearance; but, one night, thus spent, will clearly prove its utter worthlessness. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... vision. Knowing herself guilty of premeditated suicide, she saw in the established charge of murder a dreadful retribution. To make her peace with Heaven in the solitude of the prison cell, was now all that she desired. She had proved the worthlessness of life, and now she prepared herself to die. But her tortures were not ended. Julio, her lost lover, demanded an interview with her, and when, after listening to her sad tale, he renewed his vows of love, and expressed his firm belief in her innocence, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... their jobs on the strength of this one trait. It was a mystery how they misled magnates and managers alike; how for months they held their places, weakening a team, often keeping a good team down in the race; all from sheer bold suggestion of their own worth and other players' worthlessness. Strangest of all was the knockers' power to disorganize; to engender a bad spirit between management and team and among the players. The team which was without one of the parasites of the game generally stood well up in the race for the pennant, though there had been championship teams ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... clear cause and reason—it is his duty to delay. That the cause and reason and duty are not invariably clear to Hamlet himself—not clear in every mood, is another thing. Wavering conviction, doubt of evidence, the corollaries of assurance, the oppression of misery, a sense of the worthlessness of the world's whole economy—each demanding delay, might yet well, all together, affect the man's feeling as mere causes of rather than reasons for hesitation. The conscientiousness of Hamlet stands out the clearer that, throughout, his dislike to his uncle, predisposing ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... schoolin' as most city chaps," he said. "Much good it'll do you, I reckon. I never saw nothin' come of larnin' yet, 'cep'n worthlessness. But you'd set yo' mind on it, an' ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... their subscriptions, were obliged to face a drop of thirty per cent, in the market price of their new securities. For many years after the war was over British strong boxes wasted space in accommodating these absurd documents, while the idea of their worthlessness was slowly filtering through the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... is more sympathetic than the writer of genius, the powerful logician, the impassioned orator, who establishes natural law, who repudiates historic law, who proclaims the equality of men, who contends for the sovereignty of the people, who denounces on every page the usurpation, the vices, the worthlessness, the malefactions of the great and of kings! And I omit the points by which he makes acceptable to a rigid and laborious bourgeoisie, to the new men that are working and advancing themselves, his steady earnestness, his harsh and bitter tone, his eulogy of simple habits, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in his son's physical perfection had always blinded him to the fact that the private was constantly in trouble, and was known as a "bad egg." If any one had told him that he was an object of pity because of his boy's worthlessness, he would have sputtered with indignation. He never realized that Buff escaped many a "bawling out" because the officers respected the father's long years of faithful service and did not want to humiliate him. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... rubbish, and to put a litter of pigs in the king's bed. A short distance on their journey, Ethelburgh persuaded the king to return, and, showing him over the desecrated palace, exhorted him to consider the utter worthlessness of all earthly splendor and the advisability of joining her on a pilgrimage to Rome. Imprest by her words, Ina acted as she advised, and later endowed a school in Rome in which Anglo-Saxon children might become acquainted with the customs of foreign countries. Ina and Ethelburgh spent ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... socialism is this more true than of the Christian kind. Christian socialism is absolutely worthless, and its utter worthlessness is due to the essentially parasitic character of supernaturalistic or ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... powerless to impose upon her. Such as Lizzie was, Miss Macnulty was willing to put up with her and accept her bread. The people whom she had known had been either worthless,—as had been her own father, or cruel,—like Lady Linlithgow, or false,—as was Lady Eustace. Miss Macnulty knew that worthlessness, cruelty, and falseness had to be endured by such as she. And she could bear them without caring much about them;—not condemning them, even within her own heart, very heavily. But she was strangely deficient in this,—that she could not call these ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... beginning—not even to have been tempted to taste, not even to have desired to put life to the test of a fugitive personal experience, but to have divined from the first, by instinct, by the grace of God, the worthlessness of life—that was what was so wonderful. Mother Philippa, that simple nun, had done this, instinct had led her—there was no other explanation. She had arrived at the same conclusion as the wisest of the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... easy for him to invent questions of such a nature that the answer he wants is the only one possible. Again, his conclusions are often arrived at by methods or arguments which are frankly inadmissible; in the earlier dialogues are some very glaring instances of sheer logical worthlessness. Frequently the whole theme of discussion is such that no modern philosopher could be expected to approve of it. A supposed explanation of a difficulty is sometimes afforded by a myth, splendid and ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... sight when the building is finished. It is a sad pity that modern modes of building, like modern manners and fashions, conceal actual construction and character, making a mask that may hide great excellence or absolute worthlessness." ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... and should never be employed; as if there were not too many books already without truth or beauty, which cry aloud for some one to point out in print, as every one does in conversation, their utter worthlessness. The Gold of Chickaree is a continuation of Wych Hazel, and the two stories are as much alike as two halves of a slate pencil. Wych Hazel herself is rich and insufferably pert; her lover, Rollo, Dane, Duke, or Olaf, as he is called indifferently, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... himself think that this brave, glorious, loyal girl could have been shaken one instant in her faith in his friend. Why, even Ray had checked him sternly when, during the night, he had once burst forth in an impetuous tirade against the worthlessness of a woman's faith, and now he could have kicked himself had it been anatomically possible even for his marvellous length and loose-jointedness of leg. In default thereof he would have dropped on his knee; but somebody, several somebodies, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... love of splendour, luxury, or beauty, but because other women have things and she ought to have them. She has a taste for men, but none in them. Yet her creator has made her absolutely "real," and, scum of womanhood as she is, has actually evolved something very like tragedy out of her worthlessness, and has saved her from being detestable, because she is such a very woman. He has, indeed, subjected her to a kenosis, an evisceration, exantlation—or, in plain English, "emptying out"—of everything positively good (she has the negative but necessary salve of not being absolutely ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... that of Luther, like that of all great spiritual teachers, was to bring his wandering fellow-mortals into obedience to the commandments, even while he insisted on the worthlessness of it. He sounded the strings to others which had sounded loudest in himself. When he passed from mysticism into matters of ordinary life, he showed the same practical good sense which distinguishes the chief of all this order of thinkers—St. Paul. There ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... they occupied all of the important places in church and state; they were exempt from taxation; many who dwelt at the court with the king lived off the government; many were pensioned by the government, their chief recommendation apparently being idleness and worthlessness. There was a great gulf between the peasantry and the nobility. The latter had control of all the game of the forests and the fish in the rivers; one-sixth of all the grain grown in the realm went to the nobility, as did also one-sixth of all ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... can understand. It would seem, too, that writing poetry and playing on the fiddle have this much in common, that a true genius at either is fit for nothing else. The amateurs can take care of themselves, but the born-masters display an amiable worthlessness for every thing but their art. Now General Thompson was thoroughly wide-awake and competent in ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... claimant, whose father had established his title to the Earldom of Stirling in the Scotch courts, was a pretender, and that the most important papers substantiating the claim were forgeries. Just then there appeared in Blackwood's Magazine an elaborate article of more than sixty pages, showing up the worthlessness of the claim, and the North American Review published a reply, in which it said: "If the present claimant is indeed (as we believe him to be) the legal representative of the first Earl, there can be no doubt ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... own present fame was won by chance, —a misconception that, as I know, had its ancient foundation in truth, but that, as far as everybody else is concerned, remains a misconception,—so that I estimate my success at its right value, or rather, let me say, at its proper worthlessness." ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... proven by O. Schmidt in the siliceous sponges and by Haeckel in the chalk-sponges, seem to show, not the genetic coming forth of a new species out of another, and especially not the evolution of a higher species out of a lower, but rather the uncertainty of the idea of species in general and the worthlessness of the skeleton-forms, for this idea, in such low organizations as the sponges. But that objection already loses its chief force from the consideration that we have not only never observed the origin of one species from another, but never even the origin of a species itself; and that nevertheless ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... David went out and stood at the edge of his tobacco field. All about him the hail had wrought its destruction. Where yesterday broad, thick leaves of green tobacco had stood out strong and vigorous there hung only limp shreds, punctured and torn into worthlessness. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Individuals were enormously rich and the State was bankrupt. Thousands of families had lost brothers, cousins, or friends in the massacre, and the manifest cause of the disaster was the inefficiency and worthlessness of the ruling classes. In Africa, in Gaul, in Italy, and now in Asia it had been the same story. The interests of the Commonwealth had been sacrificed to fill the purses of the few. Dominion, wealth, honors, all that had been won by the hardy virtues of earlier generations, seemed ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... and in my anxiety about a borrowed animal, of which Mr. Austin makes a great joke, I put my saddle-bags on my own mare, in an evil hour, and not only these, but some fine cocoanuts, tied up in a waterproof which had long ago proved its worthlessness. It was a grotesquely miserable picture. The house is not far from the beach, and the surf, beyond which a heavy mist hung, was coming in with such a tremendous sound that we had to shout at the top ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... mother's house with the utmost simplicity. That my mother cared just as little about it I dare not say, and for me this was another reason for maintaining my stubborn resistance. It impressed me most disagreeably to hear my mother forever talking of the miserableness and worthlessness of the earthly life, and of the blessedness hereafter as the only thing deserving of our attention, and at the same time observe how with unconscious motherly matchmaking and secret strategy she sought to arrange a rich marriage for her son. I therefore ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... The executive and judicial were all the same: there was no appeal from one to the other. The only appeal from the ministers was to the king, and as the king shut himself up in his palace, and was practically inaccessible to all but high officials, the worthlessness of this appeal is evident. Outside Mandalay the country was governed by wuns or governors. These were appointed by the king, or by the council, or by both, and they obtained their position by bribery. Their tenure was exceedingly insecure, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... disputed. Plato also was human. He had a fixed income and so knew the worthlessness of riches. He issued no tariff, but the goodly honorarium left mysteriously on a marble bench by a rich pupil he accepted, and for it gave thanks to the gods. He said many great things, but he never said this: "I would have every man poor that he might know ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... regard to the war of 1812-15; they had no more sympathy with the Madison-Napoleon war than with the recent Fenian invasion of our shores. And when the war was declared, our fathers knew their duty, and knew the worthlessness of the pompous proclamations and promises of President Madison's generals and agents. The blood of our United Empire Loyalist forefathers warmed again in their own bosoms, and pulsated in the hearts of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... shattering vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions, lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course, because he could not give up worthlessness for worth. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... of calm consideration would have sufficed to show the danger of the undertaking, and the comparative worthlessness of the prize. But the temptation spoke to his feelings; the warning only to his reason. It was his misfortune that his nearest and most influential counsellors espoused the side of his passions. The aggrandizement of their master's power opened to the ambition and avarice of his Palatine servants ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... however, agreed in destroying individuality, inasmuch as the one degraded man into a will-less machine for executing the commands of others, and the other deadened him in cultivating the feeling of his sinful worthlessness. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the Lord had done for them. A widow, in reference to a conversation she had with one of the missionaries the day before, expressed herself thus: "Now I rejoice that I can again visit the meetings, where I hear of Him who, notwithstanding all my worthlessness, has so loved me! When we are assembled, I will ever pray to Jesus that he would put such words in your mouth as will speak to my heart." Another said, "I am often moved to tears when I consider what God my Saviour has done for me. I start back with terror when I reflect upon my former wicked ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... Spinoza had taught: through the knowledge of God to the love of God; in Pascal the watchword becomes, God is not conceived through the reason, but felt with the heart. After attacking the Jesuits in his Provincial Letters, and unveiling the worthlessness of their casuistical morality, Pascal, constrained by a genuine piety, undertook to construct a philosophy of Christianity; but the attempt was ended by the early death of the author, who had always suffered under a weak constitution. Fragments of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... that she had been out of her mind for some time. Indeed rumours of the sort had been afloat before. The proximate cause of her insanity was not certainly known. Some suspicion of the worthlessness of her lover, some enlightenment as to his perfidy, or his unaccountable disappearance alone, may have occasioned its manifestation. But there is great reason to believe that she had a natural predisposition to it. And having never been taught to provide for her own mental sustenance, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... respect it, notwithstanding it felt awkward under these incumbrances; it consequently has become a duty to favor imposture, because it has artfully entrenched itself behind the altars of truth; its ears, however, discover its worthlessness; its natural cowardice betrays itself; it is from this intrenchment we ought to drive it; it should be dragged forth to public view; stripped of its surreptitious panoply; exposed in its native deformity; in order that the human race may become acquainted ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Prince John as the head and front of the offence which he had received, "Whatever," he said, "have been the follies and vices of our race, a Saxon would have been held 'nidering'," [21] (the most emphatic term for abject worthlessness,) "who should in his own hall, and while his own wine-cup passed, have treated, or suffered to be treated, an unoffending guest as your highness has this day beheld me used; and whatever was the misfortune of our fathers on the field of Hastings, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... admired. That condition awakened his unsatisfied past days to desire positive proof of her worthlessness. The past days writhed in him. The present were loveless, entirely cold. He had not even the wish to press her hand. The market held beautiful women of a like description. He wished simply to see her proved the thing he read her to be: and not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that can be done to others by any use of force against them, and the worthlessness of the goods that can be acquired by force, will be very full of respect for the liberty of others; they will not try to bind them or fetter them; they will be slow to judge and swift to sympathize; they ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... with a dazzling brightness. The whole situation, in all its bearings, was focussed sharply before me—the shame of losing the prisoners, the worthlessness and cowardice of George, the meeting with Le Grant and the other patrol-men and the lame explanation; and then there was the fight I had fought so hard, victory wrenched from me just as I thought I had it within my grasp. And out of the tail of my eye I could see the Chinese ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... imaginations of many a bright tenant that poesy has lodged there, and find, in more than one instance, our admiration of the faith and fancy of the worshipper increased by our discovery of the worthlessness ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of English Etymology, 1872) from the old word trousse, signifying the clipping of trees. But in old Gipsy or in the German Gipsy of the present day, as in the Turkish Rommany, it means so directly "fear, mental weakness and worthlessness," that it may possibly have had a Rommany origin. Terror in Gipsy is trash, while thirst is trush, and both are to be found in the Hindustani. Tras, which means ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... caused so much excitement, and led to such important results that they give him a place in literature. He also wrote a highly offensive Essay on Woman. W. was expelled from the House of Commons and outlawed, but such was the strength of the cause which he championed that, notwithstanding the worthlessness of his character, his right to sit in the House was ultimately admitted in 1774, and he continued to sit until 1790. He was also ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... also in great part, at least indirectly, responsible. In the various wars a large amount of capital was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies. Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police, brigands and pirates swarmed every where. In Sardinia and the interior of Asia Minor brigandage was endemic; in Africa and Further Spain it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed outside of the city-enclosures with walls and towers. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... failure in England taught me the utter worthlessness of our present school of music, and inspired me with the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... also, who imagined himself to be ornamental, but laid no claim to usefulness of any sort. Lady Wentworth concurred heartily and proudly in her son's opinion of himself and encouraged his uselessness to a point where it became worthlessness. But Sir William took no pains to conceal his disappointment and disgust. Young William held a small post at court, and, being supplied with money by his mother, was one of the evil spirits of the set composed of Crofts, Berkeley, Little Jermyn, ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... the preceding observations, seems to correspond with the quality so emphatically described in the sacred writings under the name of Charity. It is there uniformly represented as the great test of the moral condition; and we find exposed, in the most striking manner, the worthlessness of all endowments which are not accompanied by this regulation of the whole character. We cannot, therefore, conclude this subject in a more appropriate manner, than by a passage in which, by a few most ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... to describe in detail the ruin, misery, tumults, loss and confusion which attended the speedy descent of Law's paper and shares to entire worthlessness. Thousands of families were made paupers, and trade and commerce destroyed by the painful process. Law himself escaped out of France poor; and, after another obscure and disreputable career of gambling, died in ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... saved a hundred and twenty-five years I could not go anywhere; for I had nothing to save. The worthlessness of civilization rushed over me. When I was an Indian the boundless world was mine. I could build a shelter, and take food and clothes by my strength and skill. My boat or my strong legs carried me to ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... reserving such circumstances for the present as require to be enforced by argument, I will content myself with pointing out certain passages that bear out my view. I must first, however, remind your readers that while some plays, from their worthlessness, were never printed, some were withheld from the press on account of their very value; and of this latter class were the works of Shakspeare. The late publication of his works created the impression, not yet quite worn out, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... preached it, I stand amazed at the forms men have given to it, and the fictitious barriers they have built up between themselves and their brethren. I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of the great truths Christ taught us—our own utter worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He has brought us back to our one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we shall have all we need to guide us through ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... up with the Christian doctrine of redemption is that of mediation. Eucken believes that the Christian conception of mediation resulted from the feeling of worthlessness and impotence of man, and the aspirations which yet burned within him after union with the Divine. The idea of mediation bridges the gulf, "a mid-link is forged between the Divine and the human, and half of it belongs to each side; both sides are brought into a definite connection which ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... confidently. The destruction of the fortress presented no hard problem to them. The utter worthlessness of similarly fortified positions had been proven in the earlier days of the war—in the destruction of Louvain, Liege, Brussels and Antwerp, the latter the most strongly fortified city in the world, with the exception ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... Well, we are betrothed, and should have been married years ago, had not Fate or Providence stood in the way; and I suppose her life at home is far from pleasant, for her step-mother is not one to let a good marriage go by, without reminding poor Paulie of my general worthlessness; but I must say that my better financial and matrimonial prospects offer little hope ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... poverty. Tenants could not be held at the accustomed rents and services because it was impossible to make a living from their holdings. The absence of competition for holdings was no temporary thing, due to the high mortality of the years 1348-1350, but was chronic, and was based upon the worthlessness of the land. The vacant tenements of the fourteenth century, the reduction in the area of demesne land planted, the complaints that no profit could be made from tillage, the reduction of rents on account of the poverty of whole ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... wish herself different from what she had been; but the future—was that to be the same as the past? Then, with an apparent contradiction to what she had been thinking a few moments before regarding the worthlessness of life, she began to think that her unhappiness was possibly the result of her eccentric life. She had lived in defiance of rules, governed by individual caprice. Apparently it had succeeded, but only ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... is adulterated, so to speak, by numbers of spurious existences. Many of these are a nuisance to themselves. Others may at an earlier period have been lives of great promise and fulfilment. In the case of the latter, how sad to think that they should be dragged out into worthlessness or dishonour, all for want of a friendly hand to snap them short! In the lower form of life the process of preying upon animals whose work is accomplished—that is, of weeding—goes on continually. Man must, ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... bit o' brass bi this time, for he wor allus a nipper; but he wor allus honest, an' it isn't ivery man yo meet i'th world 'at's honest; but aw doant think Tommy ud wrang ony body aght o'th' vally o' that;"—saying which, he snapped his finger and thumb together to denote its worthlessness. ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... assure you. You see, even with your views as to the worthlessness of wealth, views which, I am sure, are very sensible and much to your credit, you must allow that if a man should happen to be the possessor of vast—well, let us say of considerable—sums of money, it is his duty to get that money into ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ignorance or inexperience, before putting the intended teachers to the test, commit their sons to the charge of untried and untested men. If they act so through inexperience it is not so ridiculous; but it is to the remotest degree absurd when, though perfectly aware of both the inexperience and worthlessness of some schoolmasters, they yet entrust their sons to them; some overcome by flattery, others to gratify friends who solicit their favours; acting just as if anybody ill in body, passing over the experienced physician, should, to gratify his friend, call him in, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch |
