"Aimless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine instincts of her own. Her womanly intuition told her that nothing could be more healing than the touch of those baby fingers. When Audrey sat down opposite to her, with her nephew sprawling on her lap, and kicking up his pink toes in a baby's aimless fashion, her face always looked happier, and a more contented look came ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... shared in the general ugliness of that rain-swept dawn. Its maples were gaunt skeletons, its garden a sodden field over which the chickens were wandering in sad and aimless fashion. To my city-bred wife this home-coming must have been a cruel shock, but it was the best I could do, and whatever the girl felt, she concealed with a smile, resolute to make the best of me ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... became horribly despondent—like an outcast who suddenly realizes the whole world is alien. And all the wandering about the world, and all the romance and excitement I'd enjoyed in it, appeared an aimless, futile business, chasing around in a circle in an effort to avoid touching reality. Forgive me, Curt. I meant myself, not you, of course. Oh, it was horrible, I tell you, to feel that way. I tried ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon—(how made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the stillness) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... life, that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... purpose; is the process of creation the sport of an infant God; is the Logos, sacrificing himself in order to give life to the Universe, a prodigal, working without rhyme or reason, sending forth His intelligence and might in aimless sport and leaving evolution at the mercy of His caprice; did not Brahma, by means of meditation, which, as the Oriental scriptures tell us, preceded creation, practise the gentlest, the most rapid, and the easiest method of guiding beings to the Goal? Is it ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... of waiting about; but he craved for the society of someone he knew, and the idea of going back to spend the rest of the day in those suburban lodgings seemed intolerable. So he decided to wait, and walked down the narrow side street into the Strand, and thence westwards, in more or less aimless fashion. He had never known town sufficiently well to note the changes which the last ten years had brought; possibly, they would not have interested him greatly in any case, for he was a Londoner by birth, and the true Londoner looks at the ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... thoughts in exultation held their way: Whose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade Were once to me unearthly tones of love, Joy without object, wordless music, stealing Through all my soul, until my pulse beat fast With aimless hope, and unexpressed desire— Thou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep Through all thy restless waves, and wasting shores, Of silent labour, and eternal change; First teacher of the dense immensity Of ever-stirring life, in thy strange forms Of fish, and shell, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There are valleys unpeopled and still; There's a land — oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... spear from thy breast, When the storm of war blew strongest, and the best men met the best? Lo, this is the tale of to-day: but what shall to-morrow tell? That Thiodolf the Mighty in the fight's beginning fell; That there came a stroke ill-stricken, there came an aimless thrust, And the life of the people's helper lay quenched in ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... embarrassed. He was sure that he ought to know who they were, but for the life of him he could not think. He met so many people in his rather aimless life it was ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... Nicholson and his family at Penrith, and there are one or two notes concerning his journey tither. The next letter is dated 24th Aug., 1856. He wrote therefore when the Crimean War was still going forward. That war which, amongst mistaken policies, blundering Government tactics, and aimless ambitions, holds a foremost place. It was not till the end of the year 1855 that it came to an end. After the attack on Sebastopol, the French—whose army had suffered quite as much from the terrible winter and from disease, etc., as our own—succeeded in ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... harmless, and whenever he came into a wigwam he was driven there by extreme hunger. He went nude except for the half of a red blanket he girdled around his waist. In one tawny arm he used to carry a heavy bunch of wild sunflowers that he gathered in his aimless ramblings. His black hair was matted by the winds, and scorched into a dry red by the constant summer sun. As he took great strides, placing one brown bare foot directly in front of the other, he swung his long lean arm to ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... dying, every cough threatened a hemorrhage; but when his breath came more easily and he missed the familiar taste of blood in his mouth he rose and tottered about through the fog. He could discover no tracks; he began to fear the night would foil him, when at last luck guided his aimless footsteps to a slide of loose rock banked against a seamy ledge. The surface of the bank showed a muddy scar, already half obliterated by the rain; brief search among the near-by boulders uncovered the hiding-place of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... aid, he bridles the wolf and bear, ploughs a field of adders with a plough of gold, and conquers the gigantic pike that swims in the Styx of Finnish mythology. After this point the story is interrupted by a long sequel of popular bridal songs, and, in the wandering course of the rather aimless epic, the flight and its incidents have been forgotten, or are neglected. These incidents recur, however, in the thread of somewhat different plots. We have seen that they are found in Japan, among the Eskimo, among the Bushmen, the Samoyeds, and the Zulus, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... light-heartedness. Vere smiled as she listened, but there was a wistfulness in her heart. At that moment a very common desire of young and vigorous girls assailed her—the desire to be a boy; not a boy born of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of aristocratic young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly dressed, or scarcely dressed at ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... had seen Lynn write down in the corner of a note that he had taken to Monopoly for her, "Kindness of Billy," so he wrote "Kindnus of Cheef." Then he mounted his wheel and rode to Economy. After some apparently aimless riding he brought up at the back of the Chief's garage where he applied a canny eye to a crack and ascertained just how many and what cars were inside. He then rode straight to the bank where he was pretty sure the Chief would be standing near the steps at this hour. Waiting a time of leisure ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... inflictions upon slaves, are not hap-hazard assertions, nor the exaggerations of fiction conjured up to carry a point; nor are they the rhapsodies of enthusiasm, nor crude conclusions, jumped at by hasty and imperfect investigation, nor the aimless outpourings either of sympathy or poetry; but they are proclamations of deliberate, well-weighed convictions, produced by accumulations of proof, by affirmations and affidavits, by written testimonies and statements of a cloud ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the cap the boy had on, and, with this head gear pulled down over the left side of his face, the appearance of Bob Hunter was much changed. His accustomed step, quick, firm, and expressive, was changed to that of the nerveless, aimless boy—a sort of shuffle. ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... novels for the simple reason that we know not what else to call them. The former was begun, in his own words, "with no real idea of how it was to turn out"; its nine volumes, published at intervals from 1760 to 1767, proceeded in the most aimless way, recording the experiences of the eccentric Shandy family; and the book was never finished. Its strength lies chiefly in its brilliant style, the most remarkable of the age, and in its odd characters, like Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, which, with all their eccentricities, are so humanized ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... but spring. Unmated yet, nor of mate solicitous, in pure joy of heart he cannot refrain from ascent and song; but the snow-clouds look cold, and ere he has mounted as high again as the church-spire, the aimless impulse dies, and he comes wavering down silently to the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the donkey following, and Philidor, now thoroughly disillusioned, bringing up the rear. He was thinking deeply, his gaze on the graceful lines of her intolerant back, aware that she had paid him in full for his temerity, and wondering in an aimless way how soon she would be taking the train for Paris. He had done what he could to atone but some instinct ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... nations to which they belong, there was not in them the incentive to action and progress which is given by the consciousness of a part in human destiny, by the inspiration of a high idea, or even by the natural development of institutions. Their life and literature were aimless and wasteful. Without combination or concentration, they had no star to guide them in an onward course; and the progress of dawn into day was no more to them than to the flocks and to ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... and tragic instinct possessed these two—for as a wild thing, mortally hurt, wanders away through solitude to find a spot in which to die, so these two moved slowly away together into the twilight of the trees, unconscious, perhaps, what they were seeking, but driven into aimless motion toward that ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... her sixty thousand thalers were the foundation. He must know whether she were for him or not; in the one case to transform his castle in the air into reality without loss of time, and in the other case not to waste the best years of his life in aimless disappointment; not to let other opportunities slip by. He was not quite clear, however, on one point, To whom should he make his proposal? To Frau Brohl? That would be the most practicable way, no doubt, as the bent, pale old lady, with the soft, sighing voice, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... harangue; for an instant, it looked as though this consideration was taking them all back into aimless meditation. Then, "That's right," Billy Fairfax took it up heroically. "Say, Merrill," he added in almost a conversational tone, "what are our chances? I mean how soon do we ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... earth presents obstacles, so it offers channels for the easy movement of humanity, grooves whose direction determines the destination of aimless, unplanned migrations, and whose termini become, therefore, regions of historical importance. Along these nature-made highways history repeats itself. The maritime plain of Palestine has been an established route of commerce and war from the time of Sennacherib to Napoleon.[1] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... object to which the commonwealth can lend its aid, than that of a movement, adopted in a practical way, to open the door of emigration to young women who are wanted for teachers and for every appropriate, as well as domestic, employment in the remote West, but who are leading anxious and aimless lives ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Confederacy. I had an affectionate regard for General Hood, but it was my belief that neither he nor any other soldier could save the day, and being out of commission and having no mind for what I conceived aimless campaigning through another winter—especially an advance into Tennessee upon Nashville—I wrote to an old friend of mine, who owned the Montgomery Mail, asking for a job. He answered that if I would come right along and take the editorship of the paper he would make me ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... yet vitally-momentous province; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was completed;—thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... tenderly as ever. Old friends in New York cooled toward her. Her health was precarious. Months passed without bringing a word from over the sea; and the letters that did reach her, lively and jovial as they were, contained no good news. She saw her father expelled from England, wandering aimless in Sweden and Germany, almost a prisoner in Paris, reduced to live on potatoes and dry bread; while his own countrymen showed no signs of relenting toward him. In many a tender passage she praised his fortitude. "I witness," she wrote, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... seed. At any rate, it is good for a man who thinks seriously to face his fellows, and speak out whatever really burns in him, so that men may seem less strange to one another, and misunderstanding, the fruitful cause of aimless strife, may ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear That steals into the soul when unaware, And springs up Memory ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... down into the gloomy fore-hold of a three-masted lake schooner, harnessed securely between two long capstan bars, and set to walking in an aimless circle while a creaking cable was wound about a drum. At the other end of the cable were fastened, from time to time, squared pine-logs weighing half a ton each. It was the business of Blue Blazes to draw these timbers into the hold through a trap-door ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... they left cantonments—could not take us out of ourselves. A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... remained, but that she suggested another kind of scene altogether. He felt that to say it was a bore to go out was no longer that easy fiction which it usually is. It was a bore to go out into those aimless assemblies where not to go was a social mistake, yet to go was weariness of the flesh and spirit. In the midst of them his thoughts would turn to the little group in Half Moon Street which had made the commonplace drawing-room of the lodging-house into ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... down the steps, trying not to look aimless. She decided to steer for one of the high-back brocaded chairs which had little satellite tables. Better settle on one in the ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... months' period of thankless labor, and of unending yet aimless anxiety, follows here in my story. It was my business to remain in the Valley, watch its suspected figures, invigorate and encourage its militia, and combat the secret slander and open cowardice which there menaced the cause ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... dully upward. The sky was gray slate now, festooned with bellying black. No sign of the sun; not the least ray could pierce. The fliers hung aimless overhead, no sparkle to their hulls. The valley was dark too; the terrible rays had ceased raking it with ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... girl, with a toss of her head Mr. Gryce would have corrected in one of his grandchildren. "He can have nothing to say about me." And she began to move about the room in an aimless, half-insolent way. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him headlong into inky darkness. His gills crumpled in the rough embrace of the mud, and his eyes and sucker were choked with slime. It was only a desperate, convulsive, aimless wriggle that freed him. The next time he cleared his immediate surroundings, and shot a full six inches upwards, only to sink slowly to the ooze again, motionless, and exhausted. He ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... would have resented it hotly. Had she been told that another girl had consented to be his wife, she would have thought that girl to be happy in her destiny. When she heard that he was leading a wretched, moping, aimless life for her sake, her heart was sad within her. It was necessary to the completion of her happiness that Larry should recover his tone of mind and be her friend. "Reg," she said, leaning on his arm out in the park, "I want you to ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... the word "homeless" has implications of aimless drifting, of destitution and misery, and of the indifference of a "homeless" man to "his" country. Certain advocates of cosmopolitanism in their agitation against patriotism often take advantage of the importance of home in the relation of a man to his country when they ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... miserable! Whither am I borne? Into what region are these wavering sounds Wafted on aimless wings? O ruthless Fate! To what a height thy fury ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... dream, there must be some system on the earth commissioned to fulfil those promises; some authority divinely appointed to regenerate, and rule, and guide the lives of men, and the destinies of nations; who must go mad, unless he finds that history is not a dreary aimless procession of lost spirits descending into the pit, or that the salvation of millions does not depend on an obscure and controverted hair's ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... mirror in a trembling hand; Sad, trembling lips that utter broken thought: One of a wide and wandering, aimless band; One in the world who for the world ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Sheppard?" echoed Trent with bitter emphasis. "That question, if you will pardon me for saying so, Cupples, is thoroughly characteristic of the spirit of aimless inquiry prevailing in this restless day. I suggest our dining at Sheppard's and instantly you fold your arms and demand, in a frenzy of intellectual pride, to know who Sheppard is before you will cross the threshold of Sheppard's. I am ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... which a hankering which cannot be fulfilled may prove itself a torture. A more ordinary case is that of a man who has no particular vices, such as drink or sensuality, but yet has been attached entirely to things of the physical world, and has lived a life devoted to business or to aimless social functions. For him the astral world is a place of weariness; the only thing for which he craves are no longer possible for him, for in the astral world there is no business to be done, and, though he may have as much companionship as he wishes, ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... of falsehood. No party cared for knowledge that could not be made available for argument. Neutral and ambiguous science had no attractions for men engaged in perpetual combat. Its spirit first won the naturalists, the mathematicians, and the philologists; then it vivified the otherwise aimless erudition of the Benedictines; and at last it was carried into history, to give new life to those sciences which deal with the tradition, the law, and the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... unskilled in pain, and perhaps he bore it ill; he feared that the nurses thought so too—that Corydon called too often for something, or cried out too much in mere aimless misery. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... on the bars and ladders. With this precaution, strains are easily avoided; even with this, the hand will sometimes blister and the body ache, but perseverance will cure the one and Russia Salve the other; and the invigorated life in every limb will give a perpetual charm to those seemingly aimless leaps and somersets. The feats once learned, a private gymnasium can easily be constructed, of the simplest apparatus, and so daily used; though nothing can wholly supply the stimulus afforded by a class in a public institution, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... feeling his freedom in every word; there was Bret Harte, who had lately come East in his princely progress from California; and there was Clemens. Nothing remains to me of the happy time but a sense of idle and aimless and joyful talk-play, beginning and ending nowhere, of eager laughter, of countless good stories from Fields, of a heat-lightning shimmer of wit from Aldrich, of an occasional concentration of our joint mockeries upon our host, who took it gladly; and amid the discourse, so little improving, but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Aimless talking which indulges in the main in vague generalities can never be justified. Preaching presumes a pulpit and has little place in classwork. The teacher who persists in talking most of the time overvalues his own thoughts and minimizes the ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... regiments go by. Out of the hundreds of regiments in the French Army, just two! But whence they had come, what they had done, whither they were travelling, what they were intended to do—nobody could tell me. They had an air as casual and vague and aimless as a flight ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... the ghost's gaze must now fall on nothing; that would be too appalling (without doubt I was mad). Its gaze must meet something, otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether. The notion of such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze. My eyes desired those eyes: if that glance did not press against them, they would burst from my ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... He took a few aimless steps and, stooping over a basket of flowers, inhaled it with violence, almost buried his face. "I dare say we ARE interesting." He had spoken rather vaguely, but Mrs. Brook knew exactly why. "We render him no end of a service. We keep him in touch ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... far in mere aimless fashion; leaning against a wall he strove once more to plan, but ever as he did so, through his thought the girl's fair face, looking out from enshrouding lace, intruded. Again he felt the light of her eyes, all the bitterness ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... of this extravagant expense and senseless show upon these same young men and women? We can easily discover. It saps their noble ambition, assails their health, lowers their estimate of men and their reverence for women, cherishes an eager and aimless rivalry, weakens true feeling, wipes away the bloom of true modesty, and induces an ennui, a satiety, and a kind of dilettante misanthropy, which is only the more monstrous because it is undoubtedly real. You shall hear young men ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... one girl," he said between his teeth, "and I'll get her. I'll settle with her! I've got something here——" he felt in his pocket in a vague, aimless way. "I thought I had it, I've carried it about so long; but I've got it somewhere, I ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... less blind after that." The withered hand traced an aimless pattern on the table with its crooked and half-closed fingers, and the man's face was puckered into a shrewd, reminiscent scowl. "The papers couldn't get a lead on the motive for the murder, and the police weren't talking for publication. Not a word about the Rajah's jewels. Washington ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... entirely away from the maternal apron-strings, his impulse was towards the relief of tears, but his wandering gaze encountered the admiring eyes of Eva Gonorowsky and his aimless hand came in contact with the hidden store of chewing-gum with which the absent Patrick was won't to refresh himself, lightly attached to the under surface of the chair. Isaac promptly applied it to the soothing of his spirits, and decided that a school which furnished such dark and curly locked ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... Jack could see figures moving to and fro in the aimless manner natural to such indolent people. There were children running and playing among the stumps and dwellings—half naked little knots of humanity, who in a few years would become the repulsive squaws or terrible warriors of the tribe. Three of the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... flattery. In those days, I could see no excuse for Hippolyta, and ascribed no motives to her but fortune-hunting and despair at being a spinster so long; but I have since learnt to think that she had a genuine wish to be in a position of usefulness rather than to continue her aimless life of rattle and excitement, and that she had that impulse to take care of Eustace and protect him which strong-minded women sometimes seem to feel for ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Would you imply that anything in my past life, aimless and useless as it may have been, is unworthy of my honour—the honour of ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... have her question him, as she had questioned, concerning his beliefs and his hopes. He thought that in the evening he would like to go to a house of his own and find her sitting there waiting for him. All the charm of his aimless, half-dissolute way of life died in him, and he believed that with her he could begin to live more fully and completely. From the moment when he had definitely decided that he wanted Sue as a wife, ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... moping and ineffectual youth who still remained poor and unsettled, with a father desperately healthy and inexorable, and all hope of the baronetcy very far off indeed; they grew tired of him and went away,—the wife, like Lady Byron, refusing to go back to such an aimless, rhapsodizing vagabond. With her natural decision of mind, aided and encouraged, very likely, by her astute relatives, she thought she saw good reasons for breaking and setting aside the contract which had united them; and no ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... an assent. The two fell briskly to work and soon made an impression on the blank iron wall. At first the American chatted of this and that, rehearsing his own aimless ramblings as men will, but presently he observed that Smith was painting away and paying no ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... trivial episode of an uneventful day, involving no greater catastrophe than the momentary rousing of a sleeper who would doze again. But what day can we with certainty call uneventful? and what episode trivial? Those half- aimless, purposeless steps of Annie Walton into the quiet parlor might lead to results that would radically change the endless ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... insist, is no aimless travesty of the average Wall Street man, but a faithful etching of him, apart from those more sorry lineaments which might be disclosed in a portrait painted, as it were, with the oil of his own slippery speculations. If he resents the honest drawing of his well-known features, why, so ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... No one thought of telling us anything about flowers and trees, which give such zest to one's aimless rambles, nor about insects, with their curious habits, nor about stones, so instructive with their fossil records. That entrancing glance through the windows of the world was refused us. Grammar was ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... so, Mrs. Conyers, suddenly beside herself with aimless rage, raised one arm and hurled the necklace against the opposite wall of the room. It leaped a tangled braid through the air and as it struck burst asunder, and the stones scattered and rattled along the floor and rolled far out on ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... high noon Aimless I stand, my promised task undone, And raise my hot eyes to the angry sun That will go ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... who see more beauty, and poetry, and romance, in the distant "red light of a cigar" twinkling through the darkness, on some quiet night, than in all the stars of heaven combined; girls who expect that every silent, handsome man, who gives them a passing glance (of aimless curiosity) is a wonderful character, just stepped over the threshold of some of Ouida's or The Duchess' volumes, ready to seize them in his steady arms, if they sprain an ankle, or faint over some fright; ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... says or does a foolish thing it's always here. All the family breezes have started here. It's a kind of focus for aimed and aimless scandal. You know, when my father and mother had their special quarrel, my aunt was mixed up in it,—I never knew how or how much—but you may be sure she didn't calm things down, unless she found ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the average man through life is an aimless zigzag. It has neither direction nor purpose. It represents wasted ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... had swept through half their camp, leaving a long litter of the dead and the dying to mark their course. Uncertain who were their attackers, and unable to tell their English enemies from their newly-arrived Breton allies, the Spanish knights rode wildly hither and thither in aimless fury. The mad turmoil, the mixture of races, and the fading light, were all in favor of the four who alone knew their own purpose among the vast uncertain multitude. Twice ere they reached open ground they had to break their way through small bodies of horses, and once there came ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of aimless wandering, felt himself attracted to the gymnasium. Going inside, he went to his locker, where, with feverish energy, ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... restless and disposed to dark hours, and there is reason to suspect that there was in him a vein of insanity. His later writings were incomprehensible. When we were living in England, he passed through the midst of us on one of his aimless, mysterious journeys round the world; and when I was in New York, in 1884, I met him, looking pale, sombre, nervous, but little touched by age. He died a few years later. He conceived the highest ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few months, therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased, and put in some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... language of bitterness, violence, and execration was on her lips. With the never-ceasing complaints of want—want of position, want of friends, but, most of all, want of money—sounding in his ears, Andrew grew up a poet. The unsettled and aimless mind of his mother, shadowed as it was with perpetual blackness, prevented her from calmly and wisely striving to place her son in some position by which he could have aided in supporting himself and her. As a child, Andrew was shy and solitary, caring ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... thoughts of the idiot were ever falling. He beheld curious concurrences of words therein, and could read strange meanings from them—sometimes even received wondrous hints for the direction of celestial inquiry, from what, to any other, and it may be to the fool himself, was but a ceaseless and aimless babble. Such power lieth in words. It is not then to be wondered at, that the sounds I have mentioned should fall on the ears of Elsie, at such a moment, as a message from God himself. This then—all this dreariness—was but a passing show like the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... you mean to do?" said Frank, suddenly. It was just as they came in sight of the graceful spire of St Roque's; and perhaps it was the sight of his own church which roused the Perpetual Curate to think of the henceforth aimless life of his brother. "I don't understand how you are to give up your work. ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... perhaps, but it was the place and the time for foolish talk. After a little more of it they drifted apart, wandering this way and that in a delightful, aimless way. So little of their four lives had been aimless or especially delightful that they reveled in the sweet opportunity. Loraine wandered farthest. She came after awhile to a clearing where a small pond glimmered redly with the parting rays of ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... the main insincere; that every man of them had his own pet scheme for the salvation of wicked New York; and that they could not possibly accomplish anything more valuable than leading the people on the familiar, aimless, ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... hoes and hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind, (Lacretelle, France pendant le 18me Siecle, ii. 455. Biographie Universelle, para Turgot (by Durozoir).) flock hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length even of Versailles. Turgot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the absurdest Corn-laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even 'factitious;' an indubitable scarcity of bread. And so, on the second day ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... soil, and finally stopped short for want of wind. He swung about and glared defiantly at his pursuers out of injected eyes. He had never seen a lasso before, possibly not a man; but his instinct told him that the horse and rider behind him were not roving the plain in his own aimless fashion. He stood pawing the ground and shaking his great red nostrils. Suddenly to his surprise the part of the horse new to him lifted itself, and a black coiling something, graceful and swift as ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... neck, which I assure you is painful and disturbing to one's whole physical and moral framework. I'll say this much for Starr: The first thing he did when he got up was to shoot the head off the snake, whose tail continued to buzz in a dreary, aimless way when there was absolutely nothing to buzz about. Snakes are ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... forth and dazzle him with its shine. All that undimmed freshness of longing he had felt the day before-all the unnamed, unidentified, nameless desires—had flooded back upon him, but now no longer aimless. They were acutely definite. He wanted Avice Milbrey,—wanted her with an intensity as unreasoning as it was resistless. This was the new world he had watched swimming out of the chaos in his mind, taking its allotted orbit in a planetary system ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... this inclement weather, were deserted by the ordinary throng of merchants, laborers, and sea-faring men; each wharf a solitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, along its misty length. Should her brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ancient Britain cocks crew lustily all night on December 24th to scare away witches and evil spirits, and in Bavaria some of the countrymen made frequent and apparently aimless trips in their sledges to cause the hemp to ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... very first elements in good teaching is the clear recognition of a well-defined aim that gives purpose and direction to all that is attempted in a lesson or in a period. The chief cause of poor teaching is aimless teaching, in which the sole object seems to be to fill the allotted time with talking about the facts of a given subject. We sit patiently through a recitation in English literature. Act I, Scene 1 of Hamlet had ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the man seems petrified into a marble sleep, not feeling what it is that is passing away forever. And the destiny of nine men out of ten accomplishes itself before they realize it slipping away from them, aimless, useless, until it is too late. "Be such a man, live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... a season brief, The lice among your feathers, Stiff-winged and aimless-eyed, With song dead you shall fall; Refuse of some clotted ditch, Seeking no more berries; Why with lyric numbers now ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... the surface should be examples of ornate art, and grotesque art, not of pure art. We live in the realm of the half educated. The number of readers grows daily, but the quality of readers does not improve rapidly. The middle class is scattered, headless; it is well-meaning but aimless; wishing to be wise, but ignorant how to be wise. The aristocracy of England never was a literary aristocracy, never even in the days of its full power, of its unquestioned predominance, did it guide—did it even seriously try to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... themselves cruising in a large, canoe-shaped boat not far from the island of Hispaniola. There were twenty-nine of them in all, and they were not able to procure a vessel suitable for their purpose. They had been a long time floating about in an aimless way, hoping to see some Spanish merchant-vessel which they might attack and possibly capture, but no such vessel appeared. Their provisions began to give out, the men were hungry, discontented, and grumbling. In fact, they were in almost as bad a condition as ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... wandering eddies which seem to meander about a forest in an aimless sort of way, coming from and going now hither, as if the breeze itself were lost among the still aisles, had touched his wet muzzle; and its ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... startling than the contrast between the heavy, formal, lifeless slang of the man-about-town and the light, living, and flexible slang of the coster. The talk of the upper strata of the educated classes is about the most shapeless, aimless, and hopeless literary product that the world has ever seen. Clearly in this, again, the upper classes have degenerated. We have ample evidence that the old leaders of feudal war could speak on occasion with a certain natural ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... the door, Brigit shook hands with them and returned, with an aimless air peculiar to her, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... ashamed of the useless life I lead, and it's that I feel to repent of. A few things your brother said to me three months ago were the beginning, and a remark you made the day we first went sleighing has served to increase that feeling. Ever since I left college I have led an aimless life, bored to death by ennui, and conscious that no one was made any happier by my existence. What Bert said to me, and your remark, have only served to make me realize it ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... to one side of the roadway and struck out hopefully. The rain had made a thin chocolate ooze of the highway, and before they had gone a hundred yards their shoes were slimy with mud. It appeared that Stillman had been something of an aimless wanderer for many years, and as he talked on and on, giving detached glimpses of the remote places he had visited, Claire had a ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... in motor cars Held in long lines Until cross-streams of cars flowed by; I saw young boys in service clothes And flags flung out from tradesmen's doors; I saw some thousand drifting men Some thousand aimless women; I saw some thousand wearied eyes That caught no sparkle from the myriad lights Which blazoned everywhere; I saw a man stop in his walk To pet ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... "Ca-a-a-a-atcher," and she retired to a remote spot to await the proper moment for gathering up the remains. Being a lady, she could make no sense at all of the deadly uproar, and she was quite thrilled and charmed when of a sudden the tumult subsided, and she found that out of that apparently aimless clamor, two teams had been selected and the players assigned to their various positions on the field. It was black magic ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... alert to the sounds and appearances about him, and at the same time his mind was busy with the perplexities of that riddle. Was the jungle just an aimless pool of life that man must drain and clear away? Or is it to have a use in the greater life of our race that now begins? Will man value the jungle as he values the precipice, for the sake of his manhood? Will he ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... rich and diversified life, many of the activities of which appear to have the remotest of bearings upon the mere struggle for existence, but the exercise of which gives him satisfaction. Thus, the primitive instinct of curiosity, once relatively aimless and insignificant, has developed into the passion for systematic knowledge and the persistent search for truth; the rudimentary aesthetic feeling which is revealed in primitive man, and traces of which are recognizable in creatures far lower in the scale, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton |
