"Unproductive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part, remained uneasily silent for a moment, and then only said: "Sure it's time we was gettin' home." This they accordingly proceeded to do, and had gone most of the distance before it occurred to anybody that little Terence O'Driscoll was not with them. Then, after a superficial and unproductive search among the scattered stones and bushes, they thought it expedient to run back in a fright, and report that the child had gone and got lost, unless by any odd chance he'd come home along ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... power, and reserve and repression are parts of the dignified office of the preacher, but carried too far may degenerate into weak and unproductive effort. Perfection of English style, rhetorical floridness, and profundity of thought will never wholly make up for lack of appropriate action in the work of ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... the abode of men could scarce have been found, or even imagined. The soil was sterile, unproductive, and rarely visited by game worthy of being hunted. The few roots and other articles of food they were enabled to raise, furnished but a ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... permanent, and to grasp the necessary conditions of their existence, suppressing all accidental limits. No doubt this transcendental procedure will remove us for some time from the familiar circle of phenomena, and the living presence of objects, to keep us on the unproductive ground of abstract idea; but we are engaged in the search after a principle of knowledge solid enough not to be shaken by anything, and the man who does not dare to rise above reality will ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... conducted it with the utmost minuteness, was quite unproductive of results. If the woman possessed a typewriter, she had apparently made away with it. The scrap basket contained nothing but a few torn bits of paper of no value. There was no stationery on the small desk in the living room, ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... confounding courtesans with queens, and love with ambition, that any sort of case can be made out against the former. Third paragraph—'Courtesans are a factor in the great problem of the circulation of wealth, etc.' It will be said that the money thus spent is unproductive.... So much the better! For if it were given to the poor it would merely enable them to bring more children into the world, thereby increasing immensely the general misery of the race. Schopenhauer will not be left ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... people who possessed a heap of this paper learnt that the Rosewarnes would give them interest for it as well as for money, and bethought them that, if hoarded, it ran the risk of robbery, besides being unproductive. Timidly and at long intervals men came to Martin and asked him to take charge of their wealth. He agreed, of course. 'Use the money of others' was still his motto. So ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... palliatives have been suggested and some have been applied, but many of them sin against the economic law, which provides that legislation intended to protect a man against the consequences of his own folly or improvidence is generally unproductive of result. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... needs to have some splendid mania or other. Even the most selfish of young people are endowed with a superfluity of life, a capital sum of energy which has been advanced to them and cannot be left idle and unproductive: they are for ever seeking to expend it on a course of action, or—(more prudently)—on a theory. Aviation or Revolution, a muscular or intellectual exercise. When a man is young he needs to be under the illusion that he is sharing in some great movement ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... choicest works of art are spinning-jennies, have valued the intellectual tasks of the library and the studio by "the demand and the supply." They have sunk these pursuits into the class of what they term "unproductive labour;" and by another result of their line and level system, men of letters, with some other important characters, are forced down into the class "of buffoons, singers, opera-dancers, &c." In a system of political economy it has been discovered ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... depart for the little room he slept in and used as work-place over at the carpenter's house among the vineyards. He kept his books there, his rows of pipes and towering little heap of half- filled match-boxes, and there he wrote his clever studies that yet were unproductive of much gold and brought him little more than pleasant notices and occasional letters from enthusiastic strangers. It seemed very unremunerative labour indeed, and the family had done well to migrate from ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... happiest of men." And yet, he confesses that the scholars of this country have not fulfilled the reasonable expectation of mankind. "Men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought." For all this he offers those correctives which in various forms underlie all his teachings. "The resources of the scholar are proportioned to his confidence in the attributes of the Intellect." New lessons of spiritual independence, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... made me appear quite new to myself, inasmuch as, in conversations with my almost maternal friend, I began to think I was of a somewhat cold nature, a nature which in comparison with hers seemed rather dry, unproductive and unimaginative, a ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the scions of the old tidewater families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villany she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... the forest of Waignies. The ground has not been cleared and is therefore unproductive. As for your farms at Orchies, the rents scarcely suffice to pay the interest of the sums you ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... possessing some of the brightness but lacking the snap and glisten of those of Tehuantepec and the plateau. Many were chrome-yellow with fever. Ragged officers of law and disorder were numerous, often in bare feet, the same listless inefficiency showing in their weak, unproductive, unshaven features. The car grew so crowded I went to sit on the platform rail, as had a half-dozen already, though large signs on the door ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... makes and sends them their diseases, bad weather and bad crops, and that he makes and supports witches. He owns a large country adjoining that of his brother, with whom he is continually at variance. His fields are unproductive; thick clouds intercept the rays of the sun, and consequently destructive frosts are frequent; game is very scarce, and not easily taken; ravenous beasts are numerous; reptiles of every poisoned tooth lie in the path of the traveller; streams are muddy, and hunger, nakedness ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... by his presence, associated to reform the State, under the guidance of the Earl of Leicester, high steward, the Earl of Hereford, high constable, the Earl Marshal, and the Earl of Gloucester. The circumstances of the times were favorable to their views. An unproductive harvest had been followed by a general scarcity, and the people were willing to attribute their misery, not to the inclemency of the seasons, but to the incapacity of their governors. Henry called a great council at Westminster, and on the third day the barons assembled in the hall in complete armor. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... we owe ninety-nine per cent. of our enjoyments. If this is so—and no sane person has ever questioned it—then all our brothers and sisters have a right to share in the common heritage. That this heritage would be unproductive without the labour of us who are strong is true, and it would be unfair—nay, foolish and impracticable—for our weaker brethren to claim an equal share. But they have a right to claim a fraternal participation—not merely a charitable one, but one based upon their right of inheritance—in ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Madeira for the Common People." His repeated re-election as Governor proves his popularity. Through lavish expenditure, his fortune was much reduced, and for many years he was sorely pressed for funds, his means being tied up in unproductive ways. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... connecting our sea with the ocean;[62] on the east, by a vast sloping tract, which the natives call the Catabathmos.[63] The sea is boisterous, and deficient in harbors; the soil is fertile in corn, and good for pasturage, but unproductive of trees. There is a scarcity of water both from rain and from landsprings. The natives are healthy, swift of foot, and able to endure fatigue. Most of them die by the gradual decay of age,[64] except such ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... rushes on without stopping one instant to notice these somniferous indulgences. Or, if they are not disposed to sleep, they sit and look about them: abstractedly gazing upon the multitude around, or at the heavens above. Pure, idle, unproductive listlessness is the necessary ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... will soon study their influence in this state. It must be admitted that windbreaks occupy space that could be profitably devoted to agricultural crops, and that the roots of the trees and their shade render a strip of ground on either side of the windbreak relatively unproductive. Yet in spite of these drawbacks, efficient windbreaks undoubtedly do more good ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... not mean to say that the calling of an officer was an altogether unproductive vocation. The yearly training of a large number of soldiers, who supported the credit of the kingdom, and thereby insured peace, was, no doubt, a positive factor in both political and ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the blazing hoop, sprang at the unhappy Quast as if he had been the contriver of the indignities to which he was being subjected. These tales of feline backsliding I used to hear from Lola, and when I asked her why she devoted her energies to the unproductive education of the uninspiring animals, she would shrug her shoulders and regard me ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... perform the operation on his clubfoot. He said it would be an unproductive waste of his time and talent, that he owed it to the world to use them to the very best advantage. Finally he agreed. The operation took about thirty seconds. He stuck a knife into Sam's foot and went snick-snick. A couple of weeks later, his foot was healed ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... is concentrated in them than in the ordinary man and woman; but also their contribution to the general good is greater. They stand out among men and cannot be wholly fitted into the framework of democratic equality. A social system which would render them unproductive would stand condemned, whatever other ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... "treating all men alike," though they might respond better to different handling, or else the individual is undirected and his personality manifests itself in all sorts of unguided directions, many of which must necessarily be wasteful, unproductive, or incomplete in development. Under Scientific Management, functionalization, as will be shown, provides for the utilization of all idiosyncrasies and efficient deviations from class, and promotion is so planned that a man may develop along the line of his ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... David Trevarrow had neither wife, child, nor mother to support, so he could afford to toil for poor pay, and, being of a remarkably hopeful and cheery disposition, he returned home that afternoon resolved to persevere in his unproductive toil, in the hope that at last he should discover a good "bunch of copper," or a ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... into a way of contenting himself with meeting the requirements of the college curriculum. The effects of this curriculum upon the professors are deeper and farther-reaching than is usually perceived. It is in accordance with facts to call American professors, as a class, unproductive. But it would be unjust and inconsiderate to ascribe this want of productivity to the disposition called laziness. Laziness is not a national fault of Americans. On the contrary, we are pushing, active, restless: we yearn, Alexander-like, for something new to overcome. Our professors are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... unoccupied and restless, and could neither enjoy Mr. Ruskin's criticism of his sketches nor the kindly hospitality of his Genevan hosts. Early in 1863 he made another fruitless visit to London, where he remained four or five months, but found no opening. Though unproductive of work, this year brought Yule official recognition of his services in the shape of the C.B., for which Lord Canning had long ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of infancy, and so long thereafter as the youth or man is not thrown upon his own resources, he lives by consuming the vital capital provided by others. To use a terminology which is more common than appropriate, whatever work he performs (and he does a good deal, if only in mere locomotion) is unproductive. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and fishermen, may reasonably expect employment and make themselves useful to the new community; as will also a limited number of house-carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, black-smiths, tailors, shoemakers, and common labourers, the latter being required to assist in building habitations; but the unproductive class, or idlers, had better wait a few years before they embark for a country where, as yet, there is neither hut nor hovel, and where the "fruges consumere nati" have unquestionably no place in society. We cannot forget what happened, when, a few years ago, the government ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny. Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds—and there is no plant so unproductive as this—and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants. The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... is unfavourable to the purposes of narration. The striking facts which the writer exerts himself to record, and the reader is eager to peruse, arise only from difficult situations: uniform prosperity is described in very few words. Of this acceptable but unproductive kind was the passage of the Botany Bay fleet from Rio de Janeiro to the Cape of Good Hope; uniformly favourable, and not marked by any extraordinary incidents. This run, from about lat. 22 deg. south, long. 43 west of London, to lat. 34 deg. south, long. 18 deg. east of London, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... "Exactly. Nothing is so unproductive as the law. It is expensive whether you win or lose, and it is murderously expensive when you do lose. You will observe, I know, that your Jean Jacques is a man who can ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... corner of the garden and made its way to the Saone just above Challe. Tall bushy trees followed the course of the little stream, and described a half-circle, inclosing the house on three sides. The house itself was formerly an inn which proved unproductive to the innkeeper. It had been closed for seven or eight years, and was beginning to fall into decay. Before reaching it, the main road coming from Macon made ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... fearless pioneers of the movement, Mr. and Mrs. Hewat Mackenzie, I am allowed to publish another example of spirit photography. The circumstances were very remarkable. The visit of the parents to Crewe was unproductive and their plate a blank save for their own presentment. Returning disappointed, to London they managed, through the mediumship of Mrs. Leonard, to get into touch with their boy, and asked him why they had failed. He replied that the conditions had been ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to where it took a sudden sharp turn, and a little farther. Then he crossed it, and was in a lonely nook of the glen, with steep braes about him on all sides, some of them covered with grass, others rugged and unproductive. He threw himself down in the clover, a short distance from the stream, and straightway felt as if he were miles from home. No shadow of life was to be seen. Cottage-chimney nor any smoke was visible—no human being, no work of human hands, no sign of cultivation ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... is to bear fruit, the teacher must take pains to see that it is followed. Carefully to prepare his lesson according to a definite plan must become a habit with the student. Facility, accuracy, and thoroughness are impossible otherwise. Haphazard methods are wasteful of time and unproductive of results. The teacher can afford to emphasize method during the first few weeks of the course. The time thus spent in assisting the pupil to develop definite habits of study will pay rich dividends for the remainder of the student's life. Daily inquiry as ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... climate, scattered population, and wide expanses of unproductive land have constrained economic development. Economic activity traditionally has been based on agriculture and the breeding of livestock. In past years extensive mineral resources had been developed with Soviet support; total Soviet assistance at its height amounted ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... would take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down throughout this long, leaden-footed day—the past twenty-four hours unproductive of a single ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... without their influence. The land of Cape Leveque is low, and presents a sandy beach lined by a rocky reef, extending off the shore for a mile, on many parts of which the sea was breaking heavily: the land was clothed with a small brush wood, but altogether the coast presented a very unproductive appearance, and reminded us of the triste and arid character of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... scarcely necessary, after this, to say that the search in the wood for Sir Francis Varney was an unproductive one, and that the morning dawned upon the labours of the brother and of Mr. Marchdale, without their having discovered the least indication of the presence of Varney. Again puzzled and confounded, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... rotation we keep about all of our farm under control; but the smaller farms were necessarily cropped more continuously to support the family, and they became so unproductive that many of them have been completely abandoned for agricultural purposes; and even some of the large plantations were poorly managed, one part having been cropped continuously until too poor to pay for cropping, while the remainder was allowed to grow up in scrub brush ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... siege began one farmer has steadily continued to plough his acres on the plain near the racecourse. He reminded one of the French peasant ploughing at Sedan. His three ploughs went backwards and forwards quite indifferent to unproductive war. But to-day the Boers deliberately shelled him at his work, the shells following him up and down the field, and ploughing up the earth all wrong. Neither the farmer nor his Kaffir labourers paid ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... confusion of blossoms as in our villages. You never see the cottager at work among his roses; once his necessary labours are over, he smokes and talks to his neighbours: to grow flowers for aesthetic reasons were too ornamental, too unproductive a hobby. AEsthetically the Dutch are dead, or are alive only in the matter of green paint, which they use with such charming effect on their houses, their mills and their boats. What is pretty is old—as indeed is the case in our ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... lately back from their wedding-trip. Adrian, after several years of unproductive traffic in exotic literature, had finally made a hit; he had been able not only to lay a telling piece of work at the dear one's feet, but also—by a slight discounting of future certainties—to put a good deal of money in his purse. He ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... sweep of country lying between the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain, which civilization with its improvements and its rush of progress has not yet invaded. It is mountainous, rocky, and for all agricultural purposes sterile and unproductive. It is covered with dense forests, and inhabited by the same wild things, save the red man alone, that were there thousands of years ago. It abounds in the most beautiful lakes that the sun or the stars ever shone ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... apt to make laments about things which cannot be helped, or requests about those which are trivial; because to be thus disposed with respect to these things is consequent only upon real anxiety about them. Again, he is the kind of man to acquire what is beautiful and unproductive rather than what is productive and profitable: this being rather the part of an independent man. Also slow motion, deep-toned voice, and deliberate style of speech, are thought to be characteristic of the Great-minded ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... there being perfectly flat, the waters accumulate and stagnate, forming vast pestilential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields should be—and have been in ancient times. In short, if left to itself, Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient Assyria), is unproductive from the barrenness of its soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its extraordinary ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... everything still"—that is an appropriate winter doctrine, good cheer for an unproductive period, a great comfort ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... equally unproductive of result. Paula and her father had also gone to England. They had taken the V. A. D. with them, and their address was unknown. The matron of the hospital believed that they had planned a motor trip to Scotland, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Hi-mighty! what you forgot this time? Fishhooks? Goin' fishin', be you? Wal, in my 'pinion you're throwin' your hook into unproductive waters around here, as ye might say. Even chummin' won't ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Mrs. Isemonger, who is a sister of Mr. Maxwell, my present host, is gentle, thoughtful, well-informed, and studious, and instead of creating and living in an artificial English atmosphere which is apt to make a residence in a foreign country a very unproductive period, she has interested herself in the Malays, and has not only acquired an excellent knowledge of Malayan, but is translating a ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... any serious motive and often shockingly brutal. City life most readily uncovers the sub-normal. This is true because the strain is far greater in the city than the country. There are exceptions to this rule, particularly those portions of the country that are barren and unproductive territory into which the venturesome and obvious unfits ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... it—as if Mother Nature were carrying on two experiments, one at home and one on Mars. On earth it's trial of an emotional, highly competitive race in a world of plenty; here it's the trial of a quiet, friendly race on a desert, unproductive, and inhospitable world. Everything here makes for cooperation. Why, there isn't even the factor that causes so ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... effloresced into the rank luxuriant growth of mere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the outward display of Religiousness, without the fruits of true Religion. You might have lived and died unproductive cumberers, deceiving others and deceiving yourselves. But He would not suffer you to linger in this state of worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely, these severest cuttings and incisions of the pruning knife, than to listen to the stern words—"Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!" ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... manner must the entire circumstance complete its course unless some ingenious method of evading it can be discovered in the meantime. Alas, my beloved one! the occupation of ensnaring winged insects is indeed an alluring one, but as far as this person has observed, it is also exceedingly unproductive of taels. Could not some more expeditious means of enriching yourself be discovered? Frequently has the unnoticed but nevertheless very attentive Lila heard her father and the round-bodied ones who visit him speak of exploits which ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... accessit at the "Concours Academique," and both were mentioned with praise by the Sous-Prefet at the public distribution of prizes. Besides, what was still more important, Stephen had successfully passed his examination for the "Baccalaureat." Lastly, there had been an expensive and unproductive journey, and there was the prospect of another. All this in the same year somewhat alarmed me. The gig was not an important concern, being made, like the four-wheeled carriage, from designs of my husband's, by ordinary wheelwrights and blacksmiths; but ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... for the happiness of his subjects could have consented to it. Khufu must have forced his subjects to labour for a long term of years—twenty, according to Herodotus—at a servile work which was wholly unproductive, and was carried on amid their sighs and groans for no object but his own glorification, and the supposed safe custody of his remains. Shafra must have done nearly the same. Hence an evil repute attached to the pyramid builders, whose names were handed down to posterity as those of evil-minded ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Pope Paschal [*Paschal II] says (cf. I, qu. iii, cap. Si quis objecerit): "Whoever sells one of two such things, that the one is unproductive without the other, leaves neither unsold. Wherefore let no person sell a church, or a prebend, or ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... active patronage of Mrs. Mac-Candlish, Sampson picked up some other scholars—very different indeed from Charles Hazlewood in rank, and whose lessons were proportionally unproductive. Still, however, he gained something, and it was the glory of his heart to carry it to Mr. Mac-Morlan weekly, a slight peculium only subtracted to supply his snuff-box ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... goods from England, their trade had gone to ruin; and praying for the intervention of the legislature. In consequence of this, a bill was proposed by Lord North, to repeal all the American taxes and duties except tea. In proposing this repeal he censured the Revenue Act only as an inexpedient or unproductive impost, and not as an illegal or impolitic claim. The duty on tea, he said, was continued to maintain the right of taxing the Americans, and it could not be supposed that an impost of three pence per pound on an article from which one shilling was deducted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... general or for your particular case; and all the more, for the very good reason that your life is only really beginning now. You are not yet thirty-four, you may yet do something great, something pre-eminent, and who knows if those very qualities which have made your life unproductive hitherto, may not enable you later on to do things beside which the achievements of a Paul Haber shrink into insignificance? On the other hand, I am persuaded—quite apart from your respective ways of life—that you have chosen the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... years at Mossgiel, from 1784 to 1786, when the times were hard, and the farm unproductive, Burns must indeed have found poetry to be, as he himself says, its own reward. A nature like his required some vent for itself, some excitement to relieve the pressure of dull farm drudgery, and this was at once his purest and noblest excitement. In ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... honey and wheat, the gold and silver," which he found in "fair Innis-fail." It is probable that land was cultivated then which now lies arid and unreclaimed, for a writer in the Ulster Archaeological Journal mentions having found traces of tillage, when laying out drains in remote unproductive districts, several feet beneath the peaty soil. Dr. O'Donovan also writes in the same journal: "I believe the Irish have had wheat in the more fertile valleys and plains from a most remote period. It is mentioned constantly in the Brehon laws and in our most ancient poems."[256] ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... giving place to sterile and malarious ground: the plains and shores formerly covered with wealthy and populous cities are now deserted marshes: Sardinia and other ancient granaries of the Roman Empire are empty and unproductive: two-thirds of the Kingdom are occupied by mountains impossible of cultivation, and the remainder is to a large extent ill-farmed and unremunerative. To call Italy the 'Garden of Europe' under these circumstances seems ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... trade had been practically stopped, and the only merchants remaining were those who carried on an illicit traffic with the Arabs or, with Eastern apathy, were content to wait for better days. Being utterly unproductive, Suakin had been wisely starved by the Egyptian Government, and the gloom of the situation was matched by the poverty ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... thoughts, but in words he replied, "The lady of Beaumanoir is not my wife, perhaps never will be." Angelique's eager question fell on very unproductive ground. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mission in committee, but I know their individual opinions in an informal way. Messrs. Meech and Barradale don't say much; Mr. Owen thinks we will never do much in Mongolia working upon so distant a base as Peking; Mr. Lees thinks it a pity to take up such a seemingly unproductive field while so many more promising fields call for attention; he moreover thinks that the only way to do much for Mongolia is through China; Dr. Edkins thinks I spend too much time and labour over the Mongols, his idea being seemingly ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... of unforeseen ruin, which suddenly attacked the landed proprietors and utterly deprived them of the hope of subsistence; for, in the case of estates that were deserted and unproductive, the owners or tenants of which had either died or abandoned their country and hidden themselves after the misfortunes they had undergone, Justinian did not hesitate to impose a tax. Such were these "impositions," which were of frequent occurrence during ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... nod solemnly, or, if feeling especially loquacious, venture some prophecy concerning the morrow, before resuming his unproductive rounds and his lugubrious yawp. One day he discovered that she spoke French. From that time the relationship advanced rapidly. On Christmas he gave her a pair of red woolen gloves. On New Year's he took ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the surrounding country, but many of them from all parts of the surrounding world; oddly and confusedly jumbled together; the very olla-podrida of moral and mental combination. They were chiefly those to whom the ordinary operations of human trade or labor had proved tedious or unproductive—with whom the toils, aims, and impulses of society were deficient of interest; or, upon whom, an inordinate desire of a sudden to acquire wealth had exercised a sufficiently active influence to impel to the novel ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... What a complicated and extravagant affair! I know something about that. One must have money for everything! So that with a modest revenue and an unproductive profession one has to make up one's mind to have but little. So I do! The habit is formed, but the days that work does not go well are not amusing. Yes indeed! I would love to follow you into another planet. And a propos of money, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... land-tax is nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square feet or a quarter of an ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... over the work that might be done by one. Competing stores needlessly occupy the time of hundreds of thousands of employees in a mixture of idleness and industry. An inconceivable quantity of human effort is spent on advertising, mere shouting and display, as unproductive in the social sense as the beating of a drum. Competition breaks into a dozen inefficient parts the process that might conceivably be carried out, with an infinite saving of effort, by ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... Domeyko's account of those mines, in the "Comptes Rendus" tome 14 page 560.) I was assured by Mr. Lambert, that native copper without a trace of silver has been found in the same vein with native silver without a trace of copper. At the mines of Aristeas, the silver veins are said to be unproductive as soon as they pass into the green strata, whereas at S. Rosa, only two or three miles distant, the reverse happens; and at the time of my visit, the miners were working through a red stratum, in the hope of the vein becoming productive ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the symptoms of stupor are to be explained as expressions of death, for a regression to a Nirvana-like state can be most easily formulated in such a delusion. Other clinical conditions may temporarily and superficially resemble stupor on account of the attention being misdirected and applied to unproductive imaginations. To employ our metaphor again, in these false stupors the current is switched to another, invisible machine but not cut ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... became evident to the committee, that their mission was to be unproductive of results. The government did not take kindly to them, nor would the Bishop of Quebec and his clergy trust the vague expressions of the United Colonies, whose statute books, they pointed out, still bore the most bitter and ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... adventure on a full stomach to useful work on an empty. Setting aside the theory with its latent quarrel between Free Trade and State control, we can still recognize that each workman engaged in these pursuits has become an unproductive middleman, one of that very parasitic species which the revolutionaries had hoped to make unnecessary. It is bad from the revolutionary point of view if a workman is so employed, but it is no less bad from the point of view of ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... Ireland, this condition of affairs early and earnestly attracted the attention of Lord George Bentinck. So vast an expenditure in unproductive labour dismayed him. He would not easily assent to the conclusion that profitable enterprise under the circumstances was impossible. Such a conclusion seemed to him unnatural, and that an occasion where we commenced with despair justified a bold and venturesome course. The field is legitimately ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... Paul, that we are justified by faith in Christ, without the Law. Once a person has been justified by Christ, he will not be unproductive of good, but as a good tree he will bring forth good fruit. A believer has the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will not permit a person to remain idle, but will put him to work and stir him up to the love of God, to patient suffering in affliction, to prayer, thanksgiving, to the habit ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... the beach and hasty to depart Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone, Gone with the refluent wave into the deep, A prince with half his people. Ancient towers, And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes Where beauty oft and lettered worth consume Life in the unproductive shades of death, Fall prone: the pale inhabitants come forth, And, happy in their unforeseen release From all the rigours of restraint, enjoy The terrors of the day that sets them free. Who then, that has thee, would not hold thee fast, Freedom! whom they that lose thee so ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... women are chaste, Like the snows which envelop the bleak arid waste Of the desert; once melted, alas! what remains But the poor, unproductive, dry soil of the plains? The flora of Cupid will never be found, However he toil there, to thrive in ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... convert the world,' Herbert answered chillily, rolling himself a tiny cigarette, 'he must convince the unproductive as well as the proletariate before he can set things fairly on the roll for better arrangement. The proletariate's all very well in its way, no doubt, but the unproductive happen to hold the key of the situation. One convert like you or me is worth a thousand ignorant ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... to approach, he shall not find me unprepared or faint-hearted. Our faith hopes for and awaits the deliverance to which it leads us. Yet as long as we are upon earth we must attend to our daily task. And mine shall not lie unproductive. However trifling it may seem to others, to me it is indispensable. My soul's tears must, as it were, have lacrymatoria made for them; I must set fires alight for those of my dear ones that are alive, and keep my dear dead in spiritual and corporeal urns. This is the aim and object ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... instilled, said to himself, all a-tremble, that he would hardly have staked his veracity, his standing with the brethren, if he had realized that it was so close a matter as this. He had long known that his father owned the greater part of the unproductive wilderness lying between the two ravines; the land was almost worthless by reason of the steep slants which rendered it utterly untillable. He was sure that by the terms of his deed, which his father had from its vendor, Squire Bates, his line ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... month, had never since the establishment of the colony been observed to be so severe. The settlement had indeed, between the fires of the summer, and the floods and gales of the winter, suffered very considerably. Added to these, at this time, were the inconveniences arising from an unproductive harvest, from an exhausted store in the very essential articles of clothing and bedding, from the hostile disposition of many of the natives, and from the annihilation of morality, honesty, and industry in the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... name of More we leave this unproductive period, in which there was no great growth of any kind, but which was the planting-time, when seeds were sown that were soon to germinate and bloom and astonish the world. The times remind us of the dark saying in the Bible, "Out of the eater came forth meat; out of the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... principally chosen. The planting of these trees single, at the distance of a furlong from each other, would do no injury to the crops of corn, but would, by cooling the atmosphere, rather be advantageous. In many places spots now unproductive would be improved by clumps or small plantations of timber, under which ginger and turmeric might be cultivated to great advantage. In some situations saul...would prosper. Indeed the improvements ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... stood, potential, opulent, With virile manhood, and emotions keen, And wonderful with God's creative fire. At noon he stands, with Love's large fortune spent In petty traffic, unproductive, mean - A pauper, cursed ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... party, after running for two hours, returned without having caught anything, and their horses foaming with sweat. This chase, the greater part of which was seen from the camp, formed a beautiful scene; but to the hunters it is exceedingly laborious, and so unproductive, even when they are able to worry the animal down and shoot him, that forty or fifty hunters will sometimes be engaged for half a day without obtaining more than two ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... apt illustration of the probable workings of Plautus' mind. The virtue of the Penelope-like Pamphila and Panegyris proves too great a strain and unproductive of merriment. The topic gradually vanishes as the drolleries of the parasite Gelasimus usurp the boards. He in turn gives way to the hilarious buffoonery of the two slaves. The result is a succession of loose-jointed scenes[177]. The Aul. too is ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... It might be a curious speculation, how far the purer morals of the genuine and more active Christians may have compensated, in the population of the Roman empire, for the secession of such numbers into inactive and unproductive celibacy.—M.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... most useful indications respecting the value of land. It may be laid down as an axiom that a soil to be fertile must contain all the chemical ingredients which a plant can only obtain from the soil, and chemistry ought to be able to inform us in unproductive soils what ingredients are wanting. It also is able to inform us if any poisonous substance exists in the soil, and how it may be neutralized; when lime, marl, and chalk are to ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... in this rigorous climate of Tierra del Fuego furnish no animal fit for food, and without proper clothing or nourishment the people are reduced to a state of complete barbarism. Hunting yields them hardly any game, fishing is almost equally unproductive of results; they are obliged to depend upon the storms which now and then fling some huge cetacean on their shores, and upon such salvage they fall tooth and nail, not even taking the trouble to cook ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the early centuries of the Christian era, by a singular fallacy,—which arose however from the paucity of economic knowledge in their day,—allowed farm-rent and condemned interest on money, because, as they believed, money was unproductive. They distinguished consequently between the loan of things which are consumed by use—among which they included money—and the loan of things which, without being consumed, yield a product to ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... revolution is in every respect to the advantage of the United States. The old world has been convulsed by wars, a military emperor has had the sway of Europe, and broken kingdoms into fragments; blood has flowed in torrents, and thousands of millions have been wasted for unproductive purposes and on royal vanity. Since the fall of the Great Soldier the nations have incessantly risen against their rulers, and more than a million of men now stand in arms to restrain the people and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... theatre of the labor of this people. Switzerland, with about 16,000 square miles, equals in area one-third of New York. Of its territory, 30 per cent—waterbeds, glaciers, and sterile mountains—is unproductive. Forests cover 18 per cent. Thus but half the country is good for crops or pasture. The various altitudes, in which the climate ranges from that of Virginia to that of Labrador, are divided by agriculturists into three zones. The lower zone, including all lands below a level of 2,500 feet above ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... think that you could form no better wish for yourself than mine. You see, therefore, most kind and charming lady, that I can wish nothing for you on your nameday, because my wishes are too feeble, and therefore unproductive. As for me, I venture to wish for myself your kind indulgence, and the continuance of your friendship, and the goodness that I so highly prize. This is my warmest wish! But if any wish of mine may be permitted, then mine shall become identical with your own, for thus I shall feel assured that ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... S.T. Coleridge—who repeated that same doctrine without finding any evil in it. Look at the first part of the Wallenstein, where Count Isolani having said, "Pooh! we are all his subjects," i. e. soldiers, (though unproductive labourers,) not less than productive peasants, the emperor's envoy replies—"Yet with a difference, general;" and the difference implies Sir James's scale, his vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy.—Malthus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... adverse conditions a plant or vegetable cannot put forth its best efforts. In a scrawny, impoverished soil, and exhausted atmosphere, lacking the constituents of nurture, the plant will become dwarfed and unproductive, whereas on good ground and in good air, which have the succulent properties to nourish it the best results may be expected. The soil and the air, therefore, from which are derived the constituents of plant life, are indispensably necessary, but they are not the primal principles upon which that ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... us on our real-estate sales, and against which we had issued the debentures and the guaranteed rediscounts of the Grain Belt Trust Company, the factories, stock yards, terminals, street-car system, and most of our other properties were pretty heavily bonded. Some of them were temporarily unproductive, and funds had from time to time to be provided, from sources other than their own earnings, for the payment of their interest-charges. On the whole, however, we had been able to carry the entire line forward from position to ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... usually of a very poor quality, on which energetic or forehanded men did not care to waste their labor. It was a kind of land generally known in the West as "barrens"—rolling upland, with very thin, unproductive soil. Its momentary usefulness was that it was partly cleared and cultivated, that an indifferent cabin stood on it ready to be occupied, and that it had one specially attractive as well as useful feature—a fine spring of water, prettily situated amid a graceful clump of foliage, because ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... is, ladies, that at present capital is exceedingly unproductive. Shares pay very small dividends, and speculating is exceedingly dangerous. As I understand it, the capitalist now finds himself in a more critical position than the ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... defence of deer-parks. But his ground is that the deer-forests which were denounced as unproductive have been proved to be the only mode of raising the condition and securing the well-being of the ill-fed population. If so, "humanitarians" are ready to hold up both hands in favour of deer-forests. Nay, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... constant communication with the Boers in the field, though his oath of neutrality was taken and he was availing himself of our hospitality. On one occasion Captain G. S. Higginson spent the night in an empty house in the town in an attempt to mark this fox to ground, but unfortunately his vigil was unproductive of result. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... in which the use of miracles as an evidence was depreciated. It is hoped that it will not be considered improper to have named a writer, whose sex might be expected to shelter her from remark; but her writings are too able to be unproductive of influence. ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... destined to explore more completely in 1517, in the reign of Henry VIII.—or even to the south of the Bacalhaos, known by the general name of Newfoundland. At the close of this expedition, which was almost entirely unproductive, we lose sight of Sebastian Cabot, if not completely, at least so as to be insufficiently informed about his deeds and voyages until 1517. The traveller Hojeda, whose various enterprises we have related above, had left Spain in the month of May, 1499. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... seasons, should be but three in number, but this is quite in accordance with the notions of the ancient Greeks, who only recognized spring, summer, and autumn as seasons; nature being supposed to be wrapt in death or slumber, during that cheerless and unproductive portion of the year which we call winter. In some parts of Greece there were but two Horae, Thallo, goddess of the bloom, and Carpo, of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now. That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was considerably beyond where the coal vein should pass (according ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... approve and the honours which the state can confer. He who is impartial as to persons must submit to seem lukewarm as to principles. Thus the more towering and eminent the seeming power of Aristides, the more really hollow and insecure were its foundations. To his own party it was unproductive— to the multitude it appeared unconstitutional. The extraordinary honours he had acquired—his monopoly of the magistrature—his anti-popular opinions, could not but be regarded with fear by a people so jealous of their liberties. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... complete a failure, that after trying for eleven years, the colonists were 'not even able to keep themselves in fresh vegetables.' Fortunately, but little encouragement was ever offered to permanent settlers, or the disappointments caused by an unproductive soil and unhealthy climate would have been greatly multiplied. A singular example of the lex talionis occurred among the natives at this place. One of them having been severely wounded in punishment for an offence, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... with unsatisfactory varieties, or from reaching the conclusion that they can not grow grapes in their region or garden. Let them rather admit that they can not raise some kinds, but may others. If a variety were persistently diseased, feeble, and unproductive under good treatment, I should root it out rather than continue to nurse ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... to make the best of existing circumstances. Here was Arthur left to me at last; and rousing from my despondent apathy, I exerted all my powers to eradicate the weeds that had been fostered in his infant mind, and sow again the good seed they had rendered unproductive. Thank heaven, it is not a barren or a stony soil; if weeds spring fast there, so do better plants. His apprehensions are more quick, his heart more overflowing with affection than ever his father's could have been, and it is no hopeless task to bend him to obedience and win him to love ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... honeybee on the sweets of success. And throve—even to the blindest eye. What had hitherto been lacking was now hers: the admiration and applause of her circle. And never was a child so spurred and uplifted by praise as Laura. Without it, her nature tended to be wary and unproductive; and those in touch with her, had they wished to make the most of her, would no more have stinted with the necessary incentive, that one stints a delicate rose tree in aids to growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming over-sure. Under the present stimulus ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... as high a point as the server can COMFORTABLY reach. To stretch unnecessarily is both wearing on the server and unproductive of results. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... though I do not know why, ratoon oysters. The abundance of fish solves the problem which has puzzled many, how the Minorcan population of St. Augustine live, now that their orange-trees, upon which they formerly depended, are unproductive. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... all conventionalisms into solution, and loves and celebrates hardly any human attributes save those elementary ones common to all members of the race. For this he becomes a sort of ideal tramp, a rider on omnibus-tops and ferry-boats, and, considered either practically or academically, a worthless, unproductive being. His verses are but ejaculations—things mostly without subject or verb, a succession of interjections on an immense scale. He felt the human crowd as rapturously as Wordsworth felt the mountains, felt it as an overpoweringly significant presence, simply to absorb one's mind in ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... the country in as friendly a spirit as one may, little is developed to support any statement that the country may become prosperous from the products of her own soil. In truth Japan is nearly as unproductive as Greece and Norway, for only sixteen per cent. of her soil is arable. The mountain ranges and peaks and terraced hills that make the country scenically attractive to the tourist come near to prohibiting ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... regrets. But it will be a blank day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the mind with happy recollections. One walk on a winter's day over the hills from High Barnet to Edgware I reckoned sadly unproductive of the special novelties I sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of some landscapes which I can never forget, and it printed on my brain a little papier-mache-like church at Totteridge which was worth going miles to see. Better ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... of the non-slaveholding States, nor the denunciations of the holders of slaves, but the improvement, intellectual and moral, of the slaves themselves. Slavery has but two natural and peaceful modes of death. The one is the increase of the slave population until it reaches the point of being unproductive. When the number of slaves becomes so great that the master can not profitably employ them, he manumits them in self-defense. This point would probably have been reached long ago, in many of the Southern States, had not the boundless extent of the south-western section of the Union presented ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the famous Wonder-boom tree which is one of the sights of the place. Should we need this wagon it could always be sent for; or, if we found the Lydenburg hunting-ground, which he was so set upon visiting, unproductive or impossible, we could return to Pretoria over the high-veld and pick it ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... we rode into the forest (which was dry and very unproductive), and thence along the river-banks, through Acacia Catechu, belted by Sissoo, which often fringes the stream, always occupying the lowest flats. The foliage at this season is brilliantly green; and ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... prickly greasewood which infests the more alkaline regions; nor the rabbit-brush with its blossom so like the goldenrod, but with a very disagreeable odor. No man who knows will ever buy land where the greasewood grows thickly; it is unproductive because of the large percentage of alkali. But the ancient-looking sage is a pretty sure indication of fertility of soil. Mother Nature is sometimes hard pushed to find dresses for all her poorer areas; of course the better portions of the land east or west, ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... anything. But, put them all together—ah! the result is magical. You see, it is the aggregate that counts. Now with this theory in view, our company gets to work and canvasses the country and it gathers together thousands of little, useless, insignificant, unproductive funds like yours and mine and joins them together into one vast, giant aggregate which we call a trust fund. I see it is appealing to you. It could not be otherwise. Now, with this aggregate, you, and I, and everyone can ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... N. unproductiveness &c adj.; infertility, sterility, infecundity^; masturbation; impotence &c 158; unprofitableness &c (inutility) 645. waste, desert, Sahara, wild, wilderness, howling wilderness. V. be unproductive &c adj.; hang fire, flash in the pan, come to nothing. [make unproductive] sterilize, addle; disable, inactivate. Adj. unproductive, acarpous^, inoperative, barren, addled, infertile, unfertile, unprolific^, arid, sterile, unfruitful, infecund^; sine prole; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of the sea. But the writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with insight and justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think he says) it is a means of livelihood—that it is, in his own words, an industry. Now, the moral side of an industry, productive or unproductive, the redeeming and ideal aspect of this bread-winning, is the attainment and preservation of the highest possible skill on the part of the craftsmen. Such skill, the skill of technique, is more than honesty; it is something wider, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the Government, glad to give them a knock, though ostensibly their friend. However this may be, there was nothing inconsistent in their conduct, and Wood accounted for his vote very fairly. The Tories were triumphant for a moment, but these defeats are now so common and so unproductive of any consequences, that after the first shouting was over nobody seemed to attach much importance to it. The Cambridge and Ludlow elections having gone against them is of greater consequence, because they show that the tide is running that way, and that a dissolution must in ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... think that the introduction of a system of moderate charges upon the London and Birmingham and its tributary Railways, will be calculated to afford great advantage to important commercial interests, and to the community at large, while we see every reason to hope that it will not be unproductive of benefit to the Company itself. We must remember, however, that this latter point is, to a certain extent, experimental, and that it is highly important to obtain voluntarily from the Company guarantees of a ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing
... established. It hence appears that under judicious management the income from this establishment may be relied on as fully adequate to defray its expenses, and that by the discontinuance of post-roads altogether unproductive others of more useful character may be opened, till the circulation of the mail shall keep pace with the spread of our population, and the comforts of friendly correspondence, the exchanges of internal traffic, and the lights of the periodical press ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... in fertilizing land hitherto unproductive, or even death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in all ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... are produced. Upper Austria has the largest proportion of meadows in all Austria, 18.54%, while 2.49% is lowland and Alpine pasturage. Of the remainder, woods occupy 34.02%, gardens 1.99% and 4.93% is unproductive. Cattle-breeding is also in a very advanced stage and together with the timber-trade forms a considerable resource of the province. The principal mineral wealth of Upper Austria is salt, of which it extracts nearly 50% of the total Austrian production. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... left the colony with an excess of income over expenditure. To obtain this income he fished up all the oysters, ruined the fishery in consequence; and from that day to the present time it has been unproductive. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... "The requisitions of congress for eight years past," say the committee in February, 1786, to whom the subject of the revenue had been referred, "have been so irregular in their operation, so uncertain in their collection, and so evidently unproductive, that a reliance on them in future as a source from whence moneys are to be drawn to discharge the engagements of the confederacy, definite as they are in time and amount, would be not less dishonourable to the understandings of those who entertain such confidence, than it would be dangerous ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... misled by the difference between the apparent and the real fertility of the soil. What would be a poor soil in Europe may prove to be an excellent one in a tropical country. So the famous "red earth" of Sao Paulo, which in a drier climate would be sterile and unproductive, is there excellent because of its extremely permeable, porous and ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... abound, there is not one collection; and, in all probability, I venture a conjecture, the want of mechanical and chemical knowledge renders the silver mines unproductive, for the quantity of silver obtained every year is not sufficient to defray the expenses. It has been urged that the employment of such a number of hands is very beneficial. But a positive loss is never to be done away; and the men, thus employed, would ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... route and travel on until I found some tolerable collecting ground. By this means I should secure dry land and a good road, and avoid the rivers, which at this season are very tedious to ascend owing to the powerful currents, and very unproductive to the collector owing to most of the lands in their vicinity being underwater. Leaving early in the morning we did not reach Lorok, the village where the road begins, until late at night. I stayed there a few days, but found that most all the ground in the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... for the Marechale, in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde's approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the "young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse," "her dearest of friends," could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... skull-forms with the Mediterranean race of N. Africa, was settled in the Aegean area from a remote Neolithic antiquity, but, except in Crete, where insular security was combined with great natural fertility, remained in a savage and unproductive condition until far into the 4th millennium B.C. In Crete, however, it had long been developing a certain civilization, and at a period more or less contemporary with Dynasties XI. and XII. (2500 B.C.?) the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Losh were naturally desirous of enlisting James's good services on behalf of their patent locomotive, for as yet it had proved comparatively unproductive. They believed that he might be able so to advocate it in influential quarters as to ensure its more extensive adoption, and with this object they proposed to give him an interest in the patent. Accordingly they assigned him one-fourth of ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... because, being powerless to consummate with my palate the pleasure which the sight of them never failed to give me, I would let it accumulate as my eyes ranged over their gilded expanse, until it had acquired the strength to create in my mind a fresh example of absolute, unproductive beauty; and so it had been from my earliest childhood, when from the tow-path I had stretched out my arms towards them, before even I could pronounce their charming name—a name fit for the Prince in some French ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... equally sterile soil, all sand and gravel, descending in a gentle slope to the embankment of the railway line. It was indeed a stretch of country lost to culture, where the few good patches of loam remained unproductive, inclosed within the waste land. But the spot had all the beauty and exquisite wildness of solitude, and was one that appealed to healthy minds fond of seeing nature in freedom. And on that lovely night one could nowhere have found more perfect and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... of the earth's surface is commonly called "unproductive." As a rule this is only another way of saying that such parts of the world produce little foodstuffs. We must not take the word "unproductive" either too literally or too seriously, however, for Dame Nature has a way of secreting some of her choice treasures in places so ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... intelligent man of color, or the widow of Bishop Allen, both of Philadelphia, can purchase him. I mention their names, not to extol them, but simply to show, that what begets fame in Liberia is unproductive here. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... by the government, with the expectation that they would dispose of it at reasonable prices to settlers attracted by the new transportation facilities, and would use the proceeds in railway development. In fact, however, large quantities of this land have been held in an unproductive state for speculative purposes. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... property of the aristocracy and the clergy was completely exempt from taxation. Thus the accumulation and the diffusion of capital were alike prevented; and the few possessors of property wasted it in unproductive expenditure. Hence the fundamental error of Spanish political economy, that wealth is represented solely by the precious metals; an error which well enough explains the total failure, in spite of her magnificent ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... was one of little importance as there was no passage. The winter was fast advancing, the navigable season was nearly over, and the explorers seemed to be only at the beginning of their work. The voyage had been dangerous, harassing, unproductive. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... will upon the muscles, as was done by M. Maine de Biran, we shall find it in none of these cases, not even in the last; for it is possible there should be a paralysis of the muscles which deprives the will of power over them, makes it unproductive, incapable of being a cause, and, consequently, of suggesting the notion of one. But what no paralysis can prevent is the action of the will upon itself, the production of a resolution; that is to say, the act of causation entirely mental, the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... unproductive capitalists, men who have shares in and reap profits out of a business which they never meddle with. The first reason is, because this position of the productive, and still more that of the unproductive capitalist, is a prize for past industry expended upon production. To understand this, we must recollect once more that men work, not as individuals, but as heads of families. Every working man, from the sailor to the shop-boy, covets for himself two things, pay and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... beyond that, by extending the Northern Pacific Railroad, yet for want of means it cannot be done, unless foreign capitalists can be induced by land grants, at least to invest sufficient to make the road finally, and be made to see that their present large unproductive investments in Canada railroads can be made productive in the use of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... kissed the earl's hand reverently. Perhaps in that kiss there was the repentant consciousness how far the active goodness she had often secretly undervalued had exceeded, in its fruits, her own cold unproductive powers of will and mind. Then passing on to Harley, her brow grew elate, and the pride ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the number of laborers, by securing a larger return from those now employed, and by the permanent occupation of the fertile soil of the South by a large portion of the Union army, as settlers and cultivators, who have heretofore spent their energies upon the comparatively unproductive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... drop more—we are the creatures of circumstances. It is a long story. There were misrepresentation and misunderstanding. It is true, sir, that at that time my property was encumbered, but it was not unproductive. She died long ago. I have reason to believe that her married life was not happy. I was hot-blooded in those days, and my honor was touched, but I never blamed her. She was, at twenty, the most beautiful woman in Virginia. I ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had no means of replacing. Estate after estate was sold for several generations, till, at last, my father found himself the heir to a half-ruined castle on the borders of the ocean, and a few thousand acres of unproductive land in the same neighbourhood. My mother, who is now a saint in heaven, was as much so as a mortal can be when on earth; and although my noble father inherited much of the true pride of ancient ancestry, he was free from the folly and vice of his predecessors, and he resolved ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... produced year after year on the same field certain constituents of the soil essential to plant growth are removed, and the soil becomes impoverished and unproductive. To make the land once more fertile these constituents must be replaced. The calcium phosphate of the mineral deposits or of bone ash serves well as a material for restoring phosphorus to soils exhausted of that essential ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... the immediate kingdom, it is not of high value in agricultural wealth, being at present divided up to a considerable extent into large unproductive estates, and it is quite unable to feed its teeming population, depending for this on its large commerce in food products. Its annual imports amount to about ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... some of his most important work. Here he wrote his treatise On Monastic Vows, declaring that they are wrong and invalid and urging all priests, nuns and monks to leave the cloister and to marry. In thus freeing thousands of men and women from a life often unproductive and sterile Luther achieved one of the greatest of his practical reforms. At the Wartburg also Luther began his translation of the Bible. The New Testament appeared in September 1522, and the Old Testament followed in four parts, the last published ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... they can spend it improving land which will not only be found profitable during their lives, but which will be their own and their descendants freehold for ever, than to continue starving themselves and their children on barren patches and crofts of four or five acres of unproductive land in the Highlands. We have experienced all the charms of a Highland croft, as one of a large family, and we unhesitatingly say, that we cannot recommend it to any able-bodied person who can leave it for a more promising ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... display of the power to control the labor of thousands of individuals and force them to superhuman efforts on an unproductive undertaking, which in its agricultural or strategic results was out of all proportion to the obvious cost, might have been caused by the supreme vanity of a great soldier. On the other hand, the ancient Peruvians were religious rather ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... utter bankruptcy to which sin reduces men. They become "full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (Matt. 23:28), so depraved that they are like bad trees, unproductive of any but bad fruit (rotten, in the Greek, Matt. 7:17); the very light in them is darkness, and how great darkness (Matt. 6:23). They are cut off from the real world, as we saw, and lose the faculties they have abused—the talent is taken away (Matt. 25:28); "from ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... of the most difficult and comparatively unproductive of any that the Army undertakes. The careers of these unfortunate street women, who are nearly all of them very fine specimens of female humanity, for the most part follow a rocket-like curve. The majority of them begin by getting into trouble, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... engine in complexity. When the rare man was revealed, and the engine under his direction had proved itself the giant it was reputed, ensuring profitable return upon capital invested in works hitherto unproductive, as it often did, the sagacious owner would not readily consent to let the engineer leave. He could well afford to offer salary beyond the dreams of the worker, to a rider who knew his horse and to whom the horse took so kindly. The engineer loved his engine, the engine which he had ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... Deer were caught in nets or transfixed with javelins while running. In more open places the hunter, accompanied by hounds, rode after a hare. But though far too much of Italy was taken up by preserves of this unproductive kind, the large estates were mostly turned to agricultural purposes. Different owners, different practices; but the possessor of a number of country seats would in some cases work the land for himself by means of slaves—often ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... soon have a handsome income. And so it is with many farmers. They have the elements of 100 tons of hay lying dormant in every acre of their land, while they are content to receive half a ton a year. They have property enough, but it is unproductive, while they pay high taxes for the privilege of holding it, and high wages for the pleasure of boarding two or three ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... created for an active life. Effort is the true element of a well regulated mind. Undisturbed soil becomes hard and unproductive. Its bosom is shut up against the dews and the rains, and also against the warm rays of the sun. So it is with the mind when it is closed up and deprived of healthy action; this man lives for himself alone, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... education, and Christianity within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who are at present left to grow up in ignorance and degradation. These vagrant juveniles are growing up to strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law which will give them a chance of escaping from ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith |
