"Usefulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wings in the shape of a broad V, to form a dihedral angle, with the center low and the wing-tips elevated. In theory this was an automatic system, but in practice it had two serious defects: first, it tended to keep the machine oscillating; and second, its usefulness was restricted ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... Papal States the schools for the lower classes are both few and far between. The government does nothing to increase either their number or their usefulness, the parishes being obliged to maintain them; and even this source is sometimes cut off, for not unfrequently the minister disallows this heading in the municipal budget, and pockets the money himself. In addition to this, secondary teaching, excepting in the colleges, exists but in ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the ecumenical sophistication, known as world-etiquette, marks a very high degree of knowledge or usefulness anywhere. To know which hat goes with which boots, and what collar and tie with what coat and waistcoat, and what costume is appropriate at 10 A. M., and what at 10 P. M., and to know the names of the head-waiters ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... at home, only in the library, and unfit for mingling with your fellow-men. But much less would I like to see you triflers—butterflies—living only for amusement. I hope you will become earnest men and women: choosing great and good aims in life, and working your way upward continually to greater usefulness, and to a higher moral elevation. But amusement is not wasted time: it may be so indulged as to be improving to the wits, and never to transgress the line of innocency. I have often felt the benefit of a hearty laugh, when my brain has been overtasked: it is ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... from Fort Simpson to Winnipeg to attend it. It was a good opportunity for collecting mileage and perquisites, but the probability is that this public-spirited man and the great Company he served made the contribution to the country. His usefulness was so apparent at the meeting that he was asked to help the Government in the great task of treaty-making which had baffled ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... clearest, most genial way, as if he had been born only to let his voice enunciate an endless procession of words. He read "The Lady of the Lake" aloud about this time, and Una wrote expressing our delight in his personality over and above that in his usefulness: "Papa has gone to dine in Liverpool, so we shall not hear 'Don Quixote' this evening, or have papa either." Little references to him show how he was always weaving golden threads into the woof of daily monotony. Julian, seven years old, writes ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... be considered one of the most fortunate Americans of his time. Lack of public appreciation is the least evil that can befall a man of truly great spirit,—unless indeed it impairs the usefulness of his work, and Edward Everett, who had sympathized so cordially with Doctor Howe's efforts in behalf of the Greeks, could also have told him sympathetically that domestic happiness was fully as valuable as public honor. Fortunate is the man who has wandered ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... as if, in future, there would be an additional tie between her aunt and herself; for she looked forward to leading a single life, hoping to pass her days like Miss Agnes, in that sphere of contented usefulness which seemed allotted ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... are now receiving a healthy, liberal, modern education. The course of study has been regulated to meet peculiar requirements. It is not desired to make great scholars out of these young princes to fill their heads with useless learning, but to teach them knowledge that will be of practical usefulness when they assume authority, and to cultivate manly habits and pure tastes. Their physical development is carefully looked after. They play football, cricket and other games that are common at the English universities; they have gymnasiums and prizes for athletic excellence. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... materials of our national industry, is not more but less advantageous to us, in proportion to its extent, than our trade with the continent of Europe. We mean in respect to the mere amount of the return to the labour and capital of the country; considered abstractedly from the usefulness or agreeableness of the particular articles on which the receivers may choose to ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... lies between the cannon bone and the back tendons. The fact that it stands sharply out between these two structures, when viewed from the side, shows that it is in a sound condition, which is a most important point as regards usefulness; because injury to it, from accident or overwork, is a fruitful cause of lameness, especially in saddle horses that are employed in ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... their enemy the ocean; in the roll of crisp pasturage that in unbroken swells covered the long backbone of the cape; in the few giant old trees, and, more than all, in its character of freedom, loneliness, and isolation, there was a savage charm and dignity that the thrift and cultivation, the usefulness and comfort of civilisation's beauty can ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Pacific States and China and Japan is about all the carrying trade now conducted in American vessels. I would recommend a liberal policy toward that line of American steamers—one that will insure its success, and even increased usefulness. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... appropriation—with such compensation to the existing owners as the community may think fit to give—of the land and industrial concerns. The second method is by taxation. Taxation has its special sphere of usefulness in helping the community to secure some part of its own by diverting into the national purse portions of the rent, interest, and profit which now go to keep an idle class in luxury at the expense ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... encouragement in every page of our country's history. Nowhere do we meet with examples more numerous and more brilliant of men who have risen above poverty and obscurity and every disadvantage to usefulness and honorable name. One whole vast continent was added to the geography of the world by the persevering efforts of a humble Genoese mariner, the great Columbus; who, by the steady pursuit of the enlightened conception he ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... your council. For my own part, I had even buried you, though I had not forgot you. I thank God who had disappointed our fears; & it is my ardent prayer that your health may be perfectly restored & your eminent usefulness long continued. ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... only, as I showed you above, a favorable climate and an extraordinarily fertile soil, but he has a laboring population, perhaps the best, the most easily managed, the kindliest, and—so far as habits affect the steadiness and usefulness of the laborer—the least vicious in the world. He does not have to pay exorbitant wages; he is not embarrassed to feed or house them, for food is so abundant and cheap that economy in its distribution is of no moment; and the Hawaiian ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... to-night. There is no great nor small, no high nor low, in real service. The differences are only in the forms of work you do. The quality may be just as fine in one place as in another. The boy who goes into the ministry, or who becomes a medical missionary, will have peculiar chances for usefulness. So also will the boy who goes into business or farming or teaching, or any other so-called secular occupation. Just because he is not called to religious work as a daily business he dare not think that he has no call. God's calling ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... of the house the only sufferer from this 'abnormal state of the nervous system,' as the master of the house preferred to call the mystery. The servants grew so much afraid to move about the building alone, that their usefulness was much impaired. And at length one after another ran away, and took to the woods and mountain caves, preferring to starve or beg rather than live in luxury in the haunted house. New servants were procured to supply the places of the old ones, until the latter could be ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... never called myself a detective," said Garrison. "I'm trying to occupy a higher sphere of usefulness. I left college a year ago, and last week opened my office here and became ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... usefulness to gardener, agriculturist, and landowner alike, for there is not another bird of prey which is so great a destroyer of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... led me to adopt the little creature, in place of poor Edgar, in the friendship of my boyish heart. I drew her in her little wagon—carried her over the brooklet—constructed her tiny playthings—and in consideration of my usefulness, in most generally keeping her in the best of humors, her mother was not unwilling that I should be her frequent playmate. Nay, at such times she could spare a gentle word even to me, as one throws a bone to the dog, who ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... department of military duty, except the actual fighting and dying. When it comes to that ultimate test, our men usually endure it so magnificently that one is tempted to overlook all deficiencies on intermediate points. But they must not be overlooked, because they create a fearful discount on the usefulness of our troops, when tried by the standard of regular armies. I do not now refer to the niceties of dress-parade or the courtesies of salutation: it has long since been tacitly admitted that a white American soldier will not present arms to any number of rows of buttons, if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the space was which had been thus obtained, every part of it from floor to ceiling was occupied by objects of beauty proper to the sphere in which they were placed: some, solid and serviceable, where usefulness was demanded; others light and elegant, where ornament alone was necessary—and all won gloriously by Valentine's brush; by the long, loving, unselfish industry of many years. Mrs. Blyth's bed, like everything else that she used in her room, was so arranged as ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... continued stay in the cottage undesirable. He was now the focus of all suspicion, and the innkeeper would be as good as his word and try to drive him out of the place by force. Kidnapping, most likely, and that would be highly unpleasant, besides putting an end to his usefulness. Clearly he must join the others. The soul of Dickson hungered at the moment for human companionship. He felt that his courage would be sufficient for any team-work, but might waver again if he were left ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... to need other doctors before I mended my ways. I said my aunt was right, and I made certain good resolutions, which were but short-lived and never reached adult maturity of usefulness. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... owner. That is, it excludes staircases, furnace, laundry, etc., which might be used in common by many owners and therefore need not be duplicated for each, and which are only indirectly serviceable to each owner in contributing to the usefulness of those which are directly enjoyed.) The six floors above contain 23,288 square feet of available room each, making a total of 156,416 square feet. Adding 10,880 square feet for basement storage and trunk-room for the suites, and 2,000 square ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Black-smith-shop, Engine-house, Wood-sheds, and Passenger Depot were totally consumed, and with the Engine-house three second-class Engines were much injured by the fire, but not so destroyed but that they may be restored to usefulness. ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... restraints once broken, the liabilities to every crime, especially theft, are enormously increased. The truant, although a cording to Kline's measurements slightly smaller than the average child, is more energetic and is generally capable of the greatest activity and usefulness in more out-of-door vocations. Truancy is augmented, too, just in proportion as legitimate and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... dear, you know his history," quoth Mrs. Broad, "and it would very much interfere with your usefulness if you were to ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... only hope that the translation will justify itself by its usefulness to the legal profession. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... recently come into her hands; singularly gifted and beautiful, but lamed for life, it was feared, and a great sufferer physically from the effects of the fatal hip-disease that had destroyed the strength and usefulness of one limb, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... forth his watch, took off his spectacles, and dusted them carefully with a soft yellow handkerchief; then restored them to their double sphere of usefulness, and perused, with some diligence, the time of day. By the law which compels a man to sneeze when another man sets the example, Sir Duncan ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... well settled for me that I shall not be Caesar, I am quite content to live in peace as nullus." But the fates had ordered it otherwise. Friends had long been urging him to seek a larger sphere of usefulness; and when, in August, 1827, the headmastership of Rugby became vacant, he applied for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... spotted the weaknesses in Collier's arguments, at the same time pointing out the essential usefulness of the Short View as a corrective. He was not particularly original, for many of the points he made were considered public property by writers in the controversy. Thus, along with Dennis and others, the writer admitted the necessity for reform, ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... found an excuse for advancing from his position in the rear, and rode close by her side. They had gone two or three miles in the moonlight, speaking desultorily across the wheel of her gig concerning the fair, farming, Oak's usefulness to them both, and other indifferent subjects, when Boldwood said ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... paid for work on the O.G. case one dollar and seventy-five cents; for the same work in 1855, I paid twenty cents, and many other things in the same proportion. The last thing that I invented, which has proved to be of great usefulness, was the one day timepiece that can be sold for seventy-five cents, and a fair profit at that. I remember well when I was about to give up the job, of asking the man who made the cases for the factory ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... are connected in series with the device. Under certain conditions of contact, the arrangement is extraordinarily sensitive to small sounds and approaches an ability indicated by its name. Its practical usefulness has been not as a serviceable speech transmitter, but as a stimulus to the devising of transmitters using carbon in other ways. Variation of the resistance of metal conductors and of contact between metals has served to transmit voice currents, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... they had to invent some new "great principles" to justify their revolt against tradition. That is the way in which all "great principles" are produced. They are always made for an exigency. Their usefulness passes with the occasion. The mores are forever adjusting efforts to circumstances. Sooner or later they need new great principles. Then they obliterate the old ones. The old jingle of words no longer wins a response. The doctrine is dead. In 1776 it seemed to every Whig in ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of health, happiness, and usefulness to many an unfortunate little waif, whose earthly inheritance is utter blackness, and whose moral blight can be outgrown and succeeded by a development of intelligence ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... drawn from it? In the chaotic conflict of passions and interests that make up the world, the deeds of a man or a party are not useful in proportion to the objective truth of the ideas acted out, or to the success attained. Their usefulness depends upon the direction of the effort, on the ends it proposes, on the results it obtains. There are men and parties of whom one might say, they were right to be wrong, when chimerical ideas and mistakes have sustained their courage to carry out an effective ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... of a man of great wealth: therefore, I myself am become a great man. Heaven preserve me from becoming indolent, proud, and oppressive! I have not yet forgotten that oppression exists, that pride is its chief counsellor, that activity and usefulness are the sacred duties of both rich and poor, that the wealth entrusted to my distribution is the property of those whom most it can benefit, that I am a creature of very few wants, but that those few in others as well as in myself are imperious, and that I have felt ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... take it for above six months together with great benefit, and without any inconvenience; and after long and repeated experience I do esteem it a most excellent diet drink, fitted to all seasons and ages." After mentioning its usefulness in febrile complaints, he says: "I have had all this confirmed by my own experience in the late sickly season of the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-one, having had twenty-five fevers in my own family cured by this medicinal water, drunk copiously." ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... confidential police reports show, among many others, the sentiments of the public and the usefulness of repressive measures. (Archives nationales, F.7, 3016, Report of the commissioner-general of Marseilles for the second quarter of 1808.) "Events in Spain have largely fixed, and essentially fixed, attention. In vain would ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... founded to help the many young women who were in need of a college training, but who could not afford to pay their own way. Through the wise generosity of Mrs. Durant and a group of Boston women, the society was set upon its feet, and its long career of blessed usefulness was begun. This is only one of the many gifts which Wellesley owes to Mrs. Durant. As Professor Katharine Lee Bates has said in her charming sketch of Mrs. Durant in the Wellesley Legenda for 1894: "Her ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... boasted whalebone ribs, never "broke its mighty heart" in a rainstorm (and incidentally could never be shut up tight). Flexible steel has taken the place of whalebone in many of the arts; but new avenues of usefulness open up to baleen. Out of it artificial feathers of exquisite lightness and wigs or toupees are made. Shredded into fine filaments, baleen is now woven in with the other fibres in the manufacture of the finest French ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... window fastener of the future. "Union," "American," "Columbian," "Peoples'," "Washington," "Ne Plus Ultra," and a score more, were turned over and rejected. Finally he settled upon the "Cosmopolitan Window Fastener," meaning that its destined field of usefulness was the whole civilized globe. Patents for it could be and should be obtained in England, France, Germany, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... presided, said that the domestic problem was one of great seriousness. Personally he rarely descended to the servants' hall, but he did not pretend to be unaware of the usefulness of such regions and of our dependence upon them. There must be give and take. If the stage had been guilty of too much levity in its portraiture of domestic servants, then, in the interests of all of us, it must make what our lively neighbours ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... inconveniences attending its abolition advantages proposed by its abolition has no share in the opposition to sectaries abolition of, would mean loss of occupation to freethinkers no necessity for extirpating it evils attending its abolition its organization its truth denied by freethinking usefulness of preaching on its mysteries early its want of truth a source of joy to the wicked suffered by being blended with Gentile philosophy Church and Dissent, their mutual attitudes Church, sleeping in, sermon on Church, the, not answerable ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... seminaries would produce a still greater number of inestimable scholars hereafter if sordidness did not obscure the splendid light, corruption interrupt, and certain truckling harpies and beggars envy them their usefulness. Nor can any one be so blind as not to perceive this—any so stolid as not to understand it—any so perverse as not to acknowledge how sacred Theology has been contaminated by those notorious idiots, and the celestial Muse treated ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... was worth; this was my esteem for intelligence and learning; and I was the man who had thanked God I was not as my neighbours at A.! If in the beginning I had deliberately resolved that it would be a mistake to ally myself with Melissa's family because my usefulness might be diminished, something might have been pleaded on my behalf, but I was without excuse. I had sacrificed Melissa to no principle, but to detestable vulgar cowardice. It was about two hours after ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... people, come the mulberry and tea plants, one species of the former not only feeding the silkworm, but it also affords the fibre of which Japanese paper is made, as well as forming the basis of their cordage and some descriptions of dress material. In usefulness the bamboo is most remarkable, growing to a height of sixty feet, and entering into the construction of house-frames, screens, many household articles, mats, pipes, and sails. The camphor-tree, which is seen in such abundance, is a grand ornament in ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend: such nails are then thrown into the dust or into the furnace. I must do my duty; I must accomplish what is commanded me; I must not be turned aside. I am loath to be cast into the furnace or the dust; but God's ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... than an assistant, for the clerks are apt to cuss him for all the manager's meanness, and the manager is likely to find fault with him for all the clerks' cussedness. But if he explains his orders to the clerks he loses his authority, and if he excuses himself to the manager he loses his usefulness. A manager needs an assistant to take trouble from him, not to bring ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... "Gazette," was established July 29, 1786. A mail route to Philadelphia, by horseback, was adopted in the same year. On September 29, 1787, the Legislature granted a charter to the Pittsburgh Academy, a school that has grown steadily in usefulness and power as the Western University of Pennsylvania, and which has in this year (July 11, 1908) appropriately altered its name ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... picturesque but poisonous: a fine specimen of a man, though his usefulness in the economy of things is not apparent, at least upon the surface. He dislikes steady, hard work, is a dreamer with a deeply religious tinge, but all the same cruel and remorseless in the pursuit of any object. We were well into the region that he had ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... through the abolition of it. Wealth {240} can be used for the kingdom of God, and it is a necessary instrument in the Church's work. It may be consecrated like every other gift to the service of Christ. But there are mighty forces enlisted against its best usefulness, and only through the fullness of Christian grace can its good work be done. What Jesus does condemn however is the predatory instinct, that greed of gain which embodies itself everywhere in the spirit of plunder, exploitation, and the impulse ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... may do for wintry days, A corner is your lot in spring; While you, Fan, are a useless thing When cold succeeds to heat; for neither Can change yourself to suit the weather Learn, if you're able to possess, Like me a double usefulness, From winter's rain I help to shun And guard in summer from ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... conviction. But being moved on this occasion, as he had always been on others, to act upon his own judgment and conviction, though foreseeing that this vote would probably end a long career of conspicuous public usefulness, there was no sign of hesitancy or weakness ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... end of my Harbury days I was already dreaming of a Career, of some great and conspicuous usefulness in the world. That has always haunted my mind and haunts it now. I may be cured perhaps of the large and showy anticipations of youth, I may have learnt to drop the "great and conspicuous," but still I find it necessary to believe that I matter, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... crudest sorts of farming tools. Near the coast, sea shells were the most efficient implements they possessed. The fresh-water clam-shells came next in usefulness. Where these natural scrapers were not available, pointed sticks, and pieces of flat rock served the purpose. One writer describing the Illinois Indians' method ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... in a similar tone. "He can put forward a strong claim to your sympathy and help, if not to your love. He can offer you a great field of usefulness which you want. He has been very faithful to you. Are you quite sure that even now you can refuse him without his complaining that you have trifled ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... about—because it won't be particularly agreeable for us to live in New York: which you don't care much about either. But you won't be sacrificing what is called "a career." You made up your mind long ago that your best chance of self-development, and consequently of general usefulness, lay in thinking rather than doing; and, when we first met, you were already planning to sell out your business, and travel and write. Well! Those ambitions are of a kind that won't be harmed by your ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... sending me the last number of your able essays in the New York Times. The President paid you a very handsome compliment in the Cabinet meeting yesterday, in reference to your usefulness to the country. He handed your views on colonization and the proper point to initiate the colony, which he said he had requested of you, to Secretary Smith, and said you had given him a better insight into the whole ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... upon our ignorance, and not upon our knowledge. It does not by any means follow that because we have discovered no reasons for their existence, therefore there are no reasons. Science, in enlarging its conquests of nature, is perpetually discovering the usefulness of arrangements of which our fathers were ignorant, and the reasons of things which to their minds, were concealed; and it ill becomes the men who so far "mistrust their own feeble powers" as to be afraid of ascribing any intention ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of fashion insists on its minute vagaries in dress not always with an eye to utility and an explorer in the polar regions is a very fastidious person, expending a vast amount of care on his attire, but with the sole idea of comfort, warmth, and usefulness. The clothes he wears are many and often cumbersome, but they have gradually been perfected to meet the demands of the local weather conditions. After a sojourn in the ice-lands, he returns to civilization with a new concept of the value of dress. At last he ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... vertical curtains are always in line with the wind movement, and the structure is held taut by a cord, the lateral effect, when used on a machine which does not at all times move in line with the moving air current. A condition is thus set up which destroys the usefulness of the ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... But to his Jeremiads upon the decay of the public services he added a keen interest in the world of fashion; it is always well that a man should have varied activities; it widens his horizon, and gives him a greater usefulness. If his attention had been limited to red-tape, Major Forsyth, even in his own circle, might have been thought a little one-sided; but his knowledge of etiquette and tailors effectually prevented the reproach. He was pleased to consider himself in society; ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... to the pockets of his customers with his white-oak nutmegs, horn gun-flints, and bass-wood cucumber seeds, by supplying them with pure unadulterated orthodox Calvinism, fresh from the Saybrook Platform. Nor did he confine his usefulness to beating the "drum ecclesiastic;" during the long winters in the country, he "kept school," as it is somewhat perversely called; whereas, in nine cases out of ten, it is the ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the manufacture of guncotton, and he developed a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be prepared with practically no danger and at the same time yielded the product in a form that increased its usefulness. This work to an important extent prepared the way for the "smokeless powders'' which came into general use towards the end of the 19th century; cordite, the particular form adopted by the British government in 1891, was invented jointly by him and Professor James Dewar. Our knowledge of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fuller capacity, as with open eyes and unprejudiced heart and with wisdom developing by experience it becomes willing to see that IT also must have its scrap heap, or its museum for honorable antiquities, on which to lay aside the weights that are impeding it in the race, which are crippling its usefulness, and which are bound eventually to destroy it if it blindly continues to cling ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... clothes. I wandered away to where the dog stopped behind a livery stable, and there, lying in a shuddering heap on the frosty ground, lay the still, white features of a soup bone that had outlived its usefulness. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... 1864, was another note-worthy assemblage. Its was the formulation of a plan of organization known as the National Equal Rights League. The rivalry between Mr. Douglass and Mr. Langston prevented the wide usefulness of which the ...
— The Early Negro Convention Movement - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 9 • John W. Cromwell
... flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of the church, and also the people, though she seldom appeared in public. She rapidly advanced in esteem, in good report, and in usefulness, and Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and distrustful of his powers. He only needed a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he was. Ambition, definitely shining goals, adorn the perspectives of young men in new countries less often than is commonly supposed. Lorne meant to be a good lawyer, squarely proposed to himself that the country should hold no better; and as to more selective usefulness, he hoped to do a little stumping for the right side when Frank Jennings ran for the Ontario House in the fall. It wouldn't be his first electioneering: from the day he became chairman of the Young Liberals the party had an eye on him, and when occasion arose, winter or summer, by bobsleigh ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... to the matter in hand, and dree his weird whatever befall, is a badge, not a burden. It is the stimulus of sound natures; and as the weight of his wife's arm makes a man's body proud, so the sense of his usefulness to the world does but warm and indurate his soul. It is something when a man comes to this mind, and with all his capacity to err, is abreast of life at last. He shall not regret the infrequency of his inspirations, for he will know that ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... after Governor Dudley of the Plymouth Colony. He was born at Hartford, March 10, 1839. His father was a prosperous shipping merchant, one of whose boats, during the Civil War, towed the Monitor from New York to Fortress Monroe on the momentous voyage that destroyed the Merrimac's usefulness. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... and in the hurry of leaving—" He paused again, checked by the impossibility of uttering, to the girl before him, the little conventional falsehoods which formed the small currency of Bessy's circle. Not that any scruple of probity restrained him: in trifling matters he recognized the usefulness of such counters in the social game; but when he was with Justine he always felt the obscure need of letting his ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... evening Sue began to get a hold upon herself. The old fire came back into her eyes and she went about the house with a smile upon her face and talked through the evenings to her silent, attentive husband of the life of usefulness, the full life. One day she told him of her election to the presidency of a society for the rescue of fallen women, and he began seeing her name in the newspapers in connection with various charity and civic movements. At the house a new sort ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... beauty to morality are illustrated in the following pages in a way which leaves little to be desired, and scarcely any room for dissent; but I have marked for my own future reference the following passages, of which I think it will further the usefulness of the book that the reader should initially observe the contents ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of character can come from the most commonplace necessities of life." Helen sighed; she wondered if this commonplace of Ashurst were her necessity? For again she was searching for her place in the world,—the place that needed her, and was to give her the happiness of usefulness; and she had even thought vaguely that she might find some work in Lockhaven, among John's people, and for them. They both fell into the silence of their own thoughts, until the rector and his daughter came back from ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... perhaps the most extraordinary institution in the State. At its head is General George Stone, one-time chairman of the Republican State Central Committee. At its tail is Jake Steppacher, another one-time potent politician who has passed the days of his usefulness. Between Stone at the lead and Steppacher at the tail, is an astonishing array of formerly prominent politicians, as well as politicians who are decidedly in the present. In fact, the Fish and Game Commission ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... sympathizing Friend, as a helpful Saviour, came through struggle, trial, pain, and sorrow. Not one of the apostles reached his royal strength as a man, as a helper of men, as a representative of Jesus, without enduring loss and suffering. No man who ever rises to a place of real worth and usefulness in the world walks on a rose-strewn path. We never can be made fit for anything beautiful and worthy without cost of pain and tears. Always it is ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the preceding week. Naturally one must admit that earth at the bottom of a pond is not so great an element of beauty as is clean gravel, but the advantages are so many, that beauty must give way to usefulness. Besides this, "C. C. C." must know that it is almost impossible to keep the gravel clean enough to look pretty, when the water is inhabited by a large number of little fish which are being constantly fed. I cannot at all agree with his advice that ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... in 1874 and is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of Paris. Believing that journalism opened to him a wider avenue of usefulness than the legal profession, he preferred—as the event showed most wisely—to follow a journalistic career. In this choice he may have been guided by the fact that he was the nephew of the most famous foreign correspondent in the history of journalism. I refer to M. de Blowitz, who was ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... her summons came suddenly, unexpectedly. Her disconsolate parents saw "the desire of their eyes taken away by a stroke." The dear child herself was naturally of a timid, reserved disposition; she felt more than she said. Her kind, unselfish heart delighted in devising plans of usefulness and carrying them out. The entire of her pocket-money was latterly spent in the purchase of little books for the infant-school children—all of whom loved her much—or in publications for loan among the elder Sunday class. She won ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff
... me for interferin', but, as the senior partner of this yer Ledge, and Jackson Wells yer bein' a most important member, what affects his usefulness on this claim affects us. And we propose to carry out this yer will, with all its dips ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... Story took, immediately fell into a Dissertation on the Usefulness of Looking-Glasses, and applying himself to me, asked, if there were any Looking Glasses in the Times of the Greeks and Romans; for that he had often observed in the Translations of Poems out of those Languages, that People generally talked of seeing themselves ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... came to see me sometimes. He was an eminent divine, nominated to his post by Hammerfeldt in reward, I believe, for some political usefulness. I do not think he saw far into a child's heart, or perhaps I was not like most children. He was always comforting me, telling me not to be afraid, that God was merciful, Christ full of love, and the saints praying for me. Now I was not in the least afraid; I was very curious ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... both morally and politically wrong. I entered upon this enquiry without the slightest feeling of hostility to that trade, nor have I any wish unfavourable to it; but I think a complete reform in its system would add to its usefulness and respectability. As the subject of that chapter has been much discussed, I have thought it right to take a view of the various arguments which have been advanced, and to offer my own opinion respecting their ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... shut himself from his friends, to give up all public preaching and tutorial work, and to consider himself as hopelessly lost. It is a curious fact that he dated his return to reason and happiness and usefulness after a visit paid him by my father, who happened to be in town, and who naturally was drawn to see his afflicted friend, with whom, in the days of auld lang syne, he had smoked many a pipe and held many an argument respecting Edwards on Freedom of the Will, and his favourite McKnight. ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... withholding of them from the world, unless in the cases, becoming fewer every day, in which frankness on these subjects would either risk the loss of means of subsistence, or would amount to exclusion from some sphere of usefulness peculiarly suitable to the capacities of the individual. On religion in particular the time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have on ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... unceasingly, and I breathed in the sweet, mild spring air, and warmed myself in the radiant sunlight so long denied to me. The old plum tree above my head, planted so long ago by one of my ancestors, and now almost at the end of its usefulness, spread its lacy curtain of new leaves to the tender blue of the sky, and the tiny fountain in its shade continued its tuneful melody as if it were a little hurdy-gurdy ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... an aid in oral teaching of English that story-telling in school finds its second value; ethics is the first ground of its usefulness, English the second,—and after these, the others. It is, too, for the oral uses that the secondary forms of story-telling are so available. By secondary I mean those devices which I have tried to indicate, as used by many teachers, in the chapter on "Specific Schoolroom ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... its weight of sulphur and combined by heat, the rubber acquires greater elasticity, is not hardened by cold or rendered viscid by heat, and is insoluble in many of the solvents of pure rubber; its usefulness is thus largely increased and greatly extended of late; the demand for rubber is in excess of the supply, but no substitute has been found effective; in recent years care has been bestowed on its economical collection and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... full-blooded young man's horror of death. He could think of it only as a fitting close to a long, useful life, or as a possible release from months of sickness and pain. That anyone young, and in good health, with the world of beauty and years of usefulness before them, with the opportunities and duties of life calling, should willfully seek to die, was a monstrous thought. After all the boy knew so little. He was only beginning to sense vaguely the great forces that make ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... decides sometimes far in advance of the actual test of battle just which side is going to win. Scientists, inventors, manufacturers, and practical fliers began coming together in increasing numbers to exact from this latest method of warfare its last degree of usefulness. In the studies and factories on both sides of the lines men dedicated themselves to the solution ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... hardly eight years old came running from the outer corridor—all laughter—one of those spoiled favorites of fortune whom it was the fashion to keep as pets. Their usefulness consisted mainly in retention ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... you!" came suddenly in John Banks' clear tones; and Collette, hastily lifting her basket, and apologising for the sudden termination of her usefulness, departed quickly. ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the sudden demand made upon him by the Lady of the Silver Bungalow. And he greatly desired to re-adjust his relations with Hugh Johnstone and Major Alan Hawke. The daily usefulness of "Lying as a Fine Art" was never before so apparent to Ram Lal. He slunk away on foot to his own ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... failed. And we see, finally, when nothing seemed so likely as complete dissolution, the whole system changed by a violent operation, and the dying patient's life protracted for further centuries of power and usefulness. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... proper term for an effort to sail against the wind, is left to be settled by those reverend monopolizers of all the arts and sciences, the London Reviewers; who, by the way, and we mention it pro bono publico, would very much increase their stock of knowledge and usefulness, if they would depute a few missionaries, for their own reverend body, to pass and repass the Atlantic in a British transport, containing in its black hole an hundred or two of Yankee prisoners of war: We do wish that the London Quarterly Reviewers particularly ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... for the winter; the dog hides his bone where only he can find it. Children love to have things for their "very own," and almost invariably go through the hoarding stage in which stamps or samples or bits of string are hoarded for the sake of possession, quite apart from their usefulness or value. Much of the training of children consists in learning what is "mine" and what is "thine," and respect for the property of others can develop only out of a sense of one's ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... to the possible usefulness of oxygen as a medicine was prophetic. A century later the use of oxygen had become a matter of routine practice with many physicians. Even in Priestley's own time such men as Dr. John Hunter expressed their belief in its efficacy in certain conditions, as we shall see, but its value in medicine ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in life is that of marriage, which ought never to be regarded as a mere civil contract, entered into from worldly ends, but as an essential union of two minds, by which each gains a new power, and acquires! new capacities for enjoyment and usefulness. Much has been said and written about the equality of the sexes, and the rights of woman; but little of all that has been said or written on this subject is based upon a discriminating appreciation of the difference ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... before he had certified to the Duke against the use of them, and what a burden they are to trade, and presently after, at his being at Harwich, comes to desire that he might have the setting one up there, and gets the usefulness of it certified also by the Trinity House. After long discoursing and considering all our stores and other things, as how the King hath ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... blown christian. That, to Mrs. Lasette was the initial step in the narrow way left luminous by the bleeding feet of Christ, and what the young convert needed was to be taught how to walk worthy of her high calling, and to make her life a thing of usefulness and faithfulness to God and man, a growth in grace and in the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Simply attired in a dress which Mrs. Lasette thought fitted for the occasion, Annette took her seat quietly on the platform and calmly waited till her turn ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... brave in reverse, as unassuming in. success, he laid his plans with consummate prudence and carried them out with unwavering constancy. Disinterested, honourable and patriotic, he suffered no secret view of personal advantage to narrow his mind or mar his usefulness. Looking on his work as the work of God, and therefore believing implicitly in its final success, he threw his whole heart into it, devoting to it time, talents, wealth and life, and pursuing it with a courage that never quailed and a heroism of self-sacrifice ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... the attachment missing. Missing that, hard effort was required and poor work was accomplished. It may be that some little thing stands in the way of your blessing, or the lack of some little thing hinders your usefulness. ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... pieces ever to be preserved and exhibited in one place. The collection contains the work of some of the more prominent American silversmiths, but most of the pieces are by lesser known makers and are in the collection because of historic interest rather than artistic merit. The chief usefulness of the collection lies in its value as a social document and in the mute evidence it gives of the taste and craftsmanship of the periods covered. The collection is also helpful in dating type specimens that do not have specific associations ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... aspect—she did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a girl's heart is moved to pity, it's more dangerous than anything. She is bound to want to 'save him,' to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness—well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready. I think you are frowning, Rodion Romanovitch? There's no need. As you know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I am drinking!) Do you know, I always, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... have a stronger reason for trying to learn the lesson of humility than this, that our receiving the grace of God, and consequently our usefulness, depends upon it. God will not give us his grace to enable us to be truly good and to make ourselves useful, unless we learn this lesson. And unless we have the grace of God, we cannot be useful. Like barren fig-trees we shall be ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... explain. It appeared that she had two aunts, both sisters of her father—one a widow, the other unmarried. The widow, a certain Mrs. Kihm, lived in New York, and was wealthy, and had views on "women's sphere of usefulness." The other, Miss Bessemer, a little old maid of fifty, Condy had on rare occasions seen at the flat, where every one called her Aunt Dodd. She lived in that vague region of the city known as the Mission, where ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... dismissed from Lord-lieutenancies, as a punishment for voting against the ministry; such dismissals being a flagrant attempt to put down all freedom of debate in Parliament, which of all its privileges is the one most essential to its usefulness, if not to its very existence. But, as Burke said, the practice had been abandoned, and the first resolution, therefore, as Lord North said, involved no practical result. It is the second resolution that confers ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... of Mrs. Jewkes Vice is rewarded; whence every Housekeeper may learn the Usefulness of pimping and bawding ...
— An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews • Conny Keyber
... to him that I did at all give instance of the usefulness of church government in the preservation of purity in the ordinances and in church-members. He saith, For an Independent to have given this instance had been something; but it seems strange to him that "I should have given an instance of the power and efficacy ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... exhilarating reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his dependence, of her own usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about the 'survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and sallow young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes like a chipmunk's. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Spantz, "we are safe if we take no chances with him. He must be watched all the time. If we discover that he is what some of us think he is, there is a way to end his usefulness." ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... at last grow old; new discoveries are made; new ideas arise; the old books are out of date; their usefulness is at an end. Students are the only people who still ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... a sermon delivered in New York City only a few days earlier and published broadcast. He was promptly exposed by the parallel-column system; but I have never heard that his standing was affected or his usefulness impaired by the offence proven against him. A few years ago an eminent divine in one of our cities preached as his own the sermon of a brother divine, no longer living; he, too, was detected and promptly exposed by the parallel-column system, but nothing whatever happened from the exposure. Every ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... answers you may be able to make some judgment of the usefulness of this politic treatise. Wicquefort, it is true, can never be sufficiently admired for his elaborate treatise of the conduct of an Ambassador in all his negotiations; but I design this only as a compendium, or the Ambassador's Manual, or ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... reprinted from the Pioneer editorial gives the most complete and faithful description of Mr. McNair's achievements during a too brief day of usefulness. Portions of that editorial need a passing word so far as the subject of this memoir is concerned. With regard to the disapproval of the Indian Government of McNair's venture in entering Kafiristan without the permission of his Government, I never heard a word from his lips by way of complaint, ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... military discipline I obey now instinctively, although I do not want to do this. But you know publishers. They say that if there are menus for those who do not have the desire to compute them, the usefulness of the book will be increased. ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... hand and emitted a huge sigh. "Very well," he said, "I will tell you what this is all about because my usefulness may come to an end abruptly and you may have to carry on. Listen carefully." ...
— "To Invade New York...." • Irwin Lewis
... fellow-sufferers were still prisoners in Ava. They remained in Calcutta till the close of the war, and some time after, preparing themselves by the study of the Burmese language, etc., for their subsequent career of usefulness in Burma. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... arranged in a certain sequence for the sake of an agreeable contrast of moods and tempos. It is scarcely necessary to say that the writer in question had a very poor opinion of the Symphony as an Art-form, and believed that it had outlived its usefulness and should be relegated to the limbo of Archaic Things. If he, however, trained in musical history and familiar with musical literature, could see only four unrelated pieces of music in a symphony by Beethoven, we need not marvel that ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... committed important health trusts, which we hold, not merely in our own behalf, but for the benefit of others. If we discharge the obligations of our trusteeship, we shall enjoy present strength, usefulness, and length of days; but if we fail in their performance, then inefficiency, incapacity, and sickness, will follow, the sequel of which is pain and death. Let us, then, prove worthy of this generous commission, that we may enjoy ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... a great secret of power and usefulness," he said gravely. "What do you think of this bank?—it is dry, and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner |
