"Futility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uselessness &c adj.; inefficacy^, futility; ineptitude, inaptitude; unsubservience^; inadequacy &c (insufficiency) 640; inefficiency, &c (incompetence) 158; unskillfulness &c 699; disservice; unfruitfulness &c (unproductiveness).. 169; labor in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... with a torrent of alarms and a sense of futility, she came back to the man whose life seemed so tenuously suspended, having no plan beyond a Valkyrie passion of resolution to bring him back from the border of death by the sheer force of invincible will. She succeeded, after many attempts, in shifting him from ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... addressed to himself, one for Mabel, superscribed by the same hand. From the first, he had no intention of transferring it to the keeping of the proper owner, It was forwarded in direct disobedience to his commands, and the writer should be made to understand the futility of opposition to these. For several hours, his only purpose respecting it was to enclose it, unopened, in an envelope directed by himself, and send it back to the audacious author, by the next mail. He was balked in this project by no fastidious ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... story of how a native came to him asking permission to excavate at a certain spot where he believed treasure to be hidden. Sir Gaston accompanied him to the place, and a tunnel was bored into what appeared to be virgin sand and rock. At the end of the first day's work the futility of his labours was pointed out to the man, but he was not to be daunted. For two more days he stood watching the work from morn to nightfall with hope burning in his eyes, and on the following morning ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... final, and, though far from satisfied, Phil felt the futility of further discussion. He turned to ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... stand, taken by the court martial, had left no glimpse of hope, at head quarters, that the prosecution of Hall, on the charge of mutiny, on which he had been imprisoned, could be attempted with any prospect of success—the futility of any further proceedings against Louallier was evident—Jackson, therefore, put an end to Hall's imprisonment on Saturday, the 11th of March. The word imprisonment is used, because Eaton assures his readers, that 'Judge Hall was not imprisoned; it was merely an arrest.' Hall ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Seneschal, though his men outnumbered Ralegh's by twenty to one, was intimidated. He let Ralegh accomplish his purpose, which was the occupation of Barry's Court, the seat of Lord Barry. Barry was one of the Irish nobles whose loyalty was not fixed. Ralegh desired to convince the class of the futility of resistance by sudden blows. His courage in this instance was more apparent than his wisdom. He had with difficulty obtained the Deputy's consent to the enterprise. The result justified Grey's hesitation. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... I had experienced at Wesel I was prepared for anything. I had already learned the futility of giving way. I felt no inclination to sit or lie in the blistering sand. I caught sight of a stretch of inviting turf, made my way to it, and threw myself down upon it. But I was not to enjoy the luxury of Nature's couch. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... a recognition of the futility of further dallying that was driving the old man on- ward. He knew, of course, that if he was resolved to take this step, a longer delay would simply make it harder for him. The correspondent, leaning forward, was ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... came over for a confab on the last upset. Both Generals went word by word through my M.F. 657 of the 26th September,—(1) as to drawing in our horns at Suvla,—(2) as to our power of holding on after we lose the 10th and 53rd Divisions. They concur in my cables and are emphatic as to the futility of making a gift of ground to any enemy who are shaking in their shoes. What the Turks want is a gift, not of ground but of high explosive shell. A few thousand pounds worth of that and Byng would go ahead and settle their hash for good. Birdie stayed to lunch during which meal I got ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... knowing the futility of further argument with the sheriff, who was representative of the considerable element that always looked upon Indians as "red devils" and that would never admit that any good existed in race ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... at the period of which I speak, seen to be untenable. How absurd in these people, then, to persist in putting faith in "axioms" as immutable bases of Truth! But even out of the mouths of their soundest reasoners it is easy to demonstrate the futility, the impalpability of their axioms in general. Who was the soundest of their logicians? Let me see! I will go and ask Pundit and be back in a minute.... Ah, here we have it! Here is a book written nearly a thousand ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... because it shows very clearly the utter futility of the modern method of treating infectious diseases by means of drugs ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the difficulty—the futility of attempting to fasten on Emerson any particular doctrine, philosophic, or religious theory. Emerson wrings the neck of any law, that would become exclusive and arrogant, whether a definite one of metaphysics or an indefinite ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... to Eustacia's instructions to the letter, to deposit her where she wished and to leave her, should that be her will, the spell that she had cast over him intensified, and his heart was beating fast in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face of a mutual wish that they should throw ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... reckless haste, without forethought or caution. He would stake his life to save twenty yards of distance. There was no discretion in his valor. Blithe young gambler that he was, he would do the thing in his own way. No one could tell him. Tom knew the utter futility of shouting any last ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to give, for the excellent reason, he urged that he was possessed of none. He was a soldier, and he had received orders which he must obey, without questioning either their wisdom or their justice. Appreciating the futility of bearing himself otherwise, since his retreat was already blocked by a couple of gendarmes, Caron submitted to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... only the facts cannot be undone. Why then should I bother myself especially as my last effort fell on deaf ears. This I realize; but it is not my nature to abandon what is my conviction. Therefore, although aware of the futility of my words, I cannot refrain from uttering them all the same. Chu Yuan drowned himself in the Pilo and Chia Sheng died from his horse. Ask them why they did these things, they will say they did not know. Once I wrote a piece of poetry containing ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Borden and Birch, the former being the only son of the minister of militia. So ended the last attempt made by Botha upon the British positions round Pretoria. The end of the war was not yet, but already its futility was abundantly evident. This had become more apparent since the junction of Hamilton and of Buller had cut off the Transvaal army from that of the Free State. Unable to send their prisoners away, and also unable to feed them, the Freestaters ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... artist a moment when a sense of the futility of his efforts weighs upon and well-nigh crushes him. Such an oppression represents the reaction which follows or precedes much excellent work. The psychologist will, perhaps, fail to explain why this sense of emptiness so often comes before a man's best ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... that were beyond it. The past was done with, it lay buried in yonder grave, but by the mercy of God he was still a man, living beneath the sunlight, and the future stretched away before him. What would it bring? He cared little; experience had taught him the futility of anxieties as to the future. Perchance a grave like those which he had left, perchance wealth, love, and honour. Whatever the event he would strive to meet it with patience, dignity, and resignation. It was not his part to ask questions or to reason why; ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... no doubt of Cuthbert's attachment to Violet. No remonstrances of his mother—and they were but mild, in spite of her objection to Violet, since she recognized the futility of opposing her son's determined will—had the slightest effect with him. He felt confident in the final acquiescence of both parents in whatever he might choose to do with regard to marriage. Everything, as he saw, rested with ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... him. But he did know the difference between what had been desired of him and what he himself had brought on through sheer wilfulness. Thus he awakened, having learned this lesson with his headlong plunge into the fence, and having added to the lesson of the futility of rebellion the very clear desires of his mistress. Other and less intelligent horses would have continued to respond to the ancestral voice within till death. But Pat was more than ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... for other oppressed peoples. And when the Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of liberty proved the futility of mere doctrines, like those of Rousseau, and compelled the peoples to arm themselves and win their freedom by the sword. The national militarism of Prussia was the direct consequence of her humiliation at Jena ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... enthusiastic. I should be doing Mr. RUNCIMAN little injustice to say that for the moment the politician in him rose superior to the patriot. If after the War the old party-quarrels are to break out again with all their fatal futility I can imagine that Liberal wire-pullers in the rural districts will be much embarrassed by the existence of bounties which economically they cannot approve but which politically they dare not remove. But surely we shall have learned our lesson ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... my assertion. I feel it my duty, therefore, to apologize to the Author and the Public, for this rashness; and my sense of honesty would not have been satisfied by the bare omission of the note. No one can see more clearly the littleness and futility of imagining plagiarisms in the works of men of Genius; but nemo omnibus horis sapit; and my mind, at the time of writing that note, was sick and sore with anxiety, and weakened through much suffering. I have not the most distant knowledge ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... lodgment of Monsieur Renouf aboard a British hulk. The men seemed to look at the matter in pretty much the same light that I did. They recognised, as I did, that Renouf was an unscrupulous rascal, likely to hesitate at little or nothing to gain his own headstrong will; they realised the utter futility of attempting to resist him, backed as he was by his whole crew; and, finally, they made up their minds to follow my example, recognising me as their actual leader, and heartily pledging themselves to be ready to act upon my initiative at a moment's notice, and to obey me to the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... enemies of the homicide. But this bloody deed was done at home, and almost in the sight of all Paris. Of the fact there could be no doubt; and of the pretexts set forth by the organs of the French government, there were few men of any party who affected not to perceive the futility. Hitherto Napoleon had been the fortunate heir of a revolution, in whose civil excesses he had scarcely participated—henceforth he was the legitimate representative and symbol of ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... In spite of the apparent bleakness of the future, he had no desire to die, and there was, psychologically, the possibility that too much brooding of that kind would evoke a subconscious reaction that could slow him down or cause a wrong decision at a vital moment. A feeling of futility could operate to bring on his death in spite of his conscious determination to win the coming battle ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... document knew more of the facts of American slavery, or abhorred it more, than I did; but also, no other of its signers knew, as I did, the indignant sense of offense which it would be sure to excite in those to whom it was addressed; its absolute futility as to the accomplishment of any good purpose, and the bitter feeling it could not fail to arouse, even in the women of the Northern States, by the assumed moral superiority which it would ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... enough! Dore was becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, assuredly, by his illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac—but by his shuddering Biblical conceits. In pious circles Dore was saving art from the reproach of futility and frivolity. It was indubitably a tasteful idea on Gerald's part to take his love of a summer's afternoon to gaze at the originals of those prints which had so deeply impressed the Five Towns. It was an idea that sanctified the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... came to him were futile denunciations of his folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. "Poor child—you poor child!" he heard ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the door. Evidently the burglar was wise enough to appreciate the futility of fighting against odds. Perhaps he did not wish to add the charge of manslaughter to that of robbery. Certainly, he did not feel himself called to sudden death. At any rate, his hands were above his head, and in less than a second ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... fastened on a cross that all may see it. And you, Mardonius," addressing the bow-bearer, "ride back to the hillock where these madmen made their last stand. If you discover among the corpses any who yet breathe, bring them hither to me, that they may learn the futility of resisting ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... and the armed men, half a dozen in number, among whom stood the black monk, closed about the prisoners. Seeing the futility of any resistance, Aurelia whispered to her companion such words of encouragement as she could find, and supported her with her arms. But Veranilda had overcome the first terror which made ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... the observer was not much damaged outwardly. He lay—arms outstretched—looking up at the sky, on the ground that the farmer had just ploughed. He seemed to smile cynically at the hoarse cheering now spreading from field to field, from camp to camp. Perhaps even then he had realised the futility of it ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... home in sullen resentment resolved to punish Oxford by the withdrawal of his august name. He had been quizzed by the young, reprimanded by the old, plucked by the middle-aged, and he returned with his mouth, full of sentences against blind, benighted bigotry, and the futility of classical study, and of declamations, as an injured orphan, against his uncle's disregard of the intentions of his dear deceased parent, in keeping him from Bonn, Jena, Heidelberg, or any other of the outlandish universities whose guttural names ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... because it seemed that nothing could matter any more, my idea of that country was such that the contrast of those ledger accounts was uncanny and unbelievable. Yet amid all the misery and horror of the Somme, with its shattering reminder of finality and futility at every step whichever way you turned, that ledger in the road, with none to read it, was the gospel promising that life should rise again; the suggestion of a forgotten but surviving virtue which would return, and cover the dread we knew, till a ploughman of the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... I believe, is to guard the contents of his pockets; but a moment's reflection convinced me of the futility of differing with the one man who had it in his power to make me comfortable; and with whose help it was possible that I might eventually escape from the crater. I gave him all the money in my possession, Rs. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted companion. "You know, you see right through people. Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Polillo, twenty miles east of the eastern coast of Luzon; and in many ways Polillo seems ideal. The practical difficulties are so great, however, the status of the islands in our national policy is so ill defined, and the futility of strengthening it, unless Guam be adequately strengthened also, is so apparent, that the question has been hardly even mooted. Polillo made impregnable, with Guam defenseless, supported by an undefended line of communications several thousand miles long to the main country, would ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... power upon petty failings; let it watch diligently against the incursion of vice, and leave foppery and futility to die ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... country population, but striking no blow. If Henry seriously contemplated the idea of reviving old claims to the French crown, he could have adopted no worse policy. Charles of course gave no practical assistance, and the allies each blamed the other for the futility of the operations. Albany on the other hand had been back in Scotland for some months; and in opposition to Angus—in conjunction therefore with Margaret —threatened an invasion as soon as the French expedition started. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... disabled soldiers hobbled across the bridge and disappeared in the deep shade of the avenue. Their service had been rendered, their sacrifices made, months ago. They could look about them now with a peculiar sense of isolation, and with, perhaps, a feeling of the futility of the effort they had made. Our adventures were all before us. Our hearts were light and our hopes high. As we stood by the obelisk, talking over plans for the morrow, we heard, high overhead, the faint hum of motors, and saw two lights, one ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... the serenity and the selfishness of death had already descended upon him. He heard with indifference the sobs of Jon, crouched at the foot of his bed. Tears and regrets were a part of the general futility of life, insignificant enough at ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... understood them, and I imagined they took this subject as a sort of text whereon to build a parable proving to me the advantages of education, the necessity of devoting myself to study early in life, and the futility ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... still and respectful, gathered thus by a slain ruler, to see how worthy is the republic he has preserved. Whatever sympathy these have for our institutions, I think that in such audience they must have been impressed with the futility of any thought that either one citizen right or one territorial inch can ever be torn from the United States. Not to speak disparagingly of these noble guests, I was struck with the superior facial energy of our own public servants, who were generally larger, and brighter-faced, born of that aristocracy ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... remembered, that his prisoner had not been seated in that particular section of the house reserved for the company's employees, but that might have readily come from the fact that the section was fully occupied when she arrived. Then, as more names beginning with "Mar" occurred to him, the futility of the idea became apparent. Apart from any possible number of Marys, and Margarets there were Martha, Maria, Marcia, Marian, Marcella—others perhaps. Of course he would be able to recognize the woman, if he saw her, but she would be too clever to return to her place ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... this restraint, according to Polybius, was, the unwillingness of the Carthaginians to let the Romans have any knowledge of the countries which lay more to the south, in order that this enterprising people might not hear of their futility. Polyb. l. iii. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... after musing, Yoomy assented. Indeed, I had noticed, that already the Warbler had abated those sanguine assurances of success, with which he had departed from Odo. The futility of our search thus far, seemed ominous to him, of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... persuaded myself that I had not been seen distinctly; I attempted to deny it. A deep flush suffused my face and I felt the futility of my feint. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... "Don't you wish you may get it," and the others, who knew very well the futility of the poor boy's expectations, even if Gerald's augury were not fulfilled, hastened to turn away the conversation to plans for the afternoon. Anna asked the visitor if he would ride out with her and Gerald to Clipstone or to the ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... some of his lesser works, most of the characters are either altogether bad or worthless and the others very largely weak or absurd, so that the impression of human life which the reader apparently ought to carry away is that of a hopeless chaos of selfishness, hypocrisy, and futility. One word, which has often been applied to Thackeray, best expresses his attitude—disillusionment. The last sentences of 'Vanity Fair' are characteristic: 'Oh! Vanitas Vanitatum! which, of us is happy in this world? Which of us has ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... alternating currents. The former must have in its magnetic circuit a section of air or the like, or be an imperfectly closed circuit, as it were. The latter should have as perfectly closed a magnetic circuit as can be made. We see here also the futility of constructing a Ruhmkorff core coil on the closed iron magnetic circuit plan, because the currents in the primary are ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... a fascinating realisation of his own vague and chaotic "restlessness." Here was a spirit made up in truth "of an intensest life," driven hither and thither by the hunger for intellectual mastery of the universe; and Browning, far from convicting him of intellectual futility, has made him actually divine the secret he sought, and, in one of the most splendid passages of modern poetry, declare with his dying lips a faith which is no less Browning's ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... disturbed and made wretched by a consciousness of movement, of varied life and activity, of adventure, of thrill, outside the groove, but invisible, unreachable.... He strove to clamber up the glassy sides, only to slip back, realizing the futility of the EFFORT. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... It is a theoretical inquiry and has no directly hortatory quality. Yet insight into the basis of our preferences, if it could be gained, would not fail to have a good and purifying influence upon them. It would show us the futility of a dogmatism that would impose upon another man judgments and emotions for which the needed soil is lacking in his constitution and experience; and at the same time it would relieve us of any undue diffidence or excessive tolerance towards aberrations of taste, when we know what are the broader ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... many men, the regimental adjutant and another officer being struck down at the same moment. Watson, recognising the preparations made to receive him, seeing from the confusion which had arisen the futility of so informal an attack, directed a retirement, intending, doubtless, no more than that his men should temporarily seek the cover of the dead ground from which they had just climbed. But such instructions, at such a time, were more easy to obey than to understand. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... the American was most emphatically a man of his word. If Kirby swore he would not act as the men's intermediary with the company, then decisively Kirby would keep his oath. And Najib realized the futility of getting any one else to write such a letter in any language which the Cabell Smelting Company's home office ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... girls to office work. Unscrupulous business "colleges" sometimes mislead these immature girls into believing that a short course taken in their school will enable the girls to fill office positions. Facts are at hand which show the futility of attempting office work under such conditions, and teachers should be very careful to see that all the facts are in the possession of ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... their colleague. Bonaparte asked them in my presence whether they thought he ought to go to the opera. They observed that as every precaution was taken no danger could be apprehended, and that it was desirable to show the futility of attempts against the First Consul's life. After dinner Bonaparte put on a greatcoat over his green uniform and got into his carriage accompanied by me and Duroc. He seated himself in front of his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... we have already shown in a previous page, to the persistent lugging in of America by Mr. Froude, doubtless to keep his political countrymen in countenance with regard to the Negro question. We have already pointed out the futility of this proceeding on our author's part, and suggested how damaging it might prove to the cause he is striving to uphold. "Blacks of exceptional quality," like the two gentlemen he has specially mentioned, "will avail ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... irritably why places like this were allowed to get into this condition. If people wanted a barn earnestly enough to take the trouble of building one, why was it not worth while to keep the thing in proper repair? Waste and futility! That was what it was. That was what everything was, if you came down to it. Sitting here, for instance, was a futile waste of time. She wouldn't come. There were a dozen reasons why she should not come. So what was the use of his courting rheumatism by waiting in this morgue of dead agricultural ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... they were—here she was, idling uselessly at the Ritz as she had done yesterday, last week, last month—forever, it seemed to her. The vague protest that for some time had been growing within her against the senselessness and futility of her manner of existence crystallized itself now into a determination no longer to submit to it. Courageously she was resolving that she would take the first opportunity to escape from this boresome routine of pleasure-seeking. She was wondering if the request ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... deluged with flattery, she would intimate that she was a miserable sinner, but that is not what I mean. She concerned herself greatly with the manners of the great, and deplored their cards and fashionable falsehoods. John Newton, captain as he had been of a slaver, saw the futility of such pin-pricks: ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... and stood with her back to the wall and answered him in a firm voice. She understood the futility of further evasion. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... herself from his grasp, but he renewed it with all his sinewy strength, enforcing, with a vicelike gripe, the consciousness, in her mind, of the futility of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... some of you may say, and not altogether creditable to a grown-up man. And yet, from the deepest point of view, who knows the more of truth, and who knows the less,—Whitman on his omnibus-top, full of the inner joy with which the spectacle inspires him, or you, full of the disdain which the futility of his ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... transport. Coincident with this there appeared several staff officers delegated to "assist." The Senior Naval Transport Officer, a captain in the Royal Navy, endeavoured to make up the 90 minutes lost by urging speed in the move from one ship to the other. When the futility of expecting fully equipped men to move quickly over the solitary 15-inch plank laid down as a gangway was pointed out to him, he showed signs of irritability and threatened an adverse report on the handling of the troops. On being informed that it ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... was up early, but recognised the futility of watching at the Poste Restante until the daylight faded. On the other hand, if Mrs. Petre was actually in that city, she would have no fear to go about openly. Yet, after due consideration, I decided not to go to the post office ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... short cut to the making of these ideals into glad realities. The world has witnessed again and again the futility and the mischief of ill-considered remedies for social and economic disorders. But we are mindful today as never before of the friction of modern industrialism, and we must learn its causes and reduce its ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... pilgrimage, where the roads are so dusty and the caravansaries so ill provided, is the credulity of this pursuit. Mind, I am not objecting to the pursuit of wealth, or of learning, or of power, they are all explainable, if not justifiable,—but to the blindness that does not perceive their futility as a means of attaining the end sought, which is happiness, an end that can only be compassed by the right adjustment of each soul to this and to any coming state of existence. For whether the great scholar who is stuffed with knowledge is happier than the great money-getter who is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... into the other, and no man may mete the boundaries of each, though their extremes lie far apart. With the more complete understanding of the principle of development and evolution in literary art, as in physical nature, we see the futility of a strict and rigid classification into precisely defined genera and species. All that it is needful for us to remark now is that the Short-story has limitless possibilities: it may be as realistic as the most prosaic novel, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... ("K")from Fort Yamhill. The men, inspired by the urgency of our situation, marched more than forty miles a day, accomplishing the whole distance in so short a period, that I doubt if the record has ever been beaten. When this reinforcement arrived, the Indians saw the futility of further demonstrations against their agent, who they seemed to think was responsible for the insufficiency of food, and managed to exist with the slender rations we could spare and such indifferent food as they could pick up, until the Indian ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... not designed for the slaughter of mankind, but so to impress the enemy with a demonstration of overwhelming power, force, and majesty, that he may become mentally unable or unwilling to offer resistance, because of its obvious futility. So it is with the black in pursuit of a fish or turtle in shallow water. By noise and bluster he works on the senses of the fish until it becomes semi-paralysed. Then he proceeds callously to the killing, which, in the case of fish, if his right hand is encumbered, he generally accomplishes by ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... pervading this scene, something that was in my mind already, and that I had hardly dared to look at till now, became clear to me in its awful futility against the dangers, in all its remote consequences. It was a betrothal. The priest—Carlos, too—must have known that it had no binding power. To Carlos it was symbolic of his wishes. Father Antonio was thinking ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sincere, undone by want of sympathy.... The author's want of sympathy prevents 'Mehalah's' rising to the highest art; for though we shudder at the end, there the effect of the story stops. It illustrates the futility of battling with fate, but the theme is not allowable to writers with the modern notion of a Supreme Power.... But 'Mehalah' is still one of the most powerful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Ciris was written not much later. Now came a crisis in Vergil's affairs. Perhaps his own experience in the law courts, or the conviction that public life could contain no interest under an autocracy, or disgust at rhetorical futility, or perhaps a copy of Lucretius brought him to a stop. Lucretius he certainly had been reading; of that the Ciris provides unmistakable evidence. And the spell of that poet he never escaped. His farewell to Rome and rhetoric has been quoted in part above. The end of the poem bids—though ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... is no hope of inducing Mrs. Lancaster to—to change?" he said at last. Knowing Mrs. Lancaster as he did, he recognised the futility of the question. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the course of my eventful career had occasion to mark the varying degrees of plausibility with which men speak untruths, but never, I confidently aver, have I beheld one lie with so piteous a futility. The art—and I dare say with diplomat chaps and that sort it may properly be called an art—demands as its very essence that the speaker seem to be himself convinced of the truth of that which he utters. And the Honourable ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... government determined to confine the consideration of the most important affairs to a smaller number, and formed a council of seventy citizens, in whom the principal authority was invested. This new regulation calmed the minds of those desirous of change, by convincing them of the futility of their efforts. To establish their authority, they in the first place ratified the treaty of peace with the king, and sent as ambassadors to the pope Antonio Ridolfi and Piero Nasi. But, notwithstanding the peace, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... be, moving towards the selfsame goal. It had seemed to Mrs. Brenton something bordering on the blasphemous when Scott had endeavoured to put this latter phase of the question before her. Realizing his own futility upon that score, he finally had changed his tactics and assured her that, as far as money-earning work went, there were ten chances in the great college to one in ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... with her knitting needle, but he hurried by without looking up. Then the anger of Mrs. McGuire was kindled mightily, and she sometimes woke up in the night to express her opinion of him in the most lurid terms she could think of, feeling meanwhile the futility of human speech. It was a hard position for Mrs. McGuire, who had always been able to settle her own affairs with ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. From the Latin mens, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over the way had ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Ordinary speech, however, is the only kind of speech that an expeditious drama can tolerate, and it is not raised to a higher power by the blowing of brass or the beating of drums. The frankest confession of the futility of Giordano's effort to make a lyric drama out of "Fedora" is contained in the fact that only those moments in his score are musical in the accepted sense when the play stops, as in the case of the intermezzo which cuts the second act ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that occurred to Anderson to say, and he realized its futility as he spoke; but any thing was better than to stand and listen to that horrible voice, and look at the broad, white face of the landlord, all perspiring and quivering as he clutched the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... experience as a mere fantasy of sleep, or, if not an actual dream, some vision hailing from the borderland of consciousness, at the point where the senses merge. Yet, even as she argued with herself, she felt the utter futility of it, and knew her denials were vain in ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... no neurotic; no genius of the first rank ever is or was. He never lost control of himself, and so did not, like some of his brilliant contemporaries, tread the primrose path which leads down to futility and death. He was always pre-eminently sane. While composing his transcendent Lear and Othello, he was suing Philip Rogers for L1 15s. 10d. While his fancy roamed in the fairyland of Midsummer Night's Dream, his investments were in the highest ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... sharply, nodding toward the Colonel. The pithecanthropoid attendant in the white jacket hastened forward, pinned his arms behind him and dragged him down into the chair. For an instant, the old man tried to resist, then, realizing the futility and undignity of struggling, subsided. The psychiatrist had taken a leather case from his pocket and ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... reason to complain of occasional Criticks, or Criticks by profession. The very Few, who have been pleased to controvert any part of his Doctrine, have favoured him with better manners than arguments; and claim his thanks for a further opportunity of demonstrating the futility of Theoretick reasoning against Matter of Fact. It is indeed strange that any real Friends of our immortal POET should be still willing to force him into a situation which is not tenable: treat him as a learned Man, and what shall excuse the most gross violations ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... and another is painful? And even if it were, why did you prefer to make it after the one fashion rather than the other? The passionate assertion of the consciousness of their freedom, which is the favourite refuge of the opponents of the doctrine of necessity, is mere futility, for nobody denies it. What they really have to do, if they would upset the necessarian argument, is to prove that they are free to associate any emotion whatever with any idea whatever; to like pain as much as pleasure; ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... to her hip, and she flew at the culprit only to be caught in Smoke's arms, where she surrendered herself, sobbing with the futility ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... pitiful futility of his father's persistence in trying to impose his ways, his beliefs, his will, upon one so rapidly growing into full independence. The only sanction he had was a tradition daily becoming more fragile. He was in for the bitterness of another disappointment. That was what ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... 16), and still more of the Lemurs, is situated completely in the posterior face of the skull, or as much further back than that of the Gorilla, as that of the Gorilla is further back than that of Man; while, as if to render patent the futility of the attempt to base any broad classificatory distinction on such a character, the same group of Platyrhine, or American monkeys, to which the Mycetes belongs, contains the Chrysothrix, whose occipital foramen is situated far more forward than in any other ape, and nearly ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... District Council way, it is a thing to end forever. I have always hated it, so far that is as my imagination enabled me to realise it; and now that I have been seeing it, sometimes quite closely for a full month, I hate it more than ever. I never imagined a quarter of its waste, its boredom, its futility, its desolation. It is merely a destructive and dispersive instead of a constructive and accumulative industrialism. It is a gigantic, dusty, muddy, weedy, bloodstained silliness. It is the plain duty of every ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... XI. 15, 16, also undated, seems, like the last passage, best explained as delivered by Jeremiah while he watched during the close of Josiah's reign the hardening of the people's trust in their religious institutions and felt its futility; or alternatively when that futility was exposed by the defeat at Megiddo. It has, however, been woven by some hand or other into a passage reflecting the revival of the Baal-worship under Jehoiakim (verse 17; its connection with the prose ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... spirited young creature, smarting under continued injustice and seeing with her uncompromising clearness of vision the selfish jealousy which would keep her out of her birthright indefinitely. "You want to be real careful, Diantha," said Persis, realizing the futility of her words. "Thad's a nice boy and you're a nice girl, but it don't look well for young folks to be meeting on ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... strongly the futility of denial or explanation that I shrugged my shoulders and remained silent under the sneer. Two more days—two more days would take us to Rosny, and my task would be done, and Mademoiselle and I would part for good and all. What would it matter ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... customary to say that this style of composition was unsuited to women, and to pass over the epoch with the casual remark that no women composers appear within its limits. But modern research has shown the futility of ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... length to my desire to avoid society and strove by various arguments to banish my despair. Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the degradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he endeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... surprised at the storm that burst, but soon realized the futility of further speech. They would not listen—they were so intent on proving the woman's guilt, they would hear no defence. From what they said, Pearl gathered that they knew nothing about Mrs. Gray except what the sewing-machine agent had told them, and even he ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... best record of legislation in the United States yet presented in regard to coinage, to legal tender acts, and other matters connected with our financial history. It shows in the most conclusive manner the futility of all attempts to cause two substances to become, and to remain of the same value or estimation, by acts of legislation. It gives a true picture of the vast injury to the welfare and to the moral integrity of the people of this country, which ensued from the enactment of the acts of legal ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the British plantations, have all had the bad effects of taxes upon the necessaries of life, and produce no revenue to government. Nothing seems necessary for the repeal of such regulations, but to convince the public of the futility of that system in consequence of which they have ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... ourselves in the tenement where death has been, and all traces of it have been removed. It is a feeling of satisfaction and relief at having rid ourselves of the memento of mortality, the silent evidence of the futility of our pursuits and anticipations. We know that we must one day die, but we always wish to forget it. The continual remembrance would be too great a check upon our mundane desires and wishes; and although we are told ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... practical. He is very simple and direct in his nature, and is very likely to be equally so in his mental view. Edward's father was distinctly interested—very much amused, as he confessed to the boy in later years—in his son's discernment of the futility of the Spencerian style of penmanship. He agreed with the boy, and, next morning, accompanied him to school and to the principal. The two men were closeted together, and when they came out Edward was sent to his classroom. For some weeks he was given no penmanship lessons, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of 1910-1911 Nelka spent again with her aunt Martha in Washington. Her aunt had a large house and was in the social whirl of the capital. Dinners, balls, the White House, the Embassies—but all this meant little to Nelka and she felt the futility of all that activity, its artificiality and uselessness. Irritated and longing for a change she once again returned to Russia, and once again went ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... speaker, the futility of the speech, were about equally balanced! Candour was impossible, if only for kindness' sake. And the story, so told, was not only unconvincing, it was hardly intelligible even, to Letty. For the two ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pull at his flask, rests his gun upon a log, and begins to study his mark. The stag will not stand still. Greenhorn is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn has read lies the heart. Just about to fire, he catches the eye of the stag winking futility into his elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, from a tree thirty feet overhead. Then, with a mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful contempt, the stag turns away, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... ix), the author speaks of the futility of prose translations of poetry, and of the inadequacy of modern English media for translating the spirit of the poetry. Finally he adopts a line which he hopes will 'fulfil the needs and follow closely the peculiarities' of ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... a larger scale. The men who played were the men who had stakes. The workers were the fellows toiling for grubstakes. He saw the game played out according to the everlasting rules, and he played a hand himself. The gigantic futility of humanity organized and befuddled by the bandits did not shock him. It was the natural order. Practically all human endeavors were futile. He had seen so much of it. His partners had starved and died on the Stewart. Hundreds of old-timers had failed to locate on Bonanza and Eldorado, while ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... demonstrate the futility of such teachings. In these cases a good instructor chooses appropriate stories showing the baseness of such ingratitude, the dangers of disobedience, the ugliness of bad temper, to accentuate the defects of the pupil. It would be just as edifying to discourse ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... it was a ten days' affair at the shortest; and, with all our prospects doubtful and Alured still so ill, it was very trying. How Bertram did rave at the folly and futility of the expedition! but one comfort was, that Alured was a ward of Chancery, and, in the vast kindness and commiseration everyone bestowed upon us, no one tried to hurry ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of this irritable interference. Meddling with the conscience of another person is a delicate and difficult affair, and Ruth had already warned Ethel of its certain futility. But the days were rapidly wearing away to the great day, for which so many other days had been wasted in fatiguing worry, and incredible extravagance of health and temper and money—and after it? There would certainly be a break in associations. Temptation would be removed, ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... spoke, the futility, the obviousness of the lie, yet somehow unable to help speaking it, Marie answered in abrupt confusion. Yes, she had been gardening; it—it was a favourite ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... than usual as he crossed the kitchen floor. Undressing was a Titan's task, a monstrous futility, and he wept weakly as he crawled into bed, one shoe still on. He was aware of a rising, swelling something inside his head that made his brain thick and fuzzy. His lean fingers felt as big as his wrist, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... first to discover the futility of the experiment. Early in the following year he wrote to Miss Sophia Peabody to whom he was then engaged: "It has become quite evident to me that our fortunes are not to be found in this place;" ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... would give relief in the event of floods like those of 1902 and 1903. When one considers the amount of water which was carried into the lower valley, the heights which it reached, and the area which it inundated, the futility of any local improvement except levee construction is emphasized. The present channel of the river will not carry without damage the amount of water recently thrown into it, and while it is important to provide ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... personality, human but torturingly inhuman, crowded in upon me. The barriers dividing the world of ideas, sensations, and realities seemed to have been thrown down, and all rushed into my brain like a set of hungry foxhounds. The horror of effort and the futility of endeavor permeated my very soul. My weary, helpless brain was filled with hordes of unruly imaginings; I was masterless, panic-driven, maddened, and had to abide for weeks—yea, months—with a fever-haunted soul occupying a fever-rent and ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... man again. Then he evidently saw the futility of appealing to Captain Swope. Abruptly, he turned and ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... ever much less of a man of the world in one sense, yet Pattison's mind was always in the world. In company he often looked as if he were thinking of the futility of dinner-party dialectics, where all goes too fast for truth, where people miss one another's points and their own, where nobody convinces or is convinced, and where there is much surface excitement with little real stimulation. That so shrewd a man should have seen ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... the stolen property, no stone must be left unturned to recover it. The police knew what they were doing; they must have a free hand. The Duke did not press her with any great vigour; he realized the futility of an appeal to a nature so shallow, so self-centred, and so lacking in sympathy. He took his revenge by teasing her about the wedding presents which were still flowing in. Her father's business friends were still striving to outdo one another in the costliness of the jewelry they ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... belladonna, and bryonia, against the symptoms over which they are pretended to exert such palpable, such obvious, such astonishing influences. In the view of these statements, it is impossible not to realize the entire futility of attempting to silence this asserted science by the flattest and most peremptory results of experiment. Were all the hospital physicians of Europe and America to devote themselves, for the requisite period, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ways Mr. Conrad's is the most heroic imagination in contemporary literature. But he does not take this round globe of light and darkness into his purview as Browning did. The whole earth is to him shadowed with futility. Browning was too lyrical to resign himself to the shadows. He saw the earth through the eyes of a lover till the end. He saw death itself as no more than an interlude of pain, darkness, and cold before a lovers' meeting. It may be that it is all a rapturous illusion, and that, after ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... eleven to the echo. As Davies compared the heavy Yale line with the noticeably thinner Harvard wall, he shuddered instinctively as he thought of these men taking the impact of what was due to come. He was seized with a sense of futility at the very outset, and a ready sympathy for the Harvard back field. He had been in just such a position years before when it seemed as though he was battering his head against the side of a brick building, and all for naught, it seemed, too—only that he knew he should keep on battering, ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... much more simply employed now, would effect the alleged purpose far more thoroughly; (ii.) the enormous amount of human misery and its attendant hatreds brought about by this alleged divine scheme; and (iii.) the futility of an arrangement by which the pyramid was only to subserve its purpose when it had lost that perfection of shape on which its entire significance depended, according to the theory itself. But, apart from these, there is a difficulty, nowhere noticed by Smyth or his ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... to the great good which he had been taught he should accomplish. And he could muster up nothing but an irritating sense of hollow wordiness in many of his former dictums and utterances, a vast futility ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of green, this gyration, My centrifugal folly, Through roaring dust and futility spattered, Will find ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... stepped out from his grave to taunt him with the futility of his own words, which had been spoken to comfort him in his distress? The apparition was growing vaguer. Just before it vanished, it cried again and waved its hand, "Jesus of Galilee! ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... between the Hebrews of the north and those of the centre grew wider. The remnants of Saul's army sought shelter on the eastern bank of the Jordan, but found no leader to reorganise them. The reverse sustained by the Israelitish champion seemed, moreover, to prove the futility of trying to make a stand against the invader, and even the useless-ness of the monarchy itself: why, they might have asked, burthen ourselves with a master, and patiently bear with his exactions, if, when put to the test, he fails to discharge the duties for the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... their impatience, revert to force of some sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern religions of all sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride of opinion which keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary condition, and which approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... by this time Ossip seemed conscious to the full of the futility and the senselessness of what he had done: and in his state of sliminess, as he sat nodding his head, picking at the sand, looking at no one, and emitting a torrent of remorseful words, he reminded me strongly of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... room; the desk was between him and Smith, who was looking at him with a smile. Even in the weakness of fear that came over her, Mary wondered at the change in him. His very stature seemed to be greater; there was a grave power in that face she knew as a mask of witlessness and futility. He held the revolver in his right hand with the barrel resting in his left, and looked at the tall Professor with a smile that had no mirth in it, but ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... accomplished in the ranks some outline has been given; its record stands as an answer to those who think, as many are tempted to think, that work in Parliament without office is, in these days, foredoomed to futility. ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... King's reign (i.e. at a period before the plague, when labour was plentiful), and also with all appearance of justice determining the prices of agricultural produce. It was the first of a very long series of Acts of Parliament that, with every right intention, but with a really obvious futility, endeavoured to reduce everything to what it had been in the past, to put back the hands of the clock, and keep them back. But one strange ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... all quarters—and the "grand army" of a hundred and fifty thousand men marches direct on the capital. The ttes-du-pont on the Niemen, and the entrenched camp which it had cost Russia two years to fortify, were turned in the first march of the French; and the futility of the whole costly and rather timorous system was exhibited in the fact, that the crowning battle was fought within ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... man who laughed at him in derision as he held high above his head the figure of a little child. Tarzan half started as though to rush through the surf and strike out for the already moving steamer; but realizing the futility of so rash an act he ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... took in at a glance as the rangy buckskin picked his way easily up the slope. She noted, also, the white butt-plates of the revolver that protruded from its leather holster. Her first impulse was to mount and fly, but the futility of the attempt was apparent. If the man followed she could hardly hope to elude him upon a horse that was far from fresh, and even if she did it would be only to plunge deeper into the hills—become more hopelessly lost. Aunt Rebecca's words "desperate character" seemed suddenly to assume ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Lewisohn, head of the firm, is second to no man in America as a business man, which means he will not hanker for a fight with us; and when I show him we will buy, if necessary, the control of all the companies they represent, he will see the absolute futility of opposing us. I have it right from the inside of his own concern that Lewisohn Brothers have on hand a little over five millions cash and its equivalent, and that they consider the good-will and business ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson |
