"Bootless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with the bootless gold we stand Upon the desert verge of death, and say: "What shall avail the woes of yesterday To buy to-morrow's wisdom, in the land Whose currency is strange unto our hand? In life's small market they had served to pay Some ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... "He was bootless, and his pants and many-pocketed jumper of coarse dungaree were exceedingly dirty, and looked as if they had been cut out with a knife and fork instead of scissors, they were so marvellously ill-fitting. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... themselves "Brothers of the Coast," and took a solemn oath not to secrete from each other any portion of the common spoil, nor uncharitably to disregard each other's wants. Violence and lust would have gone upon bootless ventures, if justice and generosity had not been crimped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Grace! the old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely Paul could not withstand, but, as the legend tells us, his soul fainted within him, his heart misgave him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he "troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries," his thin voice pleading for ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... so. But now he had resolved to fly, and had resolved also that before he did so he would call in the ordinary way and say one last farewell. John, the servant, admitted him at once; though he had on that same morning sent bootless away a score of other suppliants for the honour of being ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... very door of the sanctuary. She repulsed me and fled. Three or four minutes later her sister came to undress me. I told her gently to go to bed as I had to write for three or four hours; but not caring that she should come on a bootless errand I opened a box and gave her a watch. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... presently. I was married, as you have somehow ascertained, to Marian Mayfield, just before going to Europe. I corresponded with her from Glasgow. I did appoint a meeting with her on the beach, upon the fatal evening in question—for what purpose that meeting was appointed, it is bootless to tell you, since the meeting never took place—for some hours before I should have set out to keep my appointment, my grandfather was stricken with apoplexy. I did not wish to leave his bedside until the arrival of the doctor. But when the evening wore on, and the storm ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the canals, and farmhouses, in the fields, the (p. 118) streets, and the gardens. Cellars serve for the same purpose. A fortnight ago my section was billeted in a house in a mining town, and the enemy began to shell the place about midnight. Bootless, half-naked, and half-asleep, we hurried into the cellar. The place was a regular Black Hole of Calcutta. It was very small, damp, and smelt of queer things, and there were six soldiers, the man of the house, his wife, and ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... the slighter symptoms of his bootless struggle against the general embarrassment into which the agricultural interests were, year after year, so ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... town glimmered in the distance, the stars shone occasionally through the broken clouds, the wind was light, and the sea comparatively smooth. On consultation with my shipmate, we came to the conclusion it was hardly worth while to pull the boat about in different directions on a bootless quest after the sloop. We also rejected the idea of returning to the town. We laid in our oars, composed ourselves as comfortably as we could beneath the thwarts, and with clear consciences ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... though she had not heard his doom, so filled her with concern and indignation, that—her eyes and thoughts fixed upon him, at the other end of the class—she did not know when her turn came, but allowed the master to stand before her in bootless expectation. He did not interrupt her, but with a refinement of cruelty that ought to have done him credit in his own eyes, waited till the universal silence had at length aroused Annie to self-consciousness and a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... means indicate the full strength of the Government, which was simply irresistible. The power of the Compact was not only completely restored, but increased. Never had its ascendency been so great. It was absolute, overwhelming; and any opposition to it was a bootless kicking against the pricks. In the Speech from the Throne his Excellency congratulated the Houses on the loyal feeling pervading the Province, and on the stillness and serenity of the public mind. He drew attention to "the conspicuous ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... awful tragedy of Friday evening are yet fresh in the minds of the people of Waco, and it is bootless to recount them. Two of the principals thereto have passed to the beyond and a third is in the hands of the outraged law. And with him let the law deal. In life Captain Davis was our friend. His assailant was ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... long, the young burgher prince to proceed to the Universities of Padua and Mantua, the future great painter to trudge back over the Alps, getting a lift now and again in waggon or carriage or on pillion? Let the man of pretentious science say it is bootless to ask such questions; those who ask them know that it is delightful; know that it is the true way to make the past live for them; guess that would historians more generally ask them, their books would be ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... poor people." Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... shrill halloo from down the trail. Not having had a mail for weeks, and expecting one hourly, they all turned out to meet the carrier, shouting loudly to guide him to the camp; but they were answered only by the shrill scream of the screech-owl, whose hooting had led them on their bootless chase. Lake Deception is very beautiful, with deep shady bays, high rocky shores, and fair green islands. At the head of one of the bays Mr. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... any one of her six daughters; not dainty, like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily, treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... For all God's charge to His high angels may Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run Quick to deny me, 'neath the morning sun? And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray? The cock crows coldly. Go and manifest A late contrition, but no bootless fear! For when thy deadly need is bitterest, Thou shall not be denied as I am here; My voice, to God and angels, shall attest— Because I knew this man ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... luckless speech, and bootless boast For which he paid full dear; For while he spake, a braying ass Did sing ...
— R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs • Various
... thought of personal inferiority for merely conventional reasons; but he must be a materialist indeed who undervalues this priceless possession. It is something for a country to have reached the stage of passing "resolutions," even if their conversion into "acts" lags a little; it is bootless to sneer at a real "land of promise" because it is not at once and in every way ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... till the coming of the goose month—April—when birds of passage wended their way north. For three days rations consisted of snow water and pipes of tobacco. The Indians endured the privations with stoical indifference, daily marching out on a bootless quest for game. On the third night Hearne was alone in his tent. Twilight deepened to night, night to morning. Still no hunters returned. Had he been deserted? Not a sound broke the waste silence but the baying of the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... more, sir," interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she could not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those whom ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... too was very happy; she had contrived to forget her brother's croaking and Father John's warning, or at least the misery which they had occasioned her, and was very happy in Ussher's good-humour. It were bootless to repeat their conversation, or to tell how often it was interrupted by some unchided caress on the part of Ussher. Feemy, however, had not forgotten her resolution, and was bringing up all her courage to make some ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... the heart to help, believing, as she did, that Lucia's journey would be as bootless as it would be dangerous ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... manner in which he referred to his coming crimes struck a chill to the listener's bones. He had apparently allowed for everything; any possible effort she might make to escape from his clutches seemed vain and bootless. She would have lost heart entirely, only there was the knowledge within her that on one point at least she had succeeded in ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... comforting incident—a species of compensation to a handful of brave and faithful colonists, for the crushing disaster which had befallen their cause, the preceding September. It was the crowning—though bootless victory—to the recent brilliant, but useless success of the French arms at Carillon, Monongahela, Fort George, Ticonderoga, Beauport Flats. It was, moreover, the last title, added to numerous others, to the esteem ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... nos, Jealous he was, and would have kept her close: He wished not to be treated monstrously: Neither does any man, no more than he; Only to hinder wives, it serveth nought; - A good wife, that is clean of work and thought, No man would dream of hindering such a way. And just as bootless is it, night or day, Hindering a shrew; for it will never be. I hold it for a very foppery, Labour in vain, this toil to hinder wives, Old writers always say so, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... (redundancy) 641; wash a blackamoor white &c. (impossible) 471. render useless &c. adj.; dismantle, dismast, dismount, disqualify, disable; unrig; cripple, lame &c. (injure) 659; spike guns, clip the wings; put out of gear. Adj. useless, inutile, inefficacious, futile, unavailing, bootless; inoperative &c. 158; inadequate &c. (insufficient) 640; inservient|, unsubservient; inept, inefficient &c. (impotent) 158; of no avail &c. (use) 644; ineffectual &c. (failure) 732; incompetent &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it bootless to row so far down the stream, or to seek any farther of this old fox; and therefore from the river of Waricapana, which lieth at the entrance of Emeria, we returned again, and left to the eastward those four rivers which fall from the mountains of Emeria into Orenoque, which ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... certain that the whole structure was wrapped in a sheet of flame. In the next instant, the fire burst through the dividing partition of the cabins, obliging our hero to fly in his night-gown, with his inexpressibles under his arm. Thus, coatless and bootless, he leaped on shore, when delay a second longer would have effectually prevented his ever ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... heading—and seem generally confused. As an excuse they say their compass is out of order, and as they appear to be wreckers, we allow them to go on without further molestation, and steam back to our moorings, consoling ourselves by the fact that these bootless chases are using up coal, and thereby hastening the time of our going to Beaufort to coal up, where we shall have a chance to step once ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... part, received us with 'God save the Queen' - whether in honour of King Tamy, or of his visitors, was not divulged. We were first introduced to a number of chiefs in European uniforms - except as to their feet, which were mostly bootless. Their names sounded like those of the state officers in Mr. Gilbert's 'Mikado.' I find in my journal one entered as Tovey-tovey, another as Kanakala. We were then conducted to the presence chamber by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Wiley, a very pronounced Scotch gentleman with ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... distance. To one, Naples was more important than Minorca, more important than a half-dozen ships in a possible fleet action; to the other, Egypt was more important than the presence of sixteen thousand veterans, more or less, on a European battle-field. It is impossible and bootless, to weigh the comparative degree of culpability involved in breaches of orders which cannot be justified. It is perhaps safe to say that while a subordinate has necessarily a large amount of discretion in the particular matter intrusted to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... In the other the smaller boys, each armed with a paper containing a problem in arithmetic, had to run to their sisters, wait for the problem to be solved, and then run back with the answer. Excellent! Simpson at his most inventive. Unfortunately, when the bootless boys arrived at the turning post, they found nothing but a small problem in arithmetic awaiting them, while on the adjoining stretch of grass young mathematicians were trying, with the help of their sisters, to get into two pairs ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Ah, luckless speech, and bootless boast, for which he paid full dear! For, while he spake, a braying ass did sing most ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... task, although I have been much affected this morning by the Morbus, as I call it. Aching pain in the back, rendering one posture intolerable, fluttering of the heart, idle fears, gloomy thoughts and anxieties, which if not unfounded are at least bootless. I have been out once or twice, but am driven in by the rain. Mercy on us, what poor devils we are! I shook this affection off, however. Mr. Scrope and Col. Ferguson came to dinner, and we twaddled away ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... without roads or landmarks, up precipitous hills, through boulder-strewn wadis, against an obstinate and determined foe, never sure of the next meal, tired almost beyond endurance and many almost bootless, in the worst of weather, cold and wet, and only slightly less miserable than the camels. And the result? The capture of Jerusalem and turning of the Turkish left flank; a loss of prestige and a military disaster from which they never recovered. We had taken part in most difficult and arduous ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... lady's worthiness; made as happy by love as by all favors; chaste by honor; far from violence; respecting but one, and that one in such kindness, honesty, truth, constancy, and honor, as were all the world offered to make a change, yet the boot were too small and therefore bootless. This is love, and far more than this, which I know a vulgar head, a base mind, an ordinary conceit, a common person will not nor cannot have. Thus do I commend that love wherewith in these poems I have honoured the ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... so bootless and uncalled for! Marian Holbury might have divorced her husband had she wished, and remained unstigmatized. Yet she had, by yielding to an ungoverned impulse, reversed their positions of justification. Now the news of their names on the same sailing lists would come to ears at ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... thing was a dead plant on us. Luck turned against him at last!" growled Blunt, as they counted up the cost of the bootless cruise of the Hirondelle. And only Justine Delande's bitter tears flowed in silence to lament the bold adventurer who had lost the game ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... replied the duke; "but if I am brought on a bootless errand, not even my royal father ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... future of my children, dark with disgrace and shame. I became afraid of myself, and Bess went about with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends to entice me into taking a vacation. Then, and at the last gasp, came the thought that saved me: Why not confiscate? If their forays were bootless, in the nature of things ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... for a bootless bene?" With these dark words begins my tale; And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring When prayer ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... front of the Twelfth Army, back of Riga, where gaunt and bootless men sickened in the mud of desperate trenches; and when they saw us they started up, with their pinched faces and the flesh showing blue through their torn clothing, demanding eagerly, "Did you bring anything ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... fain to cry out that love was only eased with love, and fancy healed by no medicine but favor. Phoebus had herbs to heal all hurts but this passion; Circes had charms for all chances but for affection, and Mercury subtle reasons to refel all griefs but love. Persuasions are bootless, reason lends no remedy, counsel no comfort, to such whom fancy hath made resolute; and therefore though Phoebe loves Ganymede, yet Montanus must honor none ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... starving, bootless, ragged, stupid wretches fell down and worshipped the System, and offered up their children as living sacrifices ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a mocking laugh. "If so, call me your fallen angel; for when I took the unfathomable leap which leads from innocence to guilt, your arms were outstretched to receive me. But pshaw! what bootless retrospection! I am here, Carl, true as steel; ready to stand or fall at your side. Feel my hand, it is warm—feel my pulse, it beats as evenly as though I had never slept ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the tawny tiny owl that had sat like a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox's bootless return, ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... been the issue of these anxieties, and of the measures to which they gave rise, had not the French Revolution intervened to aggravate the distresses of Great Britain, and to constrain her to violent methods, is bootless to discuss. It remains true that, both before and during the conflict with the French Republic and Empire, the general character of her actions, to which the United States took exception, was determined by the conditions and ideas that have been stated, and ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... this battle more calamitous by the death of a consul. There is sufficient matter for tears and grief without this addition." In reply the consul said: "Do thou indeed go on and prosper, Cneius Servilius, in your career of virtue! But beware lest you waste in bootless commiseration the brief opportunity of escaping from the hands of the enemy. Go and tell the fathers publicly, to fortify the city of Rome, and garrison it strongly before the victorious enemy arrive: and tell Quintus Fabius individually, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... done now?" said Richards, who had placed himself in a sort of theatrical posture—his bootless foot on the gig-step, the other sticking fast ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... he was; one grievous blot, So deem'd full many a courtly dame, I wot, Cross'd the full growth of his aspiring days, And dimm'd the lustre of meridian praise: With bootless artifice their lures they troll'd; Still, Gugemer lov'd not, or nothing told. The court's accustom'd love and service done, To his glad sire returns the welcome son. Now with his father dwelt he, and pursued ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... but you will always be growing stronger, and with every trial nobly met, you will feel a growing assurance that nobleness is not a mere sentiment with you. I sympathize deeply in your anxiety about your mother; yet I cannot but remember the bootless fear and agitation about my mother, and how strangely our destinies were guided. Take refuge in prayer when you are most troubled; the door of the sanctuary will never be shut against you. I send you a paper which is very sacred to me. Bless Heaven that your heart is awakened to sacred duties ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... waters, in that little ark Was launched the future monarch. But, vain mortal! How bootless are thy most ingenious schemes, Thy wisest projects! Such were thine, Humai! Presumptuous as thou wert to think success Would crown that deed unnatural and unjust. But human passions, human expectations Are ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... my turn!" the demon cries, and blows A blast of sulphur from his mouth and nose. Ah! bootless aim! the critic fiend, Sagacious Yamen, judge of hell, Is judged in his turn; Parchment won't burn! His schemes of vengeance are dissolved in air, Parchment ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... away and their places were immediately taken by a half-dozen ill-kempt, bedraggled children. A tousled head was thrust from the doorway, and after a moment of inspection a man stepped out upon the hard-trodden earth of the dooryard. He was bootless and a great toe protruded from a hole in the point of his sock. He wore a faded hickory shirt, and the knees of his bleached-out overalls were patched with ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... bootless here to repeat the words of wise and loving counsel with which the elder of the two ladies endeavored to comfort the younger, and to make her understand what were the duties which still remained to her, and which, if they were rightly performed, would, in their performance, soften ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... calling, reminding, and chiding— Taking us back to the time when Peter he done gone and done it! These are the voices of those left by the boy in the farmhouse When, with his laughter and scorn, hatless and bootless and sockless, Clothed in his jeans and his pride, Peter sailed out in the weather, Broke from the warmth of his home into that fog of the devil. Into the smoke of that ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from her American possessions—a bootless task, for the old order upon which her power rested was broken and crumbled forever. But still she strove, fighting against fate, and so it was that in the tropical America it was one continual war between her and all the world. Thus it came that, long after piracy ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... when I waded ashore. I was swordless, coatless, hatless, and bootless; but I carried a well-filled purse in my belt. Up to that time I had given no thought to my ultimate destination; but being for the moment safe, I pondered the question and determined to make my way ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... (July 22), his highness had to undergo a public dinner, in which English servants only were allowed to attend upon him, the Castilian lords, many of whom believed that they had come to England on a bootless errand, broke ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... An illustrious Breton, the last man of the Middle Ages, who had gone on a bootless errand to convert Rome, received there some brilliant offers. "What do you want?" said the Pope.—"Only one thing: to have done with ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the significancy. When the daughter of Isaac of York brought her diamonds and rubies—the poor gentle victim!—and, meekly laying them at the feet of the conquering Rowena, departed into foreign lands to tend the sick of her people, and to brood over the bootless passion which consumed her own pure heart, one would have thought that the heart of the royal lady would have melted before such beauty and humility, and that she would have been generous in the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... outer one, and a stone staircase, so narrow that a large man could not ascend it. The staircase terminated against a dead stone ceiling, closing all further passages, the last step being only six or eight inches from it. For what purpose a staircase was carried up to such a bootless termination we could not conjecture. The whole tower was a substantial stone structure, and in its arrangements and purposes about as incomprehensible ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... said De Comines, "ere you set your mind so keenly against what is proposed, will consider your own want of power to prevent it. Every wise man, when he sees a rock giving way, withdraws from the bootless attempt of preventing ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... and hurt the watching man almost as if the torture were his own. A shriek rose from the rounded white throat and the girl threw herself bootless upon the floor, and screamed in passionate childish sorrow, the wealth of disheveled hair mantling the dirty jacket, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... of the Indians has been variously estimated. They had perhaps five thousand men in their villages when they met Custer in this, the most historic and most ghastly battle of the Plains. It would be bootless to revive any of the old discussions regarding Custer and his rash courage. Whether in error or in wisdom, he died, and gallantly. He and his men helped clear the frontier for those who were to follow, and the task took its toll. Thus, slowly but steadily, ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... For all God's charge to His high angels may Guard My feet better? Did I yesterday Wash thy feet, My beloved, that they should run Quick to destroy me 'neath the morning sun? And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray? The cock crows coldly. Go, and manifest A late contrition, but no bootless fear! For, when thy final need is dreariest, Thou shall not be denied, as I am here; My voice to God and angels shall attest, Because I KNOW this ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... bootless, make the breathless housewife churn Skim milk, and sometimes labour in ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... or killed, for the roof of the barn had fallen in. After some little time, however, and after much struggling on my part, I was able to allay their fears by appearing before them. It required no small amount of pluck—as I call it—to face them—bootless, coatless, vestless, hatless, penniless, and, withal, with my feet and trousers besmeared with cow dung. But there is a time in every man's life when he shall come to evoke sympathy from his fellows. "He's coming!" they said, "Here ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... were stately, furnished / with trappings rich with gold; It were a task all bootless / to seek for knights more bold Than were the gallant Siegfried / and his chosen band. He longed to take departure ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... matters gone as I thought, that a journey of little glory thou shouldst make to the island; thou hast got maimed, and honour is no nigher to us than before, yea, we must have bootless ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... reminiscence of what the enigmatical gods have had their jest with, leaving only its gallant memory behind. The whole Conradean system sums itself up in the title of "Victory," an incomparable piece of irony. Imagine a better label for that tragic record of heroic and yet bootless effort, that matchless picture, in microcosm, of the relentlessly cruel revolutions in ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... caught his eye, Whence a faint clang shot on the light breeze by; A noise and a smoke on the plain afar— 'Tis the cloud and the clang of the Moslem war. And the light that flashed from his black eyes, lo! Was a light that paled the red wine's glow; And he shook his fetters in bootless ire, And called on the Prophet, and named his sire. But the lady of Saad heard the clang, And she knew the far sabres his fetters rang. Oh! she had the heart where a man might rest, For she knew the tempest in his breast. She rose. Ere she reached him, he called her name, But he called not ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... bridge, with other talk, The which my drama cares not to rehearse, Pass'd on; and to the summit reaching, stood To view another gap, within the round Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... has a right which the State is bound to respect. Indeed, all these dynastic establishments that so seek the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory are surrounded with a penumbra of divinity, and it is commonly a bootless question where the dynastic powers end and the claims of divinity begin. There is something ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... when Fox dined with James and chaffed him about his hopes to 'meet the Emperor of Japan.' But there was no need of rivalry; both went back disappointed men. James wintered on Charlton Island, and towards the end of 1632, after a summer's futile cruising, returned to England with a terrible tale of bootless suffering. ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... a few minutes to keep our whole party chewing all that day and at intervals for many subsequent days. It is a rather bootless kind of effort, at best, though it may tend to develop ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... which so large a part of his fame rests enduringly—as a mere waste of energy and of time. I hope that he knows about, and takes a comforting pride in—over there in the Shades—the great city which owes its founding to that seemingly bootless voyage! ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... watch his angling, telling him quaint old country stories; and when Tom had no sport, and detecting a rat some hundred yards or so off along the bank, would rush off with Toby the turnspit terrier, his other faithful companion, in bootless pursuit, he might have tumbled in and been drowned twenty times over before Benjy could ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... lost a day by this bootless journey; but our consolation lay in the belief that our Indian pursuers, following upon our trail, would make ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... and bootless boast, For which he paid full dear; For while he spake, a braying ass Did sing most loud and clear, Whereat his horse did snort as he Had heard a lion's roar, And gallop'd off with all his might, As he had ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... shows. The lion's rage was at its height; His viewless foe now laugh'd outright, When on his battle-ground he saw, That every savage tooth and claw Had got its proper beauty By doing bloody duty; Himself, the hapless lion, tore his hide, And lash'd with sounding tail from side to side. Ah! bootless blow, and bite, and curse! He beat the harmless air, and worse; For, though so fierce and stout, By effort wearied out, He fainted, fell, gave up the quarrel; The gnat retires with ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... privilege granted to a few, or a right to which all people are justly entitled, it is bootless to discuss; but its development among civilized nations is a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... probably be unable to capture one, and only drive them farther away; if I did not, how was I to get them in? And what would their parents think of me, if they saw or heard the children rioting, hatless, bonnetless, gloveless, and bootless, in the deep soft snow? While I stood in this perplexity, just without the door, trying, by grim looks and angry words, to awe them into subjection, I heard a voice behind me, in ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... do I believe you, Master Waller; Those know I who have ventured gift and promise But for a minute of her ear—the boon Of a poor dozen words spoke through a chink— And come off bootless, save the haughty scorn That cast their bounties back to ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... Ralegh had been busy, as men of the sea were then, half Queen's servants, half buccaneers, in gathering the abundant spoils to be found on the high seas; and he had been with Sir John Norreys and Sir Francis Drake in a bootless but not unprofitable expedition to Lisbon. On his return from the Portugal voyage his court fortunes underwent a change. Essex, who had long scorned "that knave Ralegh," was in the ascendant. Ralegh found the Queen, for some reason or another, and reasons were not hard ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... habit of asking two questions about it: (1) Is it married? (2) Of what family or families was it born? If you can get an understanding answer to these two questions, an answer that will tell you what its relations stand for as well as what their name is, your inquiries will be anything but bootless. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the restless Sherman has been only wasted valor, a bootless sacrifice. Her terrific sallies, lightning counter-thrusts, and final struggles with the after-occupation, can be traced in the general desolation, by every step of the horrible ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... To abolish abuses, to set in motion the car of state on the track of justice and economy, and to distinguish between that which is really essential to human happiness and human rights, and that which is merely the result of some wild and bootless proposition in political economy, are the great self-imposed tasks that the European people seem now to have assumed; and God grant that they may complete their labors with the moderation and success with which they would appear ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence... This is usually the case. Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was for having her son accounted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... generals and other officers follow in his wake, and the gratifying spectacle may not unfrequently be seen, of the president leaning from his box in the plaza de gallos, and betting upon a cock, with a coatless, bootless, hatless, and probably worthless ragamuffin in the pit. Every one, therefore, however humble his degree, has the pleasure, while following his speculative inclinations, of reflecting that he treads in the steps of the magnates of the land; and, as Sam Weller would say, "Vot a consolation ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... in a lifeless manner, which told me his search had been bootless, and he turned languidly towards a puffy, crusty, military gentleman, whom, from the respect shown him, I judged to be Governor McDonell. "Duncan Cameron's warrant for the arrest is perfectly legal. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... but few shall go back," he cried defiantly; "besides, ye come on a bootless errand. There is not a man in broad Scotland who hath the power to ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... refrain: "Choose between us which to wed; Love is love, and art is art; Wilt thou have a barren bed? Joyless mate and bloodless heart? She will bring thee for her dower Shrunken limb and shriveled breast, Bitter thralldom, bootless power, Days and nights of endless quest, She will take thee heart and brain, Hold thee with a vampire charm, Kiss thee cold in every vein, Drink thy ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... the use of telling you what good things you have written, or—I hope I may add—that I know them to be good. Apropos—when I first opened upon the just mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary as if putting a riddle "What is good for a bootless bean?" to which with infinite presence of mind (as the jest book has it) she answered, a "shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the 2d I make you distinguish well in your old preface between the verses of Dr. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Meanwhile rumours that something was going to happen kept coming in, and Colonel Morrison was away for several days reconnoitring the country to the east and north-east. All our surplus stores were dumped and a guard of the bootless left with them, and we moved off from Sheikh Zowaid on the morning of the 25th of March, reaching Rafa about midday. Here a halt was made, and tea was issued. At five o'clock the Division moved on and crossed ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... east at sundown piled thick and black overhead, and when dark was fairly upon me I was, for all practical purposes, like a blind man in an unfamiliar room. It didn't take me long to comprehend that I was merely wasting the strength of my horse in bootless wandering; with moonlight I could have made it, but in that murk I could not hope to find the post. So I had no choice but to make camp in the first coulee that offered, and an exceeding lean camp I found it—no grub, no fire, no rest, for though I hobbled my horse I didn't ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... behaving as enemies. This induced one of the proprietors of the burnt houses to upbraid therewith one Maryn Adriaenzen, who at his request had led the freemen in the attack on the Indians, and who being reinforced by an English troop had afterwards undertaken two bootless expeditions in the open field. Imagining that the Director had accused him, he being one of the signers of the petition he determined to revenge himself. With this resolution he proceeded to the Director's house armed with a pistol, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... d'hotel opened the door and, seeing this haggard, bootless individual, who was weakened with fatigue and dazed from his recent horrible experience, did not recognize him, naturally enough, and refused him admission until the old gentleman got his poor scattered brains together ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... say. 685 Small need of inroad, or of fight, When the sage Douglas may unite Each mountain clan in friendly band, To guard the passes of their land, Till the foiled king, from pathless glen, 690 Shall bootless turn ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... must ye echo as mechanic mimes These mortal minion's bootless cadences, Played on the stops of their anatomy As is the mewling music on the strings Of yonder ship-masts by the unweeting wind, Or the frail tune upon this withering sedge That holds its papery blades against the gale? —Men pass to dark corruption, at the best, Ere I can count five ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... To mould this commonwealth on model grand Perfected by the chivalry front which Both he and thou didst draw sweet childhood's milk. These men did quick condone the ev'ry act Which emanated from the Northern mind. Yearly were millions spent on bootless task Of feeding vacant minds on useless food Because unfitted to their various needs. "A little knowledge is a dang'rous thing" And doth unfit the plodding mass for toil, Which is their proper sphere; hence ev'ry thought Hard thrust within ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... "go," was shouted, and the horse whirled off, and it seemed to me as if he flew with the speed of lightning. My hat fell off the first thing; and there I was, clinging with might and main to the neck of the fiery animal, my head bare, my feet bootless, and my old stripped shirt blown from my back, and streaming out behind, and fluttering like a banner in the breeze; my ragged pants off at the knees, and my long legs dangling down some length below; and at the same time ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... several attempts," Glazier continues, "to assert what I considered my rights, but as I had not, at that time, much muscle to back my claims, they were not recognized, and thus I spent the whole night in a bootless ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Delights! that o'er my soul On Memory's wing, like shadows fly! Ah Flowers! which Joy from Eden stole While Innocence stood smiling by!— But cease, fond Heart! this bootless moan: Those Hours on rapid Pinions flown Shall yet return, by ABSENCE crowned, And scatter livelier ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the desolation of Ireland, the Civil Wars, the reign of hypocrisy, followed by the reign of naked vice; the nation that beheaded the graceful Charles gaping idly on the scaffold of the lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a jubilee in England, was a massacre in Ireland; the bootless glories of Marlborough; the organized corruption of Walpole, the frantic war with our own American sons, the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the weary and unconscious Tom approaching, lost in the profundity of thought, and though not in love, ruminating on every miss he had made in that day's bootless trudge. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... close to them, almost leaning over them, with the hand of his late lady love,—the hand of Mr Palliser's wife,—within his own! How Lady Glencora might have carried herself at this moment had Mrs Marsham not been there, it is bootless now to surmise; but it may be well understood that under Mrs Marsham's immediate eye all her resolution would be in Burgo's favour. She looked at him softly and kindly, and though she uttered no articulate word, her countenance seemed to show that the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... of my presence—this instant!" exclaimed the general, irritated by this imprudent remark. "The prisoners shall die; and let me tell you that your errand is bootless." ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... they arrived at Cahiague, the chief town of the Hurons, the rendezvous of the allied tribes, whence they had set forth on the first of September, nearly four months before, on what may seem to us a bootless raid. To the savage warriors, however, it doubtless seemed a different thing. They had been enabled to bring home valuable provisions, which were likely to be important to them when an unsuccessful ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... blues and reds. They were a jolly little couple, as unconcerned about their environment as Robinson Crusoe after five years on his island. Soon the father came home. I can see him still—the vacant brown face of a very feeble-minded half-breed, ragged and tattered and almost bootless. He was carrying an aged single-barrelled boy's gun in one hand and a belated sea-gull in the other, which bird was destined for the entire evening meal of the family. A half-wild-looking hobbledehoy boy of fifteen years also ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... at the name. But even then he felt that Demorest was no longer of such importance to him. He felt, too, that he was not yet quite sure of his voice or even what to say. As he hesitated she went on half playfully: "It seems hard that you had to come all the way here on such a bootless errand. You haven't even seen ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... crisis—they all got well in spite of the doctor, and gave their own special cases and his anxiety all the credit for his grave looks; and all these half-finished streets and rough new roads in the east end of Carlingford were sown thick with the bootless suggestions of Dr Rider's love and fears. The crop did not show upon the vulgar soil, but gave lurking associations to every half-built street corner which he passed in his rounds many a day after, and served at ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... was a wise one, desertion, illness, death of the untrained recruits in rapid march under the hot midsummer sun, did the work of many battles, and when Smolensk was reached after two months of bootless marching, the "Grand Army" was bound to have been reduced to half ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... osto. Bonnet cxapo. Bonny beleta. Bonus liberdonaco. Booby simplanimulo. Book libro. Book-keeper librotenisto. Book (copy-book) kajero. Bookseller libristo. Boom soni. Booming sonado. Boon bonfaro, gajno. Boorish maldelikata. Boot boto. Booth budo. Bootless neprofita. Bootmaker botisto. Booty akirajxo. Borax borakso. Border (edge) randajxo. Border, to put a borderi. Bore (a hole) bori. Bore (of a gun) kalibro. Borer (tool) borilo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... in blood, even by accident, is to incur the guilt of parricide, or kin-killing, a bootless crime, which can only be purged by religious ceremonies; and which involves exile, lest the gods' wrath fall on the land, and brings the curse of childlessness on the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... renders the life one effort to fulfil the warning! Is this folly?—it were so, if all things stopped at the grave! But perhaps the very sharpening, and exercising, and elevating the faculties here—though but for a bootless end on earth—may be designed to fit the soul, thus quickened and ennobled, to some high destiny beyond the earth! Who can tell? ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... like a freeman; and muttering deep anathemas against the inhospitable house and all its inmates, he stole quietly along, with his bootless feet buried at each step in the snow. Leaving the more frequented streets, and worming his way through bypaths and dark alleys; now turning a corner, under the direful apprehension of meeting some acquaintance, and now darting this way or that to avoid a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... tortuous byways and alleys, until I realized I was hopelessly lost. With my fair guide in front and my good sword by my side, lightly I recked of streets or houses. Yet I dared not forget I was on an errand for the Governor and must not expose myself to bootless peril. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... unprovoked aggression to repel. What though from private pique her anger grew, And bade her blast a heart she never knew? What though, she said, for one light heedless line, That Wilmot's [2] verse was far more pure than mine! In wars like these, I neither fight nor fly, When 'dames' accuse 'tis bootless to deny; Her's be the harvest of the martial field, I can't attack, where Beauty forms the shield. But when a pert Physician loudly cries, Who hunts for scandal, and who lives by lies, A walking register of daily news, Train'd to invent, and skilful to abuse— For arts like these at bounteous ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... silence succeeded, during which the gentlemen were occupied in the bootless effort of endeavouring to devise expedients to escape the Arabs; bootless, because on such occasions, the successful measure is commonly the result of a sort of sudden inspiration, rather than of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... by many a petty mortification, by many a bitter tear, the boyish ambition which brought him to the Netherlands. He had certainly had ample leisure to repent the haste with which he had got out of his warm bed in Vienna to take his bootless journey to Brussels. Nevertheless, in a country where so much baseness, cruelty, and treachery was habitually practised by men of high position, as was the case in the Netherlands; it is something in favor of Matthias that he had not been base, or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... house and stay there;" whereat he straightway arose and went his ways. After this the Governor took horse, he and his escort; and all rode off to search for Attaf during a term of four days and some of them dug and dug deep down while the others returned after a bootless errand, and reported that they had failed to find him. Such was the case with the Governor of Syria; and now give ear to the adventure of Attaf. He left not wayfaring until but a single stage remained between him and Baghdad when robbers came upon him and stripped him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... address, advising me not to remain in town, as it might be some time before I was likely to hear from him; he then politely bowed me out of the room. Whether or not anything will come of it is more than I can divine. In my humble opinion my visit to London will prove bootless; it can't be helped, Sally, so cheer up, and don't let Ned get out of spirits. I am going to call on two or three shipowners, of whom Jenkins, who knows more of London than I do, has told me, for if Ned cannot ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... that persuades Men from themselves, to think they be Headless, or other bodies' shades, Hath long and bootless dwelt with me; For could I think she some idea were, I still might love, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... who nursed grudges in no way related to the line of feud cleavage. The Hollman-Purvy combination had retained enough of its old power to escape the law's retribution and to hold its dictatorship, but the efforts of John South had not been altogether bootless. He had ripped away two masks, and their erstwhile wearers could no longer hold their old semblance of law-abiding philanthropists. Jesse Purvy's home was the show place of the country side. To the traveler's ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... you," answered the man; "and Philip here says that our search will be bootless, for that he is not ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... them. Yes, even if the drought was broken and the cattle won back their strength, that great army would come down from the north once more and sheep them down to the rocks! But one thing Hardy promised himself—forgetting that it was the bootless oath of old Bill Johnson, who was crazy now and hiding in the hills—he would kill the first sheep that set foot on Bronco Mesa, and the next, as long as he could shoot; and Jasp Swope might ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge |
