"Unprofitably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Beethoven" called Cecil, when the querulous beauty of the music had died. She shook her head and played Schumann again. The melody rose, unprofitably magical. It broke; it was resumed broken, not marching once from the cradle to the grave. The sadness of the incomplete—the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art—throbbed in its disjected ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... seem to be a great thing to say of any man that he was never idle, and never unprofitably employed; but it might be more justly said of Dr. Peaslee than of any other person known to the writer. He wasted no work. His conclusions were not reached by intuition or guess, but slowly and surely elaborated, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... persecution had not been followed, instead of the circuitous plan of launching heavy calamities against him, and then issuing special miraculous powers to save him from a small portion of these calamities. But such logic would probably be unprofitably bestowed, and it is wiser to take the narratives as they stand and make the best use of them. Whoever looks at them with a cold scientific eye, will at once be struck by the close analogy of Wodrow's vaticinations and miracles to those of other times and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... but not unprofitably in assisting the president, acquainting himself with the favourite resorts of interesting persons and ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... translate easy languages of a similar construction requires no more talent than transcribing one paper from another. But I would not hence infer that translating is not a laudable exercise; for a man may be worse and more unprofitably employed. Nor can my observation apply to the two celebrated translators, Doctor Christopher de Figueroa, in his 'Pastor Fido,' and Don John de Xaurigui, in his 'Aminta,' who, with singular felicity, have made it difficult ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the undated ones look equally old; some thatched, others tiled, but none particularly attractive. Certainly they are without the added charm of a green drapery—creeper or ivy rose, clematis, and honeysuckle; and they are also mostly without the cottage-garden flowers, unprofitably gay like the blossoming furze, but dear to the soul: the flowers we find in so many of the villages along the rivers, especially in those of the Wylye valley to be described in a ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... he applied all his mind to the study of divinity, and to the reading of the volumes of the ecclesiastical fathers; and that so earnestly that, in short space of time, he bestowed his labour not unprofitably in this behalf; for, after the space of four or five years, he, issuing from his secret and solitary study into open practice in the commonwealth, preached every where unto the people with great commendation; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... fence that skirts the way, With blossomed furze unprofitably gay, There in his noisy mansion,{6} skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school. A man severe he was, and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding{7} tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... either the reformation or the ruin, of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... business going on, however, for all round the rusty iron railing which incloses the weed-entangled graveyard the houses of city merchants seem to crowd and hustle for space; and, if they had any time for it, the clerks behind those dust-blinded windows might spend an hour not unprofitably in looking down upon the decaying monuments of departed citizens and meditating at once on the uncertainty of human affairs and ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... ears boxed, you rogue!" he began; but at that moment in surged a torrent of rather frightened, very wrathful boys, who had been unprofitably spending the last half-minute in striving with penknives to force the lock ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when wee shall be in our poore cottages in the wildernesse, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may, not altogether unexpectedly nor we hope unprofitably, befall us. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... the necessary orders, he proceeded to Seville, and there the fitting out of his fleet was retarded very unprofitably through the negligence and ill management of the public officers, especially Juan de Fonseca, the archdeacon of Seville, who was afterwards bishop of Burgos, and always was a bitter enemy to the admiral and his affairs, and became the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Whom none can blame, will help, or dare upbraid. "Call this our need, a bog that all devours, - Then what thy petty arts, but summer-flowers, Gaudy and mean, and serving to betray The place they make unprofitably gay? Who know it not, some useless beauties see, - But ah! to prove it was reserved for me." Unhappy state! that, in decay of love, Permits harsh truth his errors to disprove; While he remains, to wrangle ...
— Miscellaneous Poems • George Crabbe
... interest, I should never consider whether a compliance with your wishes is or is not pleasant to me; but I freely own, that I hardly think you would be repaid, by Mr. Pigott's getting his company, for the uneasiness I feel in being made (unprofitably, too, as I think, even to the object) the channel of such a communication between two persons whom I have so much reason to ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Canadians cannot compare with the English population as agriculturists, Their province is less favoured than Ontario with respect to climate and soil. The French system of sub-dividing farms among the members of a family has tended to cut up the land unprofitably, and it is a curious sight to see the number of extremely narrow lots throughout the French settlements. It must be admitted, too, that the French population has less enterprise, and less disposition to adopt new {447} ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... sugar-maker. Sorghum, unlike sugar beet, contains various non-crystallizable sugars, the separation of which demands much skill and scientific knowledge. Sorghum-sugar will have to be made in large factories. The existing factories have shown that it can be made, but how profitably or unprofitably can not be stated by Prof. Wiley, who suggests that farmers near factories may, in effect, make their own sugar by raising the cane and trading it at factories for sugar. Cane giving sixty pounds ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Rudge'—in spite of its author's efforts to keep secret the real springs of action which controlled the characters—if taken up a second time by a reader put into possession of all that had been concealed, would be found to possess quadruple brilliance, "a brilliance unprofitably sacrificed at the shrine of the keenest ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... intellectual conditions of the world in which he lived. The mixed blood of the boy, born and bred in a Greek city near the classic ground of Dindymean rites, and his beauty, blent of Hellenic and Eastern qualities, may also not unprofitably be remembered. In such a youth, nurtured between Greece and Asia, admitted to the friendship of an emperor for whom neo-Hellenism was a life's dream in the midst of grave state-cares, influenced by the dark and symbolical creeds of a dimly apprehended East, might there ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... blood, the result of simple, frugal living, and, more largely, to the young doctor's skilful treatment, had advanced so far toward recovery that nature might safely be left to complete the cure. The week had been not altogether unprofitably spent in other respects, the two white men assiduously devoting themselves, with Mafuta's assistance, to the study of the native language, varied occasionally, on Dick's part, by a little botanising—during which he discovered some half a dozen plants that seemed to possess ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... to advance in a knowledge of these subjects, the more am I convinced of the fallacy of such a position. There is much yet to be learnt, and if there be present either member, associate, or student to whom I have imparted the smallest instruction, I shall feel that I have not unprofitably occupied my ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... which young men, and even young women, despise; and which a middle-aged man hears with a certain troubled surprise, and wonders if there is not something in it after all; and which old people discover to be true, and think with a sad regret of opportunities missed, and of years devoted, how unprofitably, to other kinds of usefulness! The truth is that most of us who have any ambitions at all, do not start in life with a hope of being useful, but rather with an intention of being ornamental. We think, like joseph in his childish dreams, that the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... any theory or motive, however good, but had been as much chosen by it as if he had been born a Physician. He was incredibly gentle and soft in all his movements, and perfectly kind, without being at any moment unprofitably sympathetic. He knew when to listen and when not to listen,—to learn everything from the quivering bundle of nerves before him without seeming to have learnt anything alarming; he smiled when it would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... receipt and payment of gold and silver in all public transactions were it not from an apprehension that a surplus in the Treasury might withdraw a large portion of it from circulation and lock it up unprofitably in the public vaults. It would not, in my opinion, be difficult to prevent such an inconvenience from occurring; but the authentic statements which I have already submitted to you in regard to the actual amount in the public ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... You catch the sense admirably. Yes, I was born under an evil star; just that! But if I haven't pondered the mysteries unprofitably I shall emerge from the shadow in due season. When you see me scribbling I am calculating the potency of the dark fate that overhangs me and trying to estimate when if ever the cloud will pass. Don't trouble your head with those fancies; leave them to me. Hope is buoyed in me by the fact ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... not Creech's way of transacting business, so that Burns was kept for many months waiting for a settlement—months during which he could not for want of money turn to any fixed employment, and which were therefore spent by him unprofitably enough. ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... tell her, she laughed aloud, and said, "Was this the thing that you had so often a mind to tell me, and were afraid? Make haste and put me on shipboard, and send this carcass where it may be most serviceable to Sparta, before age destroys it unprofitably here." Therefore, all things being provided for the voyage, they went by land to Taenarus, and the army waited on them. Cratesiclea, when she was ready to go on board, took Cleomenes aside into Neptune's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... was not the only one who passed his time unprofitably. Benito, Manoel, and Minha tried all they could together to extract the secret from the document on which depended their father's life and honor. On his part, Fragoso, aided by Lina, could not remain quiet, but all their ingenuity had failed, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... with cares and age, And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage; Unprofitably kept at heaven's expense, I live a rent-charge on his providence. But you, whom every muse and grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains; and, O! defend, Against your judgment, your departed friend: Let not the insulting foe my fame ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... he can find Use or Entertainment; either Directions for his Conduct, or Employment for his Pity, in a HISTORY of LIFE and MANNERS, where, as in the World itself, we find Vice, for a time, triumphant, and Virtue in distress, an idle hour or two, we hope, may not be unprofitably lost. ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... you know, it may be better at such times to read chit-chat than to be altogether vacant, or to talk unprofitably. I am not sure; I bow ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and of her papers, and the wedding-ring—now in the custody of Dettermain and Newson—together with the portraits of both my parents; and she, poor soul, to sustain me, as I verily believe—she had a great idea of my never asking unprofitably for anything in life—bartered the most corroborative of the testificatory documents, which would now make the establishment of my case a comparatively light task. Have I never spoken to you of my boyhood? My maternal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... benefit of his neighbours and the world at large; but nothing came of it all and he was now fast sinking into the lowest depths of poverty. Yet who would blame him? 'Tis the nature of the gorse to be "unprofitably gay." All that, however, is a question for the moralist; the point now is that in walking, even in that poor way, when, on account of physical weakness, it was often a pain and weariness, there are alleviations which ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the happiest present seem like a desert; and for most men, I imagine, such retrospect is usually busied with some fair face, or perhaps—being men—with several fair faces, once so near and dear, and now so far. How poignantly and unprofitably real memory can make them—all but bring them back—how vividly reconstruct immortal occasions of happiness that we said could not, must not, pass away; while all the time our hearts were aching with the sure knowledge that they were even then, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne |
