"Rudderless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was working swiftly. There was possibly one chance in ten that the scow—rudderless and without human guidance—would sweep safely between the black walls and jagged teeth of the Chute. Even if the scow made this passage, they would be in the power of the Police, unless some splendid whimsicality of Fate sent it ashore before ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... of security—those, that is, who are sure of making a respectable, if not a happy, living—and the submerged multitude who, through some lack in themselves, or owing to the conditions under which our strange civilisation has become organised, struggle rudderless till they die ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... seaside flee, as one That flies his foe. There shalt thou find a boat Made of one hide: eat nought, and nothing take Except one cloak alone: but in that boat Sit thou, and bear the sin-mark on thy brow, Facing the waves, oarless and rudderless; And bind the boat chain thrice around thy feet, And fling the key with strength into the main, Far as thou canst: and wheresoe'er the breath Of God shall waft thee, there till death abide Working the Will Divine." Then spake that chief, "I, that commanded others, can obey; ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... career will end suddenly and leave no sign. The ocean tries feebly to emulate the profounder tragedies of the shore. In the crowded halls of gay hotels, I see wrecks drifting hopelessly, dismasted and rudderless, to be stranded on hearts harder and more cruel than Brenton's Reef, yet hid in smiles falser than its fleecy foam. What is a mere forsaken ship, compared with stately houses from which those whom I first knew in their youth and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of the trend of human thought. It is quite useless to start life with fixed standards, and try to bring everyone to realise their virtues. We must have some standard, it is true, or we should be as rudderless boats; but it is of paramount importance that our standards should be sufficiently elastic to include new movements; and not until we have tried and weighed in the balance, and considered and sifted the philosophies of others, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... to have any respect for me, I guess. You've got your work," he waved his arm at the huge cast under the shadow of which they were sitting, "and all this. You can put all your human longings into it. I'm a poor rudderless creature without any hope or direction." He buried his face in his hands. "You don't know it," he said, with an effort to conceal the fact that his shoulders were shaking, "but you see before you a human soul in ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... He was miserably conscious that something inestimably precious had gone out of his life, almost before he had had time to realise his happiness in possessing it. But neither he nor Rachel understood what Lady Gore's death had meant to Sir William. And the poor little Rachel, rudderless, bewildered, tried to do the best she could for her father's life by planning her own with absolute reference to it, by putting at his disposal all the bare, empty hours available for companionship which up to now had been so straitly, so tenderly, so happily filled. And ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... said he, dropping quaintly into the address of his childhood. "I'm just a rudderless boat ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale |
